A psychoanalytic Reading of Dangling Subjectivities in Philip Roth’s Goodbye Columbus

Philip Roth’s literary works including Goodbye Columbus, The Breast and My Life as a Man narrate the identity frustration of educated Jewish characters who are ambivalent about their past and present identities. The characters in these novels try to make relationship between their past which exists in their minds with their current reality, but their attempts are unsuccessful because they are frustrated by the American society which is the opposite side of media manipulation. Seemingly, Roth’s characters are trapped in a Jewish society which has lost its status and dignity in the modern American society wrestling to find their own identity and place as a psychologically frustrated group. In this research work, it is shown that Philip Roth demonstrates a nuanced understanding of how the development of Jewish-American identity is a painful and often hilariously paradoxical journey of discovery as Jewish traditions intersect (and often collide) with the American ideal of vertical advancement. Since the successful fulfillment of the American Dream requires some measure of assimilation into the majority American culture known as Americanization, Roth's Jewish-American characters are continually and precariously ill-balanced between retaining and abandoning their Jewish heritage in favor of a new American identity.

Keywords:

self , dangling subjectivity , other , American dream , Jewish-American identity , Americanization , psychological frustration