American Pastoral
Encyclopedia
American Pastoral is a Philip Roth
novel concerning Seymour "Swede" Levov, a Jewish-American businessman and former high school athlete from Newark, New Jersey
. Levov's happy and conventional upper middle class
life is ruined by the domestic social and political turmoil of the 1960s, which in the novel is described as a manifestation of the "indigenous American berserk
". The novel won the Pulitzer Prize
in 1998 and was included in Time
's "All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels"
. The film rights to it were later optioned by Paramount Pictures
. In 2006, it was one of the runners-up in the "What is the Greatest Work of American Fiction in the Last 25 Years?" contest held by the New York Times Book Review.
The framing device
in American Pastoral is a 45th high school reunion
attended by frequent Roth alter ego
Nathan Zuckerman
, who is the narrator. At the reunion, in 1995, Zuckerman meets former classmate Jerry Levov who describes to him the tragic derailment of the life of his recently deceased older brother, Seymour "Swede" Levov. After Seymour's teenage daughter Merry in 1968 set off a bomb in protest against American involvement in the Vietnam War
, killing a bystander, and subsequently went into hiding, Seymour Levov remained traumatized for the rest of his life. The rest of the novel consists of Zuckerman's posthumous recreation of Seymour Levov's life, based on Jerry's revelation, a few newspaper clippings and Zuckerman's own impressions after two brief run-ins with "the Swede", in 1985 and shortly before his death. In these encounters, which take place early in the novel, Zuckerman learns that Seymour has remarried and has three young sons, but Seymour's daughter Merry is never mentioned. In Zuckerman's reimagining of Seymour's life this second marriage has no part; it ends in 1973 with Watergate
unraveling on TV while the previous lives of all the protagonists completely fall apart.
section of Newark as the son of a successful Jewish-American glove manufacturer. Called "the Swede" because of his anomalous blond hair, blue eyes and Nordic good looks, he is a star athlete in three sports and narrator Nathan Zuckerman's idol and hero. The Swede eventually takes over his father's glove factory, Newark Maid, and marries Dawn Dwyer, an Irish-American Miss New Jersey
1949 winner (the actual winner that year was Betty Jane Crowley
).
Levov establishes what he believes to be a perfect American life with a beloved family, a satisfying business life, and a beautiful old home in rural Old Rimrock, New Jersey. Yet as the Vietnam War
and racial unrest
wrack the country and destroy inner-city Newark, Seymour's teenage daughter Merry, born with an emotionally debilitating stutter, and outraged at the United States' conduct in Vietnam, becomes more radical in her beliefs and in 1968 commits an act of political terrorism. In protest against the Vietnam War and the "system", she plants a bomb in a local post office and the resulting explosion kills a bystander. In this singular act, Levov is cast out of the seemingly perfect life he has built and thrown instead into a world of chaos and dysfunction. Like a number of real-life members of the Weather Underground
, Seymour's daughter goes permanently into hiding. In Zuckerman's narration, a reunion of father and daughter takes place in 1973 in Newark's ruined inner city, where Merry is living in abysmal conditions. During this reunion, she claims that since the first bombing she has set off several other bombs resulting in more deaths and that she has been repeatedly raped while living in hiding. Though informed by Merry that she acted consciously and willingly in the murders, Seymour decides to keep their meeting a secret, unwilling to give up his notion of her as essentially an innocent who has been manipulated by stronger influences in the form of an unknown political group.
Zuckerman concludes his version with a dinner party with Seymour's parents and several friends, during which Seymour discovers that his wife has been having an affair with a mutual friend and attendee of the party. The narrator also reveals that Seymour himself has had an affair with Merry's speech therapist who is also attending the party, and had been responsible for hiding Merry in their home after the first bombing. Seymour concludes that all the members of the party have a veneer of respectability, yet each participates in subversive behavior, and that he is unable to understand the truth about anyone based on the actions they reveal outwardly. In this final scene, the narrator reveals Seymour to have turned Merry over to the police, having concluded that his daughter's actions have made him to see the truth about the chaos beneath the pastoral surface of things, something he can no longer ignore.
, the Watergate scandal, the sexual revolution
and Deep Throat
, the code name of the secret source in the Watergate scandal and the title of a 1972 pornographic film. In the novel's final scene, both the Watergate scandal and the pornographic film are discussed at a dinner party during which the first marriage of "the Swede" begins to unravel when he discovers his wife is having an affair. The novel also alludes to the rhetoric of revolutionary violence of the radical fringe of the New Left
and the Black Panthers, the trial of the leftist African-American activist Angela Davis
, and the bombings carried out between 1969 and 1973 by the Weathermen
and other radicals opposing the US military intervention in Vietnam. The novel quotes from Frantz Fanon
's A Dying Colonialism
, which Zuckerman imagines as one of the texts that inspire Merry to carry out her bombing of a local post office.
In the novel, Merry's bombing takes place in February 1968, during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson
, after which she flees her parental home. By that time she has had a "Weathermen motto" tacked up in her room for many months. In reality this would have been impossible. The Weathermen group was in fact formed in the summer of 1969. The lines of the "motto" which appear in the novel ("We are against everything that is good and decent in honky America. We will loot and burn and destroy. We are the incubation of your mothers' nightmares.") allude to a speech by John Jacobs
at a Weathermen "war council" in December 1969.
The inspiration for the Levov character was a real person: Seymour “Swede” Masin, a phenomenal, legendary all-around Jewish athlete who, like the Levov character, attended Newark’s Weequahic High School
. Like the book’s protagonist, Swede Masin was revered and idolized by many local middle-class Jews.
Both “Swedes” were tall and had distinctively blond hair and blue eyes, which stood out among the typically dark-haired, dark-complexioned local residents. Both attended a teacher’s college in nearby East Orange; both married out of their faith; both served in the military and, upon their return, both moved to the suburbs of Newark.
Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...
novel concerning Seymour "Swede" Levov, a Jewish-American businessman and former high school athlete from Newark, New Jersey
Newark, New Jersey
Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...
. Levov's happy and conventional upper middle class
Upper middle class
The upper middle class is a sociological concept referring to the social group constituted by higher-status members of the middle class. This is in contrast to the term "lower middle class", which is used for the group at the opposite end of the middle class stratum, and to the broader term "middle...
life is ruined by the domestic social and political turmoil of the 1960s, which in the novel is described as a manifestation of the "indigenous American berserk
Berserker
Berserkers were Norse warriors who are reported in the Old Norse literature to have fought in a nearly uncontrollable, trance-like fury, a characteristic which later gave rise to the English word berserk. Berserkers are attested in numerous Old Norse sources...
". The novel won the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It originated as the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, which was awarded between 1918 and 1947.-1910s:...
in 1998 and was included in Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
's "All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels"
TIME's List of the 100 Best Novels
Times List of the 100 Best Novels, is an unranked list of the 100 best novels—and 10 best graphic novels—published in the English language between 1923 and 2005. The list was compiled by Time critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo....
. The film rights to it were later optioned by Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
. In 2006, it was one of the runners-up in the "What is the Greatest Work of American Fiction in the Last 25 Years?" contest held by the New York Times Book Review.
The framing device
Framing device
The term framing device refers to the usage of the same single action, scene, event, setting, or any element of significance at both the beginning and end of an artistic, musical, or literary work. The repeated element thus creates a ‘frame’ within which the main body of work can develop.The...
in American Pastoral is a 45th high school reunion
Class reunion
A class reunion is a meeting of former classmates, typically organized at or near their former school by one of the class on or around an anniversary of their graduation. Former teachers may be invited as well...
attended by frequent Roth alter ego
Alter ego
An alter ego is a second self, which is believe to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality. The term was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists...
Nathan Zuckerman
Nathan Zuckerman
Nathan Zuckerman is a fictional character who appears as the narrator or protagonist of many of Philip Roth's works of fiction.-Character:...
, who is the narrator. At the reunion, in 1995, Zuckerman meets former classmate Jerry Levov who describes to him the tragic derailment of the life of his recently deceased older brother, Seymour "Swede" Levov. After Seymour's teenage daughter Merry in 1968 set off a bomb in protest against American involvement in the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, killing a bystander, and subsequently went into hiding, Seymour Levov remained traumatized for the rest of his life. The rest of the novel consists of Zuckerman's posthumous recreation of Seymour Levov's life, based on Jerry's revelation, a few newspaper clippings and Zuckerman's own impressions after two brief run-ins with "the Swede", in 1985 and shortly before his death. In these encounters, which take place early in the novel, Zuckerman learns that Seymour has remarried and has three young sons, but Seymour's daughter Merry is never mentioned. In Zuckerman's reimagining of Seymour's life this second marriage has no part; it ends in 1973 with Watergate
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
unraveling on TV while the previous lives of all the protagonists completely fall apart.
Plot
Seymour Levov is born and raised in the WeequahicWeequahic, Newark, New Jersey
Weequahic is a residential neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey's South Ward. It is separated from Clinton Hill by Hawthorne Avenue on the north, and bordered by Hillside Township and the city of Irvington on the west, Newark Liberty International Airport and Dayton on the east, and the city of...
section of Newark as the son of a successful Jewish-American glove manufacturer. Called "the Swede" because of his anomalous blond hair, blue eyes and Nordic good looks, he is a star athlete in three sports and narrator Nathan Zuckerman's idol and hero. The Swede eventually takes over his father's glove factory, Newark Maid, and marries Dawn Dwyer, an Irish-American Miss New Jersey
Miss New Jersey
.The Miss New Jersey competition is the pageant that selects the representative for the state of New Jersey in the Miss America pageant.Two Miss New Jersey winners have gone on to become Miss America titleholders: Bette Cooper and Suzette Charles...
1949 winner (the actual winner that year was Betty Jane Crowley
Kathleen Crowley
Betty Jane Kathleen Crowley is an American actress and was Miss New Jersey in 1949 and a contestant for Miss America in the same year . After the pageants, she became an actress who specialized in being phenomenally seductive in TV series and movies...
).
Levov establishes what he believes to be a perfect American life with a beloved family, a satisfying business life, and a beautiful old home in rural Old Rimrock, New Jersey. Yet as the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
and racial unrest
Race riot
A race riot or racial riot is an outbreak of violent civil disorder in which race is a key factor. A phenomenon frequently confused with the concept of 'race riot' is sectarian violence, which involves public mass violence or conflict over non-racial factors.-United States:The term had entered the...
wrack the country and destroy inner-city Newark, Seymour's teenage daughter Merry, born with an emotionally debilitating stutter, and outraged at the United States' conduct in Vietnam, becomes more radical in her beliefs and in 1968 commits an act of political terrorism. In protest against the Vietnam War and the "system", she plants a bomb in a local post office and the resulting explosion kills a bystander. In this singular act, Levov is cast out of the seemingly perfect life he has built and thrown instead into a world of chaos and dysfunction. Like a number of real-life members of the Weather Underground
Weatherman (organization)
Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization , was an American radical left organization. It originated in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society composed for the most part of the national office leadership of SDS and their...
, Seymour's daughter goes permanently into hiding. In Zuckerman's narration, a reunion of father and daughter takes place in 1973 in Newark's ruined inner city, where Merry is living in abysmal conditions. During this reunion, she claims that since the first bombing she has set off several other bombs resulting in more deaths and that she has been repeatedly raped while living in hiding. Though informed by Merry that she acted consciously and willingly in the murders, Seymour decides to keep their meeting a secret, unwilling to give up his notion of her as essentially an innocent who has been manipulated by stronger influences in the form of an unknown political group.
Zuckerman concludes his version with a dinner party with Seymour's parents and several friends, during which Seymour discovers that his wife has been having an affair with a mutual friend and attendee of the party. The narrator also reveals that Seymour himself has had an affair with Merry's speech therapist who is also attending the party, and had been responsible for hiding Merry in their home after the first bombing. Seymour concludes that all the members of the party have a veneer of respectability, yet each participates in subversive behavior, and that he is unable to understand the truth about anyone based on the actions they reveal outwardly. In this final scene, the narrator reveals Seymour to have turned Merry over to the police, having concluded that his daughter's actions have made him to see the truth about the chaos beneath the pastoral surface of things, something he can no longer ignore.
Historical setting
The novel alludes extensively to the social upheavals of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It refers to the 1967 Newark riots1967 Newark riots
The 1967 Newark riots were a major civil disturbance that occurred in the city of Newark, New Jersey between July 12 and July 17, 1967. The six days of rioting, looting, and destruction left 26 dead and hundreds injured.-Social unrest:...
, the Watergate scandal, the sexual revolution
Sexual revolution
The sexual revolution was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the Western world from the 1960s into the 1980s...
and Deep Throat
Deep Throat
Deep Throat is the pseudonym given to the secret informant who provided information to Bob Woodward of The Washington Post in 1972 about the involvement of United States President Richard Nixon's administration in what came to be known as the Watergate scandal...
, the code name of the secret source in the Watergate scandal and the title of a 1972 pornographic film. In the novel's final scene, both the Watergate scandal and the pornographic film are discussed at a dinner party during which the first marriage of "the Swede" begins to unravel when he discovers his wife is having an affair. The novel also alludes to the rhetoric of revolutionary violence of the radical fringe of the New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
and the Black Panthers, the trial of the leftist African-American activist Angela Davis
Angela Davis
Angela Davis is an American political activist, scholar, and author. Davis was most politically active during the late 1960s through the 1970s and was associated with the Communist Party USA, the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panther Party...
, and the bombings carried out between 1969 and 1973 by the Weathermen
Weatherman (organization)
Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization , was an American radical left organization. It originated in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society composed for the most part of the national office leadership of SDS and their...
and other radicals opposing the US military intervention in Vietnam. The novel quotes from Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon was a Martiniquo-Algerian psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism...
's A Dying Colonialism
A Dying Colonialism
A Dying Colonialism, published in 1959, is an account of the Algerian War written by Frantz Fanon. The book details cultural and political changes that emerge due to the rejection of Algerian colonial oppression by the French....
, which Zuckerman imagines as one of the texts that inspire Merry to carry out her bombing of a local post office.
In the novel, Merry's bombing takes place in February 1968, during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
, after which she flees her parental home. By that time she has had a "Weathermen motto" tacked up in her room for many months. In reality this would have been impossible. The Weathermen group was in fact formed in the summer of 1969. The lines of the "motto" which appear in the novel ("We are against everything that is good and decent in honky America. We will loot and burn and destroy. We are the incubation of your mothers' nightmares.") allude to a speech by John Jacobs
John Jacobs (student leader)
John Gregory Jacobs was an American student and anti-war activist in the 1960s and early 1970s. He was a leader in both Students for a Democratic Society and the Weatherman group, and an advocate of the use of violent force to overthrow the government of the United States...
at a Weathermen "war council" in December 1969.
The inspiration for the Levov character was a real person: Seymour “Swede” Masin, a phenomenal, legendary all-around Jewish athlete who, like the Levov character, attended Newark’s Weequahic High School
Weequahic High School
Weequahic High School is a public high school in Newark in Essex County, New Jersey. The school is operated by the Newark Public Schools and is located at 279 Chancellor Avenue....
. Like the book’s protagonist, Swede Masin was revered and idolized by many local middle-class Jews.
Both “Swedes” were tall and had distinctively blond hair and blue eyes, which stood out among the typically dark-haired, dark-complexioned local residents. Both attended a teacher’s college in nearby East Orange; both married out of their faith; both served in the military and, upon their return, both moved to the suburbs of Newark.