This thesis examines Philip Roth’s The American Trilogy which are American Pastoral, I Married a Communist and The Human Stain, using the theory of Slavoj ?i?ek’s fantasy. Like the Greek chorus, Nathan Zuckerman, the narrator, depicts the downfall of three protagonists; Swede Levov in American Pastoral, Ira Ringold in I Married a Communist and Coleman Silk in The Human Stain.
Starting from the 1940s, Roth asks a question about the definition of ‘being an American.’ Being an American is a fantasy itself. The protagonist’ dreams to be an American is just an endless frustration and tragedy in the end. Every main character in The American Trilogy passes away after going through the fall of their lives.
Considering that ‘why the main characters have no choice but to face tragedy,’ this thesis figures out that parts of modern American history such as Mccarthyism, Vietnam war, and political scandals, which are backgrounds of The American Trilogy, are related with the protagonists’ falls. Their tragedies result indicate that the lives they wanted are illusions in the end. This point relates that what ideology must repress to organize itself, to preserve its consistency and the trial to disclose protagonists’ “symptom” and “Fantasy,” which are Zizek’s concepts.
In I married a communist, Ira is an enthusiastic communist but has a fantasy that he can marry and have a family that constitutes a bourgeois life. He changes by continually renaming himself. He believes that his duty as an American is to become a communist who provokes freedom and equality, but he never asks himself a question about what ideologies are working being his belief in being an American. His tragic flaw is that he believes in a thing without understanding it in depth. As a result, his dreams collapse and turn into being an ideologic tool of Mccarthyism.
In American Pastoral, Swede has lived as a hero for a Jewish community from his childhood. His fantasy is to become a WASP beyond his race, the Jew. He accepts the norm of about being an American set up by father and identifies himself with WASP America. The falls of Swede, Newark, and America, however, are juxtaposed. The remaining anamorphosis in Swede''s fantasy of being an American returns as his daughter Mary. Mary''s bomb-dropping terrorist attack heads towards the society, not just towards Swede.
In Human Stain, Coleman does passing as a Jewish although he is a black. Coleman could not put up with chronic racism in American society, so he lives without any contact with his family, never revealing he is a black, to be free. However, the black identity that he wants to conceal returns endlessly. When he believes that he becomes an American as a Jewish, he confronts another collective fantasy of racism due to his blackness.
Roth covers the different eras of American history respectively but he coherently asks a question about the notion of ‘American Pastoral.’ He reveals that a myth in America that whoever represents as an American dream can be free is no more than a tragedy. Furthermore, Roth sees the protagonists’ lives as the tragedy of the American which anyone coincidentally living in that time might have faced rather than as the tragedy of individuals in a certain historical situations.