The human Stain in Philip Roth's Fiction

Abstract

This doctoral thesis explores the image of the human stain in Philip Roth's fiction. It examines four novels written by the Jewish American author: Sabbath’s Theater (1995), American Pastoral (1997), The Human Stain (2000) and The Dying Animal (2001). In addition, it looks at the shaping of the stain in one of his earliest works: “Epstein” (Goodbye, Columbus and other Stories, 1959).The human stain appears in Roth’s work as a mark on the skin, a spilling of bodily fluids, the undesired presence of something that, apparently, should not be there. As a literary resource it consists of a combination of images: menstrual blood, semen, feces, mud. Within the plot, the stain -in any of its shapes-becomes an obstacle for the characters, who have to face its reality. With the objective of understanding the meaning of this literary device, this thesis carries out a comparative analysis of the sources cited above, a study structured around three main points: the human stain as impurity; secondly, the stain as power to transgress; and finally, as the human expression of suffering, illness and death. With the support of Roth scholarship about the subjects of the body, transgression, desire and death, this thesis attempts to offer a new reading of Roth’s work, arguing that this resource is a lens through which it is possible to appreciate and understand some of the most controversial aspects of his work. Aware of the scandal that he provoked with his representation of Jews, women and the physical frailty of human beings at their most vulnerable, Roth used the resource of the stain precisely to write about the very feature that he thought most characterizes us as a species...