Abstract
This essay suggests that in the aftermath of the Holocaust the Jews needed to either regain the identity that existed before the war or undertake a Jewish identity that emerges with the founding of the state of Israel. Roth and Malamud are dramatizing precisely the psychic cost to the self of such strained identity formation. Using the work of Walter Benjamin, the author argues that hope is both authors' subordinate topic. Roth and Malamud invest new literary and historical significance in man's struggle with the angel.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 57-74 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Philip Roth Studies |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| State | Published - 2008 |
Keywords
- Trials
- Identity crises
- Holocaust
- Jewish peoples
- Jewish identity
- Storytelling
- Admission of guilt
- Self
- Identity
- Hope
- Operation Shylock
- Malamud
- Bernard
- Roth
- Philip
- Benjamin
- Walter
- Jewish American novelists
- Angel Levine
- 1900-1999
- hope
- novel
- American literature
- self-identity
- the Holocaust
- Twentieth Century
- Authors
- 1892-1940
- English Literature
- Jewish Identity
- 1914-1986. Angel Levine
- Jews -- Identity
- Philip. Operation Shylock
- Jacob (Biblical patriarch) -- In literature
- Critical theory
- Analysis
- Proselytes and proselyting
- Jewish
- Law
- Ivan IV Vasilyevich (1530-84)