Thomas
FALKNER "Oedipus in the Berkshires: Greek
Tragedy and Philip Roth's The Human Stain"
Reviewers and
critics have recognized Philip Roth's The Human
Stain (2000) for
its social commentary and unabashed treatment of
sexuality in old age. Largely unappreciated, however, has
been the novel's profound relationship to the classics,
conspicuous in the presentation of its protagonist,
Coleman Silk: a black man who has spent his professional
life "passing" as a white Jewish professor of Classics at
"Athena College" in Massachusetts. This paper examines
the significant and striking ways in which Roth uses
Greek tragedy to model its narrative and the extent to
which this strategy enhances the tragic standing of the
work, notwithstanding the general incompatibility between
tragedy and the modern novel. Greek tragedy provides an
explicit paradigm for the wounded anger of the
protagonist and his withdrawal from his community: "he
knew what can corrode and warp a man who believes himself
to have been grievously wronged. He knew from the wrath
of Achilles, the rage of Philoctetes, the fulminations of
Medea, the madness of Ajax, the despair of Electra, and
the suffering of Prometheus the many horrors that can
ensue when the degree of indignation is achieved and, in
the name of justice, retribution is exacted and a cycle
of retaliation begins" (p.63).
The Oedipus
plays of Sophocles, in particular, provide a rich set of
analogues. As in Oedipus the King,
Silk's true origins belie the public perception, and the
dark mysteries of race provide an American corollary to
the Greek horror of incest; the anagnorisis in the novel
will be that of the narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, who
realizes Silk's secret only after his death, although the
reader, like the audience of OT, "knows the
story" almost from the outset. This knowledge allows the
reader to appreciate its manifold ironies&emdash;not the
least, that Silk himself should fail to see the tragic
trajectory of his life, armed though he is by "the
prophylaxis of the whole of Attic tragedy and Greek epic
poetry" (p.63). An even greater depth of inspiration is
drawn from Oedipus at Colonus, whose aged
protagonist is in many ways a model for Silk in his angry
self-exile; his willful determination to live his
remaining years on his own terms rather than those of
others; his love for his idealistic daughter Lisa and
strained relationship with his son Mark (recalling
Antigone and Polyneices, respectively); and his bitter
rejection of the hypocrisy of family and community that
disguises self-interest as principle.
The tragic
intertexts support the sense of loss and suffering that
permeates the novel and engulfs its characters. The
novel's tragic ambiance is epitomized at Silk's funeral,
as his children assemble to mourn his passing and Mark
sings the Kaddish, recalling the shared sense of loss
after the passing of Oedipus in OC. Yet the
novel ends with a gesture to the redemptive power of art.
Just as OC works to
restore Oedipus to his former greatness, the novel that
the narrator vows to undertakes (which is The Human
Stain)
seeks to rehabilitate the damaged reputation of its
protagonist.