American Pastoral
Philip Roth (1997)
“The most American of fathers raises the most American of daughters — and she builds a bomb.”
Character Analysis
The American Dream personified and destroyed. Blond, athletic, a three-sport star from Newark who becomes a successful manufacturer and builds a life in the New Jersey countryside — everything the postwar promise offered. His tragedy is not that he failed but that he succeeded. He did everything right, and it wasn't enough. The Swede's decency is his vulnerability: a man who believes in management, in fixable problems, in the pastoral compact, is defenseless against history.
Formal, careful, self-editing — avoids ethnic markers, speaks in the measured tones of the successful suburban professional. When pushed, reverts to the direct speech of the Newark son.