American Pastoral

“The Swede returned home in 47 […] at twenty unencumbered by a Gentile wife and all the more glamorously heroic for having made his mark as a Jewish marine.”

All the Swede’s heroics—from his feats on the athletic field to his military service—are prefaced by his Judaism. In literary terms, the Swede is a tragic hero, and Zuckerman thus holds him to a higher standard than other people. His task is to transcend, on behalf of his whole community, the discrimination they face for their Jewish identity. By withstanding the brutal training of Parris Island, lettering in three sports, and marrying a Gentile beauty queen, the Swede proves to himself and his community that they can break free of the limitations that have been imposed on them.

“Basketball was never like this, Skip.”

One day, as the Swede walks off the football field, he catches the young Zuckerman’s eye and utters this simple phrase. It’s a moment Zuckerman remembers well into adulthood. For an icon like the Swede to not only acknowledge his presence but also call him by name (and a nickname, at that, implying familiarity) places him within the Swede’s inner circle, if only for that moment: “The adored had acknowledged the adoring” (19). It’s not until years later, when Zuckerman and the Swede have dinner as grown men, that Zuckerman sees his old idol as a human being, cast down from his pedestal on Mount Olympus.

“That’s how we know we’re alive: we’re wrong.”

When Zuckerman realizes his hasty assumptions about the Swede are wrong, he acknowledges that not fully understanding another person is part of living. We cannot, he argues, ever really get it right, and we should therefore abandon all considerations of right and wrong and “just go along for the ride” (35). Even a life as seemingly predictable as the Swede’s is far more complex than any outsider can ever know.

“You must not come to nothing! Make something of yourselves!”

The post-war generation—the Swede’s generation—is the first to come of age in an America that stands atop the international order. As such, this generation feels an enormous obligation to the previous one to not throw away the opportunity provided by their sacrifice. The Swede feels this obligation many times over as a third-generation immigrant, as a Jew, and as the eldest son of a man whose demands of his progeny are very exacting. The Swede spends his entire life fulfilling those obligations and then questioning what his virtue has all been for.

“And since we don’t just forget things because they don’t matter but also forget things because they matter too much—because each of us remembers and forgets in a pattern whose labyrinthine windings are an identification mark no less distinctive than a fingerprint.”

The fallibility and selectivity of memory is a theme of the narrative. Dawn, in her grief, chooses to forget about Merry and rebuild her life. The Swede, however, cannot let go. Each of them remembers her time as a pageant contestant differently, each memory carefully selected to buttress each person’s self-identity. The Swede remembers it fondly, a marker of his past when everything seemed optimistic; Dawn remembers it less so, a time in her life that hampered the person she chose to become.

“The philosopher-king of ordinary life. Brought her up with all the modern ideas of being rational with your children. Everything permissible, everything forgivable, and she hated it.”

As Jerry fills Zuckerman in on the Swede’s life, he issues a harsh indictment of his brother’s (and all “modern” parents’) parenting style—too much reasoning, not enough strict guidance. The Swede has this style down pat, a response to years of research by child psychologists and difficult memories of his own taskmaster father, but Jerry argues that, despite all its good intentions, it’s not what Merry needed. The Swede checks off all the boxes of a “liberal” parent, but he still ends up with an angry, fugitive daughter.

“He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach—that it makes no sense.”

As Zuckerman listens to the Swede regale him with tales of his three boys, he realizes, after piecing together his prior life, that his pride in his sons is an attempt to forget about Merry, now deceased. The Swede, unable to comprehend the tragic turn his life has taken, chooses to focus on his new life. In much the same way that Dawn rebuilds a new house and a new face, the Swede rebuilds a new family, the institution that has always been his anchor, an anchor he seeks once again.

“This is the root of humanity, this opposable thumb. It enables us to make tools and build cities and everything else.”

As the Swede gives Rita Cohen a tour of the factory, he waxes philosophical about gloves and about how a well-made glove not only fits the hand but also allows it a full range of motion and allows it to be the miraculous appendage that sets humans apart from other animals. What was a simple fashion accessory takes on, in the imagination of the Swede, a far greater significance.

“Faced with something he could not name, he had done everything wrong.”

Rita’s seduction is so aggressively wrong on every level—she’s little more than a child, and her motives are anger and vengeance, not affection—the Swede shuts down and flees the room. His default responses, logic and reason, don’t work here, and absent that, he is adrift. In hindsight, he realizes that he has given Rita everything she wants, $5,000 in ransom and all Merry’s keepsakes, and he has gotten nothing in return. Rita is operating on a level he is not remotely equipped for, despite all his athletic and business success.

“This is mine too. You just own it.”

During the Newark riots, when the city is burning, the Swede and his forewoman, Vicky, stand watch over the factory to prevent looting and vandalism. Vicky, a Black woman, acts as liaison between the Swede and the rioters, assuring them that, as a boss, he’s one of the good ones. She also gives him a lesson in pride of ownership—she doesn’t want the factory destroyed any more than he does; although he is the legal owner, she claims an investment in time and labor, an investment equal to any financial endowment the Swede has made.

“Because of her being introduced, no matter where they went, as ‘a former Miss New Jersey,’ she was sure that even though she had a bachelor’s degree people were always dismissing her as a bathing beauty, a mindless China doll capable of doing nothing more productive for society that standing around looking pretty.”

So much of Dawn’s character and motivation can be distilled into this single fear—not being taken seriously. Her accomplishments are far greater than a beauty pageant; she has a degree in music, she has raised award-winning cattle, and she has provided scholarship money for her family. Nothing irks her as much as being reduced to a single facet of her life, something that happened decades ago. It’s a testament to how beautiful people, despite the advantages afforded by their beauty, must labor to overcome assumptions (much like Zuckerman’s assumptions about the Swede’s “simple” life).

“The pyramids of Newark: as huge and dark and hideously impermeable as a great dynasty’s burial edifice has every historical right to be.”

Reflecting on the demise of Newark, once a manufacturing dynamo, the Swede compares the shuttered foundries and industrial plants to the great pyramids, tombs encasing not only pharaohs and their possessions but also the great empire of Egypt itself. As Newark has lost its manufacturing base—its very identity for decades—it has lost itself, buried in the ruins of its former glory.

“Three generations in raptures over America. Three generations of becoming one with a people. And now with the fourth it had come to nothing.”

Roth examines the dynamics of intergenerational relationships—the love, the obligations, the desire to be part of the American experience, and the need for independence. The Swede has spent his entire life as a dutiful son, obliging his father and his family’s wishes, and so he cannot imagine his own daughter doing anything less, especially when she has enjoyed every advantage of their upper-class existence. Merry has not only broken the law, but in the Swede’s view, she has also defied her obligation to previous generations.

“Life is just the period of time in which you are alive.”

When she is in school, Merry’s class assignment asks, “What is life?” The other kids construct “labored” and derivative answers that seem, to the Swede, intended not to answer the question but to please the teacher. Merry’s short, succinct answer doesn’t earn her a good grade (and its logic is circular), but the Swede admires it for its directness and maturity. All other considerations, it seems, are frivolous platitudes. When you get right down to it, Roth asks, is life anything more than the time during which you are alive?

“You are the most powerful person in the world!”

As the Swede tries to convince Merry to come home, she claims to relinquish all power over everything. The Swede argues that this is not possible. In life, people form relationships, and those relationships involve power dynamics whether she likes it or not. Her power as a daughter over him as her father is too profound to relinquish. The power of love cannot be so easily tossed aside.

“This was his daughter, and she was unknowable.”

A theme in the novel is the impossibility of ever truly knowing another person. The Swede leaves his daughter in her squalid room, in shock and disbelief, telling himself that this infuriating, self-destructive person is not Merry. It’s the only rationale he can devise to cope with the trauma and with the fact that his child has veered so far off the rails—so far out of his parental control—that she has committed murder and seems likely to starve herself to death. The notion that a father can never truly know his own daughter is unthinkable, but it’s the only thing that makes sense in the face of what he has encountered.

“Not even during the worst of it does he abandon his factory to the vandals; he does not abandon his workers afterward, does not turn his back on these people, and still his daughter is raped.”

The tragedies the Swede faces are almost incomprehensible, and, as is human nature, he struggles to makes sense of them (although, Roth suggests, maybe there is no sense to be made). Reflecting on his life, he sees a litany of good deeds, including protecting his factory from rioters and keeping production in Newark to keep locals employed, despite escalating overhead costs. How, then, he asks himself, can he be rewarded for his virtue with such cosmic punishment? He clings to the idea of unjust punishment because the idea of a random universe is even more terrifying than a malicious one.

“Every rung into America for the Levovs there was another rung to attain; this guy was there.”

On the ladder of social status in America, the Swede always feels one step behind Bill Orcutt, his neighbor who can trace his American ancestry back hundreds of years. As a more recent American—third generation—the Swede feels not only slightly less authentically American but also that he must work extra hard to achieve the same status.

“I go into those synagogues and it's all foreign to me. It always has been.”

When the Swede’s only Jewish neighbor, Bucky Robinson, tries to persuade him to join his synagogue, the Swede explains that all the trappings of his faith don’t resonate with him the way other pursuits do—baseball, for example. Subconsciously or not, the Swede is choosing what he perceives as more American pastimes—baseball, touch football, a house with its own historic lineage—over his own cultural heritage.

“As usual, the Swede’s default reaction to not being able to fathom cause and effect (as opposed to his father's reflexive suspiciousness) was to fall back on a lifelong strategy and become tolerant and charitable.”

The Swede’s tolerance knows no limits—a trait his brother sees as a tragic flaw—even in the face of Marcia Umanoff’s blatant condescension and her apparent glee over Merry’s crimes. As a Jew, as someone who is used to being judged and scrutinized unfairly, he vows not to judge others unfairly. It has become so second nature to him to reason and try to see the validity in the other side that he cannot see when he should judge and call another person out for their behavior. He tries so hard to reason with Merry and see her point of view that he ignores all his instincts telling him her point of view is unreasonable and suicidal.

“The Swede knew that once he got him on the floor of the terrace he would have no difficulty in slamming Orcutt’s head against the flagstones as many times as might be required to get him into that cemetery with his distinguished clan.”

As the Swede suffers in silence over Dawn’s betrayal with Orcutt, his rage builds until he fantasizes about killing him. All the years of patience, understanding, and tolerance have brought him to this point, and his anger at the universe or God metastasizes into thoughts of murder. For all his incredulity about Merry’s crimes, his own dark fantasies are a sign of how even the most reasonable and peace-loving person can be pushed to violence.

“I DON’T WANT TO LEAVE IT UP TO A CHILD TO DECIDE TO EAT JESUS.”

As Lou Levov questions his future daughter-in-law about her faith, she explains the sacrament of the Eucharist, the symbolism of eating Jesus’ body and drinking his blood. Lou is polite but horrified, especially when Dawn suggests allowing their future child to choose their own spiritual path. In his reductive (and sarcastic) fashion, Lou argues that this kind of decision is far too important to leave to a child, requiring adult guidance. Although Lou’s response is humorous, it is, for him, a deadly serious matter concerning issues of faith, culture, and morality.

“A moratorium on funny foods and funny ways and religious exclusivity, a moratorium on the three-thousand-year-old nostalgia of the Jews, a moratorium on Christ and the cross and the crucifixion for the Christians.”

As Dawn and Lou finally come to terms with their differences, Thanksgiving—that most American of holidays—becomes the agreed-upon neutral ground, the time during which they all become Americans and forget their unique cultural practices. Roth implies that assimilation is the only true path to common ground, that the only way to overcome differences is to unite under a single cultural heritage.