13
pronouns we, they, I” (109). Silk leaves Howard and attends New York University after
serving in the military, earns a Ph.D., accepts a position as a classics professor at a small
college that he transforms into a research institution as dean. He marries Iris Gittelman,
the daughter of a Passaic, NJ candy store owner who herself sought “to escape her
oppressive surroundings.”
As contemporary exemplars of the Alger narrative, the ascent of these figures is a
difficult one. Roth’s characters struggle with their fathers who are seen as both sources of
support and obstruction.
vii
Roth’s narrator describes the fathers of his generation as
“limited men with unlimited energy” who were obsessed with their son’s self-
improvement: “we, the children, should escape poverty, ignorance, disease, social injury
and intimidation—escape, above-all, insignificance. You must not come to nothing!
Make something of yourselves” (1997, 41). Nathan Zuckerman’s father, concerned that
his son’s future will be lost in Communist politics, implores him to support Truman in the
1948 election and demands that he not attend a Wallace rally. Swede Levov’s father
forces his son to work at the tannery and a sewing machine at 5AM six days a week
before bringing him into the business. Silk’s father threatens to disown him when he
discovers he has been boxing professionally. Coleman attends Howard University
because had he not, “his father would have killed him.” Coleman must go to Howard
because his father concluded that he would “become a doctor…meet a light-skinned girl
there from a good Negro family…marry and settle down and have children who would go
to Howard” (102).
The sons later feel admiration for their fathers’ convictions but still harbor a
sense of resentment and even a certain revulsion at their sacrifices. Levov’s brother, for
Convention