Defender of the Faith. By Philip Rot h. March 7, 1959 Save this story for later. The reason being that I was of Thurston’s faith, and not his. Philip Roth has published twenty-nine novels. In the short story 'Defender of the faith' by Phillip Roth, we are confronted with several different conflicts: man vs. Himself, as Sergeant Marx is struggling to decide whether he should be a military man, or a Jewish man; man vs. Man, with Grossbart constantly challenging authority and assimilation into the military; and man vs. Society, as Sergeant Marx is worried about how his decisions.
Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University
Defender of the Faith
(1959)
Philip Roth
(March 19, 1933 – )
Notes
'Defender of the Faith' was first published in the March 14, 1959 issue of The New Yorker.162 C.O.: Commanding Officer
- 'List of Abbreviations,' US Army Center of Military History
- 'Abbreviations and Acronyms of WWII and Service Records, ' WWII Forum (2010)
162 G.I.:
- GI (Merriam-Webster)
1: provided by an official U.S. military supply department <GI shoes>
2: of, relating to, or characteristic of U.S. military personnel
3: conforming to military regulations or customs <a GI haircut> - 'GI,' FUBAR: Soldier Slang of World War II (2007)
1) Government Issue. The term became synonymous with the Army. It can mean the soldier himself, or any government or military property, or can be tagged to just about anything relating to the Army or the soldier's life. It was not until late 1943 that GI came into general use for identifying soldiers.
2) Gastrointestinal illness—diarrhea, dysentery. See 'shits.'
3) Galvanized Iron, with particular reference to the 'GI can,' a galvanized iron trash can that was used for a wide variety of purposes (trash, laundry, cleaning weapons, cooling beverages).
4) 'To GI' means to clean up. - William H. Young and Nancy K Young, World War II and the Postwar Years in America: A Historical and Cultural Encyclopedia, vol. 1: A–I (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010)
'G.I.' (with periods) originally meant government issue and could be found stamped on many military supplies. Soldiers, with their dark humor, considered themselves a type of government issue, and the initials spread and entered everyday speech. As is always the case with slang, the meanings for GI expanded and the periods disappeared, as more and more troops swelled the armed forces. If a soldier complained of stomach discomfort, it meant he had the 'GIs,' or a gastrointestinal illness. To 'GI a place' meant cleaning up a site, probably under supervision. A 'GI haircut' meant short on the sides and back of the head.
162 G.I. party:
- 'GI party,' FUBAR:Soldier Slang of World War II (2007)
Traditional way to spend a Friday night—barracks clean-up to get ready for the Saturday-morning inspection
165 shul
Defender Faith Philip Roth Pdf Searchable
: synagogue, a Jewish house of worship, from the Yiddish word meaning 'school'- Rabbi Moshe Waldocks, 'What’s the difference between a temple, synagogue, and a shul?,' Jewish Boston (2012)
- synagogue (Merriam-Webster)
1: a Jewish congregation
2: the house of worship and communal center of a Jewish congregation
171 beat a tattoo:
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'Seder Menu,' Rome, Italy, 1945 (Courtesy of the American Jewish Historical Society at the Center for Jewish History) |
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Bitter Complaints
Since early in his career, some critics, and some important members of the Jewish community, have complained bitterly about how Roth portrays Jews - many have even gone so far as to call him an anti-Semite. Roth says that such remarks have had a great effect on him.
'I can remember the very day it began. It was 1957, when The New Yorker published my story 'Defender of the Faith.' I was 24, and being published in The New Yorker was pretty exciting. I was living down on the Lower East Side. It was a Thursday, and I kept walking out to the newsstand on 14th Street to see if the magazine had come up. Finally there it was, and I took it back to my apartment. The first few hours, I just looked at it. Then I read it, down to my name. Then I read it backward to the beginning. Then forward again down to my name. That was my day.
'The next day I got a phone call from my editor at The New Yorker, saying that the story had provoked a tremendous response—first the indignant phone calls, then, a day or two later, the angry letters. They poured in. Strong medicine for a 24-year-old writer. Not only had I published a story, but I had created a scandal. Talk about the unforeseen consequences of art. Did it have an effect on me? Sure. I put up my dukes.'
The accusations continued with 'Goodbye, Columbus' and, of course, with 'Portnoy's Complaint.'
'I didn't help things any with 'Portnoy's Complaint,' ' he says, laughing again. 'This indictment is a kind of fever that flares up from time to time. It flared up after 'Defender of the Faith,' again after 'Goodbye Columbus,' and understandably it went way up—to about 107—after 'Portnoy's Complaint.' Now there's just a low-grade fever running, nothing to worry about. I think the generation that got hot and bothered by my work is getting a little tired of the fuss.
Roth Defender Of The Faith
'You know,' he says, 'if you hang around long enough, they begin to get used to you.'—Mervyn Rothstein, 'The Unbounded Spirit of Philip Roth,' The New York Times, 1 Aug. 1985.
Comprehension Check
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Study Questions
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Review Sheet
Characters
Nathan Marx– 'Your new first sergeant is Sergeant Nathan Marx here He is a veteran of the European theater' (162)
Sheldon Grossbart– 'The trainee, who had been staring at me [Marx] whenever he thought I wouldn't notice, finally took a step in my direction' (162); 'his green-speckled eyes, long and narrow, flashed like fish in the sun. He walked over to me and sat on the edge of my desk' (163)
Larry Fishbein– 'tall boy [...] He had a cadaverous face that collapsed inward from his cheekbone to his jaw, and when he smiled [...] revealed a mouthful of bad teeth' (169)
