Philip Roth’s The human Stain is a great novel that it contains individual trauma to reflect as social and culture meaning. The voice of novel describes each character’s traumatized memories by the third person narrator, Nathan Zuckerman. Through Zuckerman’s observation, Roth made reader to travel character’s past and present. Also, he paralleled the historical facts with the events to point out race, class, sex, and ethic in 90s.
Coleman Silk is not a simple character, and he keeps huge secret that explains his traumatized memories as colored Jews. Coleman is highly educated, overwhelming, and privileged class; however, he loss all of his reputation due to the charging as a racist in his college. During his lecturing, he calls two absent students as “Spooks,” which means “a ghost or dated offensive a contemptuous term for a black person.” He can’t say that he is black. After he rejects his identity, he decides to be a white Jew. He isolates himself from his family and the past. After he meets Faunia, who suffers from death of children, he reveals his dark secret to her. They understand each other and feel free from their struggle. I was deeply impressed their trauma due to individual and social causes.
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