"The Curse Never Fell Upon Our Nation Till Now": History And Fear In Philip Roth's The Plot Against America
| dc.contributor | Brittain, Michael Lynn | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2007-08-23T01:56:20Z | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2011-08-24T21:40:03Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2007-08-23T01:56:20Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2011-08-24T21:40:03Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2007-08-23T01:56:20Z | |
| dc.date.submitted | May 2006 | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | In The Plot Against America, Philip Roth questions the common perception of historic "inevitability" by creating a counter-factual history, placing himself and his childhood family into a fictional World War II America. Through the novel's imaginary political and historical events, Roth's alternate American history (in which Charles Lindbergh is President) creates a powerful sense of fear that permeates the novel. In this paper, I examine Roth's use of history in The Plot by exploring the novel's blurring of alternate history, dystopia, "imagined autobiography," bildungsroman, and Holocaust genres. I also examine how the narrator (literally/fictionally Roth) conducts in the novel a choir of competing narrative voices--part seven-year-old boy, part adult storyteller, part historian, part Jewish-American. Roth's use of competing discourses in The Plot, along with his blurring of historical/fictional boundaries, forces us (as readers) to consider/reconsider our own histories in a post-9/11 world. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10106/240 | |
| dc.language.iso | EN | en_US |
| dc.publisher | English | en_US |
| dc.title | "The Curse Never Fell Upon Our Nation Till Now": History And Fear In Philip Roth's The Plot Against America | en_US |
| dc.type | M.A. | en_US |