Ain Shams University Faculty of Al-Alsun Dept.

of English Postgraduate Studies Philology Journal

The Lived Nightmare: A Psycho-cultural Study in Philip Roths Portnoys Complaint (1967) : (1967)
In partial fulfilment of the M.A degree Submitted by: Basma Abd El-Khaleq El-Shimy. Under the supervision of:

Dr. Fadwa Kamal Abd El-Rahman Associate. Prof. of English language and literature Faculty of Al-Alsun Ain Shams University

Dr. Noha Faisal Mohamed Associate. Prof. of English language and literature Faculty of Al-Alsun Ain Shams University

 

The publication of Portnoys complaint (1969) came ten years after Philip Roths first book Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories (1959), officially establishing Roths literary status as one of the most prominent post-war American novelists. The novel fulfils the early promise made by Goodbye, Columbus (1959), a promise of breaking free from the Orthodox Jewish tradition in the American fiction. In his critical study Waiting for the End (1964), Leslie Fiedler refers to what he calls the post-war triumph of the Jewish novelists in America during the 1950s and 1960s. The American Jewish fiction, with its prominent practitioners such as Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and Philip Roth, naturally reflected the cultural changes that took place in the American society and the lives of the Jews as an ethnic group. After the World War II, economic conditions improved and many Jews entered the middle class by virtue of education. Many were faced with the dilemma of either embracing an ethnic heritage growingly detached from their American identity or assimilating into the Gentile society. Accordingly, a generation of American scholars and writers has emerged. Such writers devoted their writing to exploring such conflict and the ensuing feelings of confusion and alienation. Writers such as Bellow, Malamud, and Roth were regarded as secular Americans or humanists first, and Jews second as they reflected in their work obvious rootlessness and scepticism.

If Roth is generally reputable for his penchant for writing novels that shock readers and critics, it was PC that established such reputation. In 1969 PC had been the ground-breaking as well as scandalous best seller, for it had shocked the American Jewish community as well as the literary community at large. Many Rabbis and other Jewish leaders openly accused Roth of being a typical selfhating Jew; [H]is novels had been labelled pornographic (take for example, Portnoy's Complaint and The Breast), vulgar (The Great American Novel and The Anatomy Lesson), misogynistic (My Life as a Man and The Dying Animal), self-absorbed (The Counterlife and Deception), politically slipshod (Our Gang and I Married a Communist), politically incorrect (Sabbath's Theater and The Human Stain), and even anti-Semitic (back to Goodbye Columbus and Portnoy's Complaint). (Royal 1)

Despite all the above accusations, in 2001, the Time magazine chose Philip Roth as "America's Best Novelist", which actually surprised many people. The fact is that many casual readers of Roth's works take what they read for its face value without realizing the complex nature of Roth's narrative tone. They judgingly view Roth as "the controversial bad boy of American letters" (Royal 2). Speaking about himself, Roth remarks: "Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends" ("Eight Books" 111). Elsewhere, he ironically responds to such type of affronted readers: In their eyes I commit not amusing mischief, not responsible mischief but irresponsible mischief; with a crazy intensity that is unremitting, I enact a farce about issues that are anything but farcical [. . . .they] have reminded me more than once that my impertinence imposes on even our gravest concerns a demeaning and most ridiculous shape. Because of this my mischief-making is something other than a relief. It is a menace and a scandal. ("Jewish Mischief" 1, 20)

The sarcastic tone in the above passage signifies the flair with which Roth plays his duplicity game in order to make out of the farcical a serious statement about contemporary American Jewry. The present paper is an attempt to glimpse beneath one of Roth's masks the self-hating Jew to reveal the social satire behind his tirade against the Jewish Middle-class habits and values. In achieving so, Roth has employed the most compelling narrative technique of "[grounding] the mythological in the recognizable, the verifiable, the historical (Reading Myself and Others 39-40).

The Narrative of the novel is constructed as a stream-of-consciousness monologue that is only loosely linear in chronology. It proceeds through a series of what Roth himself calls blocks of consciousness (Reading Myself and Others 15). The advantages of this narrative choice are numerous. First, it is suitable for the confessional nature of the novel, as the apparently random episodes only associated inside Portnoys memory are typical of a patient's improvisations on his analyst couch. Second, Bernard F. Rodgers argues that the psychoanalytic monologue provides a realistic justification for Portnoys vehement soul-baring and finger-pointing, for his use of words and images

which could be unacceptable in a more public context, and also for his emphasis on sexual memories (87).

Another closely-related advantage of such technique is the artistic freedom it allows. In his book Reading Myself and Others (1961), Roth points out that the psychoanalytic monologue framework enabled him legitimately to bring into my fiction the sort of intimate, shameful sexual detail [] that in another fictional environment would have struck me as pornographic, exhibitionistic, and nothing but obscene (216-17). Furthermore, the narrative technique contributes to the comic effect intended by Roth, the very randomness and unpredictability of what is narrated, the sudden shifts in time, locate, and situation, create exactly that ambience of fluidity and surprise which is most congenial to the genre of low comedy (Grebstein 408).

PC is written in the form of a long psychoanalytic monologue narrated by Alexander Portnoy and addressed to his psychoanalyst, Dr. Spielvogel. Throughout the monologue, the patient describes what is fixing him, and sketches, in the process, a history of his boyhood and adolescence as a young American Jew. The aim of the analysis is to obtain emotion insight and reach catharsis.

In his prefatory note to the novel, Roth defines Portnoys complaint as A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Such raging war does not only lend itself to a psychological interpretation, it also has a cultural overlay. For Portnoy puts it clearly that his complaint consists of living in the middle of a Jewish joke! only it aint no joke!(37). The phrase in the middle suggests that his existence is suspended somewhere between two conflicting forces, his choice of the word Jewish, with its ethnic implications, problematizes the questions of identity. Furthermore, his description of his existence as a Joke sheds light on the ironic nature of his status, which resembles dancing on a tight rope, also the Jewish Joke in Freudian terms has implications of self-abuse and mockery. His seemingly paradoxical only it aint no joke! immediately negating the previous emphatic description suggests an oscillation

between a realistic and a non-realistic state, which is typical of this absurd intermediary state of his Jewish existence.

The relevance of the Freudian account on the nightmare and the uncanny as well as Homi Bhabhas notion of ambivalence and hybridity to Portnoys complaint consists in three factors: First, the anxiety that occur as a result of attempting to repress strong emotional content, second, the uncanny compulsion to repeat and the return of the repressed in traumatic nightmares, and third, the intermediary state or limbo between two conflicting forces that traumatic nightmares represents.

The nightmare, according to the Freudian theory, consists of three psychic components. First, the evil repudiated wish (254) emanating from the Id that becomes so strong that it overpowers the censorship system (which is the second component). The third component is the distressing process of such breakdown of the system, which is the main source of anxiety that the sleeper experiences.

The first component under discussion is the censorship system. It refers to the protective component of the psyche which prevents the irrational repudiated impulses of the Id from penetrating into the conscious level and manifesting themselves in any activity during day time or during sleep. A different name for censorship is the superego, or the morality principle which represents ones residue of parental influence, conscience, and restraint. According to Brenner, the Superego can be characterized as follows: 1.The approval or disapproval of actions and wishes on the grounds of rectitude. 2. Critical self-observations. 3. Self-punishment. 4. The demand for reparation or repentance of wrong-doing 5. Self-praise or self-love as a reward for virtuous or desirable thoughts and actions. (111-112).

The literary equivalent of the first element of the nightmare pattern is Sophie Portnoy. The opening chapter or part of Portnoys long psychoanalytic monologue, The Most Unforgettable Character Ive Met portrays his mother as a superego figure. The title of the chapter evokes uncanny feelings of both delight and sadness; on the one hand, it is a parody of that long familiar school assignment. On the other hand, it evokes a vague sense of sadness because the mother appears to be only horribly

unforgettable. Not only is she unforgettable to Portnoys memory, Sophie Portnoy is considered the most memorable and fully elaborated caricature of the Jewish mother (Ravits 6) in the history of American fiction at large. Her literary character has outraged many women as it has distorted their own memories of the hard work, labour organizing, and sacrifices of their mothers and themselves (qtd in Ravits 8).

The epigraph or prefatory note to the novel clearly associates Portnoy's suffering, in part, to his mother [m]any of the symptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship. However, at a later part of the novel, Portnoy warns his analyst of a traditional diagnosis of his illness: Theres more here than just adolescent resentment and Oedipal rage (PC 71). That more is the premise of the mothers literary identification with The Freudian censorship, or Superego.

The element of critical observation mentioned by Brenner is vividly given shape in Sophies portrayal. The very opening of the chapter introduces the mother as a perpetual watcher through a lens of magical realism that shows a dangerous fascination with her (Ravits 16). As a young school boy, Portnoy believes that his mother is closely watching him, even while hes away at school: She was so deeply, imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise. As soon as the last bell had sounded, I would rush off for home, wondering as I ran if I could possibly make it to our apartment before she had succeeded in transforming herself. Invariable she was already in the kitchen by the time I arrived, and setting out my milk and cookies. Instead of causing me to give up my delusions, however, the feat merely intensified my respect for her powers. And then it was always a relief not to have caught her between incarnations anyway. (1)

Portnoy ascribes to his mother supernatural powers which uncannily relate to old primitive perceptions of the universe. His mothers imagined omnipotence, according to Freud, confirms the archaic surmounted primitive universal beliefs of supernatural powers which produce the uncanny fear. Further, Sophie is keen on preserving her little boys perfect neatness: For mistakes she checked

my sums; for holes, my socks; for dirt, my nails, my neck, every seam and crease of my body (12). Her critical observation is not confined to her sons neatness and behaviour, she watches like a hawk (11), Portnoy mentions, the butcher to make sure hes doing his job properly. While at the cemetery, she is the only one who has the common sense (12), as the mother puts it, to clear the weeds off their relatives' graves. Such sketch of the mother as the perpetual critical monitor is reminiscent of the domestic image that Roth describes in an essay titled The New Jewish Stereotypes. In this essay, Roth depicts a Portnoy-like figure who is, somewhere between ten and fifteen, who gets excellent grades in school and is always combed and courteoushe is watched at bed time, at study-time, and especially at mealtime. Who he is watched by is his mother; the father we rarely see (4).

Her close monitoring hardly leaves any room for Portnoys privacy. In a comic episode, Portnoy, obsessed with adolescent masturbation, pretends to have diarrhea to escape his mothers observation. Sophie, worried about her son, talks to him through the lavatory door: Alex. I want an answer from you. Did you eat French fries after school? Is that why youre sick like this? Nuhhh, nuhhh. Alex, are you in pain? Do you want me to call the doctor? Are you in pain, arent you? I want to know exactly where it hurts. Answer me. Yuh, yuhhh" Alex, I dont want you to flush the toilet, says my mother sternly. I want to see what youve done in these. I dont like the sound of this at all. (19)

With the onset of Portnoys puberty, another aspect of the mothers superego personality is revealed. That is, her ability to influence her son through guilt. The total devotion of the mother to her house and the life-long sacrifice she made for Alex become his greatest tormentor. She has the melodramatic ability of turning the least transgression into a great offence. Urging him to telephone his father on his birthday, Sophie whispers to Alex: next week is his birthday. That Mothers Day came and went without a card, plus my birthday, those things dont bother me. But hell be sixty-six, Alex thats not a

baby, Alex thats a land mark in a life. So youll send a card. It wouldnt kill you (36).

He

describes his parents as The outstanding producers and packagers of guilt in our time! (36). As a young man, Portnoys sense of guilt is aggravated due to his practise of masturbation: Do you get what Im saying I was raised by Hottentots and Zulus! I couldnt even contemplate drinking a glass of milk with my Salami sandwich without giving serious offence to God Almighty. Imaging then what my conscience gave me for all that jerking off. (34-35).

Besides the rack of guilt, the superego element of punishment is also embodied in the mother. When Alex refused to eat, she held a knife over him, thus releasing his male fear of castration; "So my mother sites down in a chair beside me with a long bread knife in her band. It is made of stainless steel, and has little sawlike teeth Doctor, why, why oh why oh why oh why does a mother pull a knife on her own son? I am six, seven years old, how do I know she really wouldnt use it?" (16)

The urge for rectitude by the mother is best exemplified in the episode where Alex describes how Sophie used to lock him out of the apartment when he did something wrong, thus unleashing another childhood fear, which is the fear of abandonment: "My mother has no choice but to throw the doublelock on our door. This is when I start to hammer to be let in. I drop to the door mat to beg forgiveness for my Sin (which is what again?) and promise her nothing but perfection for the rest of our lives, which at that time I believe will be endless"(15).

To make Brenners sketch of the superego complete, the mother occasionally rewards little Portnoy for his good deeds. 'You know what youre going to have for dinner, my mother coos so lovingly to me, for being such a hard-working boy? Your favourite winter meal. Lamb Stew (28).

The second component of the Freudian nightmare pattern is the evil repudiated wish that seeks to penetrate into the conscious part of the psyche, causing the breakdown of the censorship system. Portnoy describes his predicament simply as one of being torn by desires that are repugnant to my conscience, and a conscience repugnant to my desires (20). His desperate quest for sexual gratification

is perpetually warring with his parental upbringing and its notions of goodness. His already weakened sense of his ethnic heritage fails to fend off his overriding libidinous desires. As a result, he chooses to secretly unleash his forbidden desires. However, the secret life he chooses to live is guilt-ridden. He finds it impossible to be bad and enjoy it! (39).

Alex finds himself locked up in a cycle of guilt and shame further aggravated by the disparity between his public role as an Assistant Commissioner on Human Opportunity, and his degrading secret life, he pleads with is doctor: Bless me with manhood! Make me whole! Enough being a nice Jewish boy, publicly pleasing my parents while privately pulling my putz! Enough! (55).

The onset of such lascivious life begins with his practice of adolescent masturbation where masturbation becomes Portnoys primary means of asserting himself. He finds satisfaction in imagining a partner who calls him Big Boy (23) that distracts him from the suffocating monitoring of his mother. At a later stage, Portnoy sets to embrace the forbidden world of Shikse; of the flesh-and-blood Gentile women. Portnoy has been longing for the American girls he has seen in the movies. He has learnt from these movies that America is a Shikse nestling under your arm (83). Portnoy's quest for the American beauty is given shape through the mythical girls of his dreams, whom he names Thereal McCoy. In his essay The New Jewish Stereotypes, Roth gives some brief account of stories written by his students at Iowa, one of these suggests that such fascination is, in essence, a fascination with the mysterious Other: "I must hasten to point out that in these stories the girls to whom their Gentile Comrades lead the heroes are never Jewish girls. The Jewish girls in the stories are mothers and sisters. The sexual dream for whatever primal reason one cares to entertain is for the Other. The dream of the Shiksa" (15-16).

Portnoys dream girl, Thereal McCoy is a blonde ice-Skater who is so gorgeous, so healthy so blond (145). His fantasy, defiantly, runs counter to his mothers warning: DON'T RUN FIRST THING TO A BLONDIE, PLEASE! BECAUSE SHE'LL TAKE YOU FOR ALL YOU'RE WORTH

AND THEN LEAVE YOU BLEEDING IN THE GUTTER' A BRILLIASNT ANNOCENT BABY BOY LIKE YOU, SHE'LL EAT YOU UP ALIVE!"(189).

Not wanting to feel obedient and helpless (73), the strength of Portnoys blind obedience to his mothers warning against blondes later on defiantly turns into a most keen interest in them. His interest in gentile girls is secretive and bad the antithesis of the moral goodness instilled in him by his parents. The first flesh-and-blood realization of Thereal McCoy is an illiterate high-fashion model from West Virginia whom he calls The Monkey. His affair with her is devoid of love on his part. His indulgence is purely functional and selfish. On the other hand, his lover threatens suicide for a marriage proposal from him. Eventually, he leaves her in a suicidal state in a hotel room. Despite Portnoys covetous desire for her, his sense of moral superiority over her is behind his decision of abandonment: "This brutalized woman! This coarse, tormented, self-loathing, bewildered, lost, identityless How can I go on and on with someone whose reason and judgement and behavior I cant possibly respect? Who sets off inside me daily explosions of disapproval, hourly thunder-claps of admonition!" (214).

The implication of the above-mentioned episode is that despite Portnoys apparent defiance of his parents moral taboos through sexual excess, he is never fully liberated from their proscriptions. Despite his rage at his parents: I will not treat any human being (outside my family) as inferior! (83), he treats his lover as an object of his personal pleasure. He even deprives his lover, Mary Jane Reed, of her original name, calling her The Monkey. His contempt and sense of superiority over her does not only echo his mothers anti-goyim teachings, it also contradicts the dictates of his position in the Gentile World. His job, as Assistant Commissioner for Human Opportunity for New York charges him to encourage equality of treatment, to prevent discrimination, to foster mutual understanding and respect (92). However, he negates all these ideals in almost all of his personal relationships. The Monkey bitterly and scornfully screams at him: The Great Humanitarian! And how you want to treat me like Im nothing (124).

His relationship with The Pumpkin, Kay Campbell, clearly exemplifies this point. She is, according to Portnoy, Artless, sweet-tempered, without a trace of morbidity or egoism a thoroughly commendable and worthy human being (216). She never raises her voice in an argument or ridicules her opponent, despite her being hard as a gourd on matters of moral principle, beautifully stubborn in a way I couldnt but envy and adore (216). For Portnoy, she is the perfect representative of the Gentile world or the world of goyim: "Yes, this is what the goyim who have got something have got! Authority without the temper. Virtue without the self-congratulation. Confidence sans swagger or condescension. Come on, lets be four and give the goyim their due, Doctor: when theyre impressive, they are impressive. So sound! Yes, thats what hypnotized the heartiness, the sturdiness; in a word, her pumpkinness" (217).

He expresses his admiration for the goyim lifestyle which the Campbells represent: Their fathers are men with white hair and deep voices who never use double negatives, and their mothers the ladies with the kindly smiles and the wonderful manners who say things like, I do believe, Mary, that we sold thirty-five cakes at the Bake Sale.' Dont be too late, dear,' they sing out sweetly to their little tulips as they go bouncing off in their bouffant taffeta dresses to the junior from with boys whose names [are] [N]ot Portnoy or Pincus, but Smith and Jones and Brown! These people are the Americans, Doctor. (145)

However, Portnoy secretly finds himself sarcastic about the Campbells in their seemingly-vacuous good nature. This episode of Portnoys visit to the Campbells house on Thanksgiving eve presents the image of the self-conscious Jew who is anxious not to offend his Gentile hosts by affirming any antiSemitic stereotypes they might harbour: Then theres an expression in English, Good morning, or so I have been told; the phrase has never been of any particular use to me. Why should it have been? At breakfast at home I am in fact known to the other boarders as Mr. Sourball, and The Gab. But suddenly, here in Iowa, in imitation of the local inhabitant, I am transformed into veritable geyser of good mornings. Thats all anybody around here knows how to say they feel the sunshine on their

faces and, and it just sets off some sort of chemical reaction. Good morning! Good morning! Good morning! Sung to half a dozen different tunes! (201-2)

He starts the above-quote with self-mockery; he suggests that he has scarcely heard the expression good morning used back in his home town. He then proceeds to direct his mockery at the Campbells whose seemingly care-free nature prompts them to greet each other in a near-hysterical manner, as if all they have to say to each other was good morning. Portnoy is, however, keen on preserving courtesy by responding in a similarly-nice manner lest the anti-Semitic stereotypes his hosts may entertain are affirmed.

Despite all his fascination with the Pumpkins and the Gentile values they represent, ruptures of his inner contempt of them occasionally reveal themselves; upon his walking into their house as a weekend guest in Thanksgiving eve, he struggles to conceal his feelings of repel: I Sniff and I Sniff, trying to catch the scent. There! Is that it, is that Christianity I smell, or just the dog? Everything I see, taste, touch, I think, Goyish! [] The soap on the sink is bubbly with foam from somebodys hands. Whose? Marys? . . . Should I just take hold of it and begin to wash, or should I maybe run a little water over it first, just to be safe. But safe from what? Schmuck, maybe you want to get a piece of soap to wash the soap with! I tiptoe the toilet, I peer into the bowl: Well, there it is, boy, a real goyische toilet bowl. . . (225-26)

When The Pumpkin appears to be pregnant, they make plans of getting married. However, he finds himself asking her to convert first, to which she indifferently replies, Why would I want to do a thing like that? (230). Portnoy's reaction was one of fury. However, his rage has confronted him with the ambivalence of his attitude, which he calls a joke: "How could I be feeling a wound in a place where I was not even vulnerable? What did Kay and I care less about than one, money, and two, religion? Our favorite philosopher was Bertrand Russel. Our religion was Dylan Thomas religion, Truth and Joy! Our children would be atheists. I had only been making a joke!" (231)

Portnoys dilemma apparently consists in being trapped between his attempts to shed his Jewish identity represented in his mother through embracing the other, and his guilt-ridden conscience which reveals itself in behaviour that conforms to his Jewish background. His ambivalent admiration/despise attitude towards the Gentile world highlights his identity crisis. Helge Nilsen remarks: "The intensity of his struggle is evidence of the power both of the tradition and the larger culture that is opposed to many of its mores and attitudes. Generally speaking, there is much to be said for the view that Portnoys battle against his heritage ends in a draw. It is a modern paradox that the hero can not quite escape from a tradition that he no longer believes in and thus is doubly victimized" (411).

Even in his rage, he can't help admiring her assured sense of identity; he describes her as someone who knew who she was! Psychologically so intact as not to be in need of salvation or redemption by me! Not in need of conversion to my glorious faith (251). The Pilgrims robust faith and refusal to convert confronts Portnoy with his abandoned attitude of religious conformity. According to Freud, an uncanny experience occurs when an incident actually happens that confirms to surmounted or archaic primitive beliefs. This concept perhaps accounts for Portnoys fury at The Pilgrims steadfast refusal to abandon Christianity.

Portnoys identity crisis best exemplifies Homi Bhabhas famous notion of almost the same but not quite (Bhabha 229) which has become insightful in understanding the position of ethnic minorities all over the world, including the Jews in America. Michael Mitchell argues that while some postcolonial theorists have proposed that identities are shaped through hard and fast boundaries between us and them, self, and other, Bhabha has proposed instead that identities are inevitably hybridized, because the spaces of social life are formed through a rupturing through boundaries and thorough flow of illicit border traffic (245). Bhabha has used a number of terms such as hybridity, in between, and third space to describe this rupturing. The third space of enunciations is described as a certain void that occur as a result of assimilating contraries. Such space is bound to create its shortcomings, a zone of occult instability, Bhabha points out (quoting Fanon), which occurs whenever there are profound cultural changes (248). In such interstitial space, totalizing notions of fixed cultural identities, which

derive their authority from being originary, are challenged and denied. The third space, according to Huddart, displaces the histories that constitute it and sets up new structures of authority not governed by recognizable traditions (175). Bhabha argues that the discourse of mimicry is constructed around an ambivalence . . . mimicry emerges as the representation of a difference that is itself a process of disavowal (Bhabha 126). Such ambivalence emerges in the conflictual space between what Said describes as the tension between the synchronic panoptical vision of dominationthe demand for identity, statusand the counter pressure of the diachrony of historychange, difference (127).

Portnoys quest is to disavow his Jewish identity in an attempt to embrace the American Dream with its guilt-free sexual liberation. Theres an episode when Portnoy, taken up in his fantasy about Thereal McCoy, parodies the familiar image of the self-hating Jew whos afraid of rejection and desperate to assimilate by shedding any signs of his ethnic identity. He envisages an imaginary conversation between himself and his dream girl, Thereal McCoy, in which hes ashamed to introduce himself in his flagrantly-Jewish name. Instead, he reinvents his name as Al Parsons or Alton Peterson (137, 151). Noteworthy that when Portnoy attempts to change his name, the most explicit constituent of his ethnic identity, he does not alter it in a way that totally effaces its basic phonetic features. Totally aware of his otherness in both appearance and name, Portnoy poses a non-Jewish persona to attract gentile girls. Yet in doing this, he is unable to entirely shed his Jewish identity. It is out of this inner conflict between pleasure/anxiety, and knowledge/disavowal that Portnoys dilemma arises. Homi Bhabha argues, the disavowal of difference turns the colonial subject into a misfit a grotesque mimicry or doubling that threatens to split the soul whole (75). Portnoy screams in his distress: Doctor, my doctor, what do you say, LETS PUT THE ID BACK IN YID! Liberate this nice Jewish boys libido, will you please? Raise the prices if you have to Ill pay anything! Only enough cowering in the face of the deep, dark pleasures! Ma, Ma, what was it you wanted to turn me into anyway, a walking Zombie like Ronald Nimkin? Where did you get the idea that the most wonderful thing I could be in life was obedient? A little gentleman? O fall the aspirations for a creature of lusts and desires! (125)

The word "Yid" means Jew and the phrase "PUT THE ID BACK IN YID" is emblematic of Portnoys frustrated attempts to assimilate into the Gentile world, and to break free from the grip of a tradition he no longer believes in. It indicates that instinctual urges need to be projected in the Jewish consciousness. Hence, it suggests essential split/slippage between the coveted American liberty and the engraved Jewish heritage.

Portnoys ambivalence is best evident in his attitude towards Freud. Throughout his monologue, Portnoy is keen on displaying his Freudian virtuosity by referring to various Freudian theories, most discernable of which is Portnoys Oedipal complex. Portnoy considers himself an expert on psychoanalysis, frequently condescending to his doctor and offering self-diagnosis. Portnoy identifies himself as a Freudian case study and constantly refers to the Freudian symbolism of more than one episode in the novel---mainly his mothers threatening him with a knife when he refused to finish his dinner and his impotence when trying to rape Naomi, the Israeli soldier. Brauner contends that by presenting his narrative as a series of symbolic threats (of castration and emasculation) to his sexuality, Portnoy criticizes the totalizing tendency of psychoanalysis to reduce all events into a phallocentric narrative (46). Further, by offering an orthodox Freudian psychoanalysis of his behaviour, Portnoy deconstructs such possible interpretations and renders them reductive and redundant. In this sense, Freud is revealed as a sadist [. . .] a quack and a lousy comedian (242). More than once does Portnoy warn his analyst of orthodox Freudian analysis of his case, No! Theres more than just adolescent resentment and oedipal rage (64). He also makes occasional derogatory remarks about his dreams theory Who needs dreams, I ask you? Who needs Freud? (203). He almost blames Freud for his predicament accusing him of trivializing complex human relationships and undermining human dignity (Brauner 46). However, Portnoy boasts of having read Freuds essay on Leonardo (116) and of having bought the Collected Papers. His vocabulary is steeped in Freudian psychoanalysis: screen memory (108), superego (181), the Oedipal drama (301), his parents wearing their unconscious on their sleeves (108). Lilian R. Furst holds that Mostly Portnoy endorses Freud as the valid framework of his self-conceptualization. . . That he uses a volume of Freud to put himself to sleep at night (208) is also a somewhat backhanded compliment (59). He openly refers to Freuds Civilization

and its Discontents (1930) where he identifies the root conflict of Jewish manhood and the Western civilization at large, which is the struggle between the individuals instinctual urges and societys demand for restraint and renunciation. One chapter of the novel takes its title from one of Freuds essays (The Most Prevalent form of Degradation in Erotic Life) features a detailed discussion of the theory articulated in this essay that a certain type of men can only love women for whom they have no sexual desire and can only experience sexual desire for women they are unable to love. Portnoy discusses with his analyst whether the Freudian notion applies to him: Are Alexander Portnoys sensual feelings fixated to his incestuous fantasies? What do you think, Doc? . . . Is it true that only if the sexual object fulfils for me the condition of being degraded, that sensual feelings can have free play? Listen, does that explain the preoccupation with shikses?(186)

Obviously, Portnoy seems to value the Freudian theory only in issues of eroticism and the engendered psychic conflicts, but he seems to reject his approach of interpreting complex human predicaments (such as identity crises) in terms of dream works and phallocentric attachments. It is noteworthy that Portnoys Jewish identity as presented in the novel bears similarity to Freuds Jewish identity in reality. In his analysis of Freuds Moses and Monotheism (1939), Moshe Gresser maintains that Freud was quite essentialist about his own identity, and that despite his unequivocal ignorance of Hebrew and reluctance to share in Jewish nationalist ideals, he retains the very essence of Jewishnessthe status of being chosen (142-43). In the introduction to the Hebrew edition of his writings, Freud says I do not know Hebrew and I do not observe the tradition and I do not even have national orientation. What then remains in me that is Jewish? The essence, even if I cant express that essence in words (25). Likewise, for all Portnoy's renunciation of the "saga of his people . . . sucking and sucking on that sour grape of a religion!" (85), and his being fed up of being a "Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew"(85), he has never forsaken his sense of being 'chosen'; his moral superiority over the gentiles. Gresser categorizes the status of Freud not as being a non-Jewish Jew, but as having dual allegiance to Jewry and humanity at large (142). Similarly, Portnoy's ambivalent moral attitude speaks of such dual allegiance. Jacqueline Rose suggests that the fixity of identityfor Freud, for any of usis something form which it is very hard to escape (74). She holds that such fixity is a result of

historical trauma which triggers the compulsion to repeat, and causes identities to batten down, to go exactly the other way: towards dogma, the dangers of coercive and coercing forms of faith (76). The same happens with Portnoy as he eventually abandons all temptations of assimilation in quest of a state of pure Jewishness in Israel only to find himself totally out of place and impotent.

In his account of what he calls the metaphoric English book, Homi Bhabha defines hybridity as the revaluation of the assumption of colonial identity through the repetition of discriminatory identity effects (112). The hybrid subject displays an identity of difference that can neither be original by virtue of the act of repetition that constructs it no identical by virtue of the difference that defines it (Bhabha 107). Hybridity is considered, according to Bhabha, a threatening force to the process of assimilation because it reverses the effects of the colonialist disavowal, so that other denied knowledges enter upon the dominant discourse, and estrange the basis of its authority (114). This notion bears similarity to Freuds return of the oppressed (72). However, the emphasis in Bhabhas hybridity is rather on disturbing and reversing the dominant authority than on the traumatic impact of the return of oppressed.

This leads to a discussion of the hybrid language of Portnoys narrative, given that language is the most essential component of ones culture. Throughout his monologue, Portnoy employs a variety of Yiddish terms and vocabulary with no glossary provided by Roth. The terms Goy, Shikse are the most recurrent and most familiar to readers. Many others are less familiar such as: Shiksas, kvetching, shlepped, besides many other obscene ones such as the synonyms of the male sexual organ: Putz, Shtong, schmuck, Shvantz, and others. Drawing on his ancestor Henry Roth, Philip Roth weaves Yiddish or Hebrew terms into the narrative of the novel. However, unlike Henry, Philip does not seek to provide any strategy for translating the phrases and terms into English for non-Jewish readers. David Biale holds that as the drive for assimilation was paramount for Henrys generation of pre-WWII immigrants, writers were eager to translate not only Yiddish terms, but also the rituals and customs into equivalences that their gentile readers could immediately grasp (213). Translating the Jewishness of the text into American culture meant their introduction to, as well as acceptance in, the mainstream

culture. The case differs, however, with Philip Roths Post-War generation whose writings wilfully highlight the foreignness and difference of language; in PC, Hebrew terms and phrases remain defiantly untranslatable.

Bakhtin, in his work on the semiotics of hybridity, highlights how hybrid language can become a means of critique and resistance to the dominant language of authority. His term heteroglossias refers to language that crosses cultural boundaries as distinguished from the unitary language of authority or authoritative language. The proposition of a language that is both the same and different disrupts the singular order by which the dominant code categorises the other (267). The disintegrity of language corresponds to the subjects sense of shattered identity and cultural disintegration. Hence, the insertion of Yiddish terms into Portnoys verbal complaint suggests the failure of the American language to fully express the cultural conscience of ethnic minorities. The recurrent fusion of foreign terms into the narrative estranges the basic pillar of the dominant culture, i.e. language. The colonial presence is disrupted when the disavowed culture is repeated, rather than repressed in the form of something different, in other words, a hybrid.

In his article Articulating the Archaic, Bhabha maintains that such foreign words are not simply natural descriptions of colonial otherness, but rather inscriptions of an uncertain colonial silence that mocks the social performance of language with their non-sense; that baffles the communicable verities of culture with their refusal to translate (124). Most of Portnoys significant diatribes are pregnant with Hebrew vocabulary: I am something called a weekend guest? I am something called a friend from school ? What tongue is she speaking? I am the bonditt, the vantz, I am the insurance mans son. I am Warshaws ambassador! (81).

Further discussing the cultural implications of Freuds The uncanny, Bhabha holds that culture as an authority contains both familiar Heimlich and strange unheimlich factors, or in other words, factors imitation and others of identification. The Heimlich factor is represented in the enduring cultural imperatives, the archaic survival of the Ego-istical in the superego (216). The unheimlich is related to

the process of cultural translation and dissemination which enables culture to be distinctive, significatory, influential (216). The Heimlich factors involve imitation which represents a dogmatic rejection to the egos limitation, whereas the unHeimlich factor involves assimilation. In this sense, the Yiddish language represents the heimlich aspect of culture for Portnoy. However, it is also unheimlich for its ability to cross borders and disseminate into other cultures. Being neither purely American, nor purely Yiddish, Portnoys narrative reflects a state of psycho-cultural ambivalence or uncertainty. The Yiddish terms which sound meaningless for American readers are intended to defy the authority of the dominant American culture, as the sporadic flow of Yiddish terms defy the norms of correct American language. They also mock the inability of the American language to express the bitterness and anger of ethnic minorities.

Bhabha contends that the act of repetition through imitation and identification endangers the sense of cultural integrity, For the repetition of the same can in fact be its own displacement, can turn the authority of culture into its own non-sense precisely in its moment of enunciation (216). Portnoys word choice is significant in this respect; Portnoys excessive use of the F word throughout his monologue serves as an indicator of his alleged Americanness, Tell me, please why must you always use that word all the time? (270) inquires Naomi loathingly. Portnoy makes an implicit association between the F word and the process of Americanization or assimilation: I dont seem to stick my click up these girls, as much as I stick it up their backgrounds as though through [. . .] I will discover America. Conquer America may be thats more like it (235). Portnoy equates the sexual invasion of the female and his mastery of the disturbing otherness with all the superiority it represents. In this sense, Portnoys verbal obscenity represents, paradoxically, a quest for assimilation, as well as an attack against American Jewish culture. His verbal obscenity represents an act of resistance against Americanization. Resistance, Bhabha stresses, is not necessarily an opposition act of political intension, nor is it the simple negation or exclusion of the content of another culture, as a difference once perceived. It is the effect of an ambivalence produced within the rules of recognition of dominating discourses as they articulate the signs of cultural difference and reimplicate them within the differential relations of colonial power (110). The excessive recurrence of the F word in Portnoys

narrative expresses a state of what Bhabha calls intellectual and cultural uncertainty in which the authority of the dominant culture ceases to be effective. Portnoys inner sense of moral perfection makes him resentful of the American culture. Nevertheless, he finds himself tied to it by virtue of the profits and rewards it offers him. He is forced to adopt the melting-pot policy and embrace its tokens, most important of which is the use of American slang. The repetition of the F word hence expresses defiance rather than compliance. It represents the will to displace the dominant culture. In his most flamboyant monologue, Portnoy addresses his mother as the major source of his plight: "Thats how good I am, Mamma. Cant smoke, hardly drink, no drugs, dont borrow money or play cards, cant tell a lie without beginning to sweat as though Im passing over the equator. Sure I say fa lot, but I assure you, thats about the sum of my success in transgressing" (124).

The above quotation underscores Portnoys ambivalent attitude and his bitterness at failing to embrace the sexual liberation of the American dream. He points out ironically that the verbal obscenity is his only substantial success at breaking his ingrained cultural taboos and imperatives. He is obscene, Roth comments in a personal interview, because he wants to be saved.

When Portnoy chooses to speak the American slang instead of Yiddish, he chooses to disavow rather than repress his ethnic heritage. There are components of his ethnic identity, however, that remain inassimilable namely, his mother. Portnoys moral and cultural ambivalence brings into focus the whole question of the cultural uncanny double that Freud has highlighted in his essay on The Uncanny. The final chapter In Exile witnesses the uncanny return of the mother figure embodied in the character of Naomi. The chapter represents the culmination of all Portnoys affairs and ends up in his ultimate downfall and despair. In this chapter Portnoy makes a final and brief sojourn to Israel, which suggests a state of nostalgia for his Jewishness. Judith Plaskow in her study on Feminist Judaism defines the term "Israel" not as a geographical place but metaphorically as "the nature of Jewish community and the Jewish people" (72). Portnoy is tantalized by the exotic thought of being in an allJewish country: The faces of my neighbours, my uncles, my teachers, the parents of my boyhood friends. Faces like my own face! (253). He then finds himselfsuddenly languishing with all my heart

for home (226) so much that he starts singing:By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion! (226). According to Galchinsky, American Jews may sing the songs of Zion in a strange land, but they do so with the consciousness that the land in which they sing is not so strange and the land of which they sing is not so familiar (200). He contends that American Jews are emotionally and intellectually distanced from Israel as the Old World, and the rest of Jewish history. The Old world for many of them is the American Jewish homeland. In this sense the state of Israel represents for Portnoy, as well as for many American Jews the unheimlich, unfamiliar. Conversely, America is the heimisch familiar, free, and secure. Biale highlights that the ethnic pride experienced by the Jewish community in the wake 1967 war has renewed the need for identifying with a people, a home, and a native language. The Eastern European world was replaced with the thriving nation of Israel. As a result, "American Jewry has found itself in limbo between a homogenized mythical reconstruction of a Yiddish folkloristic world that has no manifestation in contemporary life and a Zionist socialist homeland that elicits allegiance at some level but also remains alien in language, terrain, climate, and to some extent ideology" (219).

Homi Bhabha shares with Lacan the notion that identity is both constituted as well as negated by the gaze of the other. In this context, otherness is both external and internal. This entails, according to this theory, a kind of precarious place in and out of the symbolic order of language. The binary opposition that makes up the symbolic order views woman as a primary other which entails a feminization of otherness as the unconscious, primitive, irrational, etc. The self/other interplay is manifest in the discrimination between Portnoy and Naomi as two distinct types of Jews. Naomi is a twenty-one-year old Zionist whose parents had come to Palestine before the outbreak of World War Two. After completing her army service, she decided not to return to the kibbutz (the Jewish community) where she had been born and raised, but instead to join a commune of young native-born Israelis clearing the boulders of black volcanic rock from a barren settlement in the mountains overlooking the boundary with Syria(258). With her industrious and devout Jewishness, Naomi confronts Portnoy with Jewish Otherness, wholesome Jewishness. She is strong, highly independent, passionate, vigorous, and her opinions are impeccable. She represents, for Portnoy, a state of pure Jewishness untinged with guilt:

"Wow, are you guiltless! Terrific, really-an honour to have met you. Look, take me with you, Heroine! Up to the mountain. Ill clear boulders till I drop, if thats what it takes to be good. Because why not be good, and good and good and good right? Live only according to principle! Without compromise!" (269).

Naomi expresses a sense of superiority for being Israeli-born, and claims that the passivity and paranoia of Diasporic Jews, like Portnoy, is what enabled the Nazi genocide to take place: Jews just like myself who had gone by the millions to the gas chambers without even raising a hand against their persecutors (241), as Portnoy puts it. Naomi reveals a deep-seated contempt for the Diasporic culture of which Portnoy is representative: those centuries and centuries of homelessness had produced just such disagreeable men as myself frightened, defensive, self-deprecating, unmanned and corrupted by life in the gentile world' (265). She believes that American Jews are deprived of dignified life because the American System in her view is inherently cruel and inhumane, heedless of human values (262). She considers Portnoy as corrupt as the American System itself. Her despise for Portnoy makes him even more attached to her. She firmly rejects his whining and pretensions, and she tells him that his self-degradation is the more despicable because he is a man of high intelligence and social prestige. To her telling him how little she thinks of him, he reacts by confessing his love for her and his will to marry her: You have a system inherently exploitive and unjust, inherently cruel and inhumane, heedless of human values, and your job is to make such a system appear legitimate and moral by acting as though justice, as though human rights and human dignity could actually exist in that society when obviously no such thing is possible. . . Naomi, I love you. . . I want to marry you (262)

According to this viewpoint, Portnoy is emasculated because he is overwhelmed by all the accusations of imperfection that Naomis model has confronted him with. Hence, the physical emasculation corresponds to his sense of religious emasculation (Buchen 403). His impotence suggests the failure of his attempt to fit into the Jewish culture which he outgrew. This ironic implication is that

the Jew, who has for centuries been alienated from the dominant culture, has grown to be very well assimilated into the secular humanitarian society, so much that he can no longer fit himself into the ghetto culture. This is partly due to his frail knowledge of his heritage, and partly to his attraction to the American dream with its appealing rewards of material prosperity. There is an episode in the third chapter, The Jewish Blues, that clarifies Portnoys scepticism and lack of faith in Judaism. In this episode , an argument takes place between him and his sister Hannah where she accuses him of

being ignorant of the history of his people, and he responds by declaring his atheism: Weep for your own pathetic selves, why dont you, sucking and sucking on that sour grape of a religion! Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew! I is coming out of my ears already, the saga of the suffering Jews. Do me a favor my people, and stick your suffering heritage up your suffering [] I happen also to be a human being! (76)

He directs his diatribe against the hypocrisy of the Rabbis represented in the figure of Rabbi Warshaw. He believes that Warshaw is a pompous fraud who believes himself to be Gods special assistant (74). He is even sarcastic about the way he utters words: This is a man who got the idea that the basic unit of meaning in the English language is the syllable. So no word he pronounces has less than three of them, not even the word God (73). He mimics his way of speaking that stresses each syllable he utters: I-a wan-tt to-a wel-come-a you-ew tooo thee sy-no-gawg-a (74).Obviously, Portnoy lacks any virtual interest in the history or ethnic heritage of the Saga of his people (63).

His catastrophic encounter with Naomi entails obvious Oedipal implications as he identifies her with the images of his mother. He points out to his doctor that such identification is unconsciously made; the resemblance between this girl and the picture of my mother in her high school year book is something I do not even see (259). She is a physical replica of the mother in terms of colouring, Size, even temperament (259). Portnoy seems to carry his Oedipus complex like a tattoo. Mother Portnoy never ceased to smother and haunt her son with her warm affection. Portnoy recalls with a mixture of love and resentment a telephone conversation he had with her after returning from his European vacation: Well, hows my lover? she asks as his father listens on an extension. And it never occurs

to her, says Portnoy if Im her lover, who is he, the shmegeggy she lives with?(63). He watches her pull up her stockings in their tight, slow, agonizingly delicious journey up her legs (49). Such episode and similar others are interwoven with details of his adult affairs. The unconscious association between Noami and Sophie Portnoy emerges out of what Freud calls the compulsion to repeat (238) which produces feelings of uncanny strangeness. These feelings occur when, according to Freud, something old and long familiar (225) which was repressed, emerges under certain conditions.

Naomi invokes in Portnoy uncanny feelings as a threatening substitute for his mother in physical type she is, of course, my mother coloring, size, even temperament, it turned out a real fault-finder, a professional critic of me. Must have perfection in her men (259). Naomis haughty pride in her Zionism, her sense of moral superiority for being Israeli-born, and her prejudice against the Diasporic Jews, her criticism of Portnoy as a representative of the corrupt American system (226) are all reminiscent of personality traits found in Sophie Portnoy. Portnoys mother has always distinguished between what is goyische (gentile), and what is kibbutz or Jewish. Portnoy remembers his mothers condescending attitude to her Gentile black maid, Sophie used to pride herself in being the only one who gives her a whole can of tuna for lunch (13), and in double-cleaning the dish in which the cleaning lady has eaten her lunch without hurting the colored womans feelings (13). Naomi's flagrant superiority echoes that of his mother closely engraved in his unconscious: the outrage, the disgust inspired in my parents by the gentiles, was beginning to make some sense: the goyim pretended to be something special, while we were actually their moral superiors (56). There is a passage in Saids Orientalism that articulates Freuds notion of the uncanny in relation to questions of power and desire. Said describes the process of encapsulation by which the mind attaches familiar images or values that one might abhor to things completely novel. The motive behind this process is an attempt to control what is perceived as a threat to some established view of things (Said 212). Portnoys confrontation with the original Jewishness of Naomi has struck in him fear of, as well as delights in, novelty. Hence, in order to be able to feel superior to her, like he used to feel with the other non-Jewish women he has encountered, he unconsciously establishes a link between her and his Jewish mother. Thus, the inner workings of his mind has accommodated Naomis image as repetitious.

This compulsion to repeat as Freud refers to it, is responsible for producing the uncanny strangeness. It is a compulsion inherent to the drive impulses and is powerful enough to overrule the pleasure principle (238). This concept justifies the episode of Portnoys impotence in Israel with Naomi. His admiration of her originality and his desire for her are overruled by a surge of contempt for the longestablished image of his Jewish mother. Its his fear of this mother-substitute! that emasculates him: Because she wore red hair and freckles, this makes her, according to my unconscious one-track mind, my mother? Just because she and the lady of my past are off-spring of the same pale polish strain of Jews? This then is the culmination of the Oedipal drama, Doctor? More farce, my friend! (266)

Before starting to rape Naomi, Portnoy hears his mothers warnings echoing in his ear: youre going to give yourself a tsura yet with those things, my mother would warn me from her bedroom windows. Youre going to get a cold out there in that bathing suit'. (267). In a fantasy, Portnoy imagines a mock-trial in which hes being punished for all his transgressions, and in which he is SENTENCED TO A TERRIBLE CASE OF IMPOTENCE (272). The subject of mimicry, like Portnoy, is addressed by Freud in his account on the nature of fantasy, which he believes to be located inappropriately between the unconscious and the preconscious: " Their mixed and split origin is what decides their fate. We may compare them with individuals of mixed race who taken all round resemble white men but who betray their coloured descent by some striking feature or other and on that account are excluded from society and enjoy non of the privileges" (qtd in Bhabha 85).

This Freudian linkage between the fantasy and the mimetic subject best applies to colonial subjects on the interstices of two different cultures. The notion partly applies to Portnoy's identity crisis. To further draw on this Freudian argument, an association is possible between the life of such mimetic subject (Portnoy) and the nightmare as a pattern. The torturing feelings of guilt Portnoy experiences are similar to the feelings of anxiety that the sleeper experiences. In as much as nightmares represent the failure of the dream to perform its function of protecting sleep (507), Portnoys nightmarish existence consists in the failure of the American Dream to fulfil its promises of security and liberty.

The American Dream is an ideal that promised a better, richer, and happier life for fellow citizens of every rank (Cullen 4). The Dream promised equality, economic welfare, educational attainment, sexual liberation, upward mobility, and the freedom to commit as well as freedom from commitment (Cullen 4-10). However, the ideal failed to address the serious challenges of ethnic identities and to render the dream of equality possible. Towards the end of his 1958 book Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery story, Martin Luther King Jr. made this point: Ever since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, America has manifested a Schizophrenic personality on the question of race. She has been torn between selves a self in which she has proudly professed democracy and a self in which she has sadly practiced the antithesis of democracy. The reality of segregation, like slavery, has always had to confront the ideals of democracy and Christianity. Indeed, segregation and discrimination are strange paradoxes in a nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal. (190)

In the third chapter that deals with his adolescent encounters with Gentile girls, Portnoys abortive encounter with Bubbles Girardi leaves him frustrated and longing to experience the details of a wholesome affair with her. Portnoy appeals to his gentile friends, who have more satisfying experiences with Bubbles: What is it like! Before I go out of my head, I have to know what its like!(181). The cry has a strangely-moving quality which is reminiscent of Toni Morrisons Beloved's recurrent cry I want to Join (150). It makes a statement about exclusion of ethnic minorities from living out the imagined American Dream, despite all the relentless efforts. If the dream, in the Freudian Sense, is assumed to be the psychological equivalent of the American Dream, the ethnic minorities or Jews to be the equivalent of the sleeper, then the failure of the dream to secure protection for the sleeper, is the nightmare-like existence in which immigrants of ethnic minorities are trapped. Freud further indicates that once the censorship or the night-watchman (207) has proved too weak to drive off the anxiety of the nightmare, it tends to awaken the sleeper.

As Alexander Portnoy makes his final escape from the so-called promised land of America (Cullen 184) into the so-called wonder land of Israel (Roth 256), Portnoy makes a statement that

expresses disenchantment with the American dream, his nostalgia for restoring his childhood pure Jewishness, and an anguish at his alienation: A nice little Jewish boy? Please, I am the nicest little Jewish boy who ever lived! And? Whats so wrong? Hard work in an idealistic profession; games played without fanaticism or violence, games played among like-minded people, and with laughter, and family forgiveness and love. What was so wrong with believing in all that? What happened to the good sense I had at nine, ten, eleven years of age? How have I come to be such an enemy and flayer of myself? And so alone! Oh, so alone! Nothing but self! Locked up in me! (248)

The final episode of the novel, which sketches Portnoys physical, psychological, and verbal impotence marks the climax of Portnoy's dilemma. His flamboyant monologue towards the end of the novel testifies to the argument of this thesis. It mocks the Orthodox notion that unconscious dreams alone can afford the key to psychological malaise. The monologue of Portnoy suggests that the dream work and its components can be translated into an actual experience that the person lives out while awake: Dreams? If only they had been! But I dont need dreams, Doctor, thats why I hardly have them because I have this life instead. With me it all happens in broad day light! The disproportionate and the melodramatic, this is my daily bread! The coincidences of dreams, the symbols, the terrifyingly laughable situations, the oddly ominous banalities, the accidents and humiliations, the bizarrely appropriate strokes of luck or misfortune that other people experience with their eyes shut, I get with mine open! Doctor, may be other patients dream-with me, everything happens. I have a life without latent content. The dream thing happens! (257)

Having spent hours furiously giving vent to his emotions, Portnoy begins to gradually lose his force of expression; he goes beyond language of relevant and forcible expression so that he begins to meditate about a tag on a new mattresses he has bought that forbids its own removal. He imagines himself tearing it off while the police officers approach him:

God forbid I should tear the tag from my mattress that says, Do Not remove Under Penalty of Law what would they give me for that, the chair? It makes me want to scream, the ridiculous disproportion of the guilt! May I? Will that shake them up too much out in the waiting room? Because thats may be what I need most of all, to howl. A pure howl, without anymore words between me and it! This is the police speaking. Youre surrounded, Portnoy. You better come on out and pay your debt to society.' (274)

The comic symbolism is evident in the mattress episode; the seemingly-harmless act of tearing the tag off the mattress resembles the act of removing the stamp of his heritage of sin and retribution off his libido which seeks to be unleashed. His wilful defiance against the approaching police by being bent on tearing off the tag refers to his upright defiance against institutional ethnic authorities such as the Rabbis of the synagogue and the moral imperatives of his ghetto culture. Most significantly, his being trapped between the police officers on the one hand, and his defiantly transgressive acts on the other, is subtly emblematic of his complaint.

His power of expression then begins to recede more rapidly until, finally, tormented beyond language, he screams, (Matuz 396). Portnoys four-lined Shriek suggests the beginning of Portnoys lapse into an unconscious state, after hours of continuous diatribes of anguish. The novel ironically ends with the words that his analyst is supposed to start with: So No vee may perhaps to begin. Yes? (274). These are preceded by a Rothian comment PUNCH LINE (274). Through the analyst punch line, Roth makes a joke of Portnoy's prolonged and exhaustive self-examination. The implication is that the end of Portnoy's story is the beginning of the real work of psychoanalysis that discounts his self-analysis and accusations. These final two lines of the novel leaves the readers' minds, in the last moment oscillating between trusting the voice that has shaped their understanding of the novel, and disbelieving all that has come before.

Roth seals the novel with a note of hope, for Portnoys gradual lapse into the realm of the unconscious, after having verbalized every memory and anxiety that has driven him, suggests that his

lived out nightmarish reality might be restored to its unconscious origin so that it can be mastered and subjected to psychoanalytical examination and remedy.

As it turns out, PC is not anti-Semitic or an expression of the traditional Jewish self-hatred. holds that: Portnoy's Complaint presents the schlemiel condition as unbearable; and for all its dialecthumor the punch line seriously implies that the purgation of the narrative ought to be the starting point in the cure. The Jewish joke was conceived as an instrument for turning pain into laughter. Portnoy's Complaint reverses the process to expose the full measure of pain lurking beneath the laughter, suggesting that the technique of adjustment may be worse than the situation it was intended to alleviate. (120-21)

By virtue of overwhelming tirades and rebellious thrusts of a Jew on his psycho-therapist's couch, Roth dons the mask of the self-hating Jew who is living in "the middle of a Jewish joke" (PC 37) only to reveal the deeper and darker reality of modern American Jewry. His ultimate message is that there's more to the American Dream than to willingly "fall into Caliban's dream and envision all the land peopled with little Portnoys" (Halio 638-9) thus making a statement about the fragile ambivalent position of American Jewish identity and the nightmarish flipside of the American Dream.

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Biale, David, Michael Galchinsky, and Susannah Heschel, editors. Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

Brauner, David. Getting in Your Retaliation First: Narrative Strategies in Portnoys Complaint. Philip Roth: New Perspectives on an American Author. Ed. Derek Parker Royal. London: Praeger, 2005. 43-57.

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Cullen, Jim. The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation. New York: Oxford UP, 2003.

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Plaskow, Judith. Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a feminist Perspective. New York: HarperCollins, 1990.

Ravits, Martha A. The Jewish Mother: Comedy and Controversy in American Popular Culture. MELUS 25.1 (Spring 2000): 3-31 JSTOR 11 Dec. 2007 <http://www.jstor.org>.

Rose, Jacqueline. Response to Edward Said. Edward said. Freud and the NonEuropean. London: Verso, 2003. 63-79.

Roth, Philip. Portnoys Complaint. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.

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Rpt. in Reading Myself and Others. New York: Penguin, 1985.99-113.

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Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

GLOSSARY of YIDDISH for PORTNOYS COMPLAINT Compiled by Andrew Gordon

bonditt = bandit; clever, mischievous fellow Boruch atoh Adonai = Blessed art Thou, o Lord our G-d (beginning of prayer or blessingthis is Hebrew, not Yiddish) boychick = boy, kid chazerai = (from chazer= pig), junk food, trafe (non-kosher) dreck = crap, trash flaishik, flayshedig = meat, poultry (as opposed to milchik, milchedig =dairy products; meat and milk must be kept separate in kosher cooking) gantze knockers= big shots, showoffs genug = enough gonif = thief goy = gentile (noun) goyim = gentiles (plural) goyische = gentile (adjective) hock = strike; yammer, yak; nag kibbitz = watching, with comments; interfering; making wisecracks, teasing. kishkas = intestines, guts, belly kugel = sweet noodle casserole kurveh = prostitute kvell = gush, swell with pride kvetch = complain meshugge, meshuggeneh = crazy, nuts milchik, milchedig = see flaishik (above) nachas = joy, pleasure; pride in a childs achievement noch = yet; more, too; There! (said when you hit someone) nosh = nibble, snack nudjh = nag oy = oh!an expression, depending upon circumstance, of pain, fear, woe (oy vey!), awe, relief, pleasure, horror or astonishment (oy gevalt!) oysgemitchet = exhausted punim = face, visage pisher = nothing; pisser, little squirt pisk = mouth plotz = burst, collapse, be aggravated beyond bearing putz = male organ; fool (see also shlong, shmuck, shvantz).

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rachmones = pity, mercy, compassion ruggeleh = rolled pastry made with nuts (also figures in American Pastoral) schmaltz = chicken fat; maudlin sentimentality schmegeggy = drip, incompetent person schmendrick = weakling, little boy, jerk schmuck = also shmuck; male organ; fool (see also putz, shlong, shvantz) shande = shame shaygets = young Gentile man shicker = a drunk shikse = (or shiksa) gentile woman shiva = seven days of mourning after Jewish funeral; sitting shiva(one sits on a stool) shkotzim = gentile men (plural of shaygets) shlemiel = fool, loser shlep = drag, pull, haul; a person who is a drag or jerk shlong = male organ (see also putz, schmuck, shvantz) shmatta = rag, piece of cloth, a dress shmutz = dirt shmutzig = dirty shnoz = nose shtarke = tough guy, big shot shtunk = fool, dope, jerk; stinker, mean person; scandalous mess shtup = push, shove; slang for fornicate shvantz = male organ (see also putz, shlong, schmuck) shvartze = black person shvitz = sweat shvitz bath = Turkish bath, steam bath tateleh = little boy tsatskeleh = toy, plaything trafe = (or trayf) food that is not kosher tsura = (plural tsuris) trouble, woe, suffering tuchis = ass vantz = louse zaftig = buxom, plump, well-rounded figure on a woman. Can mean fat. With thanks to Leo Rosten, The Joys of Yiddish (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1968) and The Joys of Yinglish (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1989), and to Arthur Naiman, Every Goys Guide to Common Jewish Expressions (NY: Ballantine, 1981).