Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel

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130 Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel


short story, “Defender of the Faith,” in which Roth undermines the
notion of a static and embattled Jewish identity by depicting the
unscrupulous Grossbart exploiting the idea of Jewishness for cyni-
cal purposes of self gain.^11 However, what clearly distinguishes The
Human Stain from these other works is the fact that the protagonist
is of African American rather than Jewish extraction. A more subtle
difference can be seen in the way the silences of the narrative more
conspicuously integrate the protagonist within a plot structure that
resembles the classical tragic mode. Before elaborating on the man-
ner in which the novel achieves this, it is first necessary to explain
why The Human Stain represents a modified form of tragedy, as well
as the implications this holds for its cosmopolitan credentials.
For Aristotle, an important rule of the tragic form was that the
protagonist should be of an appropriately high social station and
in possession of particular behavioral traits. To induce maximum
cathartic effect, tragic heroes should be “outstanding persons who
are blessed with both fame and fortune and are for that very reason
in particular danger.”^12 Such features are indeed to be found in The
Human Stain ’s Coleman Silk, American Pastoral ’s Se y mou r L e vov,
and I Married a Communist ’s Ira Ringold. Although all come from
fairly humble backgrounds (particularly Ringold and Silk), they each
come to rise to positions of eminence and relative fame in their com-
munities. Perhaps a more important way in which the novels reveal
their tragic form, however, is through the conspicuous hamartias of
their protagonists. In the case of Silk, this tragic flaw is bound up
with the decision he makes early in life to change his ethnic identity,
abandoning his friends and family in the process. Although this deci-
sion brings him a number of benefits and opportunities, it eventually
(albeit somewhat indirectly) leads to his tragic downfall.
The silence that comes to consume Silk’s life is a familiar sta-
ple of classical Greek tragedy, the kind, Walter Benjamin argues,
that forces the reader “to pause and reflect” on the tragic hero in a
“detached [... and] sober frame of mind’.^13 However, although The
Human Stain follows these general patterns of the classical Greek
tragedy, it also offers a number of interesting departures. One of
the most obvious of these can be seen in the circumstances that sur-
round the d é nouement of the narrative. Unlike the heroes of the great

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