Jumping up from the dinner table, I tragically clutch my belly--diarrhea! I
cry, I have been stricken with diarrhea!-and once behind the locked bathroom door, slip over my head a pair of underpants that I have stolen from my sister's dresser and carry rolled in a handkerchief in my pocket. So galvanic is the effect of cotton panties against my mouth-so galvanic is the word "panties"-that the trajectory of my ejaculation reaches startling new heights: leaving my joint like a rocket it makes right for the light bulb overhead, where to my wonderment and horror, it hits and hangs. Wildly in the first moment I cover my head, expecting an explosion of glass, a burst of flames-disaster, you see, is never far from my mind. … I come back to the kitchen table, scowling and cranky, to grumble self-righteously at my father when he opens his mouth full of red jello and says, "I don't understand what you have to lock the door about. (Roth 19-20)
Luckily he doesn’t get caught but later he has to come clean to the doctor because it becomes and addiction and his problem lie in the urge to masturbate and he needs serious help to solve it. This problem occurs through adolescence and through puberty of a teenager’s life, when hormones increase and you realize what “pleasure” is to your body and you want to satisfy it. Roth took care of this problem and played it out in the novel to a teen’s perspective but got it through as a form in his writing.
Another, style Roth used to get points across and to stress dialogue that was strong in emotion and meaning was by using figurative language and capitol letters to give a demanding tone. Critic Theodore Solotaroff explained:
Still circling back upon other scenes from his throbbing youth, as though the next burst of anger or grief or hysterical joking will allow him finally to touch bottom… turning increasingly to his relations with the mysterious creatures called "shiksas" as his life moves on and the present hang-ups emerge. (10).
As Portnoy moved on, in his youth, Solotaroff described that he drove himself deeper and deeper into a hole and Roth described it with “threatening” tones. Roth described the scene from the judge in capital lettering to give it more emotion:
ALEXANDER PORTNOY, FOR DEGRADING THE HUMANITY OF MARY JANE REED TWO NIGHTS RUNNING IN ROME, AND FOR OTHER CRIMES TOO NUMEROUS TO MENTION INVOLVING THE EXPLOITATION OF HER CUNT… YOU ARE JUSTLY SENTENCED TO A LIMP DICK… DON’T BULLSHIT ME WITH LEGALISMS PORTNOY… OH YOU SON OF A BITCH! (272).
When Portnoy was sentenced with his sexual crimes by the court, Roth used descriptive, figurative language to show emotion in what he was doing wrong and what the consequences were. This was a constant unique style of Roth’s as a writer and he always described a passionate situation or a poignant time in the novel with strong language.
Last, Roth used his novels to show Jewish children’s experiences even though “You don’t have to be Jewish to be vastly amused and touched and instructed by Portnoy's Complaint, though it helps.” (Solotaroff 10). Helge Nilsen talked about how authors like Roth noticed changes to write about. “Living conditions improved dramatically, and many Jews entered the middle class. The writers were better educated and began to merge into the mainstream of American life.” (1). Roth wrote about the household with a working father and the family at the dinner table with events going on in the world. The novel was thought to be written as “typical,” and:
Of a generation in rebellion against established values, but it has a curious resemblance to the immigrant school of Jewish-American fiction. Its hero rejects all things Jewish and struggles to become integrated into what he regards as a desirable, secular and liberal way of life.” (Nilsen 1-2).
Portnoy’s battle against his society and heritage ended in a draw, where nobody won, and relates to current society where nobody ever wins, yet we are in a struggle all the time. Roth’s novel is covers self struggle psychologically as well:
Roth's novel has a great deal of psychological awareness built into it. The hero is prodigiously intelligent and well versed in his Freud and Marx, but his knowledge is of no help to him. Instead, he employs it as the instrument of an endless self-analysis that becomes an exercise in masochism.... (Nilsen 2).
Overall, Roth described life in his novel as a Jewish-American physically and mentally through references to society and how writing came up in times after war.
Philip Roth’s novel, Portnoy’s Complaint, was wonderfully entertaining with his teenager obsession flaws, strong language, and overall experience of people in the society of Jewish-Americans as he touches you humorously and seriously with triumph and sadness.
Works Cited
Nilsen, Helge Normann, “Rebellion against Jewishness: Portnoy's Complaint.” English
Studies, Vol. 65, No. 6, Dec. 1984: 495-503. DISCovering Authors. Online Edition. Gale, 2003. Student Resource Center. Thomson Gale. 7 May 2006 <http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/SRC>
Roth, Philip. Portnoy’s Complaint. New York: Vintage Books, A Division of Random
House, Inc., 1969.
Solotaroff, Theodore, "Philip Roth: A Personal View, “Critical Essays on Philip Roth,
G. K. Hall & Co., 1982: 133-48. DISCovering Authors. Online Edition. Gale, 2003. Student Resource Center. Thomson Gale. 7 May 2006 <http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/SRC>
