In 1997 Philip Roth won the Pulitzer Prize for American
Pastoral. In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts at
the White House and in 2002 the highest award of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction. He has
twice won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics
Circle Award. He has won the PEN/Faulkner Award three times. In
2005 The Plot Against America received the Society of
American Historians' Prize for "the outstanding historical novel on
an American theme for 2003-2004." Recently Roth received PEN's two
most prestigious awards: in 2006 the PEN/Nabokov Award and in 2007
the PEN/Bellow Award for achievement in American fiction. Roth is
the only living American novelist to have his work published in a
comprehensive, definitive edition by the Library of America. In
2011 he received the National Humanities Medal at the White House,
and was later named the fourth recipient of the Man Booker
International Prize.
1. Why does Roth begin the novel by establishing the parallel
story of the public scandal over Bill Clinton''s affair with Monica
Lewinsky--a scandal that "revived America''s oldest communal
passion, historically perhaps its most treacherous and subversive
pleasure: the ecstasy of sanctimony" [p. 2]? How are Clinton''s and
Silk''s stories similar? In what ways does this context extend the
novel''s scope beyond one man''s experience to a larger critique of
late twentieth-century American culture?
2. Coleman Silk''s downfall is caused, ostensibly, by the
spurious charge of racism that results from his question about two
absent black students. But as we learn more of Silk''s past--a past
of which his colleagues at Athena have no knowledge--his disgrace
takes on different meanings. What ironies are involved in Silk
being charged with racism when he himself is black? By denying his
own racial identity has he turned it into a kind of ghost? Is
Coleman in any way responsible for his own destruction?
3. Delphine Roux appears to act on behalf of the aggrieved
students, but what other motives does she have for orchestrating
the attack on Coleman Silk? Is she aware of her motivation? What
discrepancies are revealed between her public position and her
emotional struggles?
4. Why do Silk''s colleagues fail to defend him? Why would
highly educated academics--people trained to weigh evidence
carefully and to be aware of the complex subtleties of any object
of study--so readily believe the absurd stories concocted to
disgrace Coleman Silk? Why does Ernestine describe Athena College
as "a hotbed of ignorance" [p. 328]?
5. Coleman and Faunia are an unlikely couple--a
seventy-one-year-old classics professor and a thirty-four-year-old
janitor. What draws them together? What do they offer each other?
How is their relationship--the relationship about which "everyone
knows"[as Delphine Roux claims in her anonymous letter]--different
from what others imagine it to be? Why is Coleman able to reveal
his secret to her?
6. Throughout the novel, characters are portrayed as
caricatures through a set of preexisting and clichZ?d
stories--Coleman is the racist professor and lecherous old man who
takes advantage of a woman half his age; Faunia Farley is the na?ve
and helpless victim; Les Farley is the crazed, abusive husband. How
does the real story of each of these characters defy or complicate
these simplifications?
7. In what ways are each of the major characters in the
novel--Coleman, Faunia, and Les--controlled by the past?
8. After the funeral, when Ernestine reveals that Coleman was
black, Nathan reflects, "I couldn''t imagine anything that could
have made Coleman more of a mystery to me than this unmasking. Now
that I knew everything, it was as though I knew nothing" [p. 333].
What is Roth saying about the limits of our ability really to know
one another? At what other points in the novel does this problem
arise?
9. Late in the novel, Nathan discovers that Faunia had kept a
diary and that "the illiteracy had been an act, something she
decided her situation demanded" [p. 297]. Why did Faunia feign
illiteracy? Was there any reason why she chose this flaw in lieu of
others? What are the implications of her secret?
10. In the overheard conversation that begins Chapter 3, one of
the characters complains of his students, "They fix on the
conventionalized narrative, with its beginning, middle, and
end--every experience, no matter how ambiguous, no matter how
knotty or mysterious, must lend itself to this normalizing,
conventionalizing, anchorman clichZ?. Any kid who says ''closure''
I flunk. They want closure, there''s their closure" [p. 147]. In
what ways does The Human Stain resist this
"conventionalizing" need for closure? How does it alter the
classical unities of beginning, middle, and end?
11. The Vietnam vet Les Farley is a menacing, violently angry
character, whose stream-of-consciousness rants reflect some of the
most powerful writing in the book. What kind of mental and
emotional damage has the war done to him? How has it changed who he
is? What are the implications of Les''s being the instrument of
Coleman''s destruction?
12. After an argument with Coleman, Faunia drives to the
Audubon Society to visit Prince, a crow who was raised by people
and achieved notoriety for acting like a "big shot" and stealing
girls'' barrettes. When Faunia learns that Prince has ripped down
the newspaper clippings about him, she says, "He didn''t want
anybody to know his background! Ashamed of his own background!
Prince! . . . Oh, you good boy. You''re a good crow" [p. 240]. And
when she''s told that Prince can''t live among other crows, she
says, "That''s what comes of hanging around all his life with
people like us. The Human Stain" [p. 242]. In what
ways can this episode be read as a parable of Coleman Silk''s own
experience? How does this passage help to explain the novel''s
title?
13. Nathan interprets Coleman''s choosing to reject his past
and create a new identity for himself as "the drama that underlies
America''s story, the high drama that is upping and leaving--and
the energy and cruelty that rapturous drive demands," whereas
Walter thinks of his brother as a "calculating liar," a "heartless
son," and a "traitor to his race" [p. 342]. Which of these views
seems closer to the truth? Are they both legitimate? What is
Ernestine''s position?
14. Coleman Silk is a professor of ancient Greek and Roman
literature, and the novel abounds in classical references. The
college is named Athena, Coleman thinks Viagra should be called
Zeus, the author of the anonymous e-mail message that slanders
Coleman calls herself Clytemnestra, the three young professors whom
Coleman overhears commenting on the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal are
referred to as a chorus, and so on. What do these allusions add to
the novel? How are elements of Greek tragedy such as hubris, the
hero''s fall, retribution, and ritual cleansing relevant to the
action of the novel?
15. The Human Stain ends with Zuckerman
finding Les Farley ice fishing in the middle of a secluded lake.
Les says, "And now you know my secret spot. . . . You know
everything. . . . But you won''t tell nobody, will you? It''s nice
to have a secret spot. You don''t tell anybody about ''em. You
learn not to say anything" [p. 361]. In what sense is the entire
novel about revealing and concealing secrets?
16. The Human Stain is a novel of sweeping
ambition that tells the stories not just of individual lives but of
the moral ethos of America at the end of the twentieth century. How
would that ethos be described? What does the novel reveal about the
complexity of issues such as race, sex, identity, and privacy?