Death, Mourning, and Besse's Ghost: From Philip Roth's The Facts to Sabbath's Theater

Abstract

Roth's autobiographical The Facts (1988) and Patrimony (1991) are preoccupied with themes surfacing in the novel Sabbath's Theater (1995). There, the ghost of Sabbath's mother appears as the Lacanian "Real," an irruption into ordinary reality of death and mourning. In The Facts , the Real circulates around Besse Roth, in Patrimony around Herman Roth. But Sabbath contends less with the death of a mother than with an unresolved mourning of a brother and of a self unwittingly denied existence by his mother when his brother was killed in World War II. Finally sorting out these issues, Sabbath resolves not to commit suicide.