Philip Roth’s Politics of Freedom in the American Trilogy

Abstract

Philip Roth's oeuvre demonstrates a consistent historico-political preoccupation with America, though it becomes pronounced in his late works—the American Trilogy comprising American Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist (1999), and The Human Stain (2000), and the other novels and novellas that followed it. Roth's political project, which predominantly explores how freedom was undermined in America, aligns with a philosophical perspective on the longing for and loss of freedom of his characters, tragic heroes caught up in the tumultuous roller-coaster of contemporary American history. Roth's evolving existential vision that assesses the human condition at the end of the American Century is borne out by his protagonists who double as embodiments of ideologies.