Scandals and Battle Wounds: Remembering “The Forgotten War” in Indignation

Abstract

In Roth’s 2008 novel Indignation, two types of scandals are discernable: overtly presented sex acts in public spaces and subtly presented political scandals Marcus encounters first at his college and then while at war. The academic politics that Marcus experiences at Winesburg College, and the social oppression he battles as a result, illuminate the hypocrisy of the political rationale of the Korean War fought to quell the spread of Communism abroad, while quasi-fascist policies under McCarthyism were enacted within the country. The “sex scandals” emphasize that Marcus’s sexual dalliances are minor transgressions for which he is disproportionally punished with an expulsion that leads to his military draft. This punishment reveals the subtler but more significant scandal of the novel: Marcus’s purposeless death as a result of corrupt politics in the academic and political arenas. In his dying hours, Marcus cognitively pleas for a listener of his story who will understand the ultimate scandal of his life: his tragic death. This plea, when read through the lens of trauma theory, represents a call for more critical attention to the Korean War, as Indignation ultimately calls into question the morality of this “forgotten war.”