摘 要

菲利普·罗斯的小说《反美阴谋》描述了美国犹太人1940年到1942年间遭遇的一段不同的历史。本小说通过展现主人公家庭的创伤经历揭露美国社会发生的巨变。在文学批评下的创伤理论研究领域中，凯西·卡鲁思和一些学者创立的传统创伤模式引起了其他学者对创伤研究的极大兴趣。米歇尔·巴勒夫在其专著《美国创伤小说的实质》中提出了一种有别于传统创伤研究模式的新兴多元创伤模式。该模型关注的焦点是塑造创伤价值的背景因素。根据巴勒夫的理论，本文从地点、任务个性、创伤意象等背景因素分析小说中的创伤。同时，本文从个人、种族、国家三个层面分型小说的创伤主题。本文是新兴创伤理论应用的一次实践，旨在为理解创伤提供新的视角。

关键词：《反美阴谋》；创伤；多元模式；背景因素

Abstract

Philip Roth’s novel The Plot against America depicts an alternate history of American Jews from 1940 to 1942. This novel reveals radical changes of American society by exhibiting traumatic experience of the protagonist’s family. In the field of trauma theory in literary criticism, the popular traditional trauma model established by Cathy Caruth and some other scholars has raised great interest in the topic of trauma. Michelle Balaev suggests a new pluralist model differing from the traditional one in his The Nature of Trauma in American Novels. The focolization of her model falls on contextual factors shaping the value of traumatic experience. According to Balaev’s theory, this paper aims to analyze trauma with examples in the novel The Plot against America from the perspective of contextual factors such as places, personal characters and traumatic images. The paper is a practice of utilizing new trauma theory, to provide a new perspective of understanding traumatic novels.

Key words: The Plot against America; Trauma; Pluralistic Model; Contextual Factors

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Philip Roth and His Major Works 1

1.2 The Plot against America 2

1.3 The Trauma Theory 2

2 Highlights of Michelle Balaev’s New Trauma Theory 4

2.1 Pluralistic Trauma Model 4

2.2 Contextual Factors Shaping the Value of Traumatic Experiences 5

3 Contextual Factors in The Plot against America 7

3.1 Places 7

3.1.1 The Ghetto in Newark 7

3.1.2 The Hotel in Washington, D.C 9

3.2 Personal Characters 10

3.3 Traumatic Images 12

3.3.1 Ghosts and Corpse in the Cellar 12

3.3.2 Stump 12

4 Traumatic Themes in The Plot against America 14

4.1 Individual Trauma—Philip’s Fear 14

4.2 Racial trauma—the Loss of Identity of Jewish American 14

4.3 National Trauma—Social Riots 15

5. Conclusion 16

References 17

Acknowledgements 18

Analysis of the Novel The Plot against America from the Perspective of New Trauma Theory

1 Introduction

1.1 Philip Roth and His Major Works

Philip Roth was born in a middle-class Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, in 1933. He received a master’s degree in English Literature from Bucknell University in 1954. His first collection of short stories, Goodbye, Columbus, published in 1959, won him the National Book Award for Fiction. In 1962, his first novel Letting Go was published, from which Roth had been a prolific author. In 1969, the publication of his fourth novel, Portnoy's Complaint, gave Roth widespread commercial and critical success. Later, the famous “American Trilogy” (American Pastoral, I Married a Communist and The Human Stain) came out.

In his later years, he was still active in writing and published several novels such as The Human Stain (2000), The Dying Animal (2001), The Plot against America (2004), Everyman (2006), Exit Ghost (2007), Indignation (2008), The Humbling (2009) and the Nemesis (2010). By his retirement in 2012, Roth had published at least 30 works, including the 3 major novel series (Zuckerman, Kepesh and Roth).