Quest of the Spirit: From Suffering to Acceptance

70. Guilt & Absolution: Roth, Wiesel, Singer, Agee, Gerald Green, Dostoyevsky

         Guilt and transformation play a major role is much of America's literature. Psychiatrists tells us that the major problem facing man today is his inability to forgive himself, not others. In Philip Roth's The Anatomy Lesson, the protagonist expresses tremendous grief over the loss of his mother and father, and his earlier insensitivity toward them while they lived. This middle-aged Jewish man's sorrow and guilt cause him extreme physical pain which medicine cannot assuage, as he goes through his deceased mother's possessions and recalls the intense love and affection she gave him as he grew up. Now he realizes that he must live with the burden of his  guilt and callousness. Wiesel's  The Fifth Son treats  a similar theme of overwhelming guilt as the young protagonist searches  for the true feelings of his stoic Jewish father, only to find that his life as a leader during the Holocaust, hiding and guiding other Jews, plus the loss of a young son Ariel, the protagonist's brother, haunts his father's memories--leaving the aging man with an enormous burden of guilt, sorrow, and loss over his inability to explain the circumstances associated with the deaths of countless Jews and God's seeming indifference. Isaac Singer's The Penitent examines   a similar theme of guilt and helplessness through the personality of a protagonist who in early life disowned his Jewish past for the glamour and materialism of New York society. The hero, in this case, comes of age realizing that sex, money, and power cannot create emotional fulfillment, and he abandons his unfaithful wife, lucrative job, and expensive western values to become an orthodox Jew, returning to Jerusalem to be spiritually reborn.His quest for truth,  as in the other two cases, opens the door for his own spiritual transformation; and he, too, realizes that God's solution is not man's and that no greater lesson can God provide than through human suffering, separation, and acceptance. Like  Dostoyevsky's The Gambler, all three novels recount the inner dialogue of the hero as he transitions from a state of innocence to awareness, or ignorance to experience. The guilt in these stories parallels the guilt  of Faulkner's heroes from the Old South, as does Agee's  A Death in the Family.

            In Roth's The Anatomy Lesson, the hero writes about his family, and in the process , alienates himself from them forever. Much like Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel, a novel about a Carolina family torn by poverty and prejudice. Wolfe, in reality, suffered vitriolic condemnation from his own family, a Southern one like those depicted in the works of Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, and Harper Lee. It is Wolfe's subsequent novel You Can't Go Home Again that recounts his tragic predicament. In both Roth's and Wolfe's novels, the author describes the overwhelming guilt associated with living in a confined environment of prejudice and social pressure, much like the works of Tennessee Williams,  Eugene O'Neill, Ernest Gaines, Taylor Caldwell, Lillian Smith,and William Styron.  In essence, one must confront the guilt of his past in order to grow, or escape to another setting, as depicted in Naipaul's A Turn  in the South, as countless African Americans move to the North only to discover an isolation that overwhelms their earlier security in family and church. As Naipaul suggests, the problems of racial prejudice stem from a spiritual, not a political or ethical , source. African-American responses and ideals differ from white's, and their love for family and God permeates African-American literature. A social solution, even that of Booker T. Washington or Martin Luther King, Jr., cannot resolve the racial issue, Naipaul suggests. It is much like the two races were different civilizations with different values and ways of thinking, Naipaul goes on to say.  Only God can resolve the problem. Love, patience, and tolerance can overcome the guilt of the Southern past, the arrogance of an racist population, and the paradoxical intolerance  of Northern states who also participated in the early slavery trade. Ultimately, the sense of guilt and loss remains for the African American race and the Southern tradition, just as the process of globalization is quickly effacing the Southern way of life completely through the employment of other races in industries and corporate growth, says Naipaul.  

                                                                   Works Cited

Naipaul, V. S. A Turn in the South. Franklin Center, Pennsylvania: The Franklin Library,1989.

Roth, Philip.The Anatomy Lesson. Franklin Center, Pennsylvania: The Franklin Library, 1983.

Singer, Isaac Bashevis. The Penitent. Franklin Center, Pennsylvania: The Franklin Library, 1983.

Wiesel, Elie. The Fifth Son. Franklin Center, Pennsylvania: The Franklin Library, 1985.