Derek Gladstone

Chie Chieng
Writing 39B
Portnoys Complaint: Philip Roths Implicit Protest on Prejudice
In the novel Portnoy's Complaint, author Philip Roth frames his story in the 1940s to the
1970s, a time during which Jews were assimilating into America and both Jews and Americans
were the victims of each others prejudice and stereotypes. Though seemingly aimless, Roths
story utilizes this backbone to form a satire of the conflicting cultures by employing the
shamelessly ludicrous main character Alex Portnoy as the object of the satire in order to ridicule
the ignorance and racism of such bigotry.
With such differing cultures of the time exposed to one another, disagreements, to say the
least, were inevitable. The Jewish community had many beliefs and laws that distinguished them
from non-Jews in a way that led to discrimination in many forms separation from the outside
world, denial to better jobs, and havoc from pogroms; in turn, such anti-semitism caused Jews to
develop fear, hatred, and distrust of non-Jews (Segal). Ultimately the Jews thought of themselves
as morally superior, yet powerless and of the Goyim as morally inferior but omnipotent
(Segal). On both sides, racism and stereotypes emanated forth. With this context in mind is
where Roth goes to work.
Roth places his character Alex Portnoy on the psychoanalysts chair a method that
effectively permits Roth to be under no constraints and clearly establish Portnoy as an object of
satire. This can be further assured when Roth himself states, in his own teaching notes,
Caricature? Of course. He holds a grotesque conception of his life and this creates the
coarseness of the realism. Roth is permitting the grotesque into the satiric conception of a

Jewish family, the son included. The greatest object of the satire is the narrating Portnoy!
(Avishai). Portnoy goes to extreme lengths to satisfy his sexual desire, whether its with women
or objects (though the two are one and the same to him): Big Boy, Big Boy, oh give me all
youve got, begged the empty milk bottleCome, Big Boy, come, screamed the maddened
piece of liver thatI violated behind a billboard on the way to a bar mitzvah lesson (19). The
key element of this is the fact that this man, confessing to forbidden sexual acts and gross
offenses against family order and ordinary decency, was a Jew, presenting his offenses from an
even worse perspective (Imagining Jews, 4). It is with this outlandish character that Roth
purposefully makes a fool of to portray how his behavior reflects negatively upon him.
Portnoy is a spiral of clashing values that reveal Roths opinion on bigotry in several
ways some more obscure than others. As Segal says in his article Portnoys Complaint and the
sociology of literature, How far Portnoy is representative of others is difficult to know; but if
he is, in at least some ways, representative, his complaint may shed some light on problems of
identity of a whole generation from the same group. What form these problems take can be
appraised by examining the latent structure of meaning in the novel. One example
demonstrative of this is Portnoys efforts in making one of his girlfriends perform fellatio on
him. Upon his success, he states Sally Maulsby was just something nice a son once did for his
dad. A little vengeance on Mr. Lindabury (240-1). The exploitation of his father occurs as his
company keeps him at the bottom of the business ladder, (Who else would work such barren
territory with such incredible results?) (7) and we see Portnoys retaliation, but it is done in
such a twisted way that one cant respect this act but rather condemn it and perceive Portnoy as a
hypocrite. Although his motive is good, his actions are comparable to those of his enemies.
When presented with both sides, it is only natural to see the greed and discrimination in the

upper class (qualities already apparent outside of the text) as well as the ruin in Portnoys
choices, suggesting that the best course of action is that with no hatred. This is just one manner
by which Roth conveys his message.
Although Portnoy is primarily used as one of the main objects of satire, he himself has
insightful moments that mock the Jews and Americans. One childhood memory involves
Portnoys mother bragging of feeding her black maid well, while meanwhile running scalding
water over the dish from which the cleaning lady has just eaten her lunch, alone like a leper
(13). We feel a sense of mockery in such situations, as well as from the opposition in cases like
when, upon being asked to convert, replies, Why would I want to do a thing like that? (230).
Such ideas can be summed up by one of Portnoys outbursts on pages 75-76: I am sick and tired
of goyische this and goyische that! If its bad its the goyim, if its good its the Jewsit turns out
that there is just a little bit more to existence than what can be contained in those disgusting and
useless categories! This quote also reflects the strong distinction between Jews and Americans
that Roth so purposefully frames in order to ridicule the prejudice between the two cultures. In
addition to those being mocked, we also get a better idea of Roths tone from many of the
references scattered throughout the text Henry Wallace and Glen Taylor, AVC and Bill Mauldin,
(as much my hero as Corwin or Howard Fast) (171), suggesting Roth is inclined more towards
the left wing and supporting the idea of equality.
All in all, Roth craftily mocks the bigotry on both sides of cultures of the time in the
guise of humor, effectively utilizing Portnoy as a mechanism of satire.

Works Cited

Avishai, Bernard. "Who Is Philip Roth's Portnoy Satirizing?" The Daily Beast. Newsweek/Daily
Beast, 28 Aug. 2012. Web. 28 Sept. 2012.
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/28/who-is-philip-roth-s-portnoysatirizing.html>.
Roth, Philip. "Imagining Jews." New York Review of Books 3 Oct. 1974: n. pag. Print.
Segal, Alan. "Portnoy's Complaint and the Sociology of Literature." The British Journal
of Sociology 22.3 (1971): 257-68. JSTOR. Web. 2 Sept. 2012.