The Human Stain By Philip Roth

In my personal opinion, this book was very hard to read and follow. At certain times I had a hard time figuring out who was talking in the book. I really wanted to enjoy this book and it’s “case studies” but I simply could not get past the confusion and enjoy this like I would any other book. I feel like the author wrote a lot of the situations for shock

“It was people and commercials trying to make him feel like he didn’t even matter, trying to make him feel like there was something wrong with being black”. Chapter 1 page 8

One of the intresting things about the book is that the author is almost like a combat or field journalist in the way he approaches the subject matter going to the extremes of changing his skin color with pills and tanning lamps, and trying to live the actual experiences of a black man in the south at that time that the author really wants to get it right in telling the story that he has to get in the mix and really live it instead of observing from the sidelines that the author is in a way is almost willing to lose life and limb to live the experience and get

Part of the novel is based on a young African-American called Green Cottenham, through the records of Cottenham's life are incomplete, Blackmon says that "the absence of his voice is at the center of this book." Cottenham, who was born in the 1880s with two former slaves, was arrested in 1908 for vagrancy; basically drifting, a common pretext to stop blacks who did not have a white pattern. The state of Alabama rented Cottenham as a worker to a coal mine owned by the American company Steel Corporation, where he

It was not until Wright and a few other black children got into a war with a few white children and came home bloody and beaten that he began to learn what racialization was (Wright, 1965, p. 23). This learning continued on for the rest of his life. From working at an optical company where he was chased out after a slight slip up (Wright, 1965, p. 26), to hearing a black woman be beaten by his boss at a clothing store (Wright, 1965, p. 27), and then to working as an assistant bell-boy at a hotel with prostitutes where he was not considered human (Wright, 1965, p. 29-30), racialization was everywhere for Wright. Omi and Winant write about racialization as an extension of racial meaning amongst relationships, social practices, and groups that were not previously racially classified (Omi and Winant, 1986, p. 16). Wright’s relationships with whites were nonexistent and there were many social practices he tried to follow but could not always do due to one reason or another.

Many times we do not feel like we are an individual, but another piece of a giant puzzle of other pieces just like each other. This is similar the story of the narrator in Invisible Man who is a young African American Man living in 1930s American society. After he is expelled from school, the narrator is forced to go to the north in search of employment to work and then return to school. However, life is not as easy as he thought it was going to be and is forced to confront the reality that he is black and many different things come along with that. On his journey, it becomes clear to him that there are many stereotypes that are associated with his race, which then translates into racists ideologies that forces him to realize that all along he has been an invisible man, hidden amongst other people and forced to be just like all the other black people, rather than take on his own identity

Ellison intends to write about the African-America society in 1930. He tells us the African Americans are constantly discriminated. They are blind to the fact that they are being mistreated and avoid knowing the truth. They try to find their identity in a White-dominated society. The Narrator thinks that he is alive to support and gain recognition of white people. He spends many years trying to blend into society. Another example is Mr. Bledsoe. He is an African- American person who puts blending into white society above his own people. He declares that he would bring down every African-American before he loses his job. Ellison shows how African-Americans try to join white society and those that have been excepted keep it as an accomplishment and would never give it away.

The narrator is not the only colored man in the novel to be judged by racist stereotyping. While the

Racism is one of the most prominent themes in this piece of literature. The entire story centers on the destruction that racist acts can cause. Right from the beginning of the novel, we see how such a cruel act of racism can cause the loss of a life. Armstrong

However, those were the successes of a white Jew, the new identity Colman chose when he was in his twenties. Colman’s life was organized from his father and his oldest brother Walt. He was sent by his father in Howard, historically black college, because -‘there were separate schools until 1948’ (Roth 2001, p. 171). E.g. the school Bangs Avenue- one building, but it was divided in two parts, one part was for colored children who had colored teacher, whereas in the other part were white children with white teachers, who were the principals. There, Coleman felt himself for the first time as a nigger, when somebody called him ‘nigger’. It was his father’s wish to send him there. Therefore, when he went at college, he was completely alone, as never before. There, he felt his father’s majesty, and there he understood that ‘he was a Negro and nothing else.’(Roth 2001, p. 58) He did not like the college where his father sent him, so after his father’s death, he told his mother that he was finished with that college, and now that his father was dead and Walt was in another city for his studies, he was there alone to think about his future, what he really wants to do with his own

He lets himself be ridiculed by turning into a puppet for the ignorant white men for entertainment purposes. Still, he holds onto the assumption that if he degrades himself, he will be rewarded in the end. As a result, the narrator does not advance in his journey to find his identity, but rather degrades himself even more and makes him dependent on other’s opinions.

The book was somewhat difficult to read because of the way it was written. People in the book would say different terms as to the terms we use today, multiple times the narrator said “by and by” which is not a term that we use today. The things that the main characters did were pretty much exactly what’d you think they’d

Hi. My name is Martha and I'll be talking about Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice and how the Vampires in the book are different from the other vampires from the genre. So we can spend hours discussing the many differences in Rice's Vampires but I'll concentrate on the biggest points as I only have few minutes.

I had no idea what color these students might be” (Roth 6). After he was fired, he and his wife Iris became targets of scrutiny. Shortly after the “spooks” incident Iris passes away and Coleman claims that the “spooks” incident led to her death. Following her funeral Coleman visits the novels narrator Nathan Zuckerman, a professional writer. He asks him to write his story of Coleman Silk. “I had to write something for him – he all but ordered me to… [I] had to put aside whatever else I might be doing and write about how his enemies at Athena, in striking out at him, had instead felled her” (Roth 11). The “spooks” incident posed a paradox situation of irony because Silk is living a fallacy with his very own life. Silk is actually a light skinned African American living as a Caucasian because of his disgrace to his own heritage. It was this lie that he was living hat caused him to lose everything dear to him.

Patriotism towards one’s home is the lie that resulted in the murder of over 17 million soldiers during World War one. The Great War was said to be the “the war to end all wars” but instead lead to mass slaughter. Many of us still dignify the war in glory and honour, however, in the eyes of the soldiers, war was never about glorifying, but to its absurdity, it was about promising death to those who took the chance.