Klimiuk, Magdalena. “Conundrums of Assimilation – rethinking the world presented in Philip Roth’s “Defender of the Faith” and Alice
Walker’s “Everyday Use””, Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies 4 (1/2014), 4-15.
Magdalena Klimiuk
Helena Chodkowska University of Technology and Economics in Warsaw
Conundrums of Assimilation – rethinking the world presented in Philip
Roth’s “Defender of the Faith” and Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”
Abstract: This article presents a comparative reading of Philip Roth’s “Defender of the Faith” and Alice
Walker’s “Everyday Use.” The purpose of this article is to analyze the conundrums of assimilation in both
stories, the main characters’ state of being, “not-at-home,” and their representation as ethnic Others, in order to
point to the Biblical terrain of interpretation of the two stories. “Defender of the Faith” and “Everyday Use”
skilfully explore the theme of Biblical redemption and present versions of a wise son and a mocking child from
the Biblical Book of Proverbs. By deploying these metaphors they embrace larger issues such as the clash
between ethnic/cultural authenticity and forged identity, individuality and conformity, tradition and modernity.
Keywords: ethnic Other, assimilation, redemption, “not-at-home-ness,” masquerade, identity.
Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and Philip Roth’s “Defender of the Faith” address the
problems individuals have to face when trying to construct their ethno-racial identity under
the pressure of assimilation. The aim of this article is to indicate a linkage between these short
stories and to propose a comparative reading of Jewish and African American literature with
regard to the assimilation experiences of the characters in the stories, and the characters’
representation as ethnic Others. I would like to look at “Everyday Use” and “Defender of the
Faith” through the prism of postcolonial theory, which perceives the world “in terms of binary
oppositions that establish a relation of dominance” (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 2007: 19),
and to focus on the important distinction of the colonizer/the colonized. I will also examine
the main characters’ state of being displaced, “not-at-home”, in order to point to the Biblical
terrain of interpretation of the two stories. “Defender of the Faith” and “Everyday Use”
skilfully explore the theme of Biblical redemption and present versions of a wise son and a
mocking from the Biblical Book of Proverbs. By deploying these metaphors they embrace
larger issues such as the clash between ethnic/cultural authenticity and forged identity,
individuality and conformity, tradition and modernity. The likeness between the two stories is
found in the way they represent their ethnic characters as distinctly different, as outcasts and
strangers taking part in a kind of ethno-racial masquerade.
However, juxtaposing Jewish literature with African American literature may be
considered risky because there has been a certain kind of abrasiveness between Jews and
African Americans since the 1960s. The tensions and complexities in relations between these
two groups have been discussed by Karen Brodkin, who states that “analyses of minstrelsy
and working-class immigrant whitening expand the argument that inventing blackness and
speaking for African or Indian America has been a conventional way that immigrants and
working class whites have made themselves white and American ‘on the backs of blacks,’ as
Morrison put it” (Brodkin 1998: 152). Although the experiences of African American and
Jewish assimilation vary, one can find more arguments for an affinity between these
Klimiuk, Magdalena. “Conundrums of Assimilation – rethinking the world presented in Philip Roth’s “Defender of the Faith” and Alice
Walker’s “Everyday Use””, Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies 4 (1/2014), 4-15.
experiences through a close examination of the world presented in both Roth’s and Walker’s
stories.
James Duban underlines the fact that Roth resembles Bellow and Malamud, as stated
by Roth himself, in “transcending the immediate parochialism of [our] Jewish background”
(qtd. in Duban 2011: 44). Duban suggests that Roth is “comfortable enough in his Judaism to
use his characters, their religion, and their dilemmas as points of departure to arrive at
universal truths about human nature and its dilemmas” (2011: 43). Reading Roth’s “Defender
of the Faith” with Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” is a way of finding a new ray of light to
shine on the current discussion about these short stories, a way of revising “the hallowed
process of Jewish assimilation” through a striking juxtaposition of this experience with the
African American one (Freedman 2008: 184). Roth has already pushed the limits and
reshaped the understanding of Jewishness and the African American experience through his
revisionary portrayal of Coleman Silk, a light-skinned African American passing for a white
Jew in The Human Stain. Moreover, the juxtaposition of these two stories adheres to Emily
Budick’s binding representation of Jews and blacks as groups declaring their separateness,
homelessness and strangeness. Budick notes in Blacks and Jews in Literary Conversation that
the African American becomes a nostalgic marker of what, as Jews, they feel themselves to have
lost in their acceptance into the American mainstream. At the same time the black character
signifies the incorruptible and indestructible vessel of their own Jewish ethnicity. [...] the African
American who becomes a metaphor for their [Jewish American writers’] own commitment. And it
is lasting: the image of the American black further reassures Jews that their difference, albeit
moral rather than physical, will no more rub off from them than colour from black people. (Budick
1998: 121-122)
While Roth’s “Defender of the Faith” is a good example of the short story in which the
moral difference/ethics of Jews is discussed, “the incorruptible and indestructible vessel of
[…] Jewish ethnicity” is mirrored in Walker’s black characters Mama and Maggie, who are
ardent “indestructible” pillars of African American ethnic culture.
On Detour
Sam Whitsitt notes, with regard to the home in Walker’s story, that “there must be a certain
detour, a departure; one must leave home in order to become aware of the home, even though
this departure holds no guarantee of a return” (2000: 447- 448). The statement perfectly lends
its meaning equally to both Roth’s and Walker’s stories. Roth’s character Marx supposedly
reiterates the stereotype of a Jew who has broken with ethnic tradition, lost his/her connection
with the family home, and is portrayed as a person deprived of the so-called “collective
identity.” There are no references in the text to suggest that he has any contact with his family
home or Jewish community. He seems to be displaced and “not-at-home” with his Jewishness.
He appears to be presented as one who has lost his “sense of Jewishness” (Roth 1994: 642).
However, Marx unconsciously embarks on a spiritual journey within himself, rebuilding his
Jewish identity through dealings with his manipulative recruit, Grossbart. This spiritual
journey in the story is associated with the quest for identity, as Nathan Marx remarks “in
search of more of me, I found myself following Grossbart’s track to Chapel no. 3 where the
Jewish services were being held” (Roth 1994: 640). In other words, Roth’s story becomes a
story of self-rediscovery after a long period of “detour” as Marx rediscovers his “sense of
Jewishness,” which has been lost because of war troubles: “I came to what I suddenly
remembered was myself” (Roth 1994: 640). That identity transformation, the assumption of a
Klimiuk, Magdalena. “Conundrums of Assimilation – rethinking the world presented in Philip Roth’s “Defender of the Faith” and Alice
Walker’s “Everyday Use””, Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies 4 (1/2014), 4-15.
“new-old” Jewish identity is signalled in the opening paragraph of the story when Marx states
that “there was an inertia of the spirit that told me we were flying to a new front” (Roth 1994:
634). The “new front” is an indicator of a new stage in Marx’s life, the stage of coming to
terms with his Jewishness. His subordinate Grossbart’s invitation to the “shul” and his
“singing a doubletime cadence” brings to Marx’s mind many sweet memories of his
childhood and home:
I was remembering the shrill sounds of a Bronx playground, where, years ago, beside the Grand
Concourse, I had played on long spring evenings such as this. ... It was a pleasant memory for a
young man so far from peace and home, and it brought so many recollections with it that I began
to grow exceedingly tender about myself. In fact, I indulged myself in a reverie so strong that I felt
as though a hand were reaching down inside me. It had to reach me so very far to touch me! (Roth
1994: 640)
Marx recognizes that he is not only physically far away from his home, but that this
statement acknowledges his being spiritually far away from his Jewish tradition. He interprets
Grossbart’s Yiddish expressions as “rumour of home and past time” which become a catalyst
of change in his attitude toward his Jewishness (Roth 1994: 640).
Walker’s story begins with Mama and Maggie Johnson waiting outside their new
house. But their “departure” had started earlier. Although the Johnsons now have a new house
“in a pasture” Mama and Maggie still tend to occupy the yard, which is “an extended living
room” where “anyone can come and sit and look up into the elm tree” (Walker 1993: 371).
Mama admits that she has consciously turned her back on the new house, indicating that it
bears a similarity to a ship: “there are no real windows, just some holes cut in the sides, like
the portholes in a ship” (Walker 1993: 373). This ship imagery is an obvious allusion to a
slave ship with little windows for light and ventilation. The fact that Maggie and Mama
occupy the territory around the house is indicative of their metaphorical displacement.
Dislocation is derived from Heidegger’s “umheimlich or unheimlichkeit – literally
‘unhousedness’ or ‘not-at-home-ness’ – and is a marker of ‘colonial hegemonic practices’”
(Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 2007: 65). By deliberately choosing to occupy the yard Mama
demonstrates that she understands the dominant practices of neo-colonialism by identifying
the origin of her dislocation within the practice of slavery. The old house seems to be an
allegory of the homeland, Africa, which explains why Mama is so sentimental about “the old
house”. A new house is a symbol of oppressive America, which is portrayed as a hermetic,
homogenizing space where “breezes never come” (Walker 1993: 371). Mama’s reluctance to
occupy that space signifies her resistance to the position assigned to her by racist America.
Mama’s mode of behaviour is a way of decolonizing her world.
Biblical analogies
Apart from the main characters of the two stories, who seem to be metaphorically displaced,
or ‘not-at-home’, both stories can be paralleled through their exploration of the Biblical theme
of redemption. Sam Whitsitt, in his comment on Walker’s story, remarks that at the outset of
the story Maggie and Mama “are waiting for redemption”, and that
in Walker’s writing, redemption will take one away and bring one back in a perhaps humbling but
empowering way, to something close to home. This form of redemption takes place as an
epiphany: You realize that what can save you isn’t out there, but has been nearby all along, beside
you, even in you, but never noticed, never heard, or never given a second thought. (2000: 447)
Klimiuk, Magdalena. “Conundrums of Assimilation – rethinking the world presented in Philip Roth’s “Defender of the Faith” and Alice
Walker’s “Everyday Use””, Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies 4 (1/2014), 4-15.
In the story Mama’s daydream is a kind of prelude to the epiphany before Mama and
Maggie are redeemed, before the value of their black existence is acknowledged through the
recognition of their art of stitching quilts. In her dream Mama visualizes herself as “lighter”
and better-looking, despite the fact that in real life she looks completely different. Mama’s
and Maggie’s knowing self-identification of their codified slow-wittedness and ugliness is
proven by Mama rhetorically asking, “who ever knew a Johnson with a quick tongue”, and by
comparing Maggie’s brain to “an elephant’s brain” (Walker 1993: 372, 377). She recognizes
their social assignment – the re-inscribed codification of African Americans as unintelligent.
Mama and Maggie are longing for a change, for freedom and salvation from the re-inscribed
codification of African Americans. Mama’s dream is an evident expression of that wish.
Although in Walker’s story the dream seems unrealistic and has a bitter undertone, the story
itself ends with a kind of awakening for Mama. The story ends on a positive note. The
redemption for the years of social exclusion of the African American experience and
art/culture comes just after Dee announces her willingness to take the quilts. Mama states that
she “promised to give the quilts to Maggie when she marries John Thomas” (Walker 1993:
378). Her daughter replies that her sister “can’t appreciate these quilts”, and “she would
probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use” (378). Mama is surprised by
Dee’s request since she remembers how Dee was offered to take the quilts in the past and
refused to do so as she considered them to be “old-fashioned” (378). Although Dee changes
her mind by deciding to make use of the quilts right now, she declares that she “would hang
them” as “that was the only thing you could do with them” (378). Mama perceives Dee’s
superficial interest in the quilts, as well as her recognition only of their artistic, decorative
merit, as reflecting Dee’s disingenuous investment in the African American tradition and her
shallow re-Africanization. Quilts seem to function in the story as a spiritual galvanizing
element between the past and the present, the compilation of the knowledge and experiences
of the African-American ancestors. Mama ultimately realizes that what matters in their lives
is African American practicality, the “discredited knowledge” of black people, as Toni
Morrison (1986: 342) calls it. “The discredited knowledge” in Walker’s story is the ability to
make quilts or “whittle it [a churn top] out of a tree”, and the knowledge of their ancestors on
how to put these objects to “everyday use” (Walker 1993: 376). The knowledge of their
ancestors is what can redeem Mama and Maggie, and give them a meaningful existence in an
oppressive America. Mama’s and Maggie’s ability to make the quilts is a symbol of their
redemption for social injustice.
In “Defender of the Faith,” all of Grossbart’s tricks, as well as his conscious hints
dropped with regard to Yiddish tradition and language, become a catalyst for Marx’s change
of orders. This change of orders constitutes a form of redeeming injustice. All soldiers,
including Halpern and Fishbein, are supposed to be shipped to the Pacific, except for
Grossbart, who is to be deployed to New Jersey. Marx changes the orders by asking Sergeant
Bob Wright to allow Grossbart to be sent with the rest of his Jewish friends to the Pacific.
When his trainee comes demanding an explanation Sergeant tells Sheldon that he is “the one
who owes explanations. (...) To me. (...) Mostly to Fishbein and Halpern” (Roth 1994: 659).
Marx believes that the change of orders is a way of implementing justice and moral rules
which have been perverted by Grossbart, who has constantly been asking for special
treatment. Giving special privileges to Grossbart may have given him a bad reputation by
creating the suspicion that he is a biased superior. Marx’s riposte, calling Grossbart “a regular
Messiah”, finally backfires by casting Marx as a kind of Saviour figure, the Messianic
archetype who defends the integrity of Jews (Roth 1994: 648). Marx bears a collective
Klimiuk, Magdalena. “Conundrums of Assimilation – rethinking the world presented in Philip Roth’s “Defender of the Faith” and Alice
Walker’s “Everyday Use””, Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies 4 (1/2014), 4-15.
responsibility for the fate of Halpern and Fishbein, who have been used by Grossbart for his
own selfish purposes. Marx’s change of orders might be considered to be a means of
atonement for his past sin of jettisoning the Jewish tradition, thus redemption.
While employing the Bible as an analytical tool to discuss “Defender of the Faith” and
“Everyday Use”, one can further elucidate these two narratives. Robert McMahon and.
Patricia Cane state that “Everyday Use” can be interpreted as a modified version of the
parable of the Prodigal Son, and Dee represents the prodigal child, with the important
exception that she is not endowed with gifts from her mother as she returns home at the end of
the story. Sam Whitsitt points to the Bakers’ interpretation of Dee as a kind of “serpent”, who
intrudes into the rustic garden of the Johnsons (Whitsitt 2000: 449). However, “Everyday
Use” is Mama’s story; it is not Dee’s story; it is narrated in the first person, and she is the one
who ultimately faces the dilemma of setting the dispute over the quilts. Mama’s conundrum
can be paralleled to that of Solomon’s determining the true mother in the Bible. Just the same
as Solomon, Mama has to determine who is authentic in their motives. Mama’s world is a
world of polarized values and concepts, it is a world labelled good and bad, false and
authentic, foolish and wise. It is a world filtered through the prism of Mama’s perspective,
and that is why it is not completely reliable. The story also brings to mind the biblical
quotation which says: A wise son heeds his father’s instruction, but a mocker does not
respond to rebukes (Proverbs: 13:1). Dee’s figure is close to that of a mocking child who
mocks the wisdom of Mama and her ancestors. Dee’s character also raises the question of the
hierarchy of knowledge. Since the concept of knowledge is subjective, and knowledge itself is
a tacit phenomenon, readers are left in a quandary as to whose perception of the world is
right: Dee’s or Mama’s.
In “Defender of the Faith” the readers are also put in the position of the Biblical king
Solomon when they are to verify which character represents the world of
inauthenticity/duplicity, who is the imposter, and who personifies the good Jew. By using the
Biblical Proverbs’ terminology the readers are to determine who is the wise son and who is
the mocker. Gillian Steinberg argues that “Roth’s creation of Grossbart, Marx and Grossbart’s
two friends, Halpern and Fishbein shows him [Roth] consciously engaging with Midrash and
with the textual traditions of religious Judaism” (2005: 9). She draws a parallel between
Roth’s characters and the characters in the passage in the Haggadah, which “speaks of a wise
son, an evil son, a simple son, and one who cannot even ask a question” (Steinberg 2005: 9).
But bearing in mind that Roth desires to go beyond the “immediate parochialism of Jewish
background,” finding biblical resonances in Roth’s story offers an interpretative midpoint
between the world of traditional Orthodox Jewish values and Roth’s humanistic approach.
The world in Roth’s story is also polarized like Walker’s, and polarization of the characters
increases from the outset of the story. At the beginning of the story Nathan Marx attempt s to
unify the resentments of “a goddam” war hero with a stereotypical Jewish “antihero” who
assimilates into the American mainstream (Roth 1994: 647). He does not obey Jewish dietary
laws because he treats religion as a separate secular institution. He seems to be presented as
one who has lost his “sense of Jewishness” (642). However, as the story progresses Marx
undergoes a serious change of attitude that accounts for his final decision, and he finally
defends his “Jewishness”. At the other end of this moral binary opposition one can find
Private Sheldon Grossbart, who seems to excel in his religiosity, tries to obey dietary laws,
attends Jewish services and speaks out on behalf of the Jewish community. He projects an
image of himself as being attached to old-fashioned cultural Jewish morality. Roth entirely
deconstructs this dichotomy of characters and values by reversing the roles of the characters.
He portrays the characters of Grossbart and Marx in such a way that it becomes apparent that
Klimiuk, Magdalena. “Conundrums of Assimilation – rethinking the world presented in Philip Roth’s “Defender of the Faith” and Alice
Walker’s “Everyday Use””, Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies 4 (1/2014), 4-15.
these two characters do not fit the categorizations they were assigned at the beginning of the
story. The religious Jewish private Grossbart turns out to be an unscrupulous man faking his
devotion to religion and moral values, while the highly assimilated Jewish Sergeant Marx,
showing little interest in maintaining a link with his Jewish heritage, becomes a universalized
representative of this ethnic group. Marx is confronted again by his persuasive trainee when
Grossbart comes pleading to give him a pass to celebrate a Passover dinner. Unfortunately,
Grossbart comes back to request a pass for Fishbein and Halpern, who finally manage to get
their leaves. During the next encounter, when Grossbart inquires about the change in the
direction of the front, Marx notices that his soldier has brought him a non-kosher Chinese roll
as a gift instead of “a piece of that gefilte fish” (Roth 1994: 653). He becomes very much
enraged when he finds out that the supposed Seder feast was a lie. His subordinate proves to
be a calculating selfish liar. Grossbart’s non-kosher Chinese roll epitomizes the world of the
inauthentic, the world of mockery. Gillian Steinberg (2005: 15) notes that “his substitution of
Chinese food” is a “demonstration of his secularism,” of his forged Judaism.
In questioning who is a better “Defender of the Faith” Roth presents religious identity
as an element operating separately from Jewish identity. Roth debunks the stereotypical
preconceptions of ethno-racial representation by demonstrating how stereotypical
categorizations do not always fit the characters presented in the stories. Through an
exaggerated portrayal of his characters Roth demonstrates that the world is not solely divided
into morally clear-cut and defined copies of walking stereotypes of the Orthodox Jew or the
assimilationist-type Jew. Readers seem to be left with no answer as to how to perceive Marx’s
assimilation because it is this highly assimilated character that saves the integrity of the Jews.
Roth’s story proves that assimilation may not necessarily be burdened with total dis-
identification with the ethnic minority group from which the character originates – just as
religion is not always the hallmark of belonging to the Jewish community. I suggest that
Roth’s story consciously opposes traditional framing and common stereotyping through
building upon Jewish stereotypes and playing with them. Through the caricatural depict ion of
Jews Roth runs the risk of being called an anti-semite. On the other hand, via Nathan Marx’s
standpoint and his moral dilemmas Roth proclaims the distance from schematized thinking
about Yiddishkeit. In the past Roth had to repeatedly dispel the charge of being a “self-hating”
Jew, especially after the publication of “Defender of the Faith”, along with other short stories
in Goodbye, Columbus, as well as Portnoy’s Complaint, a novel which generated a lot of
controversy.
During the first encounter Grossbart aims to shorten the distance between himself and
his first Sergeant by making a witty remark about Marx’s surname: “We thought you... Marx,
you know, like Karl Marx. The Marx Brothers. Those guys are all... M-a-r-x. Isn’t that how
you spell it, Sergeant?” (Roth 1994: 636). This joke about Marx’s last name becomes a living
representation of Grossbart’s forged Jewish faith. The reference to Jewish-American
comedians has a hidden agenda in that Grossbart’s behaviour can be compared to taking part
in a kind of masquerade, a comedic performance which can be observed by the reader as the
story develops. Marx perceives Grossbart as “entirely strategic”, which makes him a kind of
player in a game of ethno-religious masquerade (656). Grossbart himself turns into a Jewish
caricature at the end of the story. The crafty allusion to the Marx Brothers foreshadows the
way in which Grossbart will be unmasked. Grossbart is later exposed by Marx by using the
same canny strategy that he uses while confronting his superior.
In fact, in Roth’s story the readers are presented with two highly assimilated Jews:
Grossbart and Marx. Grossbart puts on the mask of an “unassimilable” dark Oriental Jew of
the 19th century, as presented in Johnathan Freedman’s Klezmer America: Jewishness,
Klimiuk, Magdalena. “Conundrums of Assimilation – rethinking the world presented in Philip Roth’s “Defender of the Faith” and Alice
Walker’s “Everyday Use””, Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies 4 (1/2014), 4-15.
Ethnicity, Modernity (2008), with strange eating habits, when in reality Grossbart is all white,
fully Americanized in his white practices, and is caught eating a non-kosher Chinese roll. The
fact that Grossbart identifies himself as “different,” the Other, casts him as the non-white.
This conscious transition from a white to a non-white position suggests a racial degradation
which can be best illustrated through the symbolic use of blackface. Although blackface
specifically refers to the experience of African-Americans, Grossbart’s metaphorical
“blacking up” resembles the use of blackface by the main Jewish character, Jakie Rabinowitz,
who impersonates an African American jazz singer in the musical The Jazz Singer. Stephen
Whitfield (drawing on Michel Rogin’s arguments about the linkage between Jews and
blackface) claims that the blackface metaphor in The Jazz Singer “signified a strategy of
assimilation”, and “that blacking up was the vehicle for becoming white” (1999: 150). I have
appropriated the “blackface metaphor” because Grossbart’s categorization as the Other
possesses a performative quality and may surprisingly be considered as a medium for
becoming white. It allows the readers to discover that he is white - fully Americanized despite
his temporary suspicious mask of “darkness”- “Otherness.” The more “non-white” (Other)
Grossbart tries to become, the whiter he appears. It is a startling way of drawing attention to
his Americaness/whiteness.
Dee’s re-Africanization also resembles a more conscious masquerade, which can
figuratively be compared to a minstrel show through the performative quality of her African-
Americaness. Although Dee maintains the appearance of appreciating African-American
tradition Mama perceives her daughter as a person who undergoes a steady process of dis-
identification with her African-American traditions and community by conforming to white
standards. Mama emphasises Dee’s passive consumerism by stating that “Dee wanted nice
things. A yellow organdy dress to wear to her graduation from high school; black pumps to
match a green suit” (Walker 1993: 373). The oddness of Dee’s racial performance is marked
by Mama’s seemingly unimportant allusion to her daughter’s dress, which is described as “a
dress so loud it hurts my eyes. There are yellows and oranges enough to throw back the light
of the sun.” (Walker 1993: 374). Dee becomes an object of suspicion through wearing a dress
that seems to be brighter than the sun. It is as if Dee’s performed blackness is ridiculed
through the lightness of her dress/looks. It is as though Mama states that Dee’s blackness is a
sophisticated cover for ascribed moral whiteness, Dee’s more assimilationist way of being
promotes white values and a white viewpoint on African-American tradition.
The Stereotypical “Other”
In “Everyday Use” Walker deals with preconceptions about African Americans, their
representation as ethnic Others. Sam Whimsitt notes that Dee, who wants to take a picture of
the house without herself, aims to “frame the world, define its borders” (2000: 448). He also
claims that “this is what the Bakers call Dee’s fashionably ‘aesthetic’ distance from southern
expediencies” (2000: 449), which slightly complicates one’s understanding of “Everyday
Use”. Dee’s “aesthetic distance”, her attempt to take a picture, which is not fully understood
by Mama and Maggie, may also have another meaning. Mama notices that Dee “stoops down
quickly and lines up picture after picture of me sitting there in front of the house with Maggie
cowering behind me. She never takes a shot without making sure the house is included” (375).
Mama and Maggie are photographed as if they were exoticized objects, but they are always
photographed in the vicinity of the house, they cannot get out of the shadow of the house.
Even when Dee takes a photo of a cow Mama states that Dee “snaps it and me and Maggie
and the house” (375). The Johnsons’ new house is at the same time the backdrop and the
Klimiuk, Magdalena. “Conundrums of Assimilation – rethinking the world presented in Philip Roth’s “Defender of the Faith” and Alice
Walker’s “Everyday Use””, Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies 4 (1/2014), 4-15.
normative racist framework of the picture. Since the house functions as a metaphor of a racist
America Mama and Maggie are left at the very bottom of this white normative framework –
they are outcasts. This explains why Mama consciously turned her back on the house. They
are exotic objects to be gazed at, but they seem to exist only within the white normative space
of America. Mama and Maggie are rendered Others, strange and ugly. Mama describes
herself as “a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands,” which is metonymic
of black womanhood and the defeminized preconceptions of black women that are present in
the dominant white culture (371). Stereotypical values attributed to black women are those of
uneducated, masculinly-built super workers. Mama’s perception of African-Americans goes
back to the time of slavery. This is especially evident in her portrayal of Maggie, who
presents a servile mentality and manner with her “chin on the chest, eyes on the ground, feet
in the shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other house to the ground” (372). Maggie is
an African-American whose mind and body tend to be “locked” in the past. Her body not only
bears signs of “the burn scars” after the fire of their old house, but her psyche is distorted by
the internalization of myths present in a white culture depicting black women as ugly (371).
Maggie and Mama are the sufferers and martyrs of the American racist perspective. However,
Dee, who receives a replica of Walker’s name – Wangero (the same name Walker is given on
her trip to Africa in the late 1960s, as Sam Whimsitt and other critics have pointed out), does
not want to fit into the stereotyping normative framework. She never places herself in the
picture – in the white normative framework of America – although one can get such a mixed
impression when looking at Dee’s playful attempt at re-Africanizing herself, renaming
herself.
In “Defender of the Faith” Grossbart tries to project himself as the ethnic Other when
he says, “Because I’m a Jew, Sergeant. I am different” (652). This way of “Othering”
Grossbart as a Jew is also deeply embedded within common postcolonial discourse. “The
construction of the Other is fundamental to the construction of the Self”, as Ashcroft, Griffiths
and Tiffin claim when analyzing the importance of Spivak’s theory of postcolonialism (156).
The process of “Othering” starts with establishing the opposition, by creating the difference
between the colonizer and the colonized. The colonizer defines himself against the colonized.
In this case, the highly assimilated Jew, Marx, takes the position of “a goy” (non-Jew) against
the supposedly oppressed Orthodox Jew, Grossbart. Grossbart accuses Marx of being an Anti-
Semite when he comes pleading to his superior to give him a pass to celebrate a Passover
dinner. When the trainee sees his superior’s reluctance to give him a pass he says that Marx
sounds like a “goy” (non-Jew), and that for Grossbart “it’s a hard thing to be a Jew. (...) it’s a
harder thing to stay one” (651, 652). Grossbart suggests that he is oppressed and stigmatized
because of his ethno-religious identity. Roth’s character Grossbart projects the features of
Jonathan Freedman’s “Oriental Jew”, with his “unassimilability, due to his systemic
constitutionally nonrational ‘Oriental make-up’” (2008: 263). Roth’s axis of difference in
Grossbart’s portrayal is grounded in the character’s religious “Oriental” eating customs and
Yiddish language.
The reader can find the colonized and the colonizer, respectively, in the figures of Dee
and Maggie in Walker’s story, particularly in the way Dee reads to Maggie and Mama.
Maggie’s and Mama’s conscious resistance against being more educated and more
sophisticated becomes an opposition to white knowledge and practices, which are markers of
influence and power in a white dominant culture. The constant imposition of white values is
illustrated through the underlying metaphor of Dee’s reading to Maggie and Mama. Mama
remarks that Dee:
Klimiuk, Magdalena. “Conundrums of Assimilation – rethinking the world presented in Philip Roth’s “Defender of the Faith” and Alice
Walker’s “Everyday Use””, Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies 4 (1/2014), 4-15.
used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks’ habits, whole lives upon us two,
sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice. She washed us in a river of make-believe,
burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn’t necessarily need to know. Pressed us to her with the
serious way she read, to shove us away at just the moment, like dimwits, we seemed about to
understand. (373)
The use of words in this passage is particularly interesting. Verbs such as “pressed”,
“burned” and “shove away” are signifiers of “epistemic violence” – a term coined by the
postcolonialist philosopher Gayatri Spivak. Epistemic violence can be identified as a violent
way of instilling knowledge on a group of ethnoracial minorities, and a means of replacing the
knowledge of various “Others” with supposedly superior white practices. Mama and Maggie
interpret Dee’s habit of reading to them as a forceful attempt at whitewashing them. Amircal
Cabral notes that:
in the effort to perpetuate exploitation the colonizer not only creates a system to repress the
cultural life of the colonized people; he also provokes and develops the cultural alienation of a
part of the population, either by so-called assimilation of indigenous people, or by creating a social
gap between the indigenous elites and the popular masses. As a result of this process of dividing,
or of deepening the divisions in the society, it happens that a considerable part of the population,
notably the urban or peasant petite bourgeoisie assimilates the colonizer’s mentality, considers
itself culturally superior to its own people and ignores or looks down upon their cultural values
(1994: 57).
In the story it is Dee who “assimilates the colonizer’s mentality” and displays a feeling
of superiority towards her black roots. Dee is also depicted as one who hated the old house,
which burnt down some time ago, and exemplifies a person with a historyless attitude,
although she maintains the appearance of just the opposite. Mama states that Dee would “do a
dance around the ashes” of the old house, which functions as a symbol of Africa (373).
Roth’s setting of the story, Camp Crowder, becomes the conflict site of pre-existing
contesting Jewish stereotypes, just as Walker’s setting, the Johnsons’ pasture, becomes a
contested space of contrary viewpoints and stereotypical preconceptions about African
American women seen as ugly and not very intelligent. Roth deploys multiple stereotypical
representations of a Jew: Marx, who seemingly falls into the category of an assimilationist
Jew, and Grossbart, an outwardly Orthodox Jew who turns out to be the scheming Jew, and
finally Fishbein, a weak and emasculated Jew. Both Fishbein and Halpern possess traces of a
“not only feminized but hystericized Jew” (Freedman 2008: 266). The author of “Defender of
the Faith” also builds upon Jewish stereotypes in his portrayal of Grossbart’s mother as: “a
ballabusta”, who “practically sleeps with a dustcloth in her hand” (Roth 1994:647). Also, the
stereotypical image of an overprotective Jewish mother adheres to what Karen Brodkin calls
“the image of smothering and emasculating mothers (of their sons)” (1998: 161).
While Marx tries to blur the differences between himself and the white mainstream,
Grossbart uses “strategic essentialism” in order to gain personal privileges. Grossbart ’s
rhetoric relies on some defined essentialist claims which attribute certain characteristics to
anyone within the Jewish subset of the population. It presupposes the claim that every Jew is a
religious person and that Jews as an ethno-religious group should “stick” together. In
“Everyday Use” Walker brings forward the practicality of African-American women as an
essentialist element of the African-American collective “we.” According to Mama the essence
of African-American women lies in their performance of everyday activities.
The worlds presented by Walker and Roth in their short stories are not one-
dimensional; the readers’ preconceptions that accrete around Roth’s Jewish characters are
Klimiuk, Magdalena. “Conundrums of Assimilation – rethinking the world presented in Philip Roth’s “Defender of the Faith” and Alice
Walker’s “Everyday Use””, Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies 4 (1/2014), 4-15.
challenged just the same as Mama’s dualistic perception of the world is challenged by
Walker’s conscious choice of Dee’s new name. Walker gives Dee the same new name –
Wangero – as Walker was given on her trip to Africa in the late 1960s. This fact was not left
unnoticed by many scholars, such as by Barbara Christian and Sam Whitsitt. The figure of
Dee in Walker’s story seems to destabilize the simplistic perception of Mama’s world of
stereotypical values. However, as a final effect the argument over the quilts is ruminated over
by Mama and ultimately enriches Mama’s perspective about the value of their African
American existence. In Roth’s short story the simplified division of the world into good,
pious, Orthodox Jews versus evil, secular Jews is threatened by the revelation of the fact that
the supposedly Orthodox Grossbart fakes his devotion to Judaism and Jewish customs.
Both the main characters of “Defender of the Faith” and “Everyday Use”, Grossbart
and Dee, perform a kind of masquerade. They are putting on the mask of the Other, which can
be compared to the tradition of minstrelsy. Both Grossbart’s and Dee’s ethno-racial identities,
respectively Jewish and African-American, possess a performative style; they invoke the
world of duplicity. By taking on their performer’s identity as Jewish or African-American, the
characters bring the internal conflicts of American ethnic Others into sharp relief.
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