Preaching to a Post-Religious World: History, Identity, and the Unstable Self in Roth’s Later Novels

Name of Author : Mr. Cijo Christober. J

Abstract: This article studies Philip Roth’s late fiction because his mature writing explores how people lose their sense of self, how historical events shape their lives, and how Jewish Americans after World War II experience their specific cultural heritage. The study analyzes Roth’s “American Trilogy” to show how Roth turned his personal life fears into advanced metafictional writing. The article argues that Roth’s literary work, which critics label as self-absorbed and Jewish, shows a detailed study of how Jewish Americans and other Americans face the conflicting demands of personal goals and ethnic ties and their need to belong to a nation. The study uses postmodern narrative theory alongside historical context to show that Roth created comic satire while also becoming the most important writer to document democracy’s decline and recovery during the late twentieth century.

Keywords : Philip Roth, Jewish Americans, metafiction, cultural heritage, postmodern narrative, democracy.

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