Portnoy's Complaint: Analysis of Major Characters
"Portnoy's Complaint" is a novel by Philip Roth that delves into the life of Alexander Portnoy, a Jewish man from Newark, New Jersey, who grapples with familial pressures, guilt, and sexual desires. As an intelligent yet tortured individual, Portnoy's narrative unfolds through his therapy sessions with Dr. Spielvogel, where he shares both humorous and poignant stories that highlight his struggles. Central to his experiences are his parents: Sophie Portnoy, the archetypal overbearing Jewish mother, whose suffocating care contributes to his Oedipal complex, and Jack Portnoy, a hardworking father whose chronic constipation symbolizes his frustrations.
Portnoy's relationships with several women also play crucial roles in his journey. These include Mary Jane Reed, who embodies his sexual fantasies but cannot free him from guilt; Kay Campbell, representing an idealized version of American womanhood; and Sarah Abbott Maulsby, who epitomizes social refinement yet is ultimately unappealing to him. Other characters, such as his sister Hannah, friends like Smolka and Arnold Mandel, and cousin Heshie, enrich the narrative by illustrating the complexities of Portnoy's upbringing and his interactions within a multifaceted cultural landscape. Overall, the novel offers a satirical yet deep exploration of identity, desire, and the immigrant experience in mid-20th century America.
Portnoy's Complaint: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Philip Roth
First published: 1969
Genre: Novel
Locale: Newark, New Jersey
Plot: Bildungsroman
Time: The 1930's to the 1960's
Alexander Portnoy, a Jewish man from Newark, New Jersey, who has “made good” as a bright college student and has become assistant commissioner for human opportunities in New York City. Throughout his life, however, he has been afflicted by a domineering mother, an intolerable sense of guilt, and an urgent sex drive. Intelligent and witty, he struggles to become free but succeeds mostly in engaging his family, his lovers, and himself in situations characterized by mutual vilification and sadomasochism that exacerbate rather than ameliorate his condition. He relates all of his adventures to his psychiatrist, Dr. Spielvogel, who provides the vehicle for the wild and often hilarious stories that disguise the real anguish he feels while living “in the middle of a Jewish joke,” as he calls his life.
Sophie Portnoy, Alexander's mother. She cannot begin to understand her son, whom she nearly smothers with care, concern, and relentless nudging. The archetypal Jewish mother, she is the source of Alex's Oedipal complex, which he eventually recognizes but seems unable to deal with effectively. Both nurturer and devourer, she simultaneously threatens and encourages her son throughout his childhood, and she looms persistently in his life thereafter.
Jack (Jake) Portnoy, Alexander's father, an insurance salesman. He is hardworking, long-suffering, and chronically constipated; he devotes his life to his family. He frequently quarrels with Alex about getting into the bathroom (where Alex is busy masturbating) to try his luck at moving his bowels. His constipation is symbolic of his frustrations as husband, father, and Jewish American wage earner. It is the Sunday morning ball games with his father and their male friends that Alex recalls later in life as among the most pleasurable times of his boyhood.
Hannah Portnoy, Alex's older sister, who is more dutiful, if also less brilliant, than her brother. She marries Morty, a man Alex admires and emulates for his liberal socialist beliefs.
Mary Jane Reed, called The Monkey, a mannequin originally from West Virginia whom Alex picks up one evening in New York and with whom he has a prolonged affair. Her sexual versatility and the orgies she engages in with him are not, after all, the real goal Alex longs for, even as she satisfies all of his sexual fantasies. She truly loves Alex and recognizes the good he does and (partly) is, but she is incapable of liberating him either from his consuming sense of guilt or to a life of hedonistic abandonment.
Kay Campbell, called The Pumpkin, Alex's college girlfriend, a blond, full-bodied, but flat-chested Midwesterner, “always the first of the Antioch nymphs to go barefoot to classes in the spring.” A true young American liberal, she astonishes Alex with her even temper and her high moral principles. She is the antithesis to everything Alex has known and still, years later, represents for him an ideal of American womanhood, though at the time of their affair he finally found her boring and ended their relationship.
Sarah Abbott Maulsby, called The Pilgrim, another WASP woman in Alex's life, a Connecticut aristocrat and Vassar graduate. To him, she constitutes “one hundred and fourteen pounds of Republican refinement, and the pertest pair of nipples in all New England.” Her boarding school argot, Ivy League friends, and sexual finickiness finally put off Alex.
Naomi, called The Jewish Pumpkin, a six-foot sabra whom Alex meets in Israel and tries to seduce; he then discovers, to his amazement, that he is impotent. It is this event that at last sends him to the psychiatrist's couch.
Smolka, Alex's gentile boyhood friend, who reportedly becomes a professor at Princeton, despite his disadvantaged youth (his father is a poor tailor and his mother works all day in the shop with him, leaving her son to fend for himself).
Arnold Mandel, another of Alex's boyhood friends, whose high IQ is belied by his ducktail haircut, long sideburns, and loud dress. Orphaned at the age of ten, when his father died, he is enamored of the fast life, plays the drums, and even changes his name legally to Ba-ba-lu. He grows up, nevertheless (and much to Alex's surprise), to be a typical middle-class husband and father, working in his father-in-law's surgical supply business.
Rita “Bubbles” Girardi, an eighteen-year-old high school dropout, Alex's first sexual contact at the age of sixteen, arranged by his friend Smolka and witnessed by Mandel, with hilarious results.
Harold “Heshie” Portnoy, Alex's cousin. Alex admires him for his athletic prowess and independent mind, especially after he becomes engaged to Alice Debosky, the head drum majorette and one of the few gentiles at Weequahic High School. Heshie's father breaks up the engagement, however, and Heshie later dies as a soldier in World War II.