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The Human Stain (2000) is a novel by Philip Roth. It was made into a film of the same name in 2003 starring Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman. The Human Stain is set in late 1990s rural New England. Its first person narrator is 65-year-old author Nathan Zuckerman, a character in previous Roth novels The Ghost Writer (1979) and Zuckerman Unbound (1981). He acts as an observer rather than the protagonist of the novel. Image File history File links Question_book-3. ...
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Image File history File links Derived from public domain images featured at: http://commons. ...
Image File history File links The Human Stain book cover This image is a book cover. ...
Philip Milton Roth (born March 19, 1933, Newark, New Jersey[1]) is a famous American novelist. ...
For other uses, see Country (disambiguation). ...
The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...
This article is about the literary concept. ...
A publisher is a person or entity which engages in the act of publishing. ...
Houghton Mifflin Company is a leading educational publisher in the United States. ...
Hardcover books A hardcover (or hardback or hardbound) is a book bound with rigid protective covers (typically of cardboard covered with cloth, heavy paper, or sometimes leather). ...
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Year 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full 2000 Gregorian calendar). ...
Philip Milton Roth (born March 19, 1933, Newark, New Jersey[1]) is a famous American novelist. ...
Year 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
For the composer, see Antony Hopkins. ...
Nicole Mary Kidman AC (born June 20, 1967), is an Australian [1] actress. ...
This article is about the region in the United States of America. ...
The Narrator is the entity within a story that tells the story to the reader. ...
Nathan Zuckerman is a fictional character who has appeared as the narrator or protagonist of (and often functions as an alter ego in) many of Philip Roths dozen or so works of fiction published since the late 1970s. ...
The Ghost Writer (1979, ISBN 0679748989) is a novel by Philip Roth. ...
Zuckerman Unbound is a 1981 novel by the American author Philip Roth. ...
A protagonist is the main figure of a piece of literature or drama and has the main part or role. ...
Plot summary Before the events of the story, Nathan Zuckerman has had prostate cancer, was operated on, and has been left both impotent and incontinent. Now he has embarked on the final part of his life and lives as a recluse in the Berkshires in New England. His neighbor is Coleman Silk, but the two men do not know each other until Silk asks for Zuckerman's help. Prostate cancer is a disease in which cancer develops in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system. ...
Berkshire region of Massachusetts The Berkshires (pronounced as or ) is a region located in Western Massachusetts (with portions located in the adjacent states of Vermont, New York, and Connecticut). ...
In April 1996, at 69, Coleman Silk is still professor of classical literature at Athena College, Athena being a small town in the area. He is presented to the reader as an assimilated Jew who has a wife, Iris, and four grown-up children: two sons, both college professors of science on the west coast, married with children, and the twins, Mark — an Orthodox Jewish Poet who despises his father — and Lisa, a burned-out teacher in New York. Silk is accused of having made a racist remark about two African-American students who were absent from his class and whom he had never seen before (reminiscent of David Mamet's Oleanna). He called them "spooks" — suggesting they were ghosts without considering that spooks is also an old-fashioned epithet for blacks. In the ensuing upheaval, several of his colleagues turn against Silk and support the African-American students. Silk feels monstrously wronged, and resigns rather than continuing to teach. This act, too, is misinterpreted by many people and also the local press. At the height of his trouble, his vigorous wife Iris dies of a stroke. Silk is devastated and accuses those who have been persecuting him as murderers. It takes him about two years to calm down and adapt to the new situation: being retired and single. He wants Zuckerman, who is a professional author, to write a book about the whole affair, but the latter refuses. So Silk spends several months writing an account he calls Spooks. When he finally finishes his book he realizes that it is not really intended for publication. Nevertheless the two men become friends. Ethnic Jews is a term used to describe people of Jewish ethnicity and background; the term sometimes can refer exclusively to Jews who, for whatever reasons, no longer accept Judaism as their religion, or who are so casual in their connection to that religion as to be effectively secular. ...
Orthodox Judaism is one of the three major branches of Judaism. ...
This article is about the state. ...
This box: Racism has many definitions, the most common and widely accepted is that members of one race are intrinsically superior or inferior to members of other races. ...
Languages Predominantly American English Religions Protestantism (chiefly Baptist and Methodist); Roman Catholicism; Islam Related ethnic groups Sub-Saharan Africans and other African groups, some with Native American groups. ...
David Alan Mamet (born November 30, 1947) is an American author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter, and film director. ...
Oleanna is a two-character play by David Mamet about the power struggle between a university professor and one of his female students who accuses him of sexual harassment and, by doing so, spoils his chances of being accorded tenure. ...
For other uses, see Stroke (disambiguation). ...
Gradually, we learn about Coleman Silk's past.
After his wife's sudden passing, at 71, Coleman starts an affair with Faunia Farley with the help of Viagra. Faunia, a 34-year-old cleaning woman from the college, also works on a dairy farm. // ...
College (Latin collegium) is a term most often used today to denote an educational institution. ...
Faunia enjoys their relationship as much as he does, but she has been victimized all her life. Although she grew up rich, she was sexually molested by her stepfather. She escaped his clutches, married Lester Farley, a Vietnam War veteran, and had two children with him. As a dairy farmer, Farley has not been successful, having never coped with his experiences and resultant drinking problem. As a husband, he seems to be hopeless. Their two children — eight year-old Rawley, a girl, and five year-old Les Junior — die in a fire while Faunia is with a man. Farley, who has been stalking them, arrives at the house as the fire burns. His delusions cause him to focus on his wife and boyfriend, and he attacks them while the children die of asphyxiation. Years later, when she meets Coleman Silk, Faunia is an illiterate who hardly has any worldly possessions except her kids' ashes, which she keeps under her bed. Combatants Republic of Vietnam United States Republic of Korea Thailand Australia New Zealand The Philippines National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam Democratic Republic of Vietnam People’s Republic of China Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea Strength US 1,000,000 South Korea 300,000 Australia 48,000...
Former crewmembers of the battleship Missouri pose for photos shortly after the Anniversary of the End of World War II ceremony, held aboard the famous ship. ...
World illiteracy rates by country Literacy is the ability to read and write. ...
Now that Farley realizes that his wife is having an affair with a "kike" twice her age, he starts stalking them, too. Time and again Silk sees a grey pickup truck near his home but each time he is unable to identify the make or the driver. Eventually, Farley attacks the lovers. Look up Kike in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
Other things go wrong as well for Coleman Silk. He realizes that he is losing touch with his children. When he phones his favorite child, 38-year-old Lisa, she sounds detached and for the first time answers her father's question with a "Nothing," which upsets and hurts him. He also gets an anonymous, handwritten letter from one of his former colleagues, Delphine Roux, accusing him of sexually exploiting the vulnerable Faunia. Silk believes his privacy has been invaded, and is almost as enraged as during the "spooks" affair.
Only gradually does the reader realize that Silk's personal history is much more complex than initially presented. He comes from a "colored" family, the descendants of Southern slaves. His father had been an optician but lost his business and had to work up to his premature death as a dining car waiter, while his mother was promoted to be the "first colored head nurse on any floor of any hospital in the city of Newark." Through various inter-racial unions for several generations, however, Silk's complexion is "of a very pleasing shade, rather like eggnog". Nickname: Map of Newark in Essex County Coordinates: , Country State County Essex Founded/Incorporated 1666/1836 Government - Mayor Cory Booker, term of office 2006–2010 Area [1] - Total 26. ...
In a reflective moment, we are given a glimpse of Silk's first sincere love, Steena Paulsson. Her ethnicity is Scandinavian, and symbolizes ultimate white racial purity. She doesn't know about Silk's race, though initially Silk fears that she knows his secret because of a poem she pens about him. After two years he decides to reveal his origin by taking her home to meet his family. During the meal everybody behaves politely and no tensions arise. After the train ride back however, Steena runs off with the words, "I can't do it," thus ending the relationship.
In a tangent, we discover Silk is an extremely skilled and successful boxer, a fact that he hides from everyone, from Steena Paulsson to his own father. For Silk, boxing is "all in the mind" and not his body. In this light, Coleman has a penchant for skilled and impressive violence, but in the symbolic arena, his ability to exert both power and control become his venue for freedom and power. Tragically, his freedom comes only in hiding his skill. "Freedom", is what Silk truly wants: freedom socially, sexually, physically and mentally.
From an early point in his life, Silk keeps secrets from his parents, his girlfriends, and all others in his life. He takes up amateur boxing, even turning professional later in life, and is able to walk around with bruises to hide his profession because he is so skilled. Similarly, he takes the "decision to identify himself as white", to "play his skin however he want[s], color himself just as he chose[s]": He does "not allow his prospects to be unjustly limited by so arbitrary a designation as race". Only by posing as a white man is he able to join the U.S. Navy, and in those days he is continually afraid of being found out and court-martialled for lying about his race. For other senses of these words, see boxing (disambiguation) or boxer (disambiguation). ...
For other uses, see Race (disambiguation). ...
USN redirects here. ...
When he meets Iris Gittelman he, like a chameleon, changes his identity again. She is Jewish, and so he pretends to be a Jew. As a consequence, he decides that she must never meet his family and tells Iris that they are all dead. Coleman Brutus Silk (think betrayal) prefers filial dislocation to loyalty, which underscores his willingness to deny not only himself, but his lineage and heritage, because it prevents him from creating his own self beyond the category of race. He is most brutal towards his mother, who realizes that if her son is really going to marry Iris, she will never in her life be able to see, let alone touch, her grandchildren unless she comes to his house posing as a babystitter. Silk thinks he has no other choice and tells Iris that all his family are dead. This is a complete break, and there is no way back now. The last he hears of his brother Walt, in 1953, is the latter's furious voice over the telephone, telling Coleman that he never wants to see his brother's "lily-white face" again. For other uses, see Chameleon (disambiguation). ...
For other uses, see Jew (disambiguation). ...
In his private life he continues to lie, telling his children (and his wife) whenever they ask him about their grandparents and great-grandparents that they were Russian Jews — the Silberzweigs — and that they are all dead. He claims that all their worldly belongings, including photo albums and the like, were lost. All of his four children turn out to be white, so after the birth of the twins he realizes that he is safe now. This is the point when he almost tells Iris, but at the last moment he decides against it.
Delphine Roux is a member of the faculty at Athena College. She was born in France in the late 1960s to rich parents who could afford to send their daughter to the best schools and universities. Petite and attractive, she spent the years of her higher education as a Marxist-oriented lycée student and had quite a number of love affairs, including one of her professors, whom she just could not resist. Eventually, also to escape from her complicated love life, she goes to the U.S.A. and embarks on her postgraduate studies at one of the prestigious American universities. Absolutely career-oriented, she considers her job at Athena as nothing but a stepping-stone to something much better. When she is hired by Silk, who is Dean at the time, she realizes that from the very moment they first lay eyes on each other they start sizing each other up — she in her carefully chosen short kilt, wearing an oversized ring, he an athletic man in his sixties who does not look older than 50. A faculty is a division within a university. ...
In France, secondary education is divided into two schools: the collège (IPA: ) (somewhat comparable to U.S. junior high school) for the first four years directly following primary school; the lycée (IPA: ) (comparable to a U.S. high school) for the next three years. ...
In an educational setting, a dean is a person with significant authority . ...
Very soon, however, Silk starts regretting hiring Roux. This is the age of political correctness, and whenever a female student complains about Silk, even if the accusation is wholly ridiculous, Roux automatically supports the student against Silk. Whereas Silk resigns over the "spooks" affair, Roux steadily climbs up the academic career ladder, achieving early tenure and, at only 27, being appointed Head of the newly-created Department of Languages and Literature. Political correctness is the alteration of language to redress real or alleged injustices and discrimination or to avoid offense. ...
Look up tenure in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
For reasons we do not really learn, she is still frightened of Silk two years after his resignation. Roux's moral outrage about Silk's affair with Faunia Farley causes her to write him an anonymous letter — handwritten but unsigned — which she carries around in her handbag for several weeks until finally posting it at a moment when her mental stability has left her: On a weekend trip to New York, she sees a man in the public library whom she fancies at once. She desperately wants to be picked up by him (or any other man, for that matter), but a girl clearly younger than herself approaches him and they leave together.
In the early morning of 1 November 1998, after having stayed for the first time overnight at Silk's instead of driving home as usual, Faunia Farley drives to the remote headquarters of the Audubon Society, where a crow is kept in a cage — a crow Faunia knows which could no longer survive in her natural surroundings. This is when she talks about "the human stain": "We leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint. Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error, excrement, semen — there's no other way to be here". There is a reference to the cycle of life and the "ceaseless perishing" that goes on on our planet — this is what Zuckerman, himself in his sixties, thinks when he watches old people gathering to listen to a concert. Also, he observes "the anarchy of the train of events, the uncertainties, the mishaps, the disunity, the shocking irregularities that define human affairs". is the 305th day of the year (306th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1998 Gregorian calendar). ...
The National Audubon Society is an American non-profit environmental organization dedicated to nature conservancy. ...
For other uses, see Crow (disambiguation). ...
Character destinies Apart from these philosophical insights, what the reader can follow now is a number of individual destinies: Image File history File links Size of this preview: 408 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (514 × 755 pixel, file size: 74 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) The poster for the film version of The Human Stain. ...
Robert Benton (born September 29, 1932 in Waxahachie, Texas) is an American screenwriter and film director. ...
Philip Milton Roth (born March 19, 1933, Newark, New Jersey[1]) is a famous American novelist. ...
Nicholas Meyer at the Paramount Pictures lot in 2002. ...
For the composer, see Antony Hopkins. ...
Nicole Mary Kidman AC (born June 20, 1967), is an Australian [1] actress. ...
The year 2003 in film involved some significant events. ...
For other uses, see United States (disambiguation) and US (disambiguation). ...
The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...
Lester Farley's destiny After passing the test of having dinner at a Chinese restaurant without attacking the "gooks" there, he is urged by another Vietnam veteran to pay a therapeutic visit to "the Moving Wall", a replica of the actual Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Farley refuses to visit the actual Wall, because of his contempt for "draft-dodging" Bill Clinton. Farley agrees, is seemingly apathetic standing in front of, and maybe also reading, all the names of the fallen soldiers but on the same night drives his pickup truck at considerable speed straight toward the oncoming vehicle carrying Silk and Faunia and thus makes Silk, who is driving, swerve off the road. Lester Farley is responsible for their deaths, but no one seems to realize or to care. Lester Farley is the one who keeps on living. The following is a list of ethnic slurs, also known as ethnophaulisms, that are, or have been, used to refer to members of a given ethnicity (or, in some cases, nationality, region, or religion) in a derogatory or pejorative manner. ...
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national war memorial located in Washington, D.C., that honors members of the U.S. armed forces who had died in service or are unaccounted for during the Vietnam War. ...
William Jefferson Bill Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III[1] on August 19, 1946) was the 42nd President of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001. ...
A parenthetical sequence in a VA hospital towards the end of the book, in which Farley discusses his role in the crash, may depict Farley being brought to justice in the future. A psychiatrist attempts to discern whether Farley was aware of the consequences of his actions and whether he was in a psychotic state at the time. The inference may be drawn that she is attempting to determine a state of insanity for a court preceding.
Coleman Silk's and Faunia Farley's destiny They stop hiding their relationship and appear in public, for example at some open-air concert one Saturday in August 1998. There Zuckerman, who is lonely and would love to be in touch with Silk, meets them again. Zuckerman knows, however, that their mutual promise about having dinner at some restaurant together soon is never going to be realized. This is the last time he sees them alive. At one point he likens them to Pygmalion and Galatea. Étienne Maurice Falconet: Pygmalion & Galatee (1763) Pygmalion is a legendary figure found in Ovids Metamorphoses. ...
Pygmalion and Galatea (1890) by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) Galatea (she who is milk-white)[1] was the name of three figures in Greek mythology, the best-known being the wife of Pygmalion. ...
Delphine Roux's destiny Roux, as lonesome as can be, composes an ad for a lonely hearts column on her computer but is not sure if she should actually e-mail it: It might cause her trouble if one of the faculty could trace it back to her. When she has finished writing, she is shocked at the result: Coleman Silk exactly fits her description of her dream man. We also learn that she would rather add "Whites only need apply" but that she is afraid to do so. In a moment of carelessness, she e-mails this draft to all the members of her department and of course cannot undo this unfortunate operation. Desperate, she already imagines her parents writing her off and herself having turned out a failure in the U.S.A. After a sleepless night — the same night in which Silk and Faunia Farley are killed — she goes back to her office early on the following morning but realizes that she has not got the keys necessary to unlock her colleagues' offices, so she cannot delete her message from their computers. In her office she starts throwing things and vandalizing the place. Then she calls Campus Security and claims Coleman Silk broke into her office, sent off the ad and then got into his car and deliberately killed himself and his mistress. A personal or personal ad is an item or notice traditionally in the newspaper, similar to a classified ad but personal in nature. ...
The narrator is particularly appalled at the malicious rumours that are spread in the wake of the accident in which Silk and Faunia Farley are killed. (As stated by Ernestine, Silk's sister: "The danger with hatred is, once you start in on it, you get a hundred times more than you bargained for. Once you start, you can't stop. I don't know anything harder to control than hating. Easier to kick drinking than to master hate. And that is saying something.") To the very end (of the novel) he is convinced that Lester Farley made Silk drive off the road and into his death and, accordingly, keeps calling him a murderer. (The reader never learns for sure whether this was the case or not.) However, no-one is interested in what he has to say: neither the police, nor Silk's children, who have consciously set out to clear their father's name and do not want his reputation to be damaged by revelations concerning his love affair with a cleaning woman half his age, nor Ernestine, who is just too polite to enquire and who does not want to upset her still very belligerent brother Walt. In November 1998 rumours about Silk and Faunia Farley are spreading across the small town of Athena although the police know that there is no truth in them, and the "public stoning" goes on: Silk is said to have been given a blowjob by Faunia while driving, and it is rumoured that the fact that he was sexually aroused and thus distracted caused the fatal car crash. Silk's enemies — and other people, too — readily believe what they are told. Nobody wishes to look into Lester Farley's desperate life or connect him in any way with the accident. For other uses, see Hate (disambiguation). ...
Oral sex consists of all the sexual activities that involve the use of the mouth, tongue, etc. ...
There are two funerals on two successive days. First there is Faunia Farley's burial, which is unspectacular compared to Silk's. Only few people show up. One of the mourners present is Harry, Faunia's biological father, an elderly man in a wheelchair who reproaches himself for having left his daughter alone with "that woman", i.e. her irresponsible mother. He is accompanied and looked after by Sylvia, a young Filipino woman who makes sure that Harry is not upset or bothered by any unpleasant business that might crop up during or after the funeral. When Zuckerman, who is keen on finding out the truth, follows them to a restaurant and overhears their conversation he learns that (a) Faunia had a child when she was 16 whom she put up for adoption and that (b) her alleged illiteracy was just an "act", that she made everyone believe that she could not read or write, probably in order to be able to lead an undisturbed life. Faunia even kept a diary, but when Zuckerman wants to have it Sylvia denies its existence. As opposed to the straightforward eulogies at her funeral, Zuckerman also comes across an anonymously posted on-line eulogy in which all the blame is placed on Coleman. For other uses, see Adoption (disambiguation). ...
Look up eulogy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
The question Ernestine is most concerned with is that, even after so many births (Coleman's children and grandchildren), the danger of a new-born child betraying Coleman's origins is not yet over: She is afraid Lisa might soon decide to have a baby, and, bound to have chosen a white out about Coleman's violent death: The accident happened on the eve of his 72nd birthday.
Zuckerman goes on living his uneventful and solitary life. Delphine Roux is never mentioned again. When, in February 1999, he is driving his car along a lonely mountain road on his way to Ernestine's, it is there he will share Sunday dinner with her and Walt who has been informed of Coleman's death and Zuckerman's knowledge of his secret. It is on his way to East Orange that he recognizes Lester Farley's grey pickup truck, the "murder weapon", parked near a small frozen lake. He cannot resist the temptation of stopping his car, getting out and looking for Farley. He finds him sitting on a bucket in the middle of the pond, ice fishing. Farley recognizes him as "the author" and, to Zuckerman's surprise, turns out to be much more intelligent and well-spoken than the narrator has imagined. What is supposed to be small talk is in reality rather a multi-layered affair, with Zuckerman pretending not to know who Farley is but at the same time knowing very well that Farley knows that he does. They talk about the Vietnam War, Farley's posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), fishing, unspoiled nature, Bill Clinton (who has just been saved from removal as President in the impeachment proceedings and whom Farley calls "draft dodger" and "Slick Willie"), literature and so on. When the conversation focuses on Farley's auger, a machine used for drilling holes in the ice, and Farley picks it up and holds it up against Zuckerman's face, the latter is just about able to make a polite retreat, saying that he is cold. He knows, however, that he will have to move now rather than be able to go on living in his solitary cabin. For other uses, see Temptation (disambiguation). ...
Post traumatic stress (PTSD) is the term for a severe and ongoing emotional reaction to an extreme psychological trauma. ...
William Jefferson Bill Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III[1] on August 19, 1946) was the 42nd President of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001. ...
Depiction of the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, then President of the United States, in 1868. ...
Their actions were criminal offences and once they had left the country draft dodgers could not return or they would be arrested. ...
An earlier example of a "passing narrative" is Nella Larsen's 1929 novel Passing. Nella Larsen in 1928 Nella Larsen (April 13, 1891 – March 30, 1964) was a Mulatto novelist of the Harlem Renaissance who wrote two novels and a few short stories. ...
Year 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Coleman Silk is partially based on the deceased New York Times literary critic Anatole Broyard, a "black" man who passed as a "white man" for many decades. Anatole Broyard (July 16, 1920–October 11, 1990) was an American literary critic for The New York Times. ...
Movie cast For the composer, see Antony Hopkins. ...
Nicole Mary Kidman AC (born June 20, 1967), is an Australian [1] actress. ...
Edward Allen Harris (born November 28, 1950) is an Academy Award-nominated American actor, known for his performances in The Rock, The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, Pollock, and The Truman Show, among many others. ...
Gary Alan Sinise (born March 17, 1955) is an Emmy and Golden Globe winning, Golden Palm and Academy Award nominated American actor and film director. ...
Wentworth Earl Miller III (born June 2, 1972) is an English-born American Golden Globe nominated actor. ...
Jacinda Barrett (born August 2, 1972) is an Australian model turned actress. ...
Mimi Kuzyk (born 1952 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) is a Canadian actress. ...
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