Response 5

Part One:
In the consensus, history is envisioned as one story encompassing all time, peoples, and locations. Even the word history “his story” is misleading. Perhaps it would be best to view history as in interaction between multiple stories, not as his story but rather as their stories. Roth’s novel allows for just this. By introducing the plot from the different angles and perspectives of his characters he allows for variability in the events of the storyline. Consensus history and Roth’s history can be seen as competing characters in themselves as the novel challenges strictly pro-American views with a “what if” scenario where America and Nazi Germany are one and the same.
The interaction between Roth’s history and consensus history creates an environment where the doxa becomes muddled. This historicity serves to disrupt automatic reading. In doing so, it also allows for the individual to play a greater role than is typically shown in history. Perhaps the best example of this is found the newsreels. The newsreels present history as it is normally perceived. They are told from one view point only and allow for no questioning or alternatives. This view is what the reader was guarded against throughout the entire story by telling the events not as a historical account, but rather through the experiences of the characters during the story.
The newsreels also serve to contrast the notion of “perpetual fear”. Roth’s use of the newsreels shows that it would have been possible to tell his entire alternate history in as little as eight pages. This, however, would not allow one to see into the individual experiences of the characters. Fear is the underlying emotion throughout the entire novel. Roth’s mother is uncertain of the future and fears what may happen to her family, the bulk of America fears getting involved in the war, and even Lindbergh is forced into submission out of fear for his kidnapped child. The notion of a perpetual fear goes against consensus. Fear is typically perceived as something that eventually subsides. The experience of fear, however, can feel like forever. In the moment, fear can be all encompassing and eternal.

Part Two:
Roth’s uses poetics in a way that captures the emotional state of his characters and story. Phillip’s dream shows not only foreshadowing, but also Phillip’s fear that his home is being corrupted by anti-Semitism. It also demonstrates that Phillip is much more in tune with his surroundings than children his age are normally given credit for. He sees the signs that many adults who are typically regarded as wiser than him are blind to.
The interaction between chapters eight and nine reveals the contrast between time from a frightened individual’s perspective and time from a historian’s point of view. The chapter eight newsreels are fast paced and told in a way similar to a newscast or a history book. The evens of chapter nine seem to drag on, especially when compared with chapter eight, showing how time felt for the characters involved.

Response 4

The three of them sat silently in their car as the bridge swayed evenly between the gales. The other vehicles around them were trapped in a similar situation, gridlocked. The boy looked out over the stretch of water beside the bridge. Overhead, the sky was a clear, pristine blue. Two mammoth storms waited at both horizons, slowly stalking nearer to the car. The boy marveled at this. Though he was an inquisitive boy, he had never understood the weather. No one had ever explained to him where a storm came from and he wondered what would happen when the two storms met over his car. Would they merge into one horrifyingly large mass? Would one overtake the other? Or would they both explode? The boy’s father sat in the chair beside him, gripping the wheel, his knuckles white. Every few minutes he would reach over and change the station on the radio, never quite distracted from the traffic. The father was not normally a tense man. He stared out of the windshield searching for the end of his trap. His search was in vain, a semi truck sat in front of him blocking his view of everything beyond a few feet. The trucks engine was still idling as if waiting for some signal to resume travel. A child lay across the back seats of the car. He twiddled his fingers, stretched, and tapped his feet. Motion for the sake of motion, motion for the sake of sanity. He dared not look out either of the side windows, afraid that if the storms knew he was there they would take him and change him into yet another shapeless cloud.
Outside the car a man paced, cursed, and spat. His face, though obscured by the veil of his hood, showed lines of desperation, confusion, and fear as he intently watched both skies. Thunder cracked overhead, though from which side it was impossible to tell. Still, no flashes lit the sky, and for this the man was thankful. Pacing, he eyed the walls around the bridge knowing no walls could halt the encroaching storms. Desperate, the man looked above him and watched as the thin blue strip of sky began to vanish before the storms. The man panicked, believing the strip dividing the storms was becoming too small, that the fragile layer of brinksmanship would soon shatter. He paced faster, knowing he had to stand on one side lest he remain in the middle. The storm to his east had taken up some dust from whatever land had spawned it. It gave the wind a red hue. Looking at this shimmering red curtain, the man began to walk towards it. In his mind he saw himself as he bade farewell and jumped of the bridge, to solitude, waving, carrying flowers, down to the river. With one foot upon the wall he stopped and looked back. The storm to his west looked equally inviting and terrifying as the one he stood before now. He stepped away just as the cavernous mouth of the storm was about to swallow him and knelt in the middle of the road under the thin streak of sky that was home to him, his tears mixing with the rain that was now beginning to fall.