Sophie Portnoy is the mother of Alexander. What kind of business can the two of us have together? Monkey business! No business!” Īlexander “… rejects conventional morality …” and depicts himself as “an Atheist …” and “… a fourteen-year-old Communist …” which relates to his lack of morality and respect, especially regarding his Jewish heritage, because “this desperate young protagonist rebels in a rage against his Jewish heritage.” Įven his trip to Israel does not help him with his problems and leads to an over-all alienation of the character: ”And in Israel! Where other Jews find refuge, sanctuary and peace, Portnoy perishes! Where other Jews flourish, I now expire.” 2.2.
By contrast to hers, my childhood took place in Brahmin Boston. “ How unnatural can a relationship be! This woman is ineducable and beyond reclamation. But eventually he realizes that she is nothing like him: He ends up with Mary Jane Reed, who he calls The Monkey and who first seems to satisfy him.
On the one hand Alexander is the “… repressed ‘Nice Jewish Boy’ …” who tries to live up to his mother’s expectations but on the other hand he is depicted as the “… aggressive ‘Jewboy’ …” who constantly has sexual adventures with non-Jewish women, called shikses. Alexander PortnoyĪlexander Portnoy is the 33-year-old main character was an successful and now is the “Assistant Commissioner for The City of New York Commission on Human Opportunity” which shows that he works hard to impress his mother Sophie. Characterizations of the Major Characters 2.1. “ Then came adolescence – half my waking life spent locked behind the bathroom door, firing my wad down the toilet bowl, or into the soiled clothes in the laundry hamper, or splat, up against the medicine-chest mirror, before which I stood in my dropped drawers so I could see how it looked coming out.” Īfter that Portnoy has sexual intercourse with various non-Jewish women and he ends his story in Israel where he becomes impotent and “… realizes that simplicity is not the solution to his tormented life”. During this recollection he always comes back to his sex fantasies, his childhood at home and his relationship to his mother, the role of Judaism in his life, his frustrations and obsessions, like the extensive masturbation during his adolescence: In the novel Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth, first published in 1969, the narrator Alexander Portnoy who comes from a strict Jewish home tells his psychologist Dr. Portnoy’s Complaint – A Jewish-American Novel The Function of the Beginning of Portnoy’s ComplaintĤ. Characterizations of the Major Charactersģ.
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