"All Over Again": the Persistence of the American Dream In Philip Roth's American Pastoral

This paper focuses on the portion of the protagonist’s life which goes untouched by Nathan Zuckerman’s imaginative reconstruction, on what the narrator calls the Swede’s “second shot at a unified life”. What lies mostly outside of the narrative proper provides, in fact, very strong evidence of the persistence of the American dream, the Swede’s own counterlife. The analysis revolves around an exploration of the onomastic geography of the novel – the protagonist’s nickname, his second wife’s namelessness, past and future inflected names – and proposes a comparison between Nathan’s dreaming as a writer and the Swede’s dreaming as an American while addressing crucial issues such as Jewish assimilation, hyphenation and post-ethnicity.