Assimilation and Authenticity in Philip Roth's I Married a Communist

This essay argues that I Married a Communist occupies an important place in Philip Roth’s on-going exploration of being an American who happens to be a Jew both in the private and in the public spheres. The protagonist’s tragic existential parable represented in his multi-names and impersonations provides a privileged place to map usable definitions of the self when the adjective American is at stake in twentieth-century Jewish America.