Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

178
Philip Roth
and possible death of his first wife Nikki, and finally the loss of
his long-term lover Drenka. Sabbath commits morbid and often
offensive acts in his efforts to reconnect with these people, through
memories and gestures. When he does succeed, his disregard for his
own dignity is oddly touching, and readers empathize with Sabbath,
in spite of his transgressions.
Mickey Sabbath is a 64-year-old puppeteer whose hands are crippled
by rheumatism and who therefore lives off his second wife Roseanna’s
income in the small town of Madamaska Falls. His long-term
lover is Drenka, the Croatian immigrant wife of the local innkeeper.
The novel begins with an argument between Drenka and Sabbath,
who regularly meet in a “grotto” outside town. The first sentence sets
up the theme of the novel: “Either foreswear fucking others or the
affair is over,” Drenka essentially demands (3). This sentence roughly
translates: contain your chaos and disruption or your life will end. But
Sabbath refuses to curb his misbehavior, and it is not his death that
follows but Drenka’s, leaving Mickey Sabbath at loose ends and in the
continued chaos of his own making.
In the first scene, Roth sets up the main tension of the novel:
Sabbath breaks taboos specifically to defy death (Safer 61), to remind
himself and others that he is an actor on his stage, someone who does
something and has some control over himself and others. Although
Drenka’s death causes Sabbath great grief, he has “the vital energy to
keep going,” unlike Kepesh, another of Roth’s heroes, who is simply
undone by a similar loss (Halio 205). Sabbath’s greatest resource is
his “energy fueled by eroticism,” and as off-putting as this is to some
readers, it may also be a redemptive quality (Halio 205). The novel
continues to work out the tensions involving death and taboo on
several levels: Sabbath’s wish to control the stage and manipulate other
characters, his memories of loss, and, through these memories, his
coming to terms with Drenka’s death.
While the novel is set in 1994, Roth shifts between the present
and Sabbath’s memories. The narrator moves from Sabbath’s idyllic
childhood on the Jersey shore to his adventures in the merchant
marine, his puppeteering career in Manhattan, his first marriage, and
finally to his encounters with Drenka. Through Sabbath’s memories,
Roth establishes the pattern of a man who thrives on controlling the
people around him. Sabbath’s desire to manipulate begins back in the
1950s, when he performed with his Indecent Theater in Manhattan,