Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

Sabbath’s Theater 183
To remain functioning in a midlife crisis he compares to Linc’s,
Norman takes the drug Prozac, which he admits is “not [ . . . ] a dickfriendly
drug” (81). His form of crisis-control is clearly not a viable
option for Sabbath, who is fond of all sexual activity, and who takes
delight in the crises into which this fervor drives him and others. Thus
driven, Sabbath commits two substantial offenses against the respectability
and order Norman’s household represents: in an ecstatic perusal
of Norman’s teenage daughter’s underwear collection, Sabbath creates
complete chaos in the room he has been offered as a guest; he also makes
a pass (received favorably) at Norman’s wife Michelle. When Norman
kicks Sabbath out of the house, Sabbath finds himself aligned with
Linc: uncontrollable and therefore exiled—contemplating suicide.
The link between the two types of taboo, sexual transgression and
suicide (already suggested by the early death of Roseanna’s father),
is now moved to Sabbath. Driven from Norman’s ordered home,
Sabbath begins to contemplate his death (by suicide, as he expects,
and in imitation of Linc), and, finding himself at the cemetery where
family members are buried, begins to make morbid arrangements for
a plot and a head stone (376). But Roth introduces the more general
connection between death and taboo much earlier in the novel, in
the context of Mickey’s first wife Nikki’s behavior at the death of
her mother.
Nikki—whom Norman has described as “tremendously gifted,
extremely pretty, but so frail, so needy, so neurotic and fucked-up.
No way that girl would ever hold together, none” (83)—has trouble
coping with the fact that her mother has died and proceeds to sit
with the corpse for days. Sabbath describes both her actions and
his response: “the fondling of the dead woman’s hands, the kissing
of her face, the stroking of her hair—all this obliviousness to the
raw physical fact—was rendering her taboo to me” (108). Here even
Sabbath, who recognizes few boundaries, draws the line: this, then, is
forbidden, “taboo,” this ongoing physical attachment to the dead. He
calls in authorities (an undertaker, transportation to the morgue) who
reestablish order and respectability. Meanwhile, however, Sabbath
fails in his own responsibility: Nikki “disappears,” only to haunt him
for the rest of his life.
Ironically, when he describes Nikki’s inappropriate response to her
mother’s death, Sabbath is speaking to his mother, who, although dead