Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

184
Philip Roth
for many years, seems to retain a physical presence in his life, and not
only on long drives in the car: the first time the reader is introduced
to her, Sabbath is meeting Drenka in their secret “grotto” outside
town and imagines his mother hovering about, noting that “his tiny
dynamo of a mother was now beyond all taboos—she could be on
the lookout for him anywhere” (29). The dead, in his world, are never
far, and contrary to the image of the “good little boy who does what
he is told,” they seem to be limited by nothing, certainly not by social
conventions of propriety.
James M. Mellard claims in his article “Death, Mourning, and
Besse’s Ghost” that it is the mother’s legacy (rather than the father’s,
as in Roth’s Patrimony) that is developed in Sabbath’s Theater (Mellard
119). He points to a direct connection between Drenka and Mickey’s
mother, established by the mother’s presence in the grotto, and to
the development of this theme throughout the novel. According to
Mellard, Drenka’s death not only adds to the series of losses Sabbath
has endured (Morty, mother, Nikki), but also returns his mother to
him; after all, Sabbath realizes, he is now speaking to her (Roth 15).
The mother returns from the dead, breaking yet another taboo, to
“restore him to real, ordinary meaningful life” by reconnecting him to
his childhood, where his troubles began (Mellard 121).
The absence at the center of the novel—the source of both
Sabbath’s and his mother’s trouble with the boundaries between life
and death—is occupied by Morty, Mickey’s older brother. Morty,
remembered as equally successful at school and sports, handy around
the house, and socially adjusted, died in World War II. In response
to this loss, their mother becomes unavailable to Mickey, and in one
fell swoop his childhood, which Sabbath describes as “endlessness”
(31), ends. The term suggests unlimited-ness, perfection, certainly
the absence of death. Forever excused from the prosaic and imperfect
through his early (and heroic) death, Morty becomes Mickey’s ideal
and, a symbol of his lost childhood. Mickey’s turn toward chaos may
also be dated to Morty’s death: Mickey’s exploits in the merchant
marines, a training ground for the sexual libertine, follow closely.
Mickey commences a life of challenging propriety, thereby becoming
the opposite of his socially adjusted brother.
While we are first introduced to Morty as the son his mother
mourns, toward the end Sabbath approaches Morty not simply as
an idealized childhood memory but appropriates, or takes on, part of