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| Plot Summary of The Human Stain |
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"Coleman Silk is a 71 year-old professor of English who resigned after being accused of racism, because of an inadvertant use of the word "spooks", in a lecture at a small New England College.
He falls in love with a young female janitor at the college, who is stalked by her vietnam-vet former husband who caused her two children to be burned in a fire.
Coleman is hiding a secret of his own; he "passed" from being a light "colored" man in the fifties, to becoming a white WWII vet studying at NYU. He marries a white woman and fathers four children who bare no trace of his origins.
The "human stain" is described in the book as"..an imprint..impurity, cruelty, abuse, error..It's in everyone. The stain so intrinsic it doesn't require a mark."
The irony of Coleman being called a racist while he himself is a victim of discrimination runs through the novel. It is the device Roth uses to portray america from the 50's to the end of the century. On the way, he describes life as an African American, the war in Vietnam, the Clinton impeachment and corruption in academia.
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Betty-Jeanne Korson, Resident Scholar
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"Narrator Nathan Zuckerman, a successful writer, has retired to the Berkshires near the small New England college of Athena, and becomes friendly with a neighbor named Coleman Silk. Silk is a retired classics professor who resigned after a campus scandal in which he was wrongly accused of racism after a chance and misunderstood remark.
As Zuckerman gets to know Silk (they're both secular Jews), it's the era of President Clinton's difficulties with Monica Lewinsky. Silk is having his own affair with an ostensibly illiterate 34-year-old cleaning woman, Faunia Farley, who is separated from her Vietnam veteran husband Lester. He is stalking Faunia and Coleman, with results that could be fatal.
But no one in this story is quite what he or she seems. Roth's alter ego Zuckerman tries to unravel the secrets and lies of the various other characters' lives -- including the young French feminist professor who primarily hounded Coleman out of his job."
David Loftus, Resident Scholar
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| Review Analysis of The Human Stain |
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Our unique search engine provides a wealth of detail about books by breaking them down into many different literary elements, all of which are searchable (click here).
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Tone of book?
- thoughtful
Time/era of story
- 1980's-1999
Romance/Romance Problems
Yes
Kind of romance:
- spurned lover going for revenge
Life of a profession:
- teacher
Inside culture (main char)
- Black
Strong "rags to riches" component?
Yes
Is this an adult or child's book?
- Adult or Young Adult Book
Outside culture (society)
- American Black
Job/Profession/Status story
Yes
Ethnic/regional/gender life
Yes
Lover is
- of a different social class
Main Character
Gender
- Male
Profession/status:
- scholar
- teacher
Age:
- 60's-90's
Is this an ordinary person caught up in events?
Yes
Ethnicity/Nationality
- Black
- Jewish
How sensitive is this character?
- middling sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor
- Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence
- Smarter than most other characters
- Very much smarter than other characters
Physique
- very athletic
- average physique
Main Adversary
Identity:
- Male
Age:
- 40's-50's
Profession/status:
- infantry soldier
- farmer
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in:
- a little/some
- a substantial amount
How sensitive is this character?
- hard edged
- mean, arrogant
Intelligence
- Average intelligence
Physique
- average physique
Setting
How much descriptions of surroundings?
- 9 ()
United States
Yes
The US:
- Northeast
Small town?
Yes
Style
Person
- mostly 1st
Accounts of torture and death?
- moderately detailed references to deaths
- explicit references to deaths
Sex in book?
Yes
What kind of sex:
- descript of kissing
- touching of anatomy
- licking
- actual description of hetero sex
- descript. of female anat. (the big B's)
- descript. of female anat. (the big V)
- descript. of nude males (the big P)
Lot of foul language?
Yes
Unusual Style:
- a lot of flashback and forwards
Amount of dialog
- significantly more descript than dialog
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Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s). | |
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