Pragmatism in Philip Roth's novel "Human Stain"

In Philip Roth’s novel The Human Stain, written in the year 2000, he explores human beings’ desire to distinguish what is real from what is fake, and our desire to control our destiny. Roth, like the pragmatists William James and John Dewey, suggests the meaning we give our actions and relationships is a matter of social and historical context, and is therefore arbitrary. The tragic fate of the protagonist Coleman Silk demonstrates that as much as human beings can attempt to control their lives, we cannot predict what will happen; we cannot anticipate how our actions will be received as the American social and cultural landscape shifts.

The novel is set in 1998, the year Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial was aired on national television. Clinton publicly denied allegations he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky in spite of pentagon worker Linda Tripp’s surmounting evidence the affair had happened. As the case unfolded Clinton admitted to prosecutors and on live TV that he did indeed have an affair. The Kenneth Starr report built a strong case for impeachment on grounds of “perjury, obstruction of justice, witness-tampering, and abuse of power, and also provided explicit details of the sexual relationship between the president and Ms. Lewinsky”.[1] Clinton was acquitted and apologized for his behavior. He continued to serve as president for the next two years.

Coleman Silk, the protagonist in The Human Stain faces a series of similar dilemmas to Bill Clinton. Silk is forced to resign from his job as a professor at Athena because of allegations that his use of the word “spooks” in reference to his former students was a racially charged epithet (p.334). He is also discovered to be having an affair with a janitor who works at the college, Faunia Farley, by his colleague Diane Roux. Ms. Roux claims that “everyone knows” about his affair and pins him as a disgrace (p.208-9). But as much as we would like to think that we know the answers as human beings, and in this case, as readers of the novel, it becomes clear by the end of the book that we can never truly know the truth of the matter. As the narrator reveals, Coleman’s “crime exceeded anything and everything they wanted to lay on him. He said ‘spooks,’ he has a girlfriend half his age—it’s all kid stuff” (p.334-335). Coleman’s biggest secret, the fact that he was passing as white man for his entire adult life, goes undiscovered by Athena, his place of work, and even his late wife Iris.

Coleman’s effort to control his perception by society is his expression of power over his own life trajectory. “The objective was for his fate to be determined not by the ignorant, hate-filled intentions of a hostile world but, to whatever degree humanly possible, by his own resolve” (p.120-1). His ability to change his race twenty years into his life shows that the concept of race is not real. It is humans who assign meaning to skin color in American society. Race is entirely constructed by the American imagination and therefore subject to change, or in the words of Coleman “not static but sliding” (p.108). But, as much as Coleman would like to control his destiny he fails. He is “blindsided by the uncontrollability of something else entirely…the history that isn’t yet history… the present moment, the common lot, the current mood, the mind of one’s country, the stranglehold of history that is one’s own time…the terrifyingly provisional nature of everything” (p.335-336). While Coleman could try to control the way he was perceived, he could not control everything that would happen to him and the shifting cultural milieu. He is run off the road and killed in a car accident by Les Farley, Faunia’s husband. Coleman was blindsided by his unknowingness.

Through the lens of Coleman Silk’s life, Roth explores changes in American culture in the 20th century. Based on how Coleman’s actions are received, while acceptable American views on race may have shifted slightly since the 1940s and ‘50s, American views on sex are age-old. When Coleman decided to pass as a white Jewish man in 1946, he could not have predicted he would be fired for being a racist in his seventies. Back then, racism was publicly condoned and legally codified. In 1998, a white institution like Athena could not stand to be labeled as racist for the sake of its reputation! It is ironic that if Coleman presented as Black, as he was, and he said the same thing to his students, he also would not been fired. On the other hand, in 1946 and especially in 1998 in lieu of the Bill Clinton impeachment (and to this day) sex is viewed as scandalous in American society. As Coleman’s lawyer suggests:

“It’s 1998. It’s years now since Janis Joplin and Norman O. Brown changed everything for the better. But we’ve got people here in the Berkshires, hicks and college professors alike, who just won’t bring their values unto line and politely give way to the sexual revolution. Narrow-minded churchgoers, sticklers for propriety, all sorts of retrograde folks eager to expose and punish guys like you” (76).

The Victorian values of chastity and marriage and the proper way of doing things permeated society in 1998. As much as we would like to believe American society is on an upward trajectory of progress, it seems that it is not so different from how it was after all.

Roth suggests that American culture is constantly changing and not always for the better: America is different from one day to the next, but it is also eerily the same. Perhaps the problems of today are not really that different from the problems of tomorrow. While Clinton’s scandal was sensationalized it instilled a sense of distrust in the American public of the government’s legitimacy. It wasn’t the first time and it wasn’t the last. Clinton may have lied, but perhaps the American government is a bigger lie because it did not find Clinton guilty. The president could lie and still remain president. Coleman Silk’s biggest lie was undiscovered by those that loved him most. Just when we think we know the truth—that the president is a liar and a cheater, that Coleman Silk is a racist and an adulterer—the truth is not validated by the systems we trust. What is real or unreal is dependent on a changing environment. It is whimsical and random and subject to change. As intellectual Oliver Wendell Holmes suggests, “we must admit that we do not know what we are talking about” (Holmes, “Natural Law”). Yet, one thing is for certain, the thing that distinguishes human beings from animals: the human desire to know the truth and to derive meaning.

[1] History.com Editors, “President Clinton impeached” HISTORY, A&E Television Networks (2009) Retrieved March 11 2021 from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-clinton-impeached