Archetypal Silk: Wily Trickster, Tragic Mulatto, and Schlemiel in Philip Roth's “The Human Stain”

Philip Roths 2000 novel, The Human Stainy should resonate with most academics because it is a satire on education, especially at the college level, and on Americas inability to escape its Puritan heritage. Roth satirizes everything from hypocrisy and political correctness on the college campus to declining academic standards to black history month to the publics persecution of Bill Clinton for his indiscretions with Monica Lewinsky. What complicates and oftentimes overshadows the satire, however, is Roths focus on the theme of passing in relation to his protagonist, Coleman Silk. The novel piles irony upon irony as Coleman, a light-skinned black man ("coal" man), decides to pass for white and ends up posing as a Jew, in essence exchanging one type of oppression for another. At the beginning of the novel, after a distinguished career as a classics professor and dean in a small New England college, Coleman is accused of racism for using the word spooks in reference to two students whose names are on his class roster but who have never appeared in class. A witch-hunt ensues, Coleman resigns, his wife dies, and Coleman seeks revenge for the injustices. In order to explore Colemans plight, Roth shifts his traditional focus from Jewish characters to African Americans. One might think that Roth intends to address the stereotypical ntagonism between blacks and Jews. But Roth avoids pitting the two minorities against each other. Instead, Roth focuses mainly on Coleman as a black man passing for white rather than on a lapsed Protestant posing as a Jew.1 In addition, Roth employs three archetypal figures, two from African American literature the wily trickster and the tragic mulatto and one from Jewish literature the schlemiel. Although some of the novels supporting characters participate in the archetypes as well, Coleman himself is the primary embodiment of all three archetypes. When he decides to pass for white, Coleman adopts the role of the trickster; however, when his world falls apart due to the charge of racism and the other tragedies that follow, Coleman evolves into the tragic mulatto and