The Fragmented Mark: Zuckerman’s Characters as Self-Making in The Human Stain

Abstract: Much of the discourse surrounding Philip Roth’s The Human Stain (2000) either deals with the novel as about America and American self-making or as about Coleman Silk. Little scholarship, however, deals with Zuckerman, the narrator, as a character central to the story; this essay seeks to show that Zuckerman not only invents the personal lives of his characters, but he invents himself, and he does so through his semi-imagined versions of each of the characters. Coleman is who he wishes himself to be, Farley is Zuckerman’s model of how not to live, Delphine is the warning about the very book he writes—the version of himself that lies about who he is—and Faunia acts as his moral compass and guide, perhaps the most important of his creations given how his narrative decisions reflect her sensibilities. Zuckerman’s characterizations of the key players and his suppositions about their interiority, then, result in Zuckerman’s own characterization.