After the Allies are victorious in the battle against the Axis in Europe, Sergeant Nathan Marx, in “Defender of the Faith,” is rotated back to the States, to Camp Crowder, Missouri. ______ Philip Roth’s “Defender of the Faith” raises questions about identity and identification, and the complexities that arise when different aspects of a person’s self-concept are in conflict with one another. The story also invokes the ethical dilemmas that identification creates, forcing its characters and the audience to confront competing allegiances. Published in 1959 as part of Roth’s first collection, the story takes place in 1945, as World War II is winding down.
Author
Witty and ironic fiction of noted American writer Philip Milton Roth includes the novels Portnoy's Complaint (1969), American Pastoral (1997), and The Human Stain (2000). He gained early literary fame with the collection Goodbye, Columbus (1959), winner of National Book Award of 1960, cemented this fame with his bestseller, and continued to write critically-acclaimed works, many of which feature his fictional alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman. The novels of Zuckerman began with The Ghost Writer in 1979 and include winner of the Pulitzer Prize. In May 2011, he won the Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement in fiction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip\_...
