"The Defender of the Faith"

"The Conversion of the Jews," with its beatific ending, brought ample criticism to Roth from many in the Jewish community, who overlooked its comedy and concentrated instead on what they regarded as anti-Semitism in the story. "The Defender of the Faith" contains fewer funny moments but, if anything, a sharper wit and a toughmindedness that insist, both in the story and its telling, that Jews are in most respects like other human beings. If Malamud's recurrent theme is that "All men are Jews," then Roth's is that "All Jews are men," as illustrated in the fictional portrayal of Sergeant Nathan Marx and the three Jewish recruits whose basic training he supervises [Sanford Pinsker, The Comedy That "Hoits": An Essay on the Fiction of Philip Roth, 1975].

Rotated back to the United States shortly after the fighting ends in Europe in 1945, Sergeant Marx is a veteran and a war hero, with ribbons to prove it. He wins the admiration and respect of his commanding officer and others he associates with at Camp Crowder, Missouri, but Sheldon Grossbart is something else. Swiftly ascertaining that Marx, like himself, is Jewish, Grossbart begins requesting special treatment, at first in relatively minor matters but eventually in some of much greater importance. Playing on Marx's sense of guilt more than on any sense of solidarity he might have with his landsmen (that is, fellow Jews), Grossbart finagles special passes and exemptions from onerous duty for himself and two of his friends. When nothing else works, he writes letters—signing his father's name—to his parents' congressman. These prompt the commanding officer and higher authorities to inquire into such matters as the food that men brought up in kosher homes must eat.

Grossbart's cleverness—for example, his wishing Marx a "Good shabbus, sir!" as, exempted from a "G.I. party" (Friday-night barracks cleaning), he runs off to "Jewish Mass"—eventually backfires. Too smart by half, he manipulates not only Marx but others to the point of getting his orders changed from being shipped out to the Pacific (where the war is still raging) to being sent to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, closer to his parents' home and certainly much safer. But this time Grossbart goes too far. Marx, furious, arranges to have someone else sent to New Jersey and Grossbart to the Pacific with the rest of the company.

The comedy in this story derives partly from the competition that develops between Grossbart and Marx, their contest of wit, a game that finally becomes deadly earnest. In this respect it resembles the games Neil and Brenda play in Goodbye, Columbus. Grossbart is usually smart enough to know when to attack and when to retreat, when to show guts and when to act meekly, as in the Passover seder incident. But Marx is no dummy. Even his sense of guilt (at not being much of a Jew) has its limits. He realizes full well who and what Grossbart is and finally confronts him in a towering rage: "Grossbart, you're a liar! . . . You're a schemer and a crook. You've got no respect for anything. Nothing at all. Not for me, for the truth—not even for poor Halpern! You use us all—." Discovering and then shifting Grossbart's orders are the final victory, however vindictive, that Roth awards Marx, who has certainly earned it.

If "The Conversion ofthe Jews" appeared too simple or too clear to Alfred Kazin, the "moral complexity" of this story exhilarated him, for in it Roth shows "the Jew as individual, not the individual as Jew." Moreover, Roth "caught perfectly the drama of personal integrity in the face of group pressures that is so typical of American literature." He does indeed. But the issue of Jewish identity, which Grossbart forces Sergeant Marx to face, and the conflicts that develop from it are Roth's own. Though they resemble situations in stories like Malamud's "Last of the Mohicans" and "The Lady of the Lake," the humor is more sharply satiric and less fanciful. Furthermore, the ending puts the entire story in an utterly different perspective, when Marx hears Grossbart weeping behind him after their confrontation. As the private swallows hard, accepting his fate, Marx resists with all his will the impulse to turn and ask Grossbart's pardon. Struggling, Marx accepts his fate too. Thus, Roth deftly mingles comedy, satire, and pathos in an amalgam fully justified by the "moral complexity" of his tale.