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Jewish Studies Quarterly
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Freud's Oedipus-Complex
and the Problems of Jewish Assimilation
in the Writings of Franz Kafka and Philip Roth
Catherine Hezser
A comparison between Franz Kafka and Philip Roth can illustrate Ger-
shon Shaked's theory of both continuity and change with regard to the
complex issue of Jewish identity reflected in modern German and Amer-
ican Jewish writing.2 Just as our understanding of Philip Roth is advanced
by reading Kafka, we can also learn a lot about Kafka by reading Philip
Roth.3 In this context the question of the representativeness of individual
literary expressions and their usefulness as historical and autobiographi-
cal sources, issues which have repeatedly been brought up in connection
with the so-called "New Historicism", shall be addressed as well.
Harold Fisch has correctly emphasized that the literary depiction of
conflicts between fathers and sons "is not primarily a Jewish phenom-
enon or problem, but something Jewish writers took over with the rest of
the apparatus of emancipation".4 The sons' rebellion against their
1 Gershon Shaked, The Shadows Within. Essays on Modern Jewish Writers, Phila-
delphia 1987, 79.
2 See also Steven M. Cohen, American Modernity and Jewish Identity, New York
and London 1983, 4, for certain analogies between European and American Jewish
society in the 19th and 20th centuries. According to Cohen, the focus on modernization
serves "to elucidate certain similarities in the rather varied experiences of nineteenth-
century West European Jewries and contemporaneous American Jewry, both of which
encountered and experienced 'modernity'. If these Jewries underwent essentially similar
processes of social change, they should, in some manner, look the same".
3 See Morton P. Levitt, Roth and Kafka: Two Jews , in: Critical Essays on Philip
Roth, ed. Sanford Pinsker, Boston 1982, 245.
4 See Harold Fisch, Fathers, Mothers, Sons and Lovers. Jewish and Gentile Pat-
terns in Literature", Midstream 18 (Mai 1972) 39.
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(2001) Freud's Oedipus-Complex and the Problems of Jewish Assimilation!^
5 Siehe Peter Gay, Freud. A Life for Our Time, New York und London 1988, 100
und 112.
6 See also Walter H. Sokel, "Kafkas 'Verwandlung': Auflehnung und Bestrafung",
in: Franz Kafka, ed. Heinz Politzer, Wege der Forschung 322, Darmstadt 1973, 278.
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250 Catherine Heiser JSQ 8
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(2001) Freud's Oedipus-Complex and the Problems of Jewish Assimilation25'
10 See Michael Brenner, "A Tale of Two Families: Franz Rosenzweig, Gershom
Scholem and the Generational Conflict Around Judaism", Judaism 42 (1993) 350-52.
On Gershom Scholem (and Walter Benjamin) see also Robert Alter, Necessary Angels.
Tradition and Modernity in Kafka, Benjamin, and Scholem, Cambridge/Mass 1991, 4.
11 See Brenner 353.
12 See ibid. 355.
13 On the Jewish student organization Bar Kochba see Rudolf M. Wlaschek, Juden
in Bhmen, Mnchen 1990, 66.
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252 Catherine Hezser JSQ 8
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(2001) Freud's Oedipus-Complex and the Problems of Jewish Assimilation253
17 See, e.g., H 1 19 (= Eng. 138): "You have worked hard all your life, have sacrificed
everything for your children, above all for me ...", and ibid. 124 (= Eng. 145): "You had
worked your way up so far alone, by your own energies, and as a result you had
unbounded confidence in your opinion".
18 On Reform Judaism in Prague see Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity. A
History of the Reform Movement in Judaism, 2nd ed. Detroit 1995, 153-55 and 193.
Since 1837, after Leopold Zunz' nine months sojourn in Prague, Michael Sachs was
conducting a moderate Reform service in accordance with the Vienna ritual. In 1839
Sachs was accepted as the fourth rabbi by Prague's rabbinical assembly. According to
Meyer, by the end of the nineteenth century most Bohemian Jews were no longer
orthodox and most of the synagogues had adopted the Viennese Reform ritual.
19 He blames his children for being spoiled (H 135 = Eng. 159) and thereby causes
guilt feelings.
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254 Catherine Heiser JSQ 8
"The whole thing is, of course, not an isolated phenomenon. It was much
the same with a large section of this transitional generation of Jews, which
had migrated from the still comparatively devout countryside to the towns.
The situation arose automatically" (Eng. 174).
He considered his father a typical representative of assimilated Jewish
middle-class values and viewed his personal relationship to him in a
wider historical context.21
Hermann Kafka can be seen as a typical example of Bohemian Jews
of the first generation after Jewish emancipation. Like many of his con-
temporaries he was preoccupied with social advancement and ambiva-
lent about his Jewish identity. Bohemian Jews were granted civic equality
only in 1849. Only then were the many restrictions concerning marriage
and family, settlement and professions removed.22 From that time on-
wards all Jews were able to establish families, move to the cities, and
obtain higher positions.23 The subsequent socio-economic ascent of the
Jewish middle classes happened at the time of beginning industrializa-
tion, when capitalist ideology and remorseless competition reigned su-
preme.24 Jews who had left their traditional enclaves and wanted to suc-
ceed in the world at large were forced to adjust themselves to the con-
ditions of the capitalist economic system. In his memoirs Enoch Hein-
rich Kisch, who was born in Prague in 1841, writes:
20 See H 134 (= Eng. 158): "The situation had, after all, become quite different as a
result of all your efforts, and there was no opportunity to distinguish oneself in the
world as you have done".
21 See also Harriet M. Parmet, "The Jewish Essence of Franz Kafka , Shofar 13
(1995) 30.
22 See Wlaschek 11, and Christof Stlzl, Kajkas bses Bhmen. Zur Sozialgeschichte
eines Prager Juden, Munich 1975, 20.
23 See Stlzl 32.
24 On Jewish participation in the Bohemian economy since the middle of the 18th
century see especially Ruth Kerstenberg-Gladstein, Neuere Geschichte der Juden in den
bhmischen Lndern. Erster Teil: Das Zeitalter der Aufklrung 1780-1830, Tbingen
1969,' 96-1 15.
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(200')Freud's Oedipus- Complex and the Problems of Jewish Assimilation255
25 Enoch Heinrich Kisch, Erlebtes und Erstrebtes. Erinnerungen, Stuttgart and Ber-
lin 1944, quoted by Wilma Iggers (ed.), Die Juden in Bhmen und Mhren. Ein histo-
risches Lesebuch, Mnchen 1986, 212 (my translation from the German).
26 See Wlaschek 39. This is not to say, however, that the majority of Prague Jews in
the middle of the nineteenth century belonged to the middle and upper classes. Most
Jews of that period were poor; see Stlzl 22. Yet proportionately more Jews than non-
Jews were members of the middle classes.
11 See Stlzl 26.
See Wlaschek 52.
^ See ibid. 54; Stlzl 36.
30 See Wlaschek 53.
31 Quoted by Iggers 225 (my translation from the German).
32 See also Stlzl 40.
33 See Parmet 29.
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256 Catherine Hezser JSQ 8
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(20Q')Freud's Oedipus- Complex and the Problems of Jewish Assimilation251
39 See Hans-Peter Bayersdrfer, "Das Bild des Ostjuden in der deutschen Litera-
tur", in: Juden und Judentum in der Literatur", eds. Herbert A. Strauss und Christhard
Hoffmann, Munich 1985, 214.
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258 Catherine Hezser JSQ 8
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(2001) Freud's Oedipus- Complex and the Problems of Jewish Assimilation259
45 In a letter to Max Brod written in April 1921 (B 315) Kafka mentions his desire
to emigrate into "a foreign southern country (it must not be Palestine ...)". Cf. the letter
to Robert Klopstock of September 13, 1923 (B 445): "Palestine would have been un-
reachable for me in any case; in view of the Berlin opportunities it would not even be
urgent" (my translation).
46 See E 51: "I was his representative here at this place" (my translation).
47 See, e. g., Binder 123f.
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260 Catherine Hezser JSQ 8
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(2001) Freud's Oedipus- Complex and the Problems of Jewish Assimilation26l
Roth admired and related to as he struggled to write about the same subjects in his own
idiom".
53 See ibid. 123-79, and Alan Cooper, Philip Roth and the Jews, Albany 1996, 174-
76.
54 See Cooper 55: "Patrimony also unlocks that easily overlooked vein in Roth's
fiction, the use of fathers, which turns out to be far more remarkable than the bally-
hooed use of mothers. The major use is the test of manhood, and a significant part of
the test is the patrimonial link to the Jews".
55 See ibid. 60.
56 In his book My Life as a Man (1974), for example, the protagonist Peter Tarno-
pol is said to have written two stories with the title "Useful Fictions" and a novel with
the title "My True Story". In The Prague Orgy at the end of the Zuckerman- trilogy
Roth writes: "... another character out of mock-autobiography, yet another fabricated
father manufactured to serve the purposes of a storytelling son" (569, quoted from
Philip Roth, Zuckerman Bound. A Trilogy and Epilogue, London 1989, Penguin paper-
back edition). In Roth's references and allusions to Kafka reality and fiction are mixed
as well; see Theodore Weinberger, "Philip Roth, Franz Kafka, and Jewish Writing",
Journal of Literature and Theology 7 (1993) 230-31.
57 Quoted from Philip Roth, My Life as a Man, New York 1993 (Vintage paperback
edition).
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262 Catherine Hezser JSQ 8
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(2001) Freud's Oedipus-Complex and the Problems of Jewish Assimilation263
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264 Catherine Hezser JSQ 8
"We are the sons appalled by violence, with no capacity for inflicting
physical pain... When we lay waste, when we efface... it isn't with raging
fists ... but with our words, our brains, with mentality, with all the stuff that
produced the poignant abyss between our fathers and us and that they
themselves broke their backs to give us. Encouraging us to be so smart
and such yeshiva bchers, they little knew how they were equipping us to
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(2001) Freud's Oedipus- Complex and the Problems of Jewish Assimilation265
leave them isolated and uncomprehending in the face of all our forceful
babble" (159).
In this text Philip Roth suggests that the conflicting relationship with
their fathers was partly due to the sons' better educational background.
Both Roth and Kafka were intellectuals, whereas their fathers were busi-
nessmen. This difference was an important aspect of the father-son re-
lationship.
Milton N. Gordon has pointed out that during the first half of the
20th century American intellectual life was dominated by White Anglo-
Saxon Protestants, the so-called WASPs. After the Second World War
this situation changed. Within American society, which consisted of var-
ious "ethclasses", that is, sets of people who shared the same ethnicity
and class membership, an "intellectual subsociety" emerged. The mem-
bers of this intellectual subsociety shared a certain lifestyle, and ethnic
affiliations were of minor importance to them.61 The result of this devel-
opment was that "many intellectuals - perhaps the large majority -
became alienated from their ethnic subsocieties of origin".62 This does
not mean, however, that Jewish intellectuals gave up their Jewish identity
entirely. It only means that they were usually uninterested in Jewish
communal life and in formalized religious ceremonies.63
As an intellectual and artist Kafka differed from petty bourgeois so-
ciety no less than Philip Roth did. But in contrast to Philip Roth's post-
war America, in Kafka's Prague no multi-cultural intellectual milieu
existed, in which Kafka could have felt comfortable and which would
have substituted for his missing links to the Jewish community.64 This
problem of having to remain an outsider with respect to all of the exist-
ing social subgroups seems to be indicated in Kafka's letter to Max
Brod, already quoted earlier. In this letter Kafka writes that Jews of
his generation are "unable to find new ground". One may assume,
then, that because of the lack of "new ground", for example, in the
form of a multi-ethnic intellectual milieu, to Kafka his ethnic Jewish
61 See Milton M. Gordon, "Marginality and the Jewish Intellectual", in: The Ghetto
and Beyond. Essays on Jewish Life in America, ed. Peter I. Rose, New York 1969, 485.
62 Ibid. 487.
63 See ibid. 488.
64 On the marginality of Jewish intellectuals in 19th-century Europe see especially
Mendes-Flohr 23-53: the Jewish intellectual was both an "axionormative stranger" and
a "cognitive insider" (see ibid. 37). Jewish intellectuals had no access to professions
which were otherwise open to academics, they were social outsiders and in this regard
considered dclasse (see ibid. 40-41). With regard to the different situation in America
Mendes-Flohr writes: "In other societies, however, particularly in the post- World War
Two U.S.A., it can be argued that social exclusion of the educated Jew is not nearly so
severe as it was in Germany..." (45).
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266 Catherine Hezser JSQ 8
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(2001) Freud's Oedipus-Complex and the Problems of Jewish Assimilation261
70 See especially Marcus Lee Hansen, "The Third Generation in America. A Critical
Essay in Immigrant History", Commentary 14 (November 1952) 494: "How to inhabit
two worlds at the same time was the problem of the second generation". See also
Gordon 481.
71 See Kramer/Leventman 9.
72 See ibid. 11.
73 See ibid. 12.
74 See ibid. 14-18. See also Kurt Dittmar, Assimilation und Dissimilation. Erschei-
nungsformen der Marginalittsthematik bei jdisch-amerikanischen Erzhlern (1900-
1970), Frankfurt, Bern, and Las Vegas 1978, 59: "Das traditionelle Judentum als Ein-
heit von Religion, Kultur, Geschichtsbewutsein und Sprache ist aufgelst, es gibt
keine gltige Definition des Juden mehr".
'* See Wlaschek 53.
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268 Catherine Hezser JSQ 8
76 See ibid. 56-57. Cf. Kafka's report on his experiences in a boarding house in
Meran in his letter of April 10, 1920, to M. Brod and F. Weltsch (B 270-71).
77 See Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint, New York 1969, 133: "... the most castrat-
ing mother, ... the most benighted father".
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(2001) Freud's Oedipus-Complex and the Problems of Jewish Assimilation269
twenty other Jewish women to be the patron saint of self sacrifice" (15).
This sentence also indicates that Roth considered the mother's behavior
representative for Jewish mothers of that time - and the son's problems
typical for Jewish sons of his generation: "I am the son in the Jewish
joke - only it ain't nojokel" (39-40).
By contrast, the father is depicted as the powerless and oppressed
victim of the Protestant American elite. His superiors in the insurance
company assign the poorest districts to him and a professional promo-
tion is out of reach:
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270 Catherine Hezser JSQ 8
The son's refusal to identify with the Jewish religion and his difficulties
with defining himself positively as a Jew seem to be connected with his
notion of being fully integrated into American society.
given enough". A libidinous relationship to his mother is also indicated by the fact that
the mother allegedly called her son "my lover" once (see Portnoy's Complaint 108).
81 Rodgers 130. See also Melvin J. Friedman, "Jewish Mothers and Sons: The Ex-
pense of Chutzpah". Contemporary American-Jewish Literature. Critical Essays, ed.
Irving Malin, Bloomington and London 1973, 159; Rachel Monika Herweg, Die j-
dische Mutter, Darmstadt 1994, 167-87; Zena Smith Blau, "In Defense of the Jewish
Mother", in: The Ghetto and Beyond. Essays on Jewish Life in America, New York
1969, 59. Fisch even maintains that "the replacement of the Jewish father by the Jewish
mother is in a way the most important event in twentieth century Jewish life and
letters" C41.
82 See also Rodgers 128: "Both sons see their difficulties as a direct result of their
family's Judaism".
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(20Ql)Freud's Oedipus-Complex and the Problems of Jewish AssimilationllX
83 For the positive view of Roosevelt shared by Peter TarnopoPs parents see also the
scene ibid. 273-74.
84 See also Hana Wirth-Nesher, "The Artist Tales of Philip Roth". Proof texts 3
(1983)266-71.
85 On I. J. Singer's Yiddish family novel by the similar title, Di mishpokhe Karnovski,
see Malka Margentsa-Shaked, "Singer and the Family Saga Novel in Jewish Litera-
ture". Prooftexts 9 (1989) 31-33. The novel describes the gradual decline of a family in
the course of increasing assimilation.
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272 Catherine Hezser JSQ 8
"In Europe - not in Newark! We are not the wretched victims of Belsen!
We are not the victims of that crime!" (77)
The son perceives the relationship between Jews and non- Jews in Amer-
ica entirely differently than his father does. The different circumstances
of his own life make it impossible for him to identify with his forebears
who actually suffered from anti-Semitism. In contrast to his father, he
fells perfectly secure and fully integrated into American society.
Another aspect of Jewish self-definition addressed in Roth's novels is
the significance of the family and the maintenance of family traditions.
The protagonists of the novels My Life as a Man (1974) and The Pro-
fessor of Desire (1977) are writers and professors of literature, who - like
Frank Kafka and Alexander Portnoy - are unable to marry a Jewish
woman and continue the Jewish family tradition, in reaction and contra-
distinction to their parents' stress on family values. In My Life as a Man
the psychoanalyst Dr. Spielvogel - whom Roth seems to have taken over
from Bettelheim's review of Portnoy 's Complaint - explains the son's
difficulties with reference to his alleged fear of castration:86 the son
spoiled by his mother and distanced from his father has developed a
narcissistic personality, degrading other people to masturbatory objects
whose sole purpose is to confirm him in his self-love.87
Peter Tarnopol, the Jewish son of this novel, naturally denies these
allegations, maintaining that they misrepresent his relations to his par-
ents. He is conscious of the good intentions of his mother and the pro-
fessional obligations of his father, whom he describes as follows:
"... he was harrassed by his own vigor, by his ambitions, by his business,
by the times. By his overpowering commitment to the idea of Family and the
religion he made of Doing A Man's Job" (243).
As in Kafka's "Letter to His Father" the father is presented as the
victim of circumstances here and his self-sacrifice on behalf of his family
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(2001) Freud's Oedipus-Complex and the Problems of Jewish Assimilation273
88 See ibid. 244. See also The Professor of Desire 245, where the "exemplary life" of
the "industrious" and "slave-driving" father is described.
89 Cooper 182.
90 The Ghost Writer (1979), Zuckerman Unbound (1981), The Anatomy Lesson
(1981), supplemented by the new epilogue The Prague Orgy.
91 See also ibid. 57, where he describes his real father as "the foot-doctor father, the
first of my fathers".
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274 Catherine Heiser JSQ 8
92 See also ibid. 324 and 328, where the much greater significance of the father for
the intellectual development of the son is stressed.
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(2001) Freud's Oedipus- Complex and the Problems of Jewish Assimilationll 5
93 See Cooper 21 1: "Choice rather than compulsion meant freer Jews able to define
their Jewishness".
y4 See also Cooper: Even now, Roth probes myth ol Jewish history by suggesting
that not Israel but America may be the new Zion. American Jews may be more at ease
in their land than Israelis in theirs". In Counterlife the common distinction between
Israel and the Diaspora is given up. Zion is defined as "any place where Jews feel
collectively secure enough to be themselves" (221, quoted from Philip Roth, The Coun-
terlife, London 1988, Penguin paperback edition). The Diaspora is not defined geogra-
phically but can also be in Israel, that is, everywhere where as a Jew one does not feel at
home.
95 For the depiction of the father-son relationship in this novel see especially Mat-
thew Wilson, "Fathers and Sons in History: Philip Roth's The Counterlife", Prooftexts
11 (1991)41-56.
96 See Cooper 211: "assertions of a Jewish self not so much arguing over as shrug-
ging off the fine print of the covenant".
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276 Catherine Hezser JSQ 8
Summary
Franz Kafka and Philip Roth treated their relationship toward their
fathers both autobiographically and literarily, both can be called
"father-obsessed writers", to use Matthew Wilson's term.97 The so-
called father-complex, the son's rebellion against his father, is addressed
not only with regard to the father himself, but also with regard to the
Judaism of the father.
Franz Kafka's and Philip Roth's problems with their fathers are
based on the fact that the sons belong to a later generation and are
intellectuals and artists. Whereas the "transitional generation" of the
fathers was especially concerned with economic ascent and a secure life
in the realms of their families and equal-status Jewish friends, the sons
were already born into more or less affluent middle-class families, from
which, as intellectuals, they tried to distinguish themselves. They rejected
the liberal communal form of Judaism represented by their assimilated
fathers and tried to define their own Jewish identity in an eclectic and
individualistic way.
As an intellectual and as a member of a later generation Philip Roth -
in contrast to his father - is integrated both into American society at
large and into the pluralistic sub-society of intellectuals. For Franz Kaf-
ka, who lived in Central Europe at the turn of the century, such integra-
97 See Wilson 46, who uses this term for Philip Roth alias Nathan Zuckerman.
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(2001) Freud "s Oedipus-Complex and the Problems of Jewish Assimilationlll
98 See also Dittmar 354, who points to an interview with Roth in Commentary 31
(April 1961) 350f, where he stresses that Judaism does not mean anything to him
personally, but that this very fact constitutes a challenge for him as a writer: "one
had to invent being a Jew".
99 On discourse analysis see Moritz Baler, "Einleitung: New Historicism - Litera-
turgeschichte als Poetik der Kultur", in: New Historicism: Literaturgeschichte als Poetik
der Kultur, ed. Moritz Baler, Frankfurt 1995, 14-17.
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278 Catherine Hezser JSQ 8
100 See Baler 9-13 and especially 11-12: "Wenn Geschichte nicht mehr als eine
monologische Wahrheit gesehen wird, der man sich annhert, sondern als historisch
kontingentes Ergebnis einer selbst immer historischen und historisch je verschiedenen
Vertextung, dann und erst dann lt sich generell von einer 'Textualitt der Geschichte'
reden".
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