Roth The Stain of Mankind Essay - 1589 Words

The Stain of Mankind In life you are faced with many challenges and hardships. It is these experiences and how you react to them that shapes and gives you your character. The Human Stain, a novel by Philip Roth is a detailed account of the past of the characters and how the choices that they made build them to be the person that they are today. Everyone has things that they are not proud of from their past. These are essentially the human stains that Roth used as a foundation for The Human Stain. These stains are not limited to a specific person, gender, race, or even society. The prominent stain that affects the protagonist is with his own race. Many of the past experiences that the characters go through take place during America’s†¦show more content†¦I had no idea what color these students might be† (Roth 6). After he was fired, he and his wife Iris became targets of scrutiny. Shortly after the â€Å"spooks† incident Iris passes away and Coleman claims that the â€Å"spo oks† incident led to her death. Following her funeral Coleman visits the novels narrator Nathan Zuckerman, a professional writer. He asks him to write his story of Coleman Silk. â€Å"I had to write something for him – he all but ordered me to†¦ [I] had to put aside whatever else I might be doing and write about how his enemies at Athena, in striking out at him, had instead felled her† (Roth 11). The â€Å"spooks† incident posed a paradox situation of irony because Silk is living a fallacy with his very own life. Silk is actually a light skinned African American living as a Caucasian because of his disgrace to his own heritage. It was this lie that he was living hat caused him to lose everything dear to him. Silk’s stain destroyed the image that he once had. But over time, he experienced second chance at life. He reveals to Zuckerman, â€Å"I’m having an affair Nathan. I’m having an affair with a thirty four year old woman. I can ’t tell you what it has done to me† (Roth 26). The woman’s name is Faunia who is a janitor at Athena College. He tells Nathan about Faunia’s life shortly after he reveals the affair and states that she was abused by her