The Idea behind Philip Roth’s The Breast or why the Author of Realistic Fiction Resorts to the Fantastic

Abstract

The article is an attempt to explain why the writer known for his realistic narratives reached for the fantastic in his novella The Breast. Sexual obsession was one of Philip Roth’s subjects of interest for his whole literary life. In addition to his portrayal of postreligious Jewish protagonists, socio-political problems of post-war America, and coping with the perspective of imminent death, sensual experience resulting from male heterosexuality recurs in Roth’s narrations as a crucial element of human condition. His characters obsessed with sex are men of different ages. This article is a search for the reason why the writer reached for this device. Even though the narrator refers to literary inspirations: Gogol’s The Nose and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, the functions of those transformations serve different purposes from his own transformation into a woman’s breast. Despite the fact that the latter remains inexplicable, the idea of resorting to the fantastic seems to stem from a literary attempt to transcend the experience of the heterosexual male without changing his sexual orientation, which resembles the Platonic concept of desiring the qualities we do not possess.