Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2000. [Vol. 6.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Tibor Tóth: The Golden Cradle: Philip Roth's Revision of the Golden Bough Tradition

demonstrate that the dislocation of the character is due to the influence of fiction. Philip Roth does not describe the process, the physical transformation of David Kepesh into a female breast nor does he care to create the theoretical dimension that could make it credible. The absence of such sections increases the shocking quality of the transformation as both the protagonist and the reader are confronted with David's metamorphosis as an accomplished narrative fact. This means that the metamorphosis proper has no relevance. On the reader's part identification with David Kepesh is impossible because he is an object, a part of the body. Yet, we have to accept him as an objectively existing real character and in truth, it is not the breast we are startled by. We have to cope with the subjective element imprisoned into this physical shape 'who' suffers of claustrophobia because he is a potent, desirous 'conscience' who has a male identity. Debra Shostak searches for possible definitions of David Kepesh's consciousness and reaches the conclusion that David Kepesh's consciousness is not a result of his transformation but its condition. As I demonstrated earlier in this chapter David Kepesh's dialogues testify to the gradual transformation of his consciousness and his final acceptance of being enclosed in a woman's breast on the basis of his insistence to remove the distance between the aesthetic and the existential dimensions. Even though he is a huge mammary gland, a dirigible, he remains the professor of comparative literature and his obsessive reinvention of the real on the basis of art-experiences compels him to accept his strange 'objective' embodiment. At the end of the novel he seems to accept his condition, but is not ready to give up his male identity or his knowledge of literature. Roth does not resolve the problem of his character's identity. The talking breast who is a male professor of comparative literature thus grows into a metaphor of the postmodern indefinite self. Debra Shostak argues much in the same way in her essay. Perplexed though, he declares that he is a breast, but if he is really a breast he is not what he is. The logic falls close to Philip Roth's interpretation of the situation when he told an interviewer "I am not what I am -1 am, if anything, what I am not!" (Shostak 319) The breast-professor then is not simply a pun, but a fictional interpretation of the difficulties in discussing the theme of freedom as 128