47 pages • 1 hour read
Philip RothPortnoy's Complaint
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1969A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Jewish Identity
Portnoy’s Complaint returns frequently to the theme of Jewish identity. As Alex explores his memories, his Jewish identity and his relationship with the Jewish community are a cornerstone of his psychological understanding of the world. Alex’s Jewish identity is consistently reinforced by others, whether in negative contexts like the antisemitism that forces the family to move to New Jersey or positive ones like the Jewish he lives in as a teen. Through his family keeping kosher, his father taking him to the bathhouse, or community softball games, Jewish identity is the ambient backdrop to Alex’s life. Simultaneously, Alex expends a lot of effort trying to escape his Jewish identity. Whether through dating gentile girls, spending Thanksgiving in the Midwest, or trying to lose himself in the hustle and bustle of New York City, Alex tries and fails to divorce himself from the ethnic and cultural context in which he was born and raised. Even as Alex tries to reject Judaism, though, it shapes his narration and search for identity.
Alex feels like an outsider in American society. He observes the gentiles around him and envies that society is built around them as the majority. The ubiquity of Christmas as a seasonal festival, for example, remains alien to him as something he is exposed to but still unable to participate in. Alex yearns for acceptance, and he would like to forget his Jewish identity and base his existence on something else (sex, for example). However, society is unwilling to allow him to do so; for example, he describes how one of his girlfriends called him an “uptight Jewish prick” during an argument (102). Jewish identity becomes a burden for Alex because he feels as though he can never truly escape it. Even when he becomes a communist or tells his father that he is an atheist, he never stops being Jewish. Just as he cannot hide from the nose he inherited from his father, he cannot hide from his own Jewishness.
With this, Alex assumes his feelings of exclusion are due to him being Jewish, only to learn in Israel that the problem isn’t Judaism: it’s him. He attempts to circumvent his outsider feelings by visiting a country where the demographic majority is Jewish. However, he still feels awkward and insecure in Israel, to the point where he becomes impotent. He projects fantasies of a stable, fulfilled life onto Naomi, who rejects him, and he reacts violently to that rejection. In the end, he is angry and alone, which forces him to confront the idea that his Jewishness might not be his problem. His trip to Israel lays bare the contradictions in his life; he is just as anxious and ashamed of himself when he is surrounded by other Jews as he is surrounded by gentiles.
Sex and Shame
In addition to Jewish identity, Alex’s other key obsession is sex. The consequences of this obsession are feelings of shame and guilt that linger in his mind long after he consummates any relationship. The intersection between sex and shame gives the novel its title: Portnoy’s Complaint refers to the war between Alex’s extreme sexual desires and his “ethical and altruistic impulses” (3). This is evident in Alex’s narration, where he describes each event in detail but cannot ever be said to be a proud narrator. Rather, he encourages the therapist to acknowledge his depravity, keen to ensure that he is suitably judged for his base actions. Alex feels ashamed, so he requires the therapist to validate these feelings of shame, hoping that they exist outside the confines of his own mind.
Alex’s first sexual experiences are with masturbation, which he does compulsively. His inability to control himself fills him with shame, and pleasure and shame become inextricable for Alex during his first sexual encounter with another person. Bubbles, an Italian girl from the neighborhood, performs manual stimulation on Alex, and when he gets semen on her furniture, she calls him an antisemitic slur. Alex is also in physical pain because he ejaculated in his eye, and that physical pain blends with shame and emotional pain. With this, his momentary pleasure is blended with negative feelings, and his shame around sex is reinforced. While Alex is rightfully angry at Bubbles’s antisemitism, he envies his friend Mandel, who received other sexual favors from Bubbles, and transitions from hating Bubbles to fantasizing about her. This formative sexual encounter establishes all of the hallmarks of Portnoy’s Complaint: Alex’s desire is so great that he pushes down his ethical feelings about antisemitism.
Alex’s narration also illustrates the way his shame is reinforced by society, particularly by his parents. Alex’s relationship with sex is modulated by the memory of his mother, and the narrative’s nonlinear nature means that descriptions of lurid, sexual activity often occur alongside tender moments of love and affection (or discipline and punishment) between Alex and his mother. Alex cannot think about sex without thinking about his mother and her judgment. Just as when he was a teenager, when he hid from his mother in the hope that she would not catch him masturbating, he cannot think about his adult sex life without remembering his mother’s attitudes toward sex. Additionally, he thinks about the way his community gossips. Any transgressive or notable act spreads through the community like wildfire. Alex wonders what would happen if his depravity were revealed, and how his mother might react if the entire community was suddenly talking about her perverted son. These speculations allow Alex to imagine getting revenge on his family through sex and shame, weaponizing his neuroses to embarrass his parents, whom he blames for his attitudes toward sex.
In Israel, Alex commits his most shameful act: He attempts to rape Naomi because he is ashamed of his impotency and of being rejected by her. Naomi fights off Alex’s attempted sexual assault—her military training leaves her far more physically capable than him—and leaves him alone in the hotel room. Through his narration, Alex seems to suggest that the greater shame is his impotency rather than his attempted crime. This parallels an earlier moment when The Monkey threatens to attempt suicide and Alex worries about his own reputation rather than her safety. Shame is such an overbearing influence on Alex’s life that his attitudes toward sex and sexual assault are completely corrupted, leading him to dehumanize and use his sex partners to attempt to escape his feelings of shame.
Psychology and Anxiety
Portnoy’s Complaint uses the discussion between a therapist and a patient as a narrative structure. As such, psychology plays an important role in the novel as Alex explores his many anxieties. He is concerned by his constant state of anxiety and hopes that these therapy sessions will provide him with relief. However, the novel is told entirely from Alex’s perspective. He controls the conversation, jumping from memory to memory, from anxiety to anxiety, in an attempt to satisfy his idea of what a therapy session should be. Alex has a vague understanding of psychology and he plays into this understanding, pretending that he knows as much as his therapist. In doing so, he reveals that he knows as little about psychology as he knows about his own psyche. Regardless, the sessions are liberating for Alex. He may not be correct in his understanding of psychology, but he benefits from the freedom and the safety to talk about his deepest anxieties without fear of retribution. Alex never finds an answer or a resolution to his anxieties but by talking to someone, he reveals that he is—at last—willing to engage with his anxieties in an adult fashion.
Alex’s understanding of psychology suggests that his parents are very important to him. With his references to Freud and vague allusions to psychological theories, there is a sense that Alex is telling the therapist exactly what he believes he wants to hear. Alex may be disingenuous as a narrator, but the sincerity of his emotional comments about his parents leaves no doubt that they shaped (and continue to shape) his psyche in meaningful ways. Alex loves and loathes his parents in equal measure. Alex’s anxiety stems from these conflicting emotions and feelings about his parents. He wants to be a strong, Jewish man like those he sees in his community, but he doesn’t want to be like his constipated father, who he views as a pushover. Likewise, Alex struggles between deep affection for and fear of his mother; as a child, she was capable of real tenderness but also overreacted to Alex’s mistakes. For example, she locked him out of the apartment and subtly threatened him with a bread knife. These contradictions leave Alex feeling unsure of himself, and this translates into lifelong anxiety.
Alex’s anxiety manifests in his narration. He launches into a long monologue that sums up all his anxieties and shames. He is keen to adhere to his social expectations of what psychology should be, but he’s also deeply concerned with appearing likable to his therapist. When he reveals unsettling details about his past, he punctuates his narrative with jokes, showing that he’s incapable of sitting with difficult feelings. He delivers a long monologue about the most shameful parts of his life while the therapist sits and listens quietly. Only at the end, when Alex has expunged everything and achieved some form of catharsis, does the therapist suggest that they begin. This interjection by an authority figure representing psychology is soothing, suggesting that there is a way forward that may actually be able to address Alex’s worst impulses and anxieties.
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