Word: lifes
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...banned in the U.S. in 1972. But a house is a little like a living organism: once it absorbs a contaminant, it may never purge it completely. "Dust in our homes," says Beamer, "especially deep dust in our carpets and furniture, is a conglomerate of substances over the life of the home and can provide a historical record of chemicals that have entered...
...shopping cart holding their only food are filled with a basic human vitality that is lacking in “American Pastoral.” Moreover, a simple exchange in dialogue in which the father asks his son if he is cold is saturated with more genuine inner life than one of Zuckerman’s page long self-examination...
...about itself and about the world.” Zuckerman explains, “Our families could forget the way things actually work and make an athletic performance the repository of all their hopes.” Essentially, the community nourishes their impoverished inner lives with the successful outer life of the Swede...
...have graduated high school, the Swede, who wants help writing a memoir about his recently deceased father, invites the elderly Zuckerman to dinner. Zuckerman is captivated by the opportunity to explore what he dubs “the substratum,” his term for the deep and authentic life of the mind. This quest for the profound proves devastating as the Swede only discusses the happy, superficial lives of his family and does not even mention grieving for his father. During the dinner scene, Roth juxtaposes paragraphs in which the Swede relates inane family anecdotes against extended interior monologues...
...dinner conversation dramatizes Roth’s self-destructive tension between the inner and outer life, which paralyzes the novel. Ironically, Zuckerman himself lacks a self-sufficient inner life and must search for the nonexistent inner life of the Swede to justify his own mental existence. While the Swede hopes to resolve the troubles of his inner life with the accomplishments of the outer life, the remaining characters are cut off from meaningful action...