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.
Chapter 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary: “In Exile”
Alex remembers watching softball in his neighborhood on Sunday mornings. The Jewish men from the area mocked each other with “gibberish and double-talk” (117), and Alex loved the sense of community. He imagined growing up to be one of those men, returning home from softball games to a wife and family. The thought of such a happy, content family makes Alex think about The Monkey threatening to throw herself off a Greek balcony. He worried that her suicide would expose him and his sexual proclivities.
After Greece, Alex traveled to Israel which seemed “more dreamy than real” (121). He was shocked to be in a country with so many other Jewish people. Despite being a member of the ethnic majority, Alex was bullied by a gang of Jewish youths. He was still preoccupied thinking that he contracted a venereal disease from the Italian sex worker. He became obsessed with examining his own penis and was confused that it seems to be totally normal.
The morning after arriving, Alex went to the beach. He noted the Jewish beachgoers, the Jewish lifeguard, the Jewish sand, and the Jewish plane in the sky above him. He met a young woman who was a Lieutenant in the Israeli Army. Though they went back to the hotel room together, he was too worried about whether he had a venereal disease to have sex, and she left. Alone in his hotel room, Alex obsessed over his mother’s bread knife, his undescended testicle, and his other humiliating and strange experiences. He speaks to the therapist about the symbolism of him not being able to “maintain an erection in The Promised Land” (124).
In Israel, Alex met Naomi. He picked her up while she was hitchhiking near the Lebanese border. She was pretty and served in the Israeli military, and she reminded Alex of his mother. Within minutes of meeting her, Alex thought about marrying her and staying in Israel forever. During their brief relationship, she lectured Alex about the immorality of American society. Alex, she said, was just as corrupt as his countrymen, even though he believed himself to be an enemy of this corruption. Alex immediately asked Naomi to marry him or, at the very least, have sex with him. She rejected him and hit him with soldier-like precision. Naomi told Alex that there was something very wrong with him and criticized his self-deprecating irony, which she believed to be a shameful tendency of the Jewish diaspora. Naomi said that Alex was “nothing but a self-hating Jew” (128). As she tried to leave the room, Alex forced himself on Naomi but then retreated because he “can’t get a hard-on in this place” (129). Naomi told Alex to go home, kicked him in the chest, and left.
Alex was left alone with his memories, whimpering on the floor. He wondered whether his sudden impotence was a punishment for his sexual transgressions or his treatment of The Monkey. He rages to the therapist about the “ridiculous disproportion of the guilt” (131) that he feels in comparison to other men who, in his eyes, commit far worse crimes. Alex imagines the police issuing him an ultimatum and him charging them down in a suicidal blaze of defiant glory.
In a short punchline, Dr. Spielvogel asks whether they should start their therapy session.
Chapter 6 Analysis
In the final part of Portnoy’s Complaint, Alex travels to Israel. His vacation is significant in two ways. Firstly, he flees there after being confronted by The Monkey about his abusive behavior. She threatens to throw herself from a hotel balcony unless he apologizes for sexually degrading her; Alex cannot bring himself to apologize, so he flees the country instead. Secondly, this is the first time that Alex has been in a country whose majority population is Jewish. For his entire life, Alex has felt like an outsider, and he believed that his urges and desires were a manifestation of this feeling of alienation. In Israel, he experiences living in a Jewish society for the first time, but rather than alleviating, his anxieties only worsen. Alex discovers that he is impotent in Israel; when he tries to have sex with women, he cannot make his body function as it normally does. The cultural inversion of Israel, in which Alex becomes part of the majority for the first time, is matched by a physical inversion, in which he cannot act upon the sexual urges that shape so much of his life in America. The trip to Israel provides an escape for Alex but then forces him to confront the possibility that his theories about his own sexuality are completely incorrect. Alex’s sense of self is defined by his sexual and ethnic identities, but in losing his social position as an outsider, his identity seems lost entirely.
Alex is frustrated by his experience in Israel. Not only does he fail to find happiness, but he also discovers that Naomi is not attracted to him. Their brief relationship with ends tragically; she does not wish to have sex with Alex, so he forces himself on her. Alex’s attempt to rape Naomi is the tragic conclusion of his anxieties and his misogyny. Alex is desperate to have sex since his impotence interferes with his sense of self, but he seeks a different kind of validation in Naomi. Unlike other women in Alex’s life, Naomi is named, and he asks her to marry him. While this seems like growth on Alex’s part, he decides to marry Naomi within moments of meeting her. He does not love her; she is simply useful to him in a different way than The Monkey or his other lovers. Naomi is objectified as the perfect wife, representing home, morality, stability, and Jewish identity to Alex. Naomi, however, is her own person; she fought in the Israeli army, has a strong sense of personal and Jewish identity, and is capable of defending herself. She rejects Alex’s vision of a healthy, normal life, and Alex reacts violently, attempting to rape her. Naomi successfully fights him off, insults him, and abandons him, leaving him alone and despondent. His impotence is confirmed and—even in a majority Jewish country—he cannot find a place for himself or someone to care about him. The trip to Israel forces Alex to confront the possibility that his problems do not stem from sex or Jewishness. Rather, they are personal problems that he must resolve for himself.
The novel’s structure suggests that Alex is subconsciously engaging with this desire for resolution. He is talking to a therapist, but while he exhumes all the problems of his past, he does not encounter any form of solution. Alex does not grow or evolve over the narrative. Instead, he is the same man who began the therapy session at the beginning of the novel. What has changed is that he has exhausted his biography; Alex has run out of complaints and anecdotes. He no longer has anyone else to blame. The coda to the novel—a short line from Dr. Spielvogel asking whether Alex is ready to begin—is framed like a joke. This is the punchline to the joke Alex has been telling throughout the whole novel, but it also functions as a resolution of sorts. He has run through his cast of characters and excuses; now, he and the therapist can begin the real work of resolving his anxieties. There is no one left for Alex to blame but himself.
Related Titles
By Philip Roth
