Goodbye, Columbus

As the narrator, Neil tries to inform us of his story and the way he lives it. Neil is from a Newark ghetto and works at a library. He engages in a relationship with a girl named Brenda Patimkin, whose family is upper middle-class. During the course of the novella, Neil seems to be torn between two worlds. We see this inability to know which world to choose in his depictions of Brenda. At times, he imagines her to be the stuff of high romance and adventure, comparable to his dreams of Tahiti. In this view Brenda is like an angel surrounded by shining leaves. She is also like the goddess Diana, someone who by her presence in it transforms swimming pool water

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they are false, but because they prevent him from being true to himselfö (Roth 39). However, we see that despite NeilÆs perception of the PatimkinÆs as nouveau riche who have few morals and are enslaved by material trappings he seems to long to be one of this class. When he is packing to visit the Patimkin estate, he thinks ôAunt Gladys saw me packing my bag and she asked where I was going. I told her. She did not answer and I thought I saw awe in those red-rimmed hysterical eyesùI had come a long way since that day sheÆs said to me on the phone, æFancy-schmancyÆö (Roth 40). At a later point in the novella, Neil tells us ôPerhaps I was more of a businessman than I thought. Maybe I could learn to become a Patimkinö (Roth 85). In actuality, Neil ego, pride and childish resentments make him unable to mold himself as the man he dreams of being. Instead, he is nothing more than a lump of clay that is shaped by forces and individuals in his life. We see that Neil treats Brenda no better than he claims he has been treated by others in life. He is manipulative and scheming with her. He tries to bully her into wearing a diaphragm which basically brings their romance to an end. If he were being true to the ideal self he dreams a
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Patimkinö Roth, Columbus Negro, Eventually Neil, Brenda Patimkin, Lamont Library, Neil Newark, Phillip RothÆs, Klugman Klugman, Battleship Neil, Bantam Books, novella neil, actuality neil, columbus negro boy, negro boy, pride ego, throughout novella, patimkinÆs ilk, columbus negro, view brenda, dreams tahiti, love brenda,
Approximate Word count = 1311
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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