• Defender Of The Faith Philip Roth

Defender Of The Faith Philip Roth

First lineIn May of 1945, only a few weeks after the fighting had ended in Europe, I was rotated back to the States, where I spent the remainder of the war with a training company at Camp Crowder, Missouri. Great linesI indulged myself in a reverie so strong that I felt as though a hand were reaching very far to touch me! It had to reach past those days in the forests of Belgium and past the dying I'd refused to weep over; past the nights in German farmhouses whose books we—d burned to warm us; past endless stretches when I had shut off all softness I might feel for my fellows, and had managed even to deny myself the posture of a conqueror—the swagger that I, as a Jew, might well have worn as my boots whacked against the rubble of Wesel, M—nster, and Braunschweig. Last lineAnd then, resisting with all my will an impulse to turn and seek pardon for my vindictiveness, I accepted my own. Defender of the FaithCOMMENTARY A tribal secret revealedOutside discussion of 1959 story, the expression 'Defender of the Faith' has applied mainly to Christians.