DIASPORIC IDENTITY IN ARMENIAN AMERICAN AND JEWISH AMERICAN LITERATURES

The Jewish People and the Armenians are two separate cultures that both live under diasporic conditions. While the cultures themselves are not too similar, they share many other parallels with each other due to their mutual diasporic circumstances. Chief among these similarities is a shared struggle with issues of identity as a result of living in diaspora.

The Armenian and Jewish peoples’ respective histories offer the prototypical models for diaspora, each similarly the many different qualities usually connoted by that term, both positive and negative. For both groups, the United States serves as the major site for diasporic activity. Due to its unique history and multicultural make-up, the U.S. allows these diasporic peoples the unprecedented opportunity to achieve a hybrid identity. What this means is that they are not considered by others or themselves as simply Jews and Armenians who happen to live in America, or even as exclusively Americans, but rather as Jewish

Americans and Armenian Americans. This newfound hybrid identity offers these diasporic communities the opportunity to no longer live in forced exile, but rather to voluntarily decide to establish a new home in diaspora, while at the same time maintaining connections with their respective homelands, both of which are now sovereign nation-states (Kalra 30).

This diasporic condition is reflected greatly in the literatures of Jewish and Armenian

Americans. The hybrid identity found in diaspora is often portrayed in these literatures as contributing to a fragmentation of self-perception and identity, often accompanied by dual, and dueling, loyalties with respect to the homeland and the adopted hostland. These mixed feelings are exacerbated by the influences of assimilation and alienation in the hostland experienced by Jews and Armenians as members of diaspora. However, the authors portray that people living in a diasporic condition may attempt to retain their heritage and ethnic

Taub 1 identity by holding onto cultural memory, which is contained in the diasporic community’s history, religion, language, and also in the family unit.

Definition(s) of Diaspora

In brief, the term diaspora may be defined as “the collective forced dispersion of a religious or ethnic group, where the group’s cultural heritage is nevertheless preserved and the historical fact of dispersion is retained in its collective memory” (Chaliand and Rageau

3). In addition, diaspora communities usually retain an idealized memory of the original homeland, and they often feel “alienated and insulated” from their adopted location in the hostland. (Safran 83-4). The Jewish Diaspora provides the original example of diaspora, and as such it is often referred to as the “ideal type” or archetypical standard. The diaspora most often described as the closest parallel to the Jews’ is the Armenian Diaspora (Safran 84).

The word “diaspora” itself goes back to ancient history. Etymologically, the word derives from the Greek verb, diaspeirein, which means to scatter or strew about like seeds (dia = apart; speirein = to scatter) (Shirinian, A-NAL 25). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word’s original usage was in the Septuagint (written in Greek in the third to second century B.C.) translation of the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy. Following the Exodus, Moses warns the

Israelites of the dire consequences of disobedience: “thou shalt be a diaspora in all kingdoms of the earth” (OED 321). Given the origin of the term, along with the fact that the Jewish case is the first example of diaspora, it is obvious why the Jewish Diaspora is seen as the classic model for diaspora, with the Armenian case right behind it in terms of endurance, size, and influence.

There has been some debate about whether diaspora should be viewed positively or negatively. In its original Biblical connotation, it seems clear that diaspora is meant to be seen as a curse and a forced exile from one’s homeland (Mishra 22). While some researchers today still

Taub 2 attribute all the evils suffered by communities such as the Armenians and Jews to their diasporic situation, a positive view of the subject has recently gained support. Proponents of a positive interpretation claim that communities living in the diasporic condition are able to become more involved in world affairs and exhibit greater influence, all while symbolizing the growing trends of globalism and transnationalism (Ages 21-22; Tölölyan 4). Diaspora communities themselves are often unable to agree on a singular outlook of the diasporic condition, and this can be seen in the varying relationships between homelands and diaspora communities, as well as between the communities themselves. The multi-faceted view of diaspora life helps to explain why it is so common for members of diaspora to suffer from a fragmented sense of identity.

Armenian History

Jews and Armenians can claim two of the three oldest diasporas on human record (the

Greek Diaspora being the second oldest). While the Armenian Diaspora is not as old as the

Jewish case outlined below, it has been around in some form or another for nearly a thousand years. The history of the Armenian people themselves dates back much further to over three thousand years ago, when the Nairi people and the Kingdom of Urartu established sovereignty over the Armenian Highland. These two groups, with connections to the Hittites, Mitannis, and other ancient peoples, co-mingled and brought about the ethnogenesis of the Armenian people.

This culminated in the establishment of the Armenian Kingdom around 700-600 BC (Pattie 4).

Being over three thousand years old, Armenian history is very rich, and it is one of the main sources of shared identity for modern Armenians around the world. Another strong unifying force among Armenian is religion and the Armenian Apostolic Church. Armenia was the first nation to accept Christianity as the state religion. It did so around 315; Rome followed in

335 (Sourian xv). The Armenian Church subscribed to the Council of Nicea, along with the

Taub 3 Catholics and the Greeks, but the Church split and went its own way after the Council of

Chalcedon in 451. This caused the Armenian Church to become a major, unique cultural marker for the Armenian people that helped to unify and sustain a distinctive identity. Furthermore, since religion and politics were so closely associated during those times, one might argue that if there had been no argument over theology during the beginnings of the Armenian Apostolic

Church, there might not even be an Armenian identity today (Sourian xvi).

The Armenian Church contributed to the perpetuation of Armenian identity in another aspect besides religion. It was largely to fulfill ecclesiastical, as well as national, needs that the

Armenian government chose to pursue a campaign of “linguistic standardization through the development of a uniquely Armenian alphabet” (Stone and Stone 45), resulting in the creation of one in 404. The invention of the Armenian alphabet sparked the beginning of the independence of Armenian Christianity and culture. For Armenians in the diaspora, language has become “a symbol for the existence of a transnational unified Armenian community” (Yazedjian 45). Even though the language may not be spoken today as widely as it was in the past, it remains a strong component in the definition of Armenian identity. The continuing use of the Armenian language fosters a sense of unity among Armenians and delays the process of assimilation in hostlands

(Stone and Stone 45).

The Armenian Diaspora dates back to around the eleventh century. Due to Armenia’s position in Asia Minor between the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian seas, it was essentially at the center of the heavily traveled trade routes between east and west. As a result of this prime location, rival empires often sought to conquer Armenian land, prompting numerous invasions, massacres, and migrations. Since the eleventh century, all or part of Armenia has been under the control of foreign powers, such as the Byzantine, Persian, Greek, Roman, Mede, Georgian,

Taub 4 Syrian, Russian, and Ottoman empires (Yazedjian 40). Although there was an Armenian

Diaspora of sorts during these times prior to the Armenian Genocide of the 20th century, it was nowhere near as widespread or severe as the renewed Diaspora caused by that ruthless massacre.

Western Armenia fell under the control of the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth century.

The Ottoman Empire was run through a millet system, whereby millet status was designated to minority groups on the basis of religious affiliation. This was used as a means of effectively administering control over them. Minority groups under the millet system were allowed to operate under their own religious law, but had to ultimately answer to the Ottoman Empire (in the way of taxes, political affiliation, etc.) (Suny 221; Yazedjian 40). Until the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Armenians were regarded as the "loyal millet" by the Ottoman government. Nevertheless, between 1894 and 1896, the Ottoman Empire’s Sultan, Abdul Hamid, ordered the massacres of approximately one hundred thousand Armenians. The goal of Hamid’s massacres was not aimed at exterminating the Armenian population, but rather at ensuring their continued subservient position as a minority group under the Ottoman Empire (Yazedjian 40).

Abdul Hamid was overthrown by the Young Turk Revolution in 1908. At first, many

Armenians supported the Young Turks and their calls for change. However, between 1908 and

1913, the Young Turks’ promises of reform gave way to a Pan-Turkic ideology that sought to unite all Turkic peoples. These nationalistic assertions stemmed from the idea of modern nation- states that emerged during that time period, ultimately leading to the First World War. In 1913 a triumvirate representing the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) came to power in the government. The CUP held very nationalistic ideals. This, combined with the Ottoman entry into

WWI in August, 1914, and the perceived threat that the Armenians posed to CUP’s success, laid the foundation for the Armenian Genocide, which took place from 1915 to 1918 (Yazedjian 41).

Taub 5 In terms of its relation to diaspora, the Armenian Genocide directly resulted in the

Armenian Diaspora as it known today. Estimates of the number of Armenians killed ranges from

600,000 to 1.5 million, or between 30 to 65 percent of the Western Armenian population (Suny

221; Sourian x). The population of Armenians living in that area has gone from about two million before the Genocide, to fewer than 25,000 at the present time (Sourian xii).

Besides the mass murder and loss of lands that resulted from the Genocide, the

Armenians today still struggle with the continuing effects of not receiving proper recognition. To this day, many nations refuse to acknowledge the events of the Armenian Genocide as a bona fide “genocide,” and this includes nations such as the United States and Israel (Auron 284). The continuing struggle for recognition of the Armenian Genocide has become one of the central, unifying elements among Armenians in the diaspora today (Bobelian 126).

Following the Armenian Genocide, the Armenians declared a brief independence in

Eastern Armenia (Western Armenia was incorporated into Turkey). The newly formed Armenian

Republic lasted from 1918 to 1920, when it was annexed by the Soviet Union, resulting in a period of statelessness. Armenian sovereignty over the homeland returned in 1991, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Today, the Armenian population is approximately 6.5 million, with a slight majority living in the diaspora. Three million Armenians currently live in the

Armenian Republic, while around 600,000 reside in the United States (Yazedjian 40).

Jewish History

The Jewish people trace their origin back to Abraham, the founding patriarch of the religion, who entered into a covenant with G-d. This is supposed to have occurred around 4,000 years ago (Weiss 1). The Jewish people became a nation following the Exodus led by Moses from Egypt to Judea, the Holy Land. This is thought to have happened around 1210 BC (Weiss

Taub 6 2). The Jews lived in this land and built the First Holy Temple in Jerusalem, which stood as a focal point for the Jewish religion. The First Temple was erected around 960 BC and it was destroyed by the Babylonians sometime around 586 BC (Weiss 12, 20). Following the brief period of Babylonian Captivity, wherein the Jews were exiled to Babylon, the Jewish people returned to Judea and built the Second Temple on the site of the first. This Temple stood from

516 BC to 70 AD. Again, it served as the religious focal point for the Jews. The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans, who also forced the Jews from the land (Weiss 24, 56). The destruction of the Second Temple is the event that many historians point to as the official beginning of the Jewish Diaspora as it is known today (Weiss 57).

The destruction of the Second Temple directly led to the Jews becoming a stateless diaspora, completely without a land to call their own. Before the Second Temple’s destruction, there was actually already a sizable diasporic Jewish population, with more Jews living outside of the homeland than in it (Gruen 19). However, many of the Jews living in diaspora during this time had made a voluntary decision to do so, often influenced by economic factors. Following the Temple’s destruction, exile became forced. This change in the Jewish diasporic condition parallels the diasporic shift that occurred for the Armenians following the Armenian Genocide.

Following the destruction of the Second Temple, the Jews were scattered from the homeland, ultimately ending up in all corners of the world. Since the inception of their Diaspora, the Jewish people have mostly suffered through a long history of victimization and religious persecution. As perpetual outsiders, the Jews faced atrocities such as pogroms and massacres, and a sizable Jewish population was expelled altogether from Spain in 1492. Jews mainly stuck together, forming communities such as shtetls. In these isolated Jewish communities, they were easily able to pass down religion, language, tradition, and culture; the attributes that can be

Taub 7 tallied up as the foundation of Jewish identity. Prior to the Holocaust, the majority of Jews settled in Central and Eastern Europe, and many also immigrated to the United States.

The geographic make-up of European Jewry changed completely in the twentieth century as a result of the Holocaust perpetrated by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945. Six million Jews, or one-third of the world’s Jewish population at the time, were killed in the

Holocaust (Ozick 20). The Jewish population in Europe went from 60% of world Jewry before

WWII to around 12.6% in 2003 (Levine 397).

Unlike the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust can be seen as a catastrophic event that contributing to reversing diasporic trends. As a direct result of the Holocaust, the State of Israel was created in 1948 to serve as the home of the Jewish people. This put an end to a period of

Jewish statelessness spanning nearly 2,000 years. Today, the world’s Jewish population, thought to be between 13 and 14 million people, is concentrated around Israel and the United States. As of 2003, 36% of Jews live in Israel, while 46% live in America (Tye 9, Levine 397).

The Jewish and Armenian Experiences in America

America provided and still provides the Jews and Armenians (as well as other diasporic peoples) the country where they can be the most free and self-sufficient while living in diaspora.

In America, diasporic groups encounter much less discrimination and fewer economic and social barriers than any other place (Biale 178). Both Jews and Armenians faced some initial discrimination in America because they were viewed as non-whites, and thus inferior to Euro-

Americans (Kent 11-12). However, by the 1930s, Jews and Armenians were “reconsolidated” with other whites in America as belonging to one racial group. This acceptance of Jews and

Armenians came about largely due to growing discrimination against African Americans (Kent

127). Some argue that the scapegoat position of blacks in America has allowed diasporic groups

Taub 8 such as Jews and Armenians the unique position of belonging that they now enjoy (Ages 171).

Additionally, the Armenians faced less discrimination nationwide than even the Jews because of their relatively lower immigration numbers and presence (Balakian 19).

Many early Jewish and Armenian immigrants to America encountered the “melting pot” theory of American society, according to which “all immigrant groups would surrender their identities in favor of a common American identity” (Biale 194). However, the prevalence of this idea eventually diminished, giving way to the current trend of multiculturalism found in

American society. This change occurred around the 1960 and 70s, when “the cult of Roots” and the civil rights movement encouraged Americans to recognize the importance of their ethnic origins, and also to accept the widespread multiculturalism that was unique to the American nation and experience (Bobelian 139; Lang 133).

Jews and Armenians were and are able to find a freedom in America previously unimaginable to sufferers of persecution and diaspora. In America, Jews and Armenians do not have to carry an ascribed identity as foreign Others. Instead, they are free to exult in a hybrid identity that allows them the opportunity to voluntarily claim their identity as a Jew or Armenian who is also American (Balakian 7). The one major downside to this prospect is that with so much freedom regarding identification, diasporic peoples are much more likely to suffer from a fractured identity. This is not helped by the conflicting influences of assimilation and alienation.

Acculturation in America often leads to assimilation, resulting in a loss of diasporic identity and heritage. On the other hand, holding on too strongly to one’s sense of identity may cause feelings of alienation in the hostland, which may also negatively affect one’s self-perception.

Analysis of Diasporic Literature

Taub 9 One major consequence of living under a diasporic condition is that there is not a singular, accepted view of what constitutes a Jew or an Armenian in America. As diasporic cultures, Jewish and Armenian Americans who recognize themselves as such do so voluntarily, since they can relinquish their identity if they desire (Suny 217; Kent 127). Recognition of their diasporic identity is not only voluntary, but so is the level of this identification. This is further confused by their possession of a hybrid identity in America as Armenian and Jewish Americans.

Philip Roth (1933- ) is a prolific Jewish American writer who often tackles issues of identity in his works. William Saroyan (1908-1981) is the most prominent name in Armenian

American literature, and his works often included thoughts about the unique and also common aspects of Armenian and diasporic identity. Peter Najarian (1940- ) is a lesser known Armenian

American writer whose largely autobiographical novels focus on the importance and difficulty of sustaining diasporic heritage in the United States. Interestingly, all three authors grew up in mostly Jewish or Armenian communities, and thus they each share in common that they were able to harness a strong sense of Jewish or Armenian identity while young, along with their unique awareness of American identity. However, a major difference between the authors is that

Roth is a third-generation immigrant, while Saroyan and Najarian both were/are second- generation immigrants, and this too affected the ways they perceive their identities. Nevertheless, each author portrays multiple characters that exhibit multi-faceted identities that arise as a consequence of under the diasporic conditions.

Through the representation of multi-faceted identities and fragmented views of self- perception, these Jewish American and Armenian American authors tackle issues of diaspora and its effects, weighing in on the issue of whether diaspora is a positive or a negative situation. The authors utilize influences of assimilation and alienation to illustrate the conflicting forces facing

Taub 10 diasporic cultures. Finally, the importance of cultural memory and its role in maintaining identity is examined through the repositories of history, language, religion, and family.

Fragmentation of Identity in Diasporic Literature

Roth not only crafts different Jewish characters with contrasting diasporic perspectives, but his literature itself offers multiple conflicting definitions of what constitutes a Diaspora Jew.

These definitions are supplied by Israeli Jews, who naturally do not belong to the Jewish

Diaspora. In Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), Portnoy is admonished by a twenty-one year old

Israeli female, Naomi, after failing to seduce her. She lectures him on the negative effects of the

Diaspora, which Portnoy relates to his psychiatrist:

Those centuries and centuries of homelessness had produced just such disagreeable men as myself—frightened, defensive, self-deprecating, unmanned and corrupted by life in the entire world. It was Diaspora Jews just like myself who had gone by the millions to the gas chambers without ever raising a hand against their persecutors, who did not know enough to defend their lives with their blood. The Diaspora! The very word made her furious. (265)

In The Counterlife (1986), Nathan Zuckerman’s Israeli friend, Shuki Elchanan, tells him basically the exact opposite, stating:

You think in the Diaspora it’s abnormal? Come live here. This is the homeland of Jewish abnormality…. The fact remains that in the Diaspora a Jew like you lives securely, without real fear of persecution or violence, while we are living just the kind of imperiled Jewish existence that we came here to replace. Whenever I meet you American-Jewish intellectuals … I think exactly that: we are the excitable, ghettoized, jittery little Jews of the Diaspora, and you are the Jews with all the confidence and cultivation that comes of feeling at home where you are. (73-4)

The fragmented identity of the diasporic Jews is portrayed in Roth’s writing both internally and externally, by both Jews and Gentiles. This multi-layered approach at interpreting Jewish identity helps to illustrate the fractured identity that many American Jews carry as a result of the diasporic condition.

In The Counterlife, conflicting views of Diaspora life are personified in Nathan and his brother, Henry Zuckerman. Nathan is an assimilated, secularized American Jew who feels

Taub 11 comfortable in the diaspora. On the other hand, Henry is unsatisfied with his life in America and decides to flee from the diasporic condition, choosing to relocate to Israel and live in the right- wing, Zionist settlement of Agor. The situation between the Zuckerman brothers is similar to that portrayed in Najarian’s Voyages (1971). In that novel, the main character, Aram Tomasian, feels alienated by his Armenian American identity, unable to find a sense of belonging in either culture. Aram feels a disconnect with his identity due to his status as a second-generation immigrant in a new hostland, his mother’s suffering in the Armenian Genocide, and also because his father died when he was only ten years old. Aram’s situation is contrasted with his half- brother, Yero, who Aram states is “more Armenian than I could ever try to be. And at the same time more American” (88). Simultaneously, Aram also thinks, “I’m not happy, my brother. I want something more than what you have. It’s ugly where you live. It’s wrong” (103). Aram does not think that one can have it both ways and identify as both Armenian and American.

Aram believes that his half brother Yero has buried his dreams in America by becoming overly assimilated, losing not only “the luster of his father’s past,” but also his “own personal talent”

(108). Aram wants something more, where he can find happiness within himself and express his artistic talents, and throughout the novel Aram attempts to reconcile his fragmented identity and accept himself as an Armenian American.

A kaleidoscopic view of identity is ingrained in the inheritors of diaspora. Diasporic peoples often feel like they never truly belong, or feel marginalized, even in a multicultural society such as America. At the same time, Jewish and Armenian Americans often forfeit aspects of their diasporic heritage in order to attempt assimilation in the hostland. Therefore, they feel mutually marginalized in both the homeland and the diaspora; Nathan portrays this situation in

The Counterlife, describing himself as “A Jew among Gentiles and a Gentile among Jews” (324).

Taub 12 In the Armenian and Jewish cases, their histories in America go back over one hundred years. As such, many present-day Jewish and Armenian Americans report decreased feelings of connections with the homeland and a relaxed importance toward maintaining ties with identity, although this is far from a homogenous feeling (Sheffer 307; Balakian 7). Given the fragmented view that Jews and Armenians hold towards themselves, it seems natural that discontinuity and self-invention are the cornerstones of Roth’s The Counterlife, which is all about “the kind of stories that people turn life into, the kind of lives that people turn stories into” (111). The novel employs a postmodern technique in which four conflicting story arcs are presented. This postmodern technique, paired with the Jewish content, can be viewed as a literary representation of the possibilities of fragmented identification and self-invention available to diasporic peoples, such as the Jews and Armenians.

In Operation Shylock (1993), Roth takes issues of fragmented identity out of the internal conflicts of his characters and puts them onto a physical plane through the use of the doppelgänger as a literary device. In the novel, protagonist Philip Roth (hereafter referred to as

Philip to differentiate from the authorial Roth) discovers that there is an imposter Philip Roth in

Israel (hereafter referred to by the nickname Philip gives him, Moishe Pipik). As Roth states in his essay, “A Bit of Jewish Mischief,” published in The New York Times around the release of

Operation Shylock, Pipik is meant to symbolize the “deformed,” “self-hating” Jew that he was often labeled as by his detractors.

In the novel, Pipik attempts to spread an ideology called Diasporism, which calls for the movement of the Jews out of Israel so that they may return to Europe, which he describes as “the most authentic Jewish homeland there has ever been, the birthplace of rabbinic Judaism, Hasidic

Judaism, Jewish secularism, socialism,” and even Zionism (32). Pipik asserts that “Zionism has

Taub 13 outlived its historical function” and that now the time has come for the Jews to “renew in the

European Diaspora our preeminent spiritual and cultural role” (32). Pipik not only thinks that

Israel should no longer be the home of the Jewish people, but that it actually poses a danger to the Jews: “I am for the Jews and Israel is no longer in the Jewish interest. Israel has become the gravest threat to Jewish survival since the end of World War Two” (41). Pipik contends that if

Jews continue to live in Israel, the very identity of the Jewish people will be irrevocably damaged by either a second Holocaust (this time perpetrated by the Arabs) or the Israeli use of nuclear weaponry on their enemies.

Philip, although not exactly a Zionist himself, chooses to confront Pipik while he is in

Israel to interview Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld. In the process of confronting Pipik, Philip himself is often confused for his doppelgänger, and in a humorous turn of events, Philip begins to imitate his own imposter. Confusion of identities on the real-life level is meant to be representative of the inner turmoil that plagues many American Jews, who feel conflicted in their loyalties and feelings toward both America and Israel. In turn, such feelings often contribute to the overall sense of fragmented identity found among diasporic cultures.

Saroyan also writes about the fractured identity experienced by diasporic cultures and the consequences this has on self-perception. In the play Haratch (1979), Saroyan’s character states,

“I am both an American and an Armenian writer, and I am neither, I am only the writer I am. I write Saroyan (133). Here, Saroyan is expressing the unique position that diasporic cultures find themselves in. Armenian Americans are not fully Armenian, nor are they fully American. They are a marginal people that still enjoy the privileges of living in the multicultural society that is

America. This is similar to the situation experienced by the Jews. Both Jewish and Armenian

Americans feel marginalized because of their seemingly perpetual statuses as immigrants and

Taub 14 minor outsiders, while at the same time they have found an apparent safe haven away from their homelands in America, where multiculturalism is one of the principal ideals.

Fragmented identity plays a central role in Saroyan’s largely autobiographical novel,

Rock Wagram (1951). In the novel, the protagonist, Rock Wagram (who changes his name from

Arak Vagramian when he becomes an actor), asks himself early on, “Who are you, Rock? … Are you Arak Vagramian? Is that who you are? Well, he was never much, either, Rock…. What about it, Rock? Who are you, and what do you want?” (14). No less than three times, Rock is asked to give his identity, and each time he responds with lengthy enumerations (3, 107, 201).

These lists include “Armenian,” “American,” “Turk,” “American Indian,” “Christian,”

“Mohammedan,” “the proud poor,” “Vagramian,” and “human.” Rock feels that he is both

Armenian and American, and this confuses those who request his identity, expecting a simple answer. Ultimately, Rock is himself confused, and throughout the novel hopes to reconcile his

Armenian identity by starting a family and passing down the heritage that he himself inherited.

But by the end, he is left without either a family or a secure identity, his experiment proven to be a failure. Through Rock, Saroyan is expressing his own difficulties with an Armenian heritage that seems so distant to him as the first member of his family born in America (Darwent 23).

Rock’s earlier classification of himself as simply “human” (107) is significant, as it illustrates Saroyan moving away from a narrow, tribalistic interpretation of Armenians and other diasporic peoples toward a more humanistic, universal viewpoint. Saroyan wants to express that people are the same everywhere, and diasporic peoples are human just like everybody else. This idea is brought up in Roth’s literature as well. For example, at one point in The Counterlife, in reference to Nathan’s literature, someone asks, “Why can’t Jews with their Jewish problems be human beings with their human problems?” (228). This commentator feels that Nathan has “Jew

Taub 15 on the brain” (228). Thus, he is too caught up with Jewish problems and the ways it makes him different, to the extent that he forgets the central humanity that he shares with everybody.

Saroyan went further than Roth in his literature to lift Armenians from marginalized positions to a more universal plane. In this way, Saroyan can be seen trying to abate the fragmentation of Armenian identity, placing them as just another piece of the human family. In the short story, “Antranik of Armenia” (1936), Saroyan writes, “there is no such thing as nationality” (100). He also writes, “I am only this: an inhabitant of the earth, and so are you, whoever you are” (106). In the play Armenians (1971), one Armenian reminds the others, “we belong to the human race, the same as everybody else.” Another man retorts, “Of course… but let us please remember that we belong to the Armenian branch of it… and these things make a difference,” to which the original commenter replies, “that’s true, but only a small difference”

(84). In one of Saroyan’s earliest stories, “Seventy Thousand Assyrians” (1934), Saroyan asserts throughout the narrative that he does not believe in any races except for “the race of man” (32), and that through his literature he hopes “to speak a more universal language,” so that he may fulfill his true desire of showing “the brotherhood of man” (31-2). About his own Armenianness, the narrator states that while he tells people, “I am an Armenian,” it is “a meaningless remark….

I have no idea what it is like to be an Armenian or what it is like to be an Englishman… or anything else. I have a faint idea what it is like to be alive. This is the only thing that interests me greatly” (33-34).

Another universalistic portrayal of Armenians in Saroyan’s literature can be found in the play Haratch. At one point, a man states, “if the truth is told, and I am sure we have all read it in at least two or three books by two or three writers, everybody is Armenian.” He asks Saroyan if he himself had not written that, which Saroyan confirms, revealing that afterward he “was

Taub 16 informed that a Jewish writer had said the same thing a year or two before I had done so…. He said and how right he was: Everybody is a Jew” (169). In Saroyan’s literature, humans “are incapable of escaping each other’s destiny; as human beings we share the totality of all experience” (Kouymjian 35-6). But, while it may be that “Everybody is a Jew” or an Armenian, the fact remains that a Jew (or Armenian) isn’t Everybody. The Jews and Armenians possess unique histories that draw upon their diasporic heritage, and this differentiates them from the greater mass of humanity.

Although Saroyan expresses a universalistic viewpoint in much of his literature, there are times when he delves into tribalism of his own. For example, in “Antranik of Armenia,” after stating that is “only… an inhabitant of the earth,” the narrator says that he “tried to forget

Armenia but [he] couldn’t do it” (106). Saroyan may very well have seen himself as a human being first and foremost, but he clearly attached a great deal of importance to his Armenian identity. In Michael Arlen Jr.’s memoir, Passage to Ararat (1975), Saroyan is even described as going so far as to say, “An Armenian can never not be an Armenian” (49).

Both Roth and Saroyan realized the similarities between Jews and Armenians as diasporic peoples with fragmented viewpoints, and each author references the other’s diasporic culture in their own works about identity. In Operation Shylock, at one point where Philip is imitating Pipik, he praises the tenets of Diasporism. Briefly, he compares the diasporic plight of the Jewish people to that of the Armenians, although inwardly he admits that about them he

“knew nothing” (157). Saroyan was conscious of the largely unrecognized status of the

Armenian situation, and as such his works include multiple allusions to the Jews and other diasporic peoples, such as the Greeks and Assyrians. Through this technique Saroyan offered the reader a type of reference to help understand the Armenian situation. For example, in one of his

Taub 17 final plays, Warsaw Visitor (1980), Saroyan’s character, Moustache, visits different Jewish destinations, including the Jewish Theatre, Cemetery, and Museum. At the play’s conclusion,

Moustache stands overwhelmed at the Jewish Museum, overcome by an unexplainable feeling that “compels” him “to be a Jew, and a proud Jew” (134). As an Armenian, Saroyan is perhaps best able to empathize with Jewish suffering, and witnessing the accomplishments and the defeats of the Jews, Saroyan relates to their diasporic history and considers himself as one of them, due to their mutual natures as diasporic peoples.

Najarian employs the same technique of alluding to the Jews in his literature. At one point in Voyages, the story is told of Aram’s father visiting his first American prostitute shortly after arriving as an immigrant. She asks him if he is Jewish because of his looks, stating, “I don’t fuck Jews” (47). The following is Aram’s narration: “How should he answer: when he said no he felt as if he had betrayed someone…. And he fucked her, went in unto his first American whore, deceiving her loins and betraying his birthright, for he was a Jew, he wasn’t one of her people”

(47). Aram considers the Armenian the same as the Jew; both groups have each suffered as the result of diaspora, and both hold onto feelings of not truly being at home in America, which contributes to their mutually fragmented identities.

Assimilation and Alienation in the Hostland in Diasporic Literature

A large reason for the fractured identities of both Armenian and Jewish Americans can be attributed to the conflicting forces of assimilation and alienation felt in the hostland of America.

As diasporic peoples with unique heritages, Jews and Armenians face the prospect of undergoing assimilation in America. Some people, often in the younger generations, welcome assimilation and place a diminished importance on the Jewish or Armenian aspect of their identity, if any at all. However, there are others who view the process of assimilation as a destructive force trying

Taub 18 to erase their heritage, and they try to reassert their identity by tightly holding onto cultural tradition. As for alienation, many of the original Jewish and Armenian immigrants to America felt estranged from their new homeland. They often reacted by either assimilating themselves or, once again, retreating into cultural tradition and finding residence in ethnic communities.

Furthermore, among the younger generations, alienation is now often experienced, somewhat ironically, as a result of prior assimilation, and many of the young are trying to regain a traditional sense of identity, with some choosing to make a pilgrimage to their respective homeland (Tye 7).

Assimilation acts as the driving force behind the action of Roth’s short story, “Eli, the

Fanatic” (1959), which is set in the American suburbia of Woodenton. In the story, Woodenton’s

Jews hire Eli Peck, a Jewish lawyer who also lives in town, to represent the community and disband the presence of a recently established Yeshiva (a Jewish religious school). The Yeshiva consists of eighteen children, the headmaster Mr. Tzuref, and a Hasidic Jew, often referred to simply as the “man in black,” who frequently travels into town to run errands for the school. The

Yeshiva members all come from Eastern Europe as survivors of the Holocaust.

In a “parody of identity politics,” the Americanized Jews of Woodenton perceive the

Yeshiva Jews in much the same way that the Gentiles of Woodenton might perceive the

Woodenton Jews (Aarons 71). The Jews of Woodenton are frightened by the consequences that the Yeshiva Jews might bring upon them by drawing the ire of the Gentiles. This disconnect between two groups, who after all are both Jewish, comes about as a direct result of the deeply assimilated status of the Woodenton Jews. They have happily conformed to American normality, although in exchange they have lost a piece of their own heritage and identity. This is revealed most clearly in a conversation that Eli has with Ted, an anxious Woodenton Jew:

Taub 19 Sundays I drive my oldest kid all the way to Scarsdale to learn Bible stories… and you know what she comes up with? This Abraham in the Bible was going to kill his own kid for a sacrifice. She gets nightmares from it, for G-d’s sake! You call that religion? Today a guy like that they’d lock him up. This is an age of science, Eli. (277).

The fact that Ted is unfamiliar with and frightened by the story of Abraham and Isaac reveals his ignorance about the most basic aspects of his religion, and how far the Woodenton Jews have drifted from their own Jewish identity. They are so far removed from their own religious identity that instead of offering help to these Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, they want to repeat the endless cycle of Jewish suffering and run them out of town. But instead of the Woodenton Jews being run out by Gentiles as usual, they are being threatened by their own people, further illustrating the fragmentation of the Jewish people as a result of life in diaspora.

Throughout the story, Eli is conflicted between the assimilated Jewry represented by the

Woodenton Jews and the traditional heritage he has forsaken, represented by the Yeshiva Jews.

As the story progresses, Eli slowly affiliates more and more with the Yeshiva, until finally he takes the conspicuous action of dressing in the black outfit of the Hasidic Jew. Eli’s progression is revealed through dialogue and thoughts in the story. For example, near the story’s beginning,

Eli thinks to himself, “He spoke for the Jews of Woodenton, not just himself and his wife” (251).

Eli says as much when he later speaks with Tzuref, stating, “I am them, they are me,” Tzuref refutes Eli, saying “Aach! You are us, we are you!” (265). Eli then takes a stand as his own independent person, telling Tzuref, “I am me. They are them. You are you” (267). Later in the story, Eli, speaking with an anxious Woodenton Jew, begins to identify himself more with the

Yeshiva Jews as seen in the following verbal slip: “Just give me the day—them the day” (279).

Eli thinks about dropping the case, but finally he decides to reach a compromise between the two Jewish groups, much in the same way that he himself has compromised his Jewish identity. Eli decides that it is the regular, incongruous appearance of the “man in black” in town

Taub 20 that most bothers the Woodenton Jews. In order to rectify this problem, Eli donates his own clothes to the man. The next time he appears in town, Eli’s plan works perfectly, with some of the townspeople even mistaking the man for Eli initially (282).

Eli soon discovers that his clothing donation has been reciprocated, and he finds the

Hasidic Jews’ black garb on his doorstep. Without explanation, Eli decides to dress in the black attire and walk around town. Since appearance is so important in Woodenton, Eli’s choice here signals a reinvention of self of sorts, what with the idea that “the clothes make the man.”

Additionally, the black clothing is described almost metaphysically, referred to at one point as

“the skin of his skin” (293). Eli asserts his ability of choice in the matter, thinking to himself, “if you chose to be crazy, then you weren’t crazy. It’s when you didn’t choose.” (298). The story concludes with Eli going to the hospital in the Hasidic garb to see his newborn son. There, interns in white outfits tear off his jacket and inject him with a needle, pumping him with a drug that “calmed his soul, but did not touch it down where the blackness had reached” (298). The blackness represents his Jewish subconscious, his inner identity, while the injection represents outside forces of assimilation that attempt to oppress and erase cultural identity.

In the story, before heading into town and then the hospital, Eli makes his way to the

Yeshiva to confront the Hasidic Jew: “The recognition took some time. He looked at what Eli wore. Up close, Eli looked at what he wore. And then Eli had the strangest notion that he was two people. Or that he was one person wearing two suits” (289, emphasis mine). In the comparison of Eli and the Hasidic Jew, Roth represents the fragmented reality of Jewish identity and the multiple pathways open to the American Jew.

Of course, assimilation is also of vital interest and importance with regard to Armenians, and this is seen in Saroyan’s writings. In Armenians, some of the men rally against assimilation

Taub 21 away from the homeland. One man states that if the Armenians are unable to cooperate with each other and hold onto their past, then they “will become a people without a culture, and must therefore perish forever” (79). Another argues a similar point, saying that if they do not make an effort to retain their identity and oppose assimilation, then “we shall soon be totally departed from the human scene, and forgotten, or remembered only for having disappeared” (59). A man hears this argument and expresses hope that Armenian Americans “will not become so foolishly

American that being also Armenian will even be an embarrassment to them” (59).

Positive views of assimilation are also offered in the fiction of Roth and Saroyan, although these too may result in a loss of diasporic identity. At one point in Armenians, a man states that since they are now Armenians living in America, they should be Americans first and

Armenians second, concluding, “If we are good Americans, we will be good Armenians, as well”

(53). Similar sentiments are echoed in Haratch, when Saroyan’s character states that he has come to believe “that if I wrote well in English I was at the same time writing well in Armenian”

(132). Although Saroyan is himself somewhat assimilated and cannot read or write in Armenian, he believes that his literature is still inherently Armenian, because he holds onto to the importance of his Armenian heritage and identity.

Roth writes about the subject of assimilation in American Pastoral (1997), where the main character, Seymour “Swede” Levov, constitutes Roth’s clearest portrayal of a completely

Americanized Jew. As an athlete in high school, Swede is secularized, assimilated, athletic, and more or less the closest thing that the Jews of Weequahic have to a Gentile among their midst, and because of all this they adore him. They view him as the most positive representation of a

Jew possible in America. Assimilated beyond belief, when Swede grows up, it appears to all outsiders that he is living the American Dream.

Taub 22 Swede, a third-generation immigrant like Roth, Nathan, and Portnoy, sees himself first and foremost as American. For example, his favorite holiday isn’t any Jewish high holiday, but the “neutral, dereligionized,” and most importantly, American, holiday of Thanksgiving (402).

One major, uniquely American fantasy that the Swede cherishes is pretending to act like Johnny

Appleseed. Swede reveals that at his happiest, he imagines he must feel just like Johnny

Appleseed. Although Swede realizes the childishness of this fantasy and keeps it to himself, he cannot help but identify with Appleseed’s Americanness: “Johnny Appleseed, that’s the man for me. Wasn’t a Jew, wasn’t an Irish Catholic, wasn’t a Protestant Christian—nope, Johnny

Appleseed was just a happy American…. Had a big stride and a bag of seeds and a huge, spontaneous affection for the landscape, and everywhere he went he scattered the seeds” (316).

When she is a child, Swede tells his daughter, Merry, bedtime stories about Appleseed’s daughter, Merry Appleseed, explaining to her that she too would walk the countryside scattering seeds, “Far as she can, she casts them out. And everywhere she throws the seed, wherever it lands on the ground, do you know what happens? … An apple tree grows up, right there” (316).

Whether or not Roth intended it, the image of an American folk hero scattering seeds all across the fertile American countryside to grow apple trees, or to be fruitful and multiply, offers a positive symbolic image of diaspora. As mentioned earlier, the term “diaspora” derives from the Greek for the scattering of seeds. Thus, through Swede, Roth is symbolizing America as the gathering ground for diasporic people, where they are allowed to blossom and prosper.

This positive view of America and the American Dream that the assimilated Swede’s fantasy offers differs greatly from the perceptions of an alienated Aram in Voyages, who is a second-generation immigrant who feels disconnected from both his American and Armenian identities. Instead of a fertile land where immigrants can achieve their dreams, Aram describes

Taub 23 America as “the dump of refugees, dreg of all that blood” (49). He considers America “one vast foster home” (21) that “asked too much” of him, and he wishes to “escape her, as an orphan from an orphanage” (22). Instead of a fertile gathering ground, he describes America as “dry endless land indifferent to anyone’s claim” (16).

Aram feels estranged from America because of his unrefined sense of identity. Voyage’s author, Najarian, describes the novel as the story of “a young man trying to find both an identity and a way of living in a country where he feels alienated” (DOM 158). Aram’s alienation stems from the similar negative experiences shared by his immigrant parents. His father, Petrus, was plucked from his home in America and dropped in America, where he immediately faced severe alienation. His mother, Melina, suffered through the atrocities of the Armenian Genocide. His mother later tells him, “what did it mean to me, ARMENIAN, except that it made me an orphan”

(58). In addition, Aram’s father died when he was only ten years old, and Aram cannot help but feel that because of this he has also lost a piece of his Armenian heritage.

While Aram experiences severe alienation in America, he describes his half brother Yero as “more Armenian than I could ever try to be. And at the same time more American” (88).

Yero’s sense of ease in America can be attributed to his acceptance of assimilation, as well as the stronger Armenian identity that was nurtured in him as a child by his mother and father. Aram’s father passed away when he was quite young, and as such he was robbed of a powerful link to his heritage, unlike Yero’s connections to his Armenian past, which Aram “had envied and never known” (102). Also because of his father’s death and negative, unfulfilled experiences in

America, Aram is unable to form his own positive memories of the hostland, unlike Yero who is able to assimilate and finds himself naturally comfortable at a small town diner, “bullshitting with the guy next to him and the lady behind,” who “shared his memory of World’s Fair and

Taub 24 Tom Mix and Betty Grable” (110). Aram rejects these memories as not belonging to him, and thus does not really consider himself American, in addition to not feeling fully Armenian.

Aram’s rejection of America is counterpoised by the positive feelings felt by Armenian immigrants before their arrival to the country: “Ah-mehr-icah: the sound of it seemed so solemn and final, as if everyone had to go there sooner or later” (44), and “…a home in America! Ah- mehr-ica: Ah-mher: it sounded so soft” (56), and “Oh, America, everyone said on the boat, as if we were going to heaven” (DOM 98). Once in the country, however, they find things to not be quite the way they expected. At one point, Melina meets with her friends and they discuss their

Americanness, or lack thereof:

“We’re all Americans.” “Oh, we’re American now?” “Why not? Our children were born here.” “You want them to marry Americans?” “Why not? What’s the difference?” “Just because they’re born here doesn’t mean they’re Americans.” (30)

Saroyan also touches upon issues of alienation. In Armenians, one man laments about living in America, “This is dying, this is not living at all” (77). He feels that his brothers in

Armenia, even the dead ones, are the ones who are truly “living,” because they do not have to worry about fears of assimilation and feelings of alienation. Saroyan expressed his own feelings of not belonging in one of his multiple autobiographies, Here Comes, There Goes, You Know

Who (1961). Saroyan writes about his childhood days in school, stating, “The Armenians were considered inferior, they were pushed around, they were hated, and I was an Armenian. I refused to forget it then, and I refuse to forget it now…” (177).

At one point in Haratch, Saroyan’s character asks the group he is with, “Do you like being an Armenian?” A young Armenian woman answers, saying that she used to dislike being

Armenian “because it seemed to make trouble for me at school and out in society,” although the

Taub 25 more she matures the more she likes being Armenian. When asked why she likes it, she says,

“We must like what we are, or we shall surely make ourselves very unhappy and surely also very sick” (159). This answer perfectly represents the type of feelings that diasporic characters such as Aram Tomasian suffer from as a result of alienation and not being able to accept one’s identity. Basically, not “liking himself” has made him very unhappy, and in addition he feels alienated because of his lack of accepted identity.

Feelings of alienation are also common among Jews, as they too are a diasporic culture.

The Counterlife’s Henry Zuckerman is perhaps the best example found in Roth’s literature of an

American Jew who feels more at home in the Israeli homeland than the American hostland. This is different from other Jewish American characters in Roth’s works, such as Alexander Portnoy, who finds himself alienated wherever he goes, including both in America and Israel. In all instances, however, the American Jew suffers from such feelings of isolation and hostility as a direct result of living in the diasporic condition.

Henry attributes his unhappiness in America to feelings of powerlessness and alienation caused by assimilation and the loss of Jewish identity. He tells Nathan that the Jews in America live to please the Gentiles, “Camouflaging behind goyish respectability every last Jewish marking. All of it from them, for them” (111). Henry continues his diatribe against American

Jews, classifying them as “Hellenized Jews… bereft of any context in which actually to be

Jewish.” Here, Henry utilizes the classic dichotomy of Hebraic/Hellenized worldviews popularized by Matthew Arnold, and implies that Israeli Jews fulfill the expected role of Hebraic

Jewry. Unlike in Israel, Henry claims American Jews are “diseased with self-distortion, self- contortion, diseased with self-disguise.” Furthermore, while American Jews like Nathan relish

Taub 26 the opportunity to live a peaceful life in America free of true, physical Jewish persecution, Henry says that in America “the massacre of [his] Judaism couldn’t have been more complete” (110-1).

Henry’s reinvention in Israel seems to indicate a movement away from American individualism toward Jewish tribalism or communalism, as epitomized by the kibbutz movement. Henry refers to his earlier existence in America as “small” and a “grotesque apology for a life” (107). He tells Nathan, “The hell with me, forget me. Me is somebody I have forgotten.

Me no longer exists out here. There isn’t time for me, there isn’t need for me—here Judea counts, not me!” (105). Nathan thinks, “Not me—we. That’s where Henry’s me had gone” (106). In

Israel, Henry feels “authentic” and like he belongs, free of the alienation that he says he felt from his Jewish identity as a result of American assimilation.

While Nathan does not completely believe Henry’s reasoning, he does concede that

Zionism itself originated not only “in the deep Jewish dream of escaping… persecution,” but also from “a highly conscious desire to be divested of virtually everything that had come to …

[be seen as] distinctively Jewish behavior—to reverse the very form of Jewish existence” (147):

The construction of a counterlife that is one’s own anti-myth was at its very core. A Jew could be a new person if he wanted to. In the early days of the state the idea appealed to almost everyone except the Arabs. All over the world people were rooting for the Jews to go ahead and un-Jew themselves in their own little homeland. I think that’s why the place was once universally so popular—no more Jewy Jews, great! (147)

Nathan sees in Zionism a rejection of diasporic alienation through a return to the homeland.

Interestingly, in Operation Shylock, the opposing perspective is offered through Pipik’s ideology of Diasporism. Pipik sees Israel as a perversion of Jewish history. Instead of Israel, Pipik places the Jewish people’s true home as the diaspora, since that is where they have spent most of their history, including the majority of the past 2,000 years. Pipik feels that only in the Diaspora can a

Jew be truly Jewish, and this may include feelings of alienation. Through such thinking, Pipik

Taub 27 indirectly endorses Bernard Susser’s “ideology of affliction,” which states that alienation and victimization is perceived as an inherent part of Jewish identity (Susser 221).

Roth offers another proponent of the importance of alienation to Jewish identity in the form of Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld, whom Philip interviews while in Israel. Speaking with

Appelfeld about Jewish identity, Philip jokes about how Appelfeld always tries to classify him as a Jew. Appelfeld responds, “Not with you, Philip. You were a Jew par excellence years before I came along.” Philip disagrees, saying that he has never been “so exclusively, totally, and incessantly… the Jew it pleases you to imagine me to be.” But Appelfeld refutes him again, saying, “Yes, exclusively, totally, incessantly, irreducibly.” To support his position, Appelfeld offers the following reasoning: “That you continue to struggle so to deny it is for me the ultimate proof” (54). Here, Roth seems to imply that feelings of alienation and identity confusion are distinctly Jewish, which they are, much like with the Armenians. In both cases these feelings can be traced to the cultures’ diasporic conditions. Furthermore, Roth’s portrayal of Jews attributing differing sources and levels of importance to alienation and assimilation is meant to illustrate the multi-faceted perceptions of identity found among diasporic peoples, including Jews.

Remembrance and Cultural History in Diasporic Literature

Memory plays an all-important role in the fiction of Jewish and Armenian Americans, especially in regard to their struggles with identity. Memory pervades nearly every aspect of the groups’ literatures. The purveyance of memory in fiction is not uncommon, but the difference with Jewish and Armenian American literature is that much of the memory links back to diaspora, proving that the diasporic condition is an inescapable aspect of the artists’ histories and literary vision. The main repositories of memory that affect diasporic identity are cultural history, language, religion, and family. Many Jews and Armenians find themselves connected or

Taub 28 disconnected with their culture and identity based upon the level of memory that they observe.

The balancing act found among diasporic cultures between retaining and forgetting memory is addressed by both Jewish and Armenian authors.

In the short story, “Big Valley Vineyard” (1934), Saroyan writes about the significance of memory, saying that it is “certainly our only reality, apart from instant pain or instant pleasure” (125). In Haratch, Saroyan stresses the importance of remembrance to the maintenance of Armenian identity, asking rhetorically, “Who shall remember us if we don’t? Who shall remember the Armenians if they don’t remember themselves?” (179). In Najarian’s Daughters of

Memory (1986), a similar importance is also attached to memory. There is an elderly Armenian group of women whose conversations recur intermittently throughout the novel. They act as a chorus of sorts in the narrative. At one point one of the women states, “Don’t lose your memory.

If our memories go we’re finished” (134).

In Voyages, Aram considers the present situation of diasporic cultures and wonders how any of them can legitimize the past suffering of their ancestors. Aram wonders, “Do we justify?

Do we justify the burping, farting, snorting Turk, full of orgy: the fat Gestapo, the ecstatic bombardier?” (51). Therefore, Aram’s confused sense of identity and feelings of alienation can be somewhat attributed to feelings of guilt. Aram is cognizant of the past suffering of his people, and he feels guilty for his own “good luck” in being born in America during a progressive time period. He links the long suffering of the Armenian people to his current life and does not think he can live up to and carry on their legacy. Looking in the mirror, his eyes

… saw not themselves but the vapid gaze of no one in particular, a vague vestigial face not even an apology for the generations descending from the high plateau where once Urartu girls opened their legs to Armens, their daughters fucked by Medes, semen starting its long journey downstream where Greeks came and Mongols came and Arabs came, to end nowhere in America, the struggle of ten thousand pricks futile in America, ending in a bald sterile creature masturbating in the mirror. (39)

Taub 29 The infecund act of masturbation is meant to symbolize Aram’s inability to identify with his

Armenian heritage and to carry on its legacy (Shirinian A-NAL 127).

Roth presents two different Jews in both The Counterlife and Operation Shylock who view Jewish history as problematic to the current situation and identity of the Jewish people.

These two can be said to react in much the same way that leads Aram to ask, “Do we justify?”

However, they take it to a whole new level, advocating forgetting the past over remembering it.

In Operation Shylock, Moishe Pipik sees the Holocaust as the past justification for the creation of the State of Israel as a “hospital” for the Jewish people (42). Pipik asserts that the time has arrived so that the need for Israel has passed, and Israeli Jews should now forget about the pains of the Holocaust and return to their true historical home in the Diaspora, where supposedly they will be welcomed with open arms. In The Counterlife, Jewish youth Jimmy Lustig plans to hijack an El Al flight in order to close down Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum. In a mini-manifesto he has written, Jimmy proposes, “FORGET REMEMBERING!”, “THE JEWISH

FUTURE IS NOW,” and “THE PAST IS PAST! WE LIVE!” (165). Pipik and Jimmy both seem to want to disregard certain aspects of the Jewish history rather than focusing on the greater scope of the subject, and this in itself is a betrayal of the Jewish history. And history is a very important subject for the Jews in retaining their cultural identity; in The Counterlife, Nathan states that the Jews “are to history what Eskimos are to snow” (322).

Roth’s literary portrayals of Pipik and Jimmy are far from favorable. Pipik is a cancer victim with a penile implant who ultimately is imagined dying a defeated man. Meanwhile,

Jimmy is quickly apprehended in midair by undercover Israeli police and savagely restrained, before being lectured upon about the conflicted condition of Jewish identity. Roth’s representations of Pipik and Jimmy as delusional mad men seems to imply that he did not mean

Taub 30 for their ahistorical rantings to be taken seriously. Rather, Roth likely categorizes their actions and ideologies as denials of true Jewishness, since they seek to forget that suffering which is ingrained into the Jewish history. Still, this advocacy of forgetting is a real possibility, and just one facet of the multi-fractured Jewish identity found in the world today.

There are also instances in Saroyan’s literature were the function and importance of remembering Armenian history is stressed. In Haratch¸ Saroyan’s character points to the memory of the long history of Armenia as evidence of and reason for its continued existence:

“… we might have died long long ago if we were ever going to do so, and we didn’t, so we cannot be expected to die now…. Armenia will always be there, both as geography and as a living culture, don’t you think?” (145). Later, an Armenian man offers a reason for remembering the Genocide, espousing the importance of remembrance for diasporic cultures (which Pipik and

Jimmy hope to erase from the Jewish people): “We do not forget the massacres because in not forgetting we rejoice in our survival against terrible odds” (159). This statement does not itself offer an answer to Aram’s previous question, “Do we justify?” But, it offers a reasoning as for how to justify, and that is through remembering one’s cultural history, which of course includes both the positive and negative aspects. Through remembering, one creates a link with the past that contributes to one’s own sense of identity, and also connects themself with other people in their culture, both past and present.

In Armenians, when one man asks why, as diasporic Armenians, they must continuously mourn for Armenians in the homeland instead of being grateful for their own good luck in

America, another man answers, “We can of course stop mourning and we can of course be grateful for our good luck, but we can’t forget, that’s all. We just can’t forget. A man’s father dies, a man doesn’t forget his father, ever. He remembers… for the rest of his life” (86). The

Taub 31 man’s representation of Armenia, the fatherland, as a literal father accentuates the genetic link that all Armenians (even those in diaspora) share with the homeland. For this man, even (perhaps especially) diasporic Armenians should hold onto their Armenian heritage, since it contributes greatly to one’s own sense of identity.

As implied in the previous quotation, the homeland itself, be it Israel or Armenia, is often viewed as the physical embodiment of memory and history for diasporic cultures. The idea of returning to the homeland is a central aspect of diaspora identity, even if Jews and Armenians in

America more often than not consider this sentiment symbolic rather than an actual desire

(Yazedjian 39; Tye 12). Jewish and Armenian Americans are usually more economically and politically secure than their brothers who live in the homeland (Tye 12). This is especially true for Armenians, since Armenia is largely a country living in third-world conditions (Miller and

Miller 165). All three diasporic authors in this literature have made personal visits to the homeland themselves, and in each of their literatures, there are instances of characters returning to the homeland. Significantly, with the exception of Henry Zuckerman, none of the characters portrayed as returning to the homeland chooses to remain there.

Roth’s recent works have included a more pronounced importance on the relationship between American Jews and Israel, with the Jewish state acting as the central setting for the novels The Counterlife and Operation Shylock. However, Israel also appears as a setting in some of Roth’s earlier works, such as Portnoy’s Complaint. Near the end of that novel, Portnoy decides to make a sojourn to Israel. Portnoy relates that his trip took on an “air of the preposterous” because of “one simple but wholly (to me) implausible fact: I am in a Jewish country. In this country, everybody is Jewish” (253). Portnoy cannot help but be amazed.

However, he soon finds himself feeling powerless and alienated in Israel as well: “I couldn’t get

Taub 32 it up in the State of Israel! How’s that for symbolism, bubi?” (258). Unlike Henry Zuckerman in

The Counterlife, who reclaims his potency in Israel, Portnoy loses his.

In Israel, As Nathan tells Henry’s wife, Carol, Henry feels he “can be an authentic Jew and everything about him makes sense. In America being a Jew made him feel artificial” (154).

Surrounded by the history and memories of the Jews, Henry believes that he has found his true identity. This is the opposite situation found in Portnoy’s Complaint. Portnoy spends much of the novel attempting to divest himself of his Jewishness in an ill-advised attempt to join the ranks of the Gentiles, who he considers the true Americans: “… don’t tell me [the Jews are] just as good as anybody else, don’t tell me we’re Americans just like they are. No, no, these blond-haired

Christians are the legitimate residents and owners of this place” (146). Interestingly, even when

Portnoy goes to the historical homeland of Israel he still perceives himself as an outsider, calling it a place “[w]here I also don’t feel at home!” (271). Portnoy, like Nathan, has more or less successfully assimilated into the hostland, yet he still is unable to relinquish his Jewish identity, and his conflicting impulses result in a fragmented sense of identity.

At one point, Portnoy refers to his adventure in Israel as “Alex in Wonderland” (256).

Similar language is used in Daughters of Memory when the protagonist, Zeke, travels to historical Armenia, hoping to reconnect with his dead grandmother. The chapter title for this section is “She Begins to Reveal Herself in Fairyland.” As Zeke puts it, by traveling to Armenia,

“he went back to his youth and even further back to the land of bones” (119). The main lesson that Zeke takes from his experience in Armenia is that he should not hold onto anger towards the

Turks. He sees that presently, the Turks living there have no connection with the brutal suffering perpetrated in the Armenian Genocide, and besides, they are barely physically distinguishable from the Armenians (130). Zeke’s journey to historical Armenia allows him to reappropriate the

Taub 33 memory of his family lost in the Genocide, which had acted as an obstacle in his self-perception as an Armenian American.

In Najarian’s earlier novel, Voyages, Aram comes find an acceptance of himself through travel, although he does not go to the Armenian homeland. Instead, he heads over to England, as a form of “escape” and “refuge” (113-4). As an “exile-immigrant” or “pilgrim,” hoping to find

“something, someone over there” (118), he thinks back to his father “when he first came to

America and sometimes I felt that I was recapturing the flavor of those days I heard about”

(123). So, by removing himself from his own personal home, America, Aram hopes to replicate the experience of his father leaving his Armenian homeland. He hopes that this shared experience will bring about enlightenment in regard to his own identity, which it does. In

England, largely through a relationship with an Englishwoman who herself later travels to

America, Aram reappropriates the American memories he has ignored or rejected, and also reclaims the Armenian heritage he feels has been denied to him.

For the most part, Aram begins to find happiness and acceptance of his identity through learning to appreciate himself:

I was going to read but instead I started looking in the mirror. I had a very unusual face, even by Armenian standards, and I began entertaining myself with a long repertoire of masks I developed over the years: satanic, cherubic, but mostly ridiculous… and then I took a break. The muscles above my eyes and in my jaw relaxed and there was no expression at all in the face in the mirror…. It was a gentle face, good, innocent, sad but beautiful and suddenly all the love I ever wanted from… anyone, came out of me for myself. (144-5)

It is at this point that Aram begins to accept himself and his Armenian identity. Later, Aram imagines speaking with his dead father, who tells him, “Son… America is a nightmare from which we are struggling to awake…. But we will wake… one morning we’ll hear the ragman sing, see him dance in the street” (145). For Aram, America is his history, along with his

Armenian heritage, and he must therefore consolidate the two identities within himself. Aram

Taub 34 continues to speak with his imagined father, asking, “What should I do in the meanwhile, Papa?”

His answer: “Wander and search.” It is at this point that Aram reveals he thought of traveling to the homeland itself, but “it was too far and expensive. And anyway I wasn’t looking for roots anymore” (145). By this point, Aram has sufficiently realized the importance of his history and heritage to his identity, and he no longer needs to seek out the homeland in search of it.

Saroyan also writes about the importance of the homeland to diasporic identity. He makes brief mentions of returning to the homeland in both “Antranik of Armenia” (107) and Rock

Wagram (74), but the play Bitlis (1975) is Saroyan’s main meditation on Armenian homecoming. Bitlis tells the story of Saroyan’s own visit to the city Bitlis, the hometown of his mother and father. Even before visiting, Saroyan felt a strong attachment toward the city, and he often told close friends, in the traditional Armenian way of naming cities rather than countries, that he was from Bitlis (Kouymjian 14).

Saroyan visited the Armenian homeland in the Soviet Union many times during his life

(Kouymjian 24). However, his initial visits did not include trips to Bitlis since it is now found within the borders of Turkey. When Saroyan finally traveled to Bitlis in 1967, his experience ultimately left him saddened. His visit affected him so deeply that nearly a decade passed before he was able to finally write about his experience (Kouymjian 25). In Bitlis, Saroyan’s character,

Bill, states, “I had to come, I had to see it, I came, I saw it, I am saddened by it, I am glad to be leaving it, but… there is more, there is something nagging at me and I don’t know what it is”

(110). The play ends with Bill unable to voice the reason for his sadness; it is too deep and painful for words. It likely has to do with the history of Armenian suffering that is symbolized in the Armenian city of Bitlis, where there remains only one living Armenian resident.

Taub 35 At one point in Bitlis, Bill laments that Bitlis “needs the Armenians” because it “is ours”

(105). His guide, Ara, both agrees and disagrees. She says that “Bitlis probably does need

Armenians,” like many other Armenian cities, but so do “Athens, Rome, Paris, London, New

York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Hollywood” (105). Ara holds the position that diasporic peoples should be glad about their situation, since it offers them a unique opportunity at globalism that is not as readily available to non-diasporic cultures. Basically, Ara praises diasporic communities for representing “exemplary communities of the transnational moment in history” (Tölölyan 4). As a diasporic people, the Armenians are more or less free to choose any place as a possible home.

Later, near the play’s conclusion, Ara once again praises the opportunities allowed to

Armenians as a diaspora community. Stating that she is not sad for herself or her fellow

Armenians, but rather that she is “glad about it all,” she explains, “… we do not need the childish support of a geographical country to enjoy being who we are. We are who we are in other ways and for better reasons than having our own government pushing us around” (112). Ara attaches a stronger importance to the identity of the Armenians for the very reason that they lack an appointed government or organization that forces a brand of identity upon them. She implies that because Armenians continue to remain Armenians and hold onto the memory of their history voluntarily, they possess a significantly unique place in the world in which she finds pride.

Religion and Language in Diasporic Literature

History is not the only repository for diasporic memory. There is also the important function of religion in diasporic communities, especially for the Armenians and the Jews. For the

Jews, its role is obvious, as they are considered firstly as a religious group. For the Armenians, the Armenian Church acts as one of the main markers and protectors of the Armenian identity. It

Taub 36 also acts as an organizational tool for Armenians in the Diaspora to stay interconnected, which is also true in the Jewish community with the functions of the synagogue (Balakian 183). Although all three authors examined in this paper are secularized, they each write to some degree about the relevance of religion to the identity of the Jews or Armenians.

In Armenians, the three main characters are all priests from different Armenian churches

(Apostolic, Presbyterian, and Congregational). Kasparian, the priest from the Armenian

Apostolic Church, the original Church of the Armenian people, tells his colleagues that even though they are still Armenian, as priests from different churches they have “lost a little of that part of yourselves which was entirely Armenian” (57). Kasparian clearly attaches a major importance to Armenian religion to identity, and he feels that by moving away from ancient memory of the Armenian Church, his colleagues are sacrificing a piece of themselves and negatively contributing to their own fractured Armenian identities. In Voyages, the link between losing one’s religion and losing one’s identity is also examined. Aram traces his loss of faith back to his father’s illness (40). This represents that when Aram lost his father, he too became lost and began letting go of other pieces of his Armenian heritage.

In Rock Wagram, Saroyan presents a situation where Armenians can relinquish a piece of their religious identity, yet still hold onto the larger importance of their overall Armenian identity. When Rock speaks with his cousin Haig about Easter festivities at the Armenian

Church, the two share fond memories of playing games and socializing with other Armenians.

However, they neglect the religious aspect. Haig tells Rock about the previous Easter in Fresno:

“Everybody was talking and laughing… and every once in a while somebody would come out of the church and shout… ‘Quiet! Christ is risen, is He not?’ Somebody would holler back,

‘Who?’” (95). For Rock and Haig, as well as many other Armenians born in America, their faith

Taub 37 has become “eroded by American life” (Roth, The Facts 31). Rock and Haig see the Armenian

Church as a place to express their Armenian identity by gathering together with others of their kind, but they have done away with the religious aspect, which does nothing for them. In doing so, they express their willingness to continue to identify as Armenian on their own standing.

This secularized position is similar to the one that Nathan holds in The Counterlife. While visiting the Western Wall, an Orthodox Jew stubbornly attempts to get Nathan to participate in a prayer service. Nathan thinks, “Here we go. One Jew is about to explain to another Jew that he is not the same kind of Jew that the first Jew is—the source, this situation, of several hundred thousand jokes, not to mention all the works of fiction” (89). Roth is portraying how different views of religion may contribute to the fragmented identity that diasporic peoples experience.

In Portnoy’s Complaint, Portnoy attempts to distance himself from his own, deeply instilled Jewish identity by renouncing his faith, and with it, the sense of Jewish identity transferred through religion. He refers to the Judaism as a “sour grape of a religion”: “It is coming out of my ears already, the saga of the suffering Jews! Do me a favor, my people, and stick your suffering heritage up your suffering ass– I happen also to be a human being!” (76).

Portnoy feels repressed by the Jewish laws, but at the same time he perpetually lives his life in knowledge of them and cannot help but feel unwanted guilt. His fragmented identity is the main reason why Portnoy finds himself in a psychiatrist’s office in the novel.

Language is also an important factor of diasporic community identity that is slowly losing its importance. It is common to find among the younger generations of Armenian and

Jewish Americans that there is no real urgency attached to learning their culture’s language.

With each new generation born into diaspora, fewer and fewer are attempting to learn the language (Suny 216; Seliktar 125). The authors themselves represent this point. Roth, a third-

Taub 38 generation immigrant living in America, does not feel the need to know how to speak Hebrew, much less the Yiddish that his Galician grandparents most likely spoke. This situation is very similar to that experience among Armenian Americans. As second-generation immigrants, both

Saroyan and Najarian represent the fading attachment to the mother tongue: both authors (and their fictional alter-egos) were/are able to converse freely in Armenian, but neither was/is able to read or write the language. The newer generations’ feelings toward language differ from those held by many of the original immigrants. For example, In Daughters of Memory, one of the elderly female Armenian chorus laments, “We will be gone when we lose the language.” One of the women quickly refutes, “Why should anyone want to keep the language?” (56). This exchange reflects the conflicting levels of importance attached to the native language among different generations of diasporic peoples.

At one point in Operation Shylock, Philip is kidnapped and dropped off in an Israeli classroom. Philip sees the Hebrew writing on the chalkboard and thinks back to his Hebrew lessons as a child. Although he has completely forgotten these lessons now and is unable to decipher the Hebrew on the board, Philip attributes an importance to that experience that goes beyond Hebrew education:

What could possibly come of those three or four hundred hours of the worst possible teaching in the worst possible atmosphere for learning? Why, everything—what came of it was everything! That cryptography whose signification I could no longer decode had marked me indelibly four decades ago; out of the inscrutable words on this blackboard had evolved every English word I had ever written. Yes, all and everything had originated there…. (200)

Here we have one of Roth’s most vocal statements on the importance that his Jewish identity plays in his occupation as a writer. Through Philip, Roth is directly stating that his evolution as a writer is due to his identity as a Jew, dating back to childhood. Roth is signifying the Jewish memory inherent in the Hebrew language and how it can contribute to a diasporic Jew’s identity.

Taub 39 In Rock Wagram, Rock’s grandmother says at one point about an Armenian man who claims to be part of the Vagramian family, “He’s no member of the family…. He’s no Armenian.

He neither speaks nor understands the language” (136). However, Rock cares much less about the importance of language. When he and his cousin Haig leave the offices of the Asbarez¸ an

Armenian newspaper where his father worked as the editor, Rock tells his cousin, “That work was supposed to be for us, but we’re not interested. We never were” (103). Earlier, when Haig asks Rock why he never learned to read and write Armenian, he answers, “I was just beginning to learn when I quit. I didn’t want to learn. It’s too late now” (102). Rock seems to recognize that by not pursuing an education in the Armenian language, he has deprived himself of an aspect of his Armenian identity. At the same time, he considers himself more in touch with his Armenian identity than somebody who cannot even speak the language. Toward the end of the story, after losing his mother, Rock feels a rift toward his Armenian identity and only then does he attempt to learn the language again.

Family in Diasporic Literature

Rock’s return to the importance of language is spurred by the loss of the most important carrier of diasporic identity, the family (represented by his mother’s death). Family is the driving force in Rock Wagram, which is split into three sections titled, “The Father,” “The Mother,” and

“The Son and the Daughter.” Similarly, in diaspora, family is of the utmost importance. Writing about the importance of family, Lorne Shirinian states, “In the diaspora, Armenian identity could be preserved if ethnic identity could be maintained, and the central site for this was the family. It was within the Armenian family that Armenian cultural material could be given expression and maintained,” and ultimately, transferred onto the next generation to do the same (“TADW” 40).

Taub 40 As another diasporic culture, the importance of family holds true for the Jewish people as well. Daughters of Memory points to the shared importance of the family in both the Armenian and Jewish diasporas in one of the chorus sections. The women talk about the importance of passing down Armenian history within the family, even though it is full of “killing and sex.” One of the woman questions the importance of passing down this knowledge, asking, “What kind of stories are they for children?” Another woman responds, “They like to hear those kinds of stories. The Jews play their stories over and over again. They’re our stories. Our grandchildren should know them…. To know where they come from” (78-9). Once again, here the family is seen as the main site where identity can be maintained and passed down to future generations.

Roth writes about the importance of family in The Facts: A Novelist’s Autobiography

(1988), stating, “In our lore, the Jewish family was an inviolate haven against every form of menace, from personal isolation to gentile hostility…. Hear, O Israel, the family is G-d, the family is One” (14). Interestingly, for many of Roth’s characters, such as Portnoy, rebelling against his Jewish identity also means rebelling against the family. Portnoy complains that he is stuck living as “the son in the Jewish joke—only it aint no joke!” (36-7). Portnoy’s parents have instilled in him the codes of Jewish law, and even after Portnoy has denounced them as repressive, he is unable to completely let go of the Jewish upbringing his family gave him, and as a result, he still feels guilt. Although Portnoy is more or less successfully able to neglect Jewish history, religion, and language, the Jewish teachings from his formative years have proven to be an unequivocal aspect of his identity as an American Jew.

The importance of the family as a repository for the passing down of Armenian identity recurs again and again in Armenian literature. In Armenians, the priest Kasparian asserts that the only way to stop the growing tide of assimilation among young Armenians born in America is to

Taub 41 “work on the parents. If they do not teach their children to be Armenian, we can do nothing to improve the situation” (54). At another point in the play, an Armenian man from Van says that although his children were born in America, they “shall never stop being children of Van, and

Armenians.” Another man hears this and wonders if it is possible to for Armenians “to remain in

Armenia” while living in another place. The man from Van replies that it is not only possible, but necessary: “Unless we are to vanish from the face of the earth, swallowed up by the rest of the human race, it is necessary” (84-5). One can infer that the man from Van has taken it upon himself to instill Armenian heritage and identity into his children in order to combat their loss to

American assimilation. The man from Van sees that diasporic identity is formed most meaningfully through the function of the family.

Similar sentiments are expressed in Voyages, where Aram helps Vahan Vahanian, an old friend of his father, translate his memoir from Armenian into English. Returning to the subject of the loss of language, Vahan wants to translate his story so that his grandchildren may be able to read it someday. When Aram asks why, Vahan answers, “They’re my children’s children, no?

They’re Armenian, no? … They should know what it means, no?” (37). As a patriarch, Vahan has taken it upon himself to instill in future generations of his family an Armenian identity that goes through his personal history back to the homeland and the rest of the Armenian legacy

In Rock Wagram, the protagonist often discusses Armenianness with this grandmother, his oldest link back to the old country. In Daughters of Memory, the protagonist, Zeke, attempts to reclaim a part of his Armenian identity through the memory of his dead grandmother.

Throughout the narrative, he asks his mother, his oldest living link to the old country, to “tell me what you remember.” Although she remembers “many things,” she can’t remember her mother’s face (22). Zeke spends the narrative looking for the lost memory of his grandmother, and at the

Taub 42 same time his identity: “He struggles to imagine that face as if it were the image of a home they both lost in their different ways. He tries to find her inside himself but his imagination fails, his memories interfere and they become like veils he can’t clear away” (3). Najarian himself describes the novel as the continued story of Aram from Voyages, as he “comes to a [later] stage in his life where identity and family take on different meanings” (DOM 158).

In Voyages, Aram expresses alienation felt in America as a result of his mother’s

Armenian customs: “I used to be ashamed of my mother’s food when I was a child. I used to yell at her: how come we don’t eat steak and potatoes like everybody else?” (6). Zeke in Daughters of Memory seems to have progressed past this point and finds a link connection to his Armenian heritage through his mother. The kitchen of Zeke’s mother is not represented as a source of shame, but a link back to the old country: he describes how his mother would “[g]rind and pound them [ingredients for making choreg] as ancestors once did while Xenophon marched by, or famished Crusaders, or screaming Mongols…. Her kitchen is a link in the cycles of doon, domus through the ages” (41). Doon is the Armenian word for “home.” Through his connection with his mother, Zeke is able to reclaim his Armenian identity and understand his heritage more deeply.

Both Armenians and Jews in the diaspora worry about the loss of identity as a result of growing trends of intermarriage. Both groups see intermarriage and the failure to pass down identity as a type of self-inflicted genocide; Armenians refer to their dilemma as the “white massacre,” while the Jews have named theirs the “silent Holocaust” (Pattie 8; Berman 7). In the literary works addressed here, however, the issue of intermarriage is not taken up as a serious problem. Nearly all of the characters in the works are portrayed as having relationships with women outside their culture: Portnoy infamously lusts after shiksas, all of Nathan Zuckerman’s and Roth’s own marriages have been to gentiles, Rock Wagram and Saroyan himself married a

Taub 43 non-Armenian, and Aram/Zeke in Najarian’s literature is only shown in relationships with non-

Armenians, or odars. The authors, however, are conscious of the issue: in both The Counterlife and Rock Wagram the relationships of the main character and his wife is compared to that of

Othello and Desdemona (CL 283; RW 46-7).

While conscious of the issue, the authors suggest the idea that intermarriage does not inevitably mean the loss of identity for future generations. At the end of The Counterlife, Nathan proposes that the ritual of circumcision will create a bond between him and his son that will be symbolic of their shared Jewish heritage (323-4). In Rock Wagram, Rock asks for the guidance of various people about marrying outside his ethnicity. His grandmother offers the most pivotal advice, telling him, “When a man takes his woman, she becomes his woman if he is a true man.

If he is an Armenian, she becomes an Armenian” (83). This answer, in addition to the fact that his prospective wife, Ann Ford, tells Rock she wants to learn to speak Armenian so she can share in his heritage, seems to satisfy Rock, and he decides to marry Ann despite her odar status. In both The Counterlife and Rock Wagram, the main characters ponder the importance of identity in a mixed marriage and come to similar conclusions. Recognizing the importance of family and cultural history for themselves as well as others, both decide that in marrying “outsiders,” the resulting families will represent a combination of the two dissimilar families and histories, rather than an erasure. In essence, this idea of combining identities is not radically different from the fragmented, hybrid diasporic identity found in America, which is both American and also

Jewish, Armenian, or whatever else.

Like many other cultures, both Armenian and Jewish families are largely "patriarchal,” or have their authority based in the male line and the father figure (Pattie 4). While there are works by female Jewish American and Armenian American writers that focus on the importance of the

Taub 44 matrilineal connection, in the works examined in this paper, all by male authors, the father is of the utmost importance. In Rock Wagram, Saroyan writes about the shared significance of fathers in diasporic cultures. Rock speaks with Paul Key, the Jewish studio executive who discovered him, and tells him what it is that “Jews and Armenians have in common”:

Fathers…. We have fathers in common. We’re fathers ourselves the minute we’re born. We get over being sons quicker than any other people in the world. Our sons do, too. We fix our fathers, and our sons fix us. That’s the reason we’re intelligent. That’s the reason we know so much more about everything than other people do without needing to go to the trouble of studying anything. We have fathers in common, and we’re fathers at birth because we want enough of us to be around to receive the accidents, just in case an assortment or series of them is going to happen to somebody some day that is going to make a difference. (153-4)

Here, Saroyan is clearly linking Jews and Armenians due to their mutual statuses as inheritors of diasporic cultures. One can infer that in this statement, Rock is referring to the burden of historical memory that both Armenians and Jews carry due to their similar histories of diaspora and suffering. As sons, diasporic peoples often feel they have the obligation of becoming fathers themselves and passing down their long cultural history and memory, ensuring that their ethnicity’s identity remains a persistent force in the future as well. However, some do not want this diasporic burden of responsibility, and come into conflict with the father. Roth, Saroyan, and

Najarian each wrote about conflicts between fathers and sons in their literature, as well as the importance of the father in passing down cultural memory.

Strife between father and son is a major issue found in Roth’s work. In The Counterlife,

Shuki says as much when speaking with Roth’s literary alter-ego about his own problems with his son, stating that he felt like “a helpless father out of a Zuckerman novel” (79). Shuki’s own issues with his father twenty years earlier are related in the story as well (52-4). The Zuckerman brothers’ own father, Victor Zuckerman, although dead, plays a large role in the lives of his sons.

The sons hold differing views toward the father, and as such, memories of the father play disparate roles in their lives. In the novel, Victor is portrayed as an ardent Zionist. Nathan’s

Taub 45 writing, like Roth’s, is often seen as vitriolic toward the Jews, and this negatively affected his relationship with his father while he was alive. Henry claims that through his literature, Nathan acted as “family assassin,” murdering their father “under the guise of art.” In turn, this forced

Henry to become “loyal Defender of Father” (208).

In the chapter “Judea,” Nathan sees their dichotomous relationship with their father as the reason for Henry’s reinvention in Israel. Nathan tells Henry that his idol, Mordecai Lippman, is nothing but their father “supersized, raised to the hundredth power” (138). Nathan perceives

Henry’s supposed escape as nothing but a return to the father by the loyal son, symbolized even further by his pilgrimage to Israel, the fatherland. A similar idea is expressed in the memoir

Passage to Ararat, when one character states, “Fatherland, father. It is the same thing” (136).

Following the death of the father, Henry, portrayed as the dutiful son, is only able to reaffirm his sense of Jewish identity passed down to him by making a pilgrimage to the fatherland.

On the other hand, Henry sees Nathan’s actions as similarly governed by the memory of their father. Except in Nathan’s case, his rejection of an overtly Jewish identity is seen as a continuation of the struggle against the father. In the section, “Gloucestershire,” a divergent story arc is presented where Nathan has died from the same operation that kills Henry in the novel’s first chapter, “Basel.” Following the funeral, Henry sneaks into Nathan’s apartment to destroy any incriminating writing Nathan may have left behind. Once there, he comes upon the draft for

The Counterlife and quickly reads through it. Henry perceives Nathan’s reinvention of himself in the literature as “a pure magical dream of flight—from the father, the fatherland….” (228).

Perhaps “Eli, the Fanatic,” and The Facts are Roth’s most vocal pronouncements on the importance of the father in passing down cultural identity. In “Eli, the Fanatic,” shortly after Eli has reinvented himself and his identity through the donning of the traditional, Hasidic garb, he

Taub 46 makes his way to the hospital to see his newborn son. He thinks to himself: “He’d [referring to himself] wear it, if he chose to. He’d make the kid wear it! Sure! Cut it down when the time came. A smelly-hand-me-down, whether the kid liked it or not!” (297). This represents a forceful passing of identity, perhaps because Eli now feels disgusted by his formerly assimilated ways. In

The Facts, Roth writes about the importance of the father in his own life. He writes:

… his resolute dutifulness, his relentless industriousness, his unreasoning obstinacy and harsh resentments, his illusions, his innocence, his allegiances, his fears were to constitute the original mold for the American, Jew, citizen, man, even for the writer, I would become. (18-19).

This statement is reinforced by an earlier comment about his father: “Narrative is the form that his knowledge takes, and his repertoire has never been large: family, family, family, Newark,

Newark, Newark, Jew, Jew, Jew. Somewhat like mine” (16). About the perpetual presence of his father in his life, his writing, his identity, and elsewhere, Roth writes: “I naïvely believed as a child that I would always have a father present, and the truth seems to be that I always will” (16).

There are points in Roth’s literature where he attempts to imagine the effects that being fatherless might have on a child. In Portnoy’s Complaint, Portnoy links his friend’s rebellious behavior to the fact that his father died when he was only ten. He states, “this of course is what mesmerizes me most of all: a boy without a father” (172). For Portnoy, his family and father have played such a large part in his life that he is fascinated by the prospect of somebody else lacking one. In The Facts¸ Roth writes that there were only two boys in his neighborhood who came from fatherless families. He says that as a child, he considered them “blighted.” He continues, “everything either of them did or said seemed determined by his being a boy with a dead father and, however innocently I arrived at this notion, I was probably right” (13-14).

While Roth has to imagine the effects of losing a father when young, this is the reality experienced by both Saroyan and Najarian in their personal lives. Saroyan lost his father when he

Taub 47 was three; Najarian’s father passed away when he was ten. Both were left with the unfinished legacies of immigrant fathers (Bedrosian 118, 144). The father’s heritage and sense of identity that Roth has the liberty to accept or reject is largely lost altogether by Saroyan and Najarian, and this is reflected in their writing. In a larger sense, the absence of the father is symbolic of the absence from the homeland inherent to diaspora.

In Rock Wagram, as an American-born Armenian, Rock is unable to identify with his immigrant father. This is not helped by the fact that his father committed suicide when Rock was only a teenager. While still living, the strife between father and son culminates in a physical fight between the two when Rock is just sixteen. Although his nose is broken in the fight, Rock refuses to get it straightened out, saying he wants it “stay the way it is” (9). Rock wants to carry the physical mark as a constant reminder of his father. Rock tells Haig that the main motive behind the fight was that his father wanted him to be a poet, like himself, while Rock “wanted to be anything I felt like being,” unencumbered by the influences of his father, family, nation, religion, etc. He concedes, however, “All the same, it turns out that even if he does what he does as himself, he also does them as th[ose] other things,” since they are unequivocally pieces of his identity and perception of self (107).

Much like Saroyan had his own father’s writing to remember him by (HCTGYKW 238), so too does Rock. There are two times in the novel when Rock listens to pieces of poetry written by his father. Both pieces have to do with memory and identity. Rock listens to the second poem late in the story. The poem is Rock’s father’s final piece of writing, left by him when he committed suicide. Rock has secretly carried it with him for twenty-five years, although since it is in Armenian, he is unable to read it. Just like Rock could not fully understand his father because of the differing Armenian identities, Rock is unable to understand the poem because he

Taub 48 cannot read Armenian, lacking that connection to his identity. Following his mother’s death,

Rock finally takes the poem to Zadik, an Armenian priest, to translate for him.

Zadik translates the poem for Rock, and part of it is described as follows:

He says he must pity G-d because G-d is the Father, and His children love Him like fools or hate Him like fools or mock Him like fools…. He says, Rock, that he has a son, no better than any Turk’s son, but a man in whom his own heart beats with terrible hope for love between all the children of the Father. He says if he is to live he is to live in this son…. If he is to go on breathing, he says, this son must restore to him the breath of life. If he is awakened from the sleep of death by this son, he will live and he will love. If he is not awakened, he will never know that he was never awakened, he will not remember that be breathed the mulberry-scented air of Baghesht once…. (269)

Zadik interprets the poem very literally, and thinks it is about Rock not arriving home in time to save his father’s life. However, when considered in conjunction with the earlier poem, which is about the father transferring his memory to his son just as his own father did, the piece can read more metaphorically. The poem can be seen to be a reflection on the transference of memory between generations, with Rock’s father expressing that if Rock does not accept his Armenian heritage, then he is basically erasing the life of his father, along with his Armenian identity.

In Voyages, “the patrimony [Aram] feels he has lost” (DOM 158) is the driving force behind Aram’s confused identity and alienation in America. Like Najarian’s own biography,

Aram’s father suffers a stroke and dies seven years later, when Aram is only ten years old. Aram sees America as “my country where my father suffered” (3). Although it is “his,” it contains a history of family suffering from which he feels unable to remove himself.

The central importance of the father to the narrative is apparent from the novel’s beginning. The action in the novel opens on Memorial Day, 1961, as Aram and his mother walk to the cemetery to visit his father’s grave. Along the way, they pass children watching a patriotic parade, waving American flags and singing. Interestingly, the only refrain that Najarian includes in the text is “Land where our fathers died…” (8). At the gravesite, Aram reads the words engraved on the headstone, “the letters of his name that seemed to belong to someone else:

Taub 49 Petrus Tomasian 1893-1950” (9). Aram feels that he has been denied the memory of his father, weakening his own sense of identity. Before leaving the cemetery, Aram’s mother asks him to get an American flag to place on the grave. This is an incident of the absent Armenian father being appropriated into America (Shirinian, “LFAS” 8). The bitter irony of this action and its meaning is revealed as the story unfolds and the reader learns of the severe alienation felt by

Petrus, and later Aram as well, in America, as a result of their diasporic identities.

Conclusion

The Jews and Armenians are two otherwise disparate groups that nonetheless share a bond due to their mutual diasporic statuses. The parallels between Armenians and Jews as diasporic peoples can be clearly seen in their literatures, which share many similar themes and issues. As can be seen, the fragmented sense of identity that often arises from living under the diasporic condition plays a central role in the literatures of both Armenian American and Jewish

American authors. Through their writings, which deal with confused self-identification, assimilation, alienation, and retained and forgotten cultural memories, the authors attempt to tackle the issues of identity they have inherited as people born into diasporic cultures. However, the authors also happened to have been born in America, and thus have additionally inherited an

American identity. It is this dual identity as both Jew and American, or both Armenian and

American, which ironically works to both help and hinder the authors and their respective cultures in the ongoing search for a unified sense of identity while willfully living in diaspora.

While Jewish Americans and Armenian Americans often feel themselves as different from both their original cultures and the American culture, they can each find in one another shared qualities and experiences, and perhaps a sense of camaraderie, due to their mutual experiences as diasporic peoples living in America.

Taub 50 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aarons, Victoria. What Happened to Abraham?: Reinventing the Covenant in American Jewish

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