Essay On Goodbye Columbus

As humans, people often times create their own ideas and perceptions over certain individuals or a place. In Goodbye, Columbus, by Philip Roth, the story’s main character, Neil falls into that trap when he meets a girl, Brenda, and his entire life is turned upsides down. “and though we did not want to go, the little boy and I, the boat was moving and there was nothing we could do about it” (Roth 74). When Philip Roth decided to add Neil’s dream of him and the little boy visiting an island and then being forced to leave it, he added an immediate foreshadowing of what was to come at the end of the story—a goodbye. Neil and the little boy, alone, represented two different roles of living in the United States of America. Neil, although he was Jewish and had his own stereotypes attached to him, lived a very different
That song was the same he had been listening to, since Ron would play it loudly in the next room—the same record Ron promised to show Neil. When Ron finally played the record for Neil, he revealed that record was the one played during his college graduation ceremony. More times than not, graduating from college into entering the life of an every day adult. It is a pivotal moment in many young adult’s lives and Ron was no different. Without his authorization, his comfort zone and familiarity of his life were taken away from him and he was pushed into the world of adulthood. He went from being comfortable and satisfied into life pushing him into another direction. “Life calls us, and anxiously if not nervously we walk out into the world and away from the pleasures of these ivied walls” (Roth 105). By Ron listening to his Columbus record constantly, and the descriptions Roth chose to use when Neil listened to the tape with Ron, of him humming along with his eyes closed, prove how much nostalgia is fitted into the record—of Ron’s