Essay On The Patimkin Family In Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus

In Philip Roth’s story, Goodbye, Columbus, the Patimkin family as well as Neil Kulgman’s life portray the various psychological effects of wanting to win and dealing with losing in many aspects of life such as love, sports and business. Many of the interaction between the characters from Short Hills highlight the somewhat individualistic nature of those belonging to the upper class in comparison to Neil’s Aunt Gladys and Uncle Max from Newark. The latter are more family oriented as Aunt Gladys emphasises the importance of recognition and being grateful for what other members of the family may provide to them. Neil’s family also behave in ways that display more class loyalty and class resentment than the Patimkin’s. The importance of winning and the effects of losing are therefore very different from one family, representative of social class, to another and even within a same family as shown with Leo Patimkin’s statement about his unsuccessful business and financial circumstances at Ronald and Harriet’s wedding. In Roth’s story the psychological dimension of winning and losing is portrayed in the characters’ love lives, in the sports they play as
There were several popular basketball players that were Jewish at that time just like there is a prevalence of African-American talented basketball players nowadays. Brenda, in a way, wants to elevate Neil by using sports and thus by initiating him to them and to her family’s approach to them. She succeeds evidently as she mentions to him how much they resemble each other in the way they are dressed (p.609). Neil believes he understood what she was insinuating: “She meant, I was sure, that I was somehow beginning to look the way she wanted me to. Like herself.”