Literary Devices in Goodbye, Columbus
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
Setting is extremely important to Neil. You might say he's obsessed with it. Perhaps this is because he's twenty-three and trying to find the right place to be. He lives in Newark, New Jersey, a bi...
Narrator Point of View
Neil Klugman is the first person narrator of Goodbye, Columbus. He's a twenty-three-year-old man with a degree in philosophy and a job at the Newark library. This is the story of his summer-to-fall...
Genre
Neil's "voyage of discovery" from the city to the suburbs is presented as a bold adventure—even though, overall, the story features a pretty mundane and run-of-the-mill course of events. You can...
Tone
We can probably find something good to say about most of the characters we've encountered, in spite of Neil's rather judgmental point of view. (Notice that point of view looks at the narrator's per...
Writing Style
The tight plotting and consistent layering of key symbols give Goodbye, Columbus a feeling of formal unity, or completeness. To break things up and keep it from being boring, Roth provides lots of...
What's Up With the Title?
This story takes its title from lyrics to the song sung at Ron Patimkin's graduation ceremony at Ohio State University in good old Columbus, Ohio. In Chapter 6, on the eve of Ron and Harriet's wedd...
What's Up With the Epigraph?
"The heart is half a prophet."—Yiddish Proverb The epigraph isn't specific to the novella Goodbye, Columbus but shared with the other stories in the collection. It prepares us for the intensely e...
What's Up With the Ending?
The final chapter of Goodbye, Columbus includes Brenda and Neil's separation and break-up, but a little backtracking is necessary to discover whether Neil finds resolution to any of his conflicts....
Plot Analysis
Stage Identification: Brenda and Neil meet.Explanation/Discussion: These star-crossed lovers meet at a suburban county club. Brenda's a member; Neil's a guest of his War and Peace-reading cousin,...
Booker's Seven Basic Plots Analysis
Stage Identification: Brenda's dive into the pool of the other world.Explanation/Discussion: Goodbye, Columbus is very deliberately a voyage and return plot. As we discuss in "What's Up With the...
Three-Act Plot Analysis
We can divide the acts in terms of the basic stages of Neil and Brenda's relationship. Act I lasts from Brenda and Neil's first meeting at the country club pool to the end of Neil's first we...
Trivia
A ringtone of Philip Roth yelling, set to a Moby beat, is available. How better to show your love for his work than by using this on your phone? (Source.)Now that you've read about the rington...
Steaminess Rating
"Make love to me, Neil. Right now." "Where?" "Do it! Here. On this cruddy cruddy cruddy sofa." (5.110-5.112)In Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus sex is hilarious, tender, and absurd, but ne...
Allusions
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1.47)Proteus (2.56)Mary McCarthy (6.103)Gauguin (3.44)Bob Mathias (5.127)Edward R. Murrow (5.143)Margaret Sanger (6.101)Popular Mechanics (3.2)Hedy Lamarr, Ecstasy (3.2)...