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City and the American Twentieth Century provides a useful analysis of America’s movement toward a military state in the decades following World War II, particularly as a consequence of Cold War rhetoric of national defense. Noting the steady erosion of domestic, civilian life under the burgeoning military presence within our national boundaries, she writes, “A tension exists between the impulse to clearly distinguish between two cultures of the military and civilian worlds (often to either celebrate or criticize one of them) and a desire to see a single set of military and civilian values, and a single America” (Lutz 235). According to Lutz, the conflation of these two formerly distinct realms of American life suggests the emergence of a new sense of the American homeland, one defined primarily on military, rather than civilian discourse. This is especially relevant, considering the massive influx in military spending starting in 1946 and continuing to the present day (172).
Marita Sturken further traces this evolution in her analysis of the American military state leading up to and following September 11^th. Sturken specifically addresses the ways that consumerism and national politics are increasingly interconnected, and how they have begun to inscribe themselves on domestic space, most notably through the Hummer and other symbols of American military culture (40). The end result of this, Sturken explains, is the dissolution of boundaries between the home and the homeland, a process which inevitably involves the inscription of a new set of national politics on the discourses of domestic space (71). It furthermore encourages an implicit
endorsement of an American military presence, a presence whose purported sole objective is the protection of the home front.⁷ Sturken writes, “The militarization of the home is thus not only a means through which public fear of terrorism is mediated but is also a process through which the domestic household is articulated into the policies of the U.S. government. Defending the home and the desire to feel ‘at home’ are key elements in the imperial policies of the U.S. government after 9/11” (41). Considering the increased militarization of the American homeland not just after 9/11 but in the postwar years as well, it is worth looking at how these concepts help to explain the failures of the Swede’s vision of domestic harmony in American Pastoral, a vision too closely aligned with manufactured narratives of American political innocence.
The old stone house—in its impregnability and its connection to a particular American pastoral history—functions as a repository for a political narrative of security and an implicit endorsement of a bourgeois American culture of comfort.⁸ The Swede’s attachment to the house demonstrates his desire to subscribe to this narrative and fortify it against the forces of political discourse circulating around the Vietnam War and the movement toward globalization.


⁷ It is worth noting that America’s involvement in foreign wars throughout the twentieth century has consistently been justified under the rhetoric of homeland security and the protection of the American homeland. Endorsing violence in the name of domestic security has been perhaps our nation’s most powerful rhetorical tool in terms of its foreign policy.


⁸ For a useful discussion on external house aesthetics and their political underpinnings, see John A. Dolan’s “I’ve Always Fancied Owning Me Own Lion,” which examines urban housing decor that attempts to recreate the idylls of rural life. Dolan argues that these trends are political by nature and reflect a

movement to conservative ideology.
106

What he fails to realize is that, in Bachelard’s language, the house only provides the “illusion of protection,” and his blind faith in this illusion prevents him from recognizing the inherently political dimensions of domestic space. The narratives of national security and ideological homogeneity operating within this fantasy are themselves contested political sites which ultimately inspire his sixteen year old daughter, Merry, having gained political agency as an adult, to revolt against him. The Swede correctly identifies the intrusions on domestic space—mainly the presence of television media—that give rise to her increasingly political worldview. As detailed in the previous chapter, television media in recent decades has played an instrumental role in producing and communicating trauma and subsequently forcing viewers to establish positions within or against political discourse. In the novel, the Swede remembers watching the self-immolation of Buddhist monks on television and imagines the traumatic effects these images must have had on his daughter. Roth writes, “No screaming, no writhing, just [the monk’s] calmness at the heart of the flames—no pain registering on anyone on camera, only on Merry and the Swede and Dawn, horrified together in their living room. Out of nowhere and into their home, the nimbus of flames, the upright monk, and the sudden liquefaction before he keels over” (153). Here, we see the Swede’s discomfort over the evident permeability of domestic boundaries. The television has rendered his “impregnable” house highly susceptible to political intrusion and violence. Later he comments, “Into their home the monk came to stay” (154). Despite his efforts to fortify his domestic existence against
ideological subversion, modern technology has breached the walls of domesticity and entered from within, attacking the heart of domestic space: the living room.
Merry’s symbolic role as the agent responsible for political intrusion on domestic space reveals the ways that the home—and its broader function as a corollary for the politically-defined homeland—is always under threat of ideological subversion. Countering the Swede’s impulse to repress the political through his faith in the ostensibly-neutral space of domesticity, Merry tells him, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Everything is political. Brushing your teeth is political” (Roth 104). Merry is correct. Despite his efforts to envision a life free from political discourse, the Swede’s vision of domestic harmony—articulated through the old stone house—is itself a political exercise insofar as it sustains the discourses that bolster the illusion of a stable sense of American identity. Sandra Kumamoto Stanley writes, “In constructing his ideal home, the Swede believes that he has replicated the ideals of America; the family becomes a source not of biological reproduction but also of the reproduction of ideology” (10). Even the house’s history—which the Swede selectively represses—is defined by the political. In attempting to dissuade the Swede from purchasing the house, his father tells him, “Let’s be candid with each other about this—this is a narrow, bigoted area. The Klan thrived out here in the twenties. Did you know that? The Ku Klux Klan. People had crosses burned on their property out here” (309).
Furthermore, as Timothy L. Parrish notes, the entire region of Morris County, with its long history of white inhabitants connected to the American Revolution,
implicitly rejects ethnic minorities like the Swede and his parents (136-137). Merry’s astute observation regarding the ubiquity of the political applies