Defender of the Faith “Defender of the Faith” is a short story written by Philip Roth that depicts the tale of a young Jewish Sergeant in the US Army during World War II named Nathan Marx. Sergeant Marx is returned back state side after the fighting ends in Europe and is stationed at Camp Crowder. Camp Crowder is a basic training facility where Marx is in charge of training new soldiers and preparing them for war. The title “Defender of the Faith” comes from his role as a company leader full of young Jewish men and how he is tricked into protecting their faith. The young men in his company, especially one named Sheldon Grossbart, use their witty deceitful ways to trick Marx into giving them special treatment. This story is about a man discovering how to be himself again after developing what he refers to as “an infantryman’s heart” (Roth). Carol Gaffke refers to Philip Roth’s stories as the story of “unlikely heroes, who find themselves trapped within the social constraints of their immediate environment…” (Gaffke). This story fits that description perfectly because Marx was constrained by the idea of helping out his young Jewish trainees on a moral value even though he knew he was being lied to. Even with the heavy religious backing of this story Roth himself was actually an Atheist and is quoted saying, “When the whole world doesn’t believe in God, it’ll be a great place.” (Braver). Though Roth has does not believe in God he knows about Judaism because his parents were first generation Americans who were Jews of Galician decent (Shechner). His knowledge of the Jewish religion helps him formulate a masterpiece. His fellow serviceman throughout most of the story exploits Sergeant Marx, the narrator, and which is the rise of an abnormal level of moral complexity that leads to him confirming his own deliberate desensitization of heart. This is the story that leaves the reader with a feeling and understanding of the necessary decisions that sometimes have to be made in life. Marx has to deal with the struggles of either being the bad guy or the guy that everyone likes. Throughout the story he is faced with either giving into the Jewish group be letting them have their way or being hated by them and being labeled a “fake Jew”. The young Jewish men repeatedly come to Sergeant Marx with their complaints asking him to fix their problems, such as not being able to attend their respective religious service on Friday nights because of a company clean up that is scheduled carry this story. After being stern with Grossbart after his plea that it was unfair for them to be forced to clean instead of going to their service Marx has a feeling of sympathy come over him and he takes the matter to his Captain who is more or less words says that Marx needs to stop worrying about these young soldiers feelings and worry about training them instead. But that night he still feels for his young men and decides to let them go to their respective services if they were going on that night instead of cleaning their barracks. This overwhelming sense of returning from the unsympathetic person that war turns you into is the underlying sense of the entire story. War has a distinct ability to harden ones heart and soul up and upon return adjusting back into the civil life is not always as easy as one might think it should be. Within the entire story Marx goes from being a stern, uncaring, and stubborn man to a soft and delicate man who gives in easily to the demands of others even when they are not in the best interest of the company as a whole. The hardened heart caused by witnessing and preforming the actions of war can cause serious emotional disturbances that for some can never be reversed, but in Marx’s case he was able to fix some of that via his new soldiers. It was said that by Carol Gaffke,
“I admired Mr. Roth’s story because he had caught perfectly the drama of personal integrity in the face of group pressures that is so typical in American literature, and I was surprised to learn that Mr. Roth’s story had aroused the darkest displeasure among some readers of the New Yorker and that he had been called in and worried over by at lease on professional Jewish organization.” (Gaffke).
When he wrote “Defender of the Faith” it was not well received by the Jewish community because of the fact that he was labeled a “self-hating jew”, which stuck with him for many years later. He was given this label because of the way he portrayed the young Jewish soldiers as deceitful. While many outside the literary world did not take kindly to Roth’s piece other inside have hailed him as a master of the short story genre (Krstovic). At the end of the story Sergant Marx has Private Grossbart’s orders changed from New Jersey to the Pacific with the rest of his company. Grossbart is understandably upset about his order’s being changed and comes to his Sergeant with a profound sense of anger demanding an explanation as to why his orders were changed. Grossbart continues to try and connive his way out of this with a story about his father having a weak heart, but this time Marx is not buying it. He send’s Grossbart on his way and the story ends with a very powerful message of another one of its underlying messages. “I stood outside the orderly room, and I heard Grossbart weeping behind me…
With a kind of quiet nervousness, they polished shoes, shined belt buckles, squared away underwear, try as best they could to accept their fate. Behind me, Grossbart swallowed hard, accepting his. And then, resisting with all my will an impulse to turn and seek pardon for my vindictiveness, I accepted my own.” (Roth).
Marx accepting his own fate was him realizing that though he can not be the hard hearted man that he was when he returned, he can also not be a weak man who is easily deceived and who always takes sympathy upon anyone with a problem. He says that “with all my will an impulse to turn and seek pardon” means that he truly is a changed man from when he first arrived at Camp Crowder, but no longer will he be walked all over by men who are only looking out for themselves. The story “Defender of the Faith” is marked in history as one of the greatest Jewish war themed stories of all time. Even with all the controversy that surrounded this story and in particular Roth’s style of writing, his literary skills were proven in this short story. His ability to make you understand how the characters are feeling with the use of his simple yet powerful words gives the reader as close to an eye witness account as possible without actually being there. Throughout our lives we are faced with decisions that we will think about for our entire existence and we must realize that these decisions should be made in the best interest of everyone and not for just one person. Sergeant Nathan Marx learns a lesson in the transition back into civil life where he is not burdened with the pain and suffering of war and he is also taught that not every decision will be easy and there are times where you must stand by your decisions even though some people may not like them.

Works Cited
Braver, Rita. “Philip Roth on Fame, Sex and God.” CBSNews, CBS Interavtive. n.d. Web, 09 July 2014.
Gaffke, Carol. “Short Story Criticism.” Vol. 26. Detroit: Gale, 1997. 226-271. Literature Criticism Online. Gale. Web. 9 July 2014.
Krstovic, Jelana. “Short Story Criticism.” Vol. 102. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2008. p281-396. Literature Criticism Online. Gale. Web. 09 July 2014.
“Profile: Philip Roth: Literary hit man with a 9/11 bullet in his gun.” The Times, 19 Sept. 2004. Web. 09 July 2014.
Shechner, Mark. Up Society’s Ass, Copper: Rereading Philip Roth. Madison: U of Wisconsin, 2003. Print.