American Pastoral | Style
Mythic Framework
This narrative about post-World War II American society is given a mythic and Biblical framework in the titles for the three sections into which the book is divided: “Paradise Remembered,” “The Fall,” and “Paradise Lost.” These are allusions to the book of Genesis, in which Adam and Eve disobey God and are thrust out of paradise, and to the epic poem by John Milton entitled Paradise Lost, in which the fall and the expulsion from Eden are presented. In the novel, paradise corresponds to Zuckerman’s recollections of the 1940s and to the...
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