Philip Roth
The narrator and protagonist of the novel, the “Philip Roth” of the book is a fictionalized younger version of author Philip Roth. He’s Herman and Bess’s son and Sandy’s younger brother. By fictionalizing…
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Herman Roth
Philip and Sandy’s father and Bess’s husband is a loud, emotional firecracker of a man who believes staunchly and steadfastly in the promises of America. Herman is a deeply political person and staunch…
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Bess Roth
Philip and Sandy’s mother and Herman’s wife is a loving, emotional, anxious woman who fights tooth and nail to remain grounded and clear-headed for her family as America plummets into crisis. Raised in…
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Sanford “Sandy” Roth
Philip’s older brother and Herman and Bess’s son Sandy is a talented artist whose intense desire to please others and prove himself leads him down a dangerous path. Sandy harbors a secret love…
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Alvin Roth
Alvin is Philip and Sandy’s 20-year-old cousin. An orphan, Alvin is the son of Herman’s deceased brother. At the start of the novel, Alvin is living on his own, but he’s been Herman…
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Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf
A Newark rabbi who leads his congregation in the Jewish Conservative moment, Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf is one of the novel’s major antagonists. In many ways, Bengelsdorf—a tall and genteel widower from South Carolina who talks…
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Aunt Evelyn
Bess’s sister Evelyn and Philip and Sandy’s aunt is a flighty, easily-influenced woman whose long string of affairs with married men have left her, by the start of the novel, desperate for legitimate…
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Charles Lindbergh
Lindbergh is was a real-life American aviation hero who catapulted to fame in 1927 when he piloted his plane from New York to Paris in under 36 hours, completing the first nonstop transatlantic solo flight…
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Walter Winchell
Winchell was a real-life Jewish ex-vaudevillian, popular radio host, and gossip columnist who rose to prominence in the 1920s and ‘30s through his work at the New York Daily Mirror. Winchell’s outspokenness and irreverence…
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)
FDR was the 32nd president of the United States, the author of the progressive New Deal programs, and the leader of America’s entry into World War II in 1941. A progressive figure who won an…
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Seldon Wishnow
Seldon is a young boy Philip’s age who lives in the apartment downstairs from the Roth family in their multi-family house in Newark. Seldon is an awkward, nerdish boy who loves playing chess and…
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Uncle Monty
Herman’s brother Monty is the wealthy, outspoken, and generally crass owner of a produce market in Newark. Monty has had a good deal of financial success, yet his business is beholden to the local mob…
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Earl Axman
Earl is an older boy whom Philip often plays with after school. Earl— whose parents are divorced, “glamorous,” and absent—is a bad influence on Philip. It is with Earl that Philip begins his after-school habit…
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Shepsie Tirschwell
An old boyhood friend of Herman Roth’s, Shepsie runs the Newsreel Theater in Newark, a movie house which plays news footage that Shepsie himself carefully curates and splices together. Shepsie and his family make…
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Mrs. Wishnow
Mrs. Wishnow is Seldon’s mother and Mr. Wishnow’s wife (and later, his widow). Mrs. Wishnow is a kind and empathetic woman who wants her son to fit in. Shortly after she and Sheldon…
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Mr. Wishnow
Mr. Wishnow is Seldon’s father and Mrs. Wishnow’s husband. Mr. Wishnow, who has long been sick with cancer of the mouth and throat, dies early on in the novel. While Bess insists that…
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne is Charles Lindbergh’s wife and the First Lady of the United States in author Philip Roth’s fictional reimagining of the years 1940–1942. Anne Morrow Lindbergh remains in the background for much of the…
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Charles Lindbergh, Jr.
Sometimes referred to as “The Lindbergh Baby,” Charles Lindbergh, Jr. was the real-life son of Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. When Charles was scarcely two, he disappeared from his bed in the middle…
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Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia
La Guardia was the real-life mayor of New York City from 1934–1945. He was half-Jewish and half-Italian. Though a registered Republican, La Guardia was a pro-New Deal progressive who instituted major reforms in Depression-era New…
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Burton K. Wheeler
Wheeler was a real-life U.S. senator from Montana who initially supported FDR during his first term but eventually opposed several New Deal tenets and soon became Roosevelt’s political enemy. Once a more liberal democrat, in…
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Abe Steinheim
Steinheim is a wealthy and magnetic Jewish construction mogul in Newark. Alvin works as Abe’s driver for a time, and though Abe offers to send Alvin to college and help him make something of himself…
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FBI Agent/Agent McCorkle
McCorkle is a casually anti-Semitic FBI agent who looks into the Roths several times over the span of a year or two, confronting each member of the family alone to ask about the political speech…
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Longy Zwillman
Zwillman was a real-life Jewish gangster and Prohibition-era bootlegger who was a member of East Coast racketeering’s “Big Six” throughout the 1930s and 1940s. In the novel, Longy is a powerful boss who does whatever…
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Mr. Cucuzza
Mr. Cucuzza is the patriarch of the family who moves into the apartment below the Roths’ as part of the Good Neighbors program. Mr. Cucuzza, like Herman Roth, deeply opposes the spread of fascism in…
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Benito Mussolini
Mussolini was the real-life Italian leader whose totalitarian dictatorship inspired Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. Known as Il Duce, Mussolini founded Italian Fascism and was the leader of the National Fascist Party from…
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Leo Frank
Frank was a real-life Jewish pencil factory superintendent who was convicted of the murder of a 13-year-old employee, Mary Phagan in 1913. He was lynched by a mob two years later despite overwhelming evidence that…
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Adolf Hitler
Hitler was the real-life German dictator and leader of the Nazi Party who rose to power as Führer in 1934, initiated World War II in Europe by invading Poland in September of 1939 and engineered…
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Mr. Taylor
A tour guide whom the Roths meet during their trip to Washington, D.C. Hermanand Bess are initially skeptical about hiring Mr. Taylor to take them around to the historical sites and monuments throughout the…
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Minor Characters
Shushy Margulis
Margulis is one of Alvin’s neighborhood friends in Newark. Shushy is a two-bit gangster who organizes crapshoots around the neighborhood and engages in minor delinquencies. Herman despises Shushy, as he’s a bad influence on the vulnerable and rootless Alvin.
Niggy and Bullet Apfelbaum
The Apfelbaums are a pair of brothers who work as underlings for the notorious Jewish gangster Longy Zwillman.
The Mawhinneys
A Kentucky family who take Sandy in during his summer in Kentucky with the Just Folks program. The Mawhinneys later help the Roths to rescue Seldon from Danville in the midst of anti-Semitic riots which break out in the nearby Louisville.
Joey Cucuzza
Joey is a mischievous 11-year-old boy who moves into the apartment below the Roths’ with his family as part of the Good Neighbors program. Joey harbors harmful ideas about Jews, and even confides in Philip that he believes Jews drink the blood of Gentiles.
Minna Schapp
Minna is Alvin’s fiancée. She’s a timid, nervous girl who is the daughter of a reformed Jewish gangster in Philadelphia.
Hermann Göring
Göring was a real-life figure who was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party. He was the commander of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) and the creator of the Gestapo (Nazi secret police).
Joachim von Ribbentrop
Ribbentrop was a real-life figure who was a powerful member of the Nazi Party and the Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany from 1938–1945.
Emperor Hirohito
Hirohito was the real-life 124th emperor of Japan who reigned from 1926–1947. After Japan’s August 1945 surrender in World War II, Hirohito was not prosecuted for war crimes. He continued to rule the state of Japan until his death in 1989.
Rabbi Joachim Prinz
Prinz was a real-life rabbi, author, and civil rights activist who served as the rabbi of Temple B’nai Abraham in Newark from 1939–1977.
