American Pastoral - Plot

Plot

Seymour Levov is born and raised in the Weequahic section of Newark as the son of a successful Jewish-American glove manufacturer. Called "the Swede" because of his anomalous blond hair, blue eyes and Nordic good looks, he is a star athlete in three sports and narrator Nathan Zuckerman's idol and hero. The Swede eventually takes over his father's glove factory, Newark Maid, and marries Dawn Dwyer, an Irish-American Miss New Jersey 1949 winner (the actual winner that year was Betty Jane Crowley).

Levov establishes what he believes to be a perfect American life with a beloved family, a satisfying business life, and a beautiful old home in rural Old Rimrock, New Jersey. Yet as the Vietnam War and racial unrest wrack the country and destroy inner-city Newark, Seymour's teenage daughter Merry, born with an emotionally debilitating stutter, and outraged at the United States' conduct in Vietnam, becomes more radical in her beliefs and in 1968 commits an act of political terrorism. In protest against the Vietnam War and the "system," she plants a bomb in a local post office and the resulting explosion kills a bystander. In this singular act, Levov is cast out of the seemingly perfect life he has built and thrown instead into a world of chaos and dysfunction. Like a number of real-life members of the Weather Underground, Seymour's daughter goes permanently into hiding. In Zuckerman's narration, a reunion of father and daughter takes place in 1973 in Newark's ruined inner city, where Merry is living in abysmal conditions. During this reunion, she claims that since the first bombing she has set off several other bombs resulting in more deaths and that she has been repeatedly raped while living in hiding. Though informed by Merry that she acted consciously and willingly in the murders, Seymour decides to keep their meeting a secret, unwilling to give up his notion of her as essentially an innocent who has been manipulated by stronger influences in the form of an unknown political group.

Zuckerman concludes his version with a dinner party with Seymour's parents and several friends, during which Seymour discovers that his wife has been having an affair with a mutual friend and attendee of the party. The narrator also reveals that Seymour himself has had an affair with Merry's speech therapist who is also attending the party, and had been responsible for hiding Merry in their home after the first bombing. Seymour concludes that all the members of the party have a veneer of respectability, yet each participates in subversive behavior, and that he is unable to understand the truth about anyone based on the actions they reveal outwardly. In this final scene, the narrator reveals Seymour to have concluded that his daughter's actions have made him to see the truth about the chaos beneath the pastoral surface of things, something he can no longer ignore.