Previous
Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Goodbye, Columbus, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Relationships, Competition, and Power
Assimilation and Wealth
Self-Delusion and Fantasy vs. Self-Examination and Reality
Nostalgia vs. Progress
Summary
Analysis
The first time Neil meets Brenda is at a country club to which his cousin Doris belongs. Brenda asks Neil to hold her glasses for her, then she dives into the pool and returns to him to retrieve them. He is instantly drawn to her, and that night, Neil decides to call her. When his Aunt Gladys prods him about who he’s calling, he tells his Aunt that Brenda’s last name is Patimkin and that he met her at the club. Aunt Gladys says that she doesn’t know anyone named Patimkin, and Neil thinks that she wouldn’t know anyone who belongs to Green Lane Country Club.
Roth immediately establishes the class distinction between Brenda and Neil’s two families, even from Neil’s first interaction with Brenda. While Brenda belongs to the Green Lane Country Club, the fact that Aunt Gladys wouldn’t even know anyone who belongs to the country club—much less belong to it herself—implies that the two families move in different social circles.
Themes
Aunt Gladys returns to cooking dinner. Neil, his cousin Susan, Gladys, and his uncle Max all eat dinner at different times, which Neil explains is due to the fact that his aunt is crazy. He suggests to Gladys that they all eat the same meal together, saying that it’ll be easier for her. She replies that they all want to eat different things, and that it’s less work to serve four different meals at different times. She says, “Twenty years I'm running a house. Go call your girl friend.”
Here, Roth establishes the character of the family life that Neil has. He lives not with his parents but with his aunt, uncle, and cousin. Neil and his Aunt have a kind of classic banter, and the quote here illustrates the typical New York/New Jersey Jewish dialect and speech pattern that Aunt Gladys has.
Themes
Neil calls up the Patimkins’ house, but Brenda isn’t home, so he apologizes for calling and hangs up. Then Neil eats dinner: a pot roast with gravy, potatoes, peas, and carrots. Aunt Gladys pesters him as he eats, saying that she won’t buy peas if he doesn’t want to eat them, or that if he doesn’t like bread with seeds she wouldn’t have cut a slice for him. Neil protests, trying to assure her that he likes all of the food.
Roth suggests the family’s lower socioeconomic status through Aunt Gladys’s nervous concern about wasting food or spending money on food that Neil doesn’t like. Pot roast is also a stereotypically Jewish dish, establishing the connection between class and heritage as well.
Themes
Neil tries to call Brenda again after dinner, and this time she picks up. He introduces himself nervously, telling her that his name is Neil Klugman and that he held her glasses for her. She doesn’t remember him, but he asks her if he can see her tonight. She says she’ll be playing tennis, but that he can pick her up at 8:15 in Briarpath Hills. He says he’ll be driving a tan Plymouth (though he doesn’t say that it’s a very old model) and he hangs up, pleased.
Roth continues to provide small details that illustrate Brenda and Neil’s class divide. While she spends her time playing tennis at country clubs in the suburbs, Neil lives in an apartment in the city of Newark and drives a very old car. Cars are classic symbols of social status and the American dream, and the fact that he has a very old one illustrates that Neil may have some means, but not so much that he falls into the upper echelon of society, as Brenda does.
Themes
Get the entire Goodbye, Columbus LitChart as a printable PDF.
Neil drives out of Newark and approaches the suburbs, which he describes as driving “closer to heaven.” He arrives at the tennis court and sees Brenda, calling hello. She tells him that she’ll be one more game, which infuriates her opponent, Simp. As Brenda plays, Neil observes that in the sunlight, she seems to want to maintain an air of attractiveness—but as it grows darker, Brenda’s playing grows more intense and aggressive.
Neil’s thought about the suburbs being like heaven illustrates his idealization of the suburbs and the fact that he views them as a kind of fantasy. Additionally, here Roth constructs the idea that Brenda’s competitions (like the game of tennis) reflect her tendency to try to have power over others through winning. The game foreshadows how Neil will come to think of her throughout their relationship: as a formidable opponent.
Themes
After the game, Simp refuses Neil’s offer of a ride home. He asks Brenda why she calls the girl Simp, and Brenda reveals it’s her Bennington name. When Neil asks if Brenda goes to Bennington, she says she goes to school “in Boston.” This frustrates Neil, who understands the veiled meaning of people who hint at “Boston and New Haven.” He says that he always comes out and says that he went to Newark Colleges of Rutgers University. When he presses her on it, she admits she goes to Radcliffe.
The schools that Neil and Brenda attend represent another divide between them. Brenda goes to Radcliffe (the former sister school to Harvard and an elite private school), while Neil went to Rutgers (a public school). Neil is frustrated by the code of “Boston and New Haven”—which are unsubtle hints at Harvard and Yale—because he views it as a snobby way of hinting at one’s wealth and social status.
Themes
Neil and Brenda sit down on a bank of grass near the court, and he thinks, in her white outfit, that she looks like an angel and could have had wings. Brenda asks where Neil lives. When he says Newark, she remarks that she lived there when she was a baby. They start to walk together, and Brenda walks a step ahead of Neil.
Even this small exchange touches on many of the themes in the novella: Neil’s continued idealization of Brenda, whom he describes like an angel; the fact that Brenda’s family used to live where Neil lives, but now has the wealth to live in the suburbs; and the fact that Brenda is always trying to be a step ahead of Neil, in control of their conversation and their relationship.
Themes
Neil asks Brenda why she only rushes the net when it’s dark. She says that she doesn’t like to be too close to the net unless she knows that her opponent won’t return the hit. She explains that this is because of her nose, which she had fixed. He asks her what was wrong with her nose. She says it was “bumpy,” and that she wanted it to be “prettier.”
Because “bumpy” noses are stereotypical features of Jewish appearance, getting rid of the bump in Brenda’s nose is a marker of her assimilation and a desire to get rid of any aspects of her Jewish identity that will outwardly mark her as being different. She also inherently places a negative value judgement on that identity, arguing that without it she is prettier.
Themes
Brenda says that her brother Ron is getting his fixed, too. Neil asks if Ron wants to be “prettier,” too, and Brenda asks why Neil is being nasty. Neil apologizes. He then asks how much it costs; when she says $1,000, he asks to see if she got her money’s worth. Brenda asks if Neil will stop being nasty if she lets him kiss her. He goes silent, and pulls her in for a kiss, feeling a faint fluttering through her body as he does so, as though she has wings.
Even though it is clear that Neil has some resentment for Brenda’s wealth and the fact that she uses that wealth to try and assimilate to white Protestant American culture, he continues to view her as a fantasy in once again referring to her wings (like that of an angel).
Themes
