Betrayal
Seymour is betrayed by the people closest to him in his life. First his daughter is emotionally unstable. Despite insisting that she is fine, she snaps one day and sets off a bomb that kills somebody. Similarly, his wife professes her love for him. She says that she is committed to their marriage, but she is unhappy after Merry leaves. She has an affair and leaves Seymour. Finally, his own mistress never sums up the courage to commit to him.
Loneliness
Seymour is supposed to be leading the ideal country life, but things don't work out that way in reality. His daughter commits an act of treason and runs away from home. His wife cheats on him and leaves him.His brother despises him. Despite being located in just the right place and time to set up a beautifully simple life, Seymour can't hold it all together. His business fails. In desperation he has an affair with his daughter's former speech therapist. They don't last long. Though she promises to commit to him, the woman flakes in the end. At last, Seymour is all alone. Every person who put on a false front revealed their true colors in the end. He is forced to rework his beliefs about human nature in order to make sense of his overwhelming sense of loneliness.
Political Unrest
A dominant theme of the book is political unrest. The events of Seymour's life mostly occur during the 1960s and '70s. During that time America faced internal chaos. The Vietnam War polarized people, sparking an almost militant rebellion. The racial tensions also erupted into frequent spates of violence in the cities. When people turned on the TV, they were greeted with fear and confusion. This national disquiet parallels Seymour's personal turmoil as he tries to make sense of disappointment, loneliness, and despair.
Rebellion
Each of the characters in Seymour's life, and Seymour himself, all have defining rebellious moments. For whatever reason, they each make a series of choices which changes their life forever. Merry sets of the post office bomb, sending her life in a trajectory of running from police and keeping company with radical people opposed to the war. Fed up with Seymour's neediness and gloom, Dawn engages in an affair. She ends up leaving her husband for this other man. After all the others rebel, Seymour is forced to make some changes of his own. He chooses to alter his worldview to better interpret the dissonant actions of the people he had cared about in contrast to the things they professed to believe.
Past and Future
When the daughter takes part in bombing, the Swede explores the five years she has lived with her daughter, trying to establish where he wronged. Clearly, the novel swings back and forth, revealing a man who is haunted by memories of the past as well as prospects of the future and present.
Religion and Worship
The novel is majorly about worship. There are characters that are portrayed as devout Catholics. In addition to the formal forms of worship, it is clear that people worship wealth, power, greed, as well as the struggle for freedom. Moreover, the books answer the concerns about the inter-religious marriage between the Swede and Dawn. However, the Swede perceives religion as a bother and a threat. According to him, the American experience should not be chained freed of religion but freedom from religion.
Guilt and Blame
The theme of guilt and blame is clearly depicted throughout the novel. We can see that the Swede blames everything and nothing about Meredith actions. Driven by guilt, he offers various reasons why Meredith carried out the attack. The reasons are related to the themes explored in the previous sections such as politics, family, warfare, and religious ideologies.
Picture of America
American Pastoral illustrates a picture of the old America that spans about ten decades, from the 1890s to the 1990s. Notably, the story also briefly settles on the happenings during the Second World War, which narrows on the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. The story reveals that the American dream is almost like a nightmare, as the events cause the ostensible pastoral to is overtaken by realistic berserk circumstances.
Family
The American Pastoral presents the Levov family as an unhappy one. After Meredith bombs the post office and subsequently disappear, the household thrives in crisis from that moment. The narrator and protagonist, Nathan Zuckerman restructures the misfortune and explores the massive impacts it has on the family. Notably, it can be seen that individuals like Meredith are symbols of a nightmare to every parent.
Appearances
The narrator intends to find out what takes place beyond the outward appearances and presentation of the Swede. When he finally learns that his daughter was involved in the bombing of the post office, it is sufficient to imagine the emotional turmoil the Swede experiences. Moreover, the novel explores the ideological perceptions of being American and how outward looks factor into the American dream. Evidently, the Swede’s life, as well as that of the whole nation, is full of chaos and unbridled berserk. Therefore, we see what lies behind the appearances is a bold contrast from pastoral America.
Language and Communication
There are numerous miscommunications throughout the novel. Through the narration, we get Meredith’s stuttering, the reunion speech of the narrator that never was, and how the media shapes the reality in the society. The individuals are talking and writing much but still remains hard to understand their points. Notably, we can state that the book shows incorrect imaginations of a person about the unsuccessful communication within the family. There are many instances of messed-up communications throughout the novel.
Writing and Literature
The novel is a chronicle of an American family that undergoes social chaos as well as about writing novels. When the narrator begins to be preoccupied with the early years of his idol, he finds out the mysteries of the household. Meredith, the Swede’s daughter had killed someone after participating in the terror attack. Because the narrator’s idol is deceased when he learns about these facts, he is compelled to write a fictional account about the happenings and the imagined experiences of the Swede. This result in the novel about the Swede which was titled American Pastoral.
