Defender_Of_The_Faith

Defender Of The Faith In the short story “Defender of the Faith” by Philip Roth, Private Grossbart always justifies his seemingly selfish actions with the excuse of helping others. Sargent Marx sarcastically compares Grossbart to the Messiah. Through characterization and biblical references I will show the similarities and differences between the biblical Messiah and the Jewish Grossbart. I believe Grossbart is a person with a good heart but a bad motive. Grossbart helps his fellow Jews Out whenever he can but there’s one catch, he is most of the time at the receiving end of the gifts. While his gifts do help others, they mainly come back to him ten fold. It’s almost like the popular biblical story of the conscious, good versus evil, with some differences. Its like he has the demon on one shoulder and the angel on the other. The perilous decision do you choose to do well or do you chose evil. Grossbart does both, instead of choosing between the two he does good but for the wrong reasons. One vivid example of this exact scenario, minus the little demons dancing on his shoulder, is when Grossbart pleads with Sergeant Marx about being aloud to go to the Jewish synagogue, grossbart, messiah, marx, others, jewish, sergeant, one, good, go, friday, biblical, being, two, synagogue, story, similarities, show, shoulder, services, rabbi, person, people, life, jew, himself, helps, heart, grossbart’s, gifts, fellow, example, evil, differences, between, along,