American Pastoral

The Swede’s house in Old Rimrock, with its 170-year-old stone construction and dark, drafty corners, represents a ticket to the metaphorical chocolate factory, an entry to a world the Swede views as more authentically American than his Newark roots. Even as a boy, he romanticizes the house as a symbol of success, of having broken the chains of second-class immigrant status. Walking across his 100-acre property, the Swede imagines himself as Johnny Appleseed, that quintessential American folk hero. The acquisition of property has always been a marker of status in the American hierarchy—originally, it was a requirement of voting rights—and the Swede’s house and land mark him as an unequivocal American success story.

When Dawn decides to build a new house—one that corrects the aging house’s flaws—the Swede sees it as a betrayal. The house is the culmination of his hard work and his dreams, but for Dawn, the house represents heartbreak. In every room, she sees and hears a young Merry, innocent and joyful. The reality of what Merry has become is too much to bear. For Dawn, the only way to escape her pain is to escape the house. While the Swede accedes to Dawn’s wishes, losing the house is another heartbreak for him: the end of a lifelong dream to remake himself as a true American.

Dawn’s Miss New Jersey crown represents vastly different identities for her and the Swede. For Dawn, it’s a bejeweled symbol of a past she’d like to forget. The Miss America pageant was strictly a means to an end (scholarship money), but when it becomes the central part of her identity for years afterward—she is always introduced as “Former Miss New Jersey, Dawn Dwyer”—she grows to resent the whole experience. She is much more than a pageant contestant: She is a classically trained musician, a breeder of prize-winning cattle, a mother, and more. Even in middle age, she must deal with the condescension of people like Marcia Umanoff, an academic who refuses to see Dawn as anything more than a beauty queen who skates through life on her good looks. She keeps the crown in a box in her closet, and she’d just as soon forget about it.

For the Swede, the crown represents the vigor and ambition of his youth, when courting a Miss America contestant was just one more sign that he had made it. While Dawn’s and the Swede’s memories of her pageant days differ drastically—they each remember the time in a way that reinforces their own self-image—there’s no doubt the Swede romanticizes those days. For him, the crown represents an idealized, unrealistic view of Dawn, a view that doesn’t include the scars and wrinkles of their current unhappiness. When he wants Dawn to wear the crown for Merry, she disparages it as “silly.” The crown, along with all the other trappings of the pageant—the swimsuit, the chaperone, the patronizing rules—is a part of her life she’s left behind despite the Swede’s desire to drag it back into the present.

So much of American Pastoral concerns itself with how we view the past. When Rita Cohen demands the Swede turn over Merry’s scrapbook, she is demanding a piece of Merry’s past, of her youth and innocence. Audrey Hepburn, elegant, slim, and beautiful, is everything Merry, as a teen, is not, and Merry’s scrapbook is a testament to her aspiration to overcome her stutter, her defiance, and her awkwardness. The Swede would like to see his daughter this way as well, and for him, the scrapbook represents Merry before she surrenders to her anger and violence. Like Dawn’s crown, the scrapbook is a relic of the past, a relic the Swede cannot bear to turn over to a complete stranger, and yet he does, seeing it as the only way to recover his daughter. With no other options left, he cedes a part of his and his daughter’s past to confront the tragedy of the present.