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Nemesis: “the inescapable agent of someone's or something's downfall.��
“a long-standing rival; an archenemy.��
“a downfall caused by an inescapable agent.��
The Oxford Language Dictionary


Nemesis is the 8th book I have read by Philip Roth. I chose this book to read more or less by accident. Scanning my book shelves at home my eyes fell upon a bright yellow paperback written by Philip Roth. Roth has been under much discussion by friends on GR lately so I thought, “yes, let’s read some “Dick-Lit�� (thank you, Robin for the category name)." Well, was I in for a surprise. This book is not Dick-Lit nor is it in any way recognizable to me as a book written by a Philip Roth known to me. It’s actually a heartbreaking novel of historical fiction about a polio epidemic that raged through Newark, New Jersey from 1944-1945 disabling and killing many children. At the same time, WWII is raging in Europe and many sons of Newark are fighting overseas. The story mostly focuses on the polio epidemic but the war overseas is in the background throughout, coming into the foreground as parents receive word of the death of a son. Nemesis is also a story with themes relevant today with the Covid pandemic still rampant around the world.

WWII is also in the mind of Bucky Cantor, our protagonist. Bucky is an athletic and strong 23 year old playground director who is devoted to the kids under his supervision and very disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his peers.

The story begins during the summer of 1944 and we learn that summer is the season for polio. Why? At that time, no one knew but “escaping the city’s heat entirely and being sent off to a summer camp in the mountains or the countryside was considered a child’s best protection against catching polio.�� The children whose parents couldn’t afford to go away for the summer would congregate on the baking asphalt of the playgrounds in the scorching heat, playing inning after inning of softball, doing exactly what they weren’t supposed to do, overexerting themselves (a possible cause of polio) drinking from the forbidden water fountains, “crowding up against one another�� unmindful of how (their) imprudence might be dooming any one of (them)..�� And children start dying in record numbers.

"The numbers of the kids sick and dying from polio in Newark corresponded to the numbers of the dead, wounded, and missing in the real war (WWII)... because this was real war too....upon the children of Newark.��

On a deeper level this story asks the age-old question after tragedy strikes,“Why?�� Why do certain children die from polio while others escape it’s grasp? Why do some of their older brothers die in the war in Europe? These are the questions which most human beings ask after tragedy strikes. Why him? Why my child? Why? In Newark, there were many things blamed: the heat, pests, the Jews, lack of cleanliness, certain fruits and vegetables or other foods which may have been consumed just before a child became sick. Bucky was to blame at one point for not protecting the kids. The list of things to blame and scapegoat goes on and on��..because parents were desperate to find the reason for polio and to shield their child from it.

As more and more children contract Polio Newark parents become more and more angry and scared about this horrible “nemesis.�� Early on in the story a father, Mr. Michaels, asks why his son Alan had to die:�� He “always did his schoolwork…always helped his mother. Not a selfish bone in his body. Was going to begin in September to prepare for his Bar Mitzvah. Polite. Neat. Wrote each of his brothers (fighting overseas) V-mail letters�� Why did Alan get polio? Why did he have to get sick and die?��

With “Why, �� Who? or What? often follows. Someone or something must be responsible for tragedy. Blame must rest somewhere. Since the reason for polio was as yet unknown God is often mentioned in one way or another. As Bucky asks, after too many of the kids he knows and loves have died:
“And where does God figure in this? Why does He set one person down in Nazi-occupied Europe with a rifle in his hands and the other in the Indian Hills dining lodge in front of a plate of macaroni and cheese? Why does He place one Weequahic child in polio-ridden Newark for the summer and another in the splendid sanctuary of the Poconos?��."

Bucky, who tries so hard to take good care of the kids under his charge changes drastically over the course of the novel as does his view of God:

"Bucky's...conception of God was of an omnipotent being who was a union not of three persons in one Godhead, as in Christianity, but of two, a sick fuck and an evil genius.��

Roth understands the ever so human and often very Jewish proclivity towards both self-blame and the questioning of God by previously fervent believers.

"Bucky... had to convert tragedy into guilt. There is an epidemic and he has to find a reason for it. He has to ask why��..he looks desperately for a deep cause, this manic of the why, and finds the why either in God or in himself....or both��

This novel and it’s questions resonated on a very personal level for me. I can recall asking why? when someone close to me died way too young or was diabled in a cruel way. I also recognize the trait of self-blame. I am an atheist so do not recognize in myself the blaming of God for tragedy, at least not as an adult.

On a side note, in my reading of many Holocaust memoirs I recall that some religious Jews were unable to believe in God any longer, for if there were a God, how could he let the Holocaust happen? They became secular Jews. While some secular Jews came to think that if they had believed in God the Holocaust might not have happened or they and their families would not have been so tragically affected by it. They became religious Jews.

My understanding of all of this is that human beings feel helpless in a world run amok and do what they can to understand and control it, whether that takes the form of self-blame, blaming God or blaming others (rightfully or wrongly). This takes different forms in different people and circumstances but seems to be universal.