Philip Roth's Mock Lincoln

This article considers the core political ideas that animate Philip Roth's McCarthy-era novel I Married a Communist through a critical analysis of the novel's central character, Ira Iron Rinn Ringold. It argues that, with Ira, Roth dramatizes the ambiguity that surrounds both the Lincolnian ideal of individual self-determination and the intractable presence of betrayal in the theory and practice of American liberal democracy.