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STATUS In his short story “Defender of the Faith” Philip Roth uses dilemmas to effectively portray theme. The story raises our awareness to the fact that minorities sometimes use their status to manipulate the system. In “Defender of the Faith,” all the problems are between the same two people: between Marx, whose point of view the story is told from, and Grossbart, a common soldier. Both Grossbart and Marx are Jews. In some of these dilemmas, Grossbart comes out victorious, and in others Sergeant Marx realizes Grossbart’s crooked ways and stops him from manipulating the system. The first situation in the book is raised when Grossbart comes to ask Sergeant Marx if he has to attend G.I. parties on Friday nights like all the other soldiers, or if he can go to church, as he says it is very important to him. Marx is faced with a decision between making Grossbart clean the barracks with the rest of the soldiers, or letting him attend his worship services. Marx chooses to let Grossbart attend his worship services, but when Marx watches him at a service, Marx realizes he is not actually interested in the services, but that he is just there as a way of getting out of cleaning the barracks.
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