Marcus is the quintessential over-achiever. He is the first in a family of Kosher butchers to attend college. He begins his studies at a small college, Robert Treat, in his hometown of Newark, N.J.. When his heretofore reasonable father suddenly becomes overprotective and hectoring, Marcus flees from his home, searching to get far away, literally and figuratively, from the little urban, Jewish ghetto he grew up in. He ends up attending school at a small, liberal arts college in rural Ohio, the fictional and ironically titled Winesburg College.
At Winesburg, know-it-all, uncompromising Marcus locks horns with roommates, and is constantly on the move till he manages to secure a room unto himself. Isolated, he falls in with a rich but troubled gentile girl who is equally isolated. Although initially attracted by Olivia's sexual antics, compassionate Marcus becomes more solidly attached to her when he discovers her troubled past: a suicide attempt, alcoholism, and treatment at a hospital.
Marcus' Jewish mama eventually puts an end to the relationship. Olivia takes this poorly, has a nervous breakdown, and is expelled. And, there's a dark secret: Olivia is pregnant. Marcus discovers this when the Dean calls him into his office and questions him on the matter. Marcus and Olivia's relationship having come to his attention, the Dean believes Marcus has impregnated a troubled and emotionally disturbed girl. Having previously dealt with the rude and obstreperous Marcus on another issue, the Dean believes he has Marcus in his hands. However, although he fears expulsion as a prelude to being drafted, Marcus stands by his rights and truthfully denies having anything to do with Olivia's pregnancy. He proclaims his innocence and dares the Dean to punish him, an innocent man. To make matters worse, when the Dean suggests Marcus' version of events is not true, Marcus defiantly replies, "'Oh, fuck you it is!'"(192).
Occurring near the end of a novel heavily foreshadowed by tragedy, it's hard to believe this wont be the proverbial last straw. Certainly Marcus wont be taken at his word, certainly he will be unjustly expelled for this, and, as he's feared throughout the book, drafted and sent to Korea. Yet, his actual expulsion is occasioned by a far less glamorous and poetic misdeed. Marcus is expelled soon afterward, not for having fallen helplessly in love with a beautiful and troubled girl, but instead for the far more mundane crime of paying another student to attend a mandatory chapel in his place.
Ironies surround this misdeed. For one, Roth first has Marcus resists this misdeed as something undeserving and below him, only to have him succumb in one of his few moments of weakness. Moreover, in doing so, he follows the advice of the hypocritical, goody-two shoes, Jewish boy wonder Sonny Cottler. Marcus has contempt for Cottler, despite (or likely because of) his parents endorsement of Sonny as a model for Marcus. In a particularly cruel twist, Marcus; father warns and worries about a myriad of potential dangers, but endorses the very danger that proves deadly. Of course, Marcus hardly takes Cottler's advice in response to his father's advice. Instead, he follows it at a moment when he simply grows weary and tired of always battling the powers that be. In effect, it is his one uncharacteristic moment or decision which might be pointed to as the immediate or efficient cause of his end.
And, this straw of a misdeed doesn't have to be the last one. Despite the fact he's very likely offended and eager to punish self-righteous Marcus, the merciful Dean offers the offending Marcus an option: expulsion or a doubling of the normal mandatory chapel attendance. Yet, seemingly fated by character, Marcus can't accept such a gift. "Like the Messner that he was"(230), convinced he's done nothing wrong, hardheaded Marcus stands on right and is expelled. Shortly afterward, as feared and expected, he's drafted, sent to Korea, and meets his end in a particularly fierce battle.
I call him hard-headed and am not sure what part of that conclusion I brought to the book and what part is the result of Roth's subtle pleading. There is something to be said for Marcus and his refusal to bow. Roth's epigraph is a line from e.e. Cummings "I sing of Olaf glad and big":
Olaf (upon what once were knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
'There is some shit I will not eat'
Cumming's Olaf is intended as a hero. There is something heroic about Marcus. Yet, as Roth implies, Olaf the conscientious objector to war and Marcus the battler are both equally stubborn (or principled) and equally dead as a result. If this is character and principle, it doesn't seem too evolutionarily advantageous. The world in which Roth situates Marcus almost seems designed to torment and kill him.
In summary, Roth turns a caustic eye toward Marcus and his idealism. Sure, it is admirable to a point; we've all eaten shit and wondered while munching if it was necessity or simply a weakness. We've pondered the possible satisfactions of an exalted virtue, of saying no even though doing so brought wrath down upon us. But, as Roth frames it, Marcus' story ultimately points to an underlying absurdity in the world and the futility of striving, either for security or principle, in such a world. Near the end, he concludes,
"had he been able to stomach chapel and keep his mouth shut, [Marcus] would have received his undergraduate degree from Winesburg College-more likely as class valedictorian-and thus have postponed learning what his uneducated father had been trying so hard to teach him all along: of the terrible, the incomprehensible way one's most banal, accidental, even comical choices achieve the most disporportionate result,"(231).
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