Goodbye Columbus

Neil is the protagonist and narrator of the title story of Roth’s collection, “Goodbye, Columbus.” A young man in his early twenties, he tries to find himself in his love of Brenda Patimkin but struggles to accept the differences in their class and social standing. As their relationship grows, Neil becomes more and more preoccupied with the influence she tries to exert over him to make him more acceptable in her bourgeois social world. Neil realizes while staying with the Patimkins that Brenda tries to shape him to fit in when they begin running in the mornings in matching outfits: “I had the feeling that Brenda was not talking about the accidents of our dress—if they were accidents. She meant, I was sure, that I was somehow beginning to look the way she wanted me to. Like herself” (70). Neil believes that Brenda’s efforts to make him exercise, and to dress him in the style of herself and her family, are attempts to change him—to make him more like the other people in her life and less like the boy from Newark he is. His insecurity about not being accepted by her family, and his worries that she will leave, push him to advocate for a diaphragm, believing that this will be like a marriage between them.