Society today has many expectations for how people should look and act, and most people try their hardest to conform to these expectations so they can fit in. They act how they’re expected to, and dress according to the current styles. When everyone around you fits in, you are expected to fit in just as well. The pressure to fit in can be overwhelming, and Merry Levov is pressured so hard to be as perfect, normal, and successful as her parents, that she eventually breaks. In the novel American Pastoral by Philip Roth, the author demonstrates, through Merry and Seymour Levov’s life, that obsession with privilege and success can lead to corruption. Seymour Levov and his family live a successful and close to perfect life, which can be seen through…show more content… She is beautiful and sees herself as perfect, which is her own version of success. “During the week in September of 1949 leading up to the Miss America Pageant, when she called Newark every night from the Dennis Hotel to tell him what had happened to her that day as a Miss America contestant, what radiated from her voice was sheer delight in being herself” (Roth 181). Dawn Levov gains happiness from being perfect and beautiful, and cannot stand to see herself otherwise. Because of her beauty, she can be seen as the “perfect” wife, “Swede returns home in 1947 to enroll at Upsala College, and there he meets and marries Dawn Dwyer, Miss Union County, Miss New Jersey, and a contestant in the Miss America pageant of 1949. Swede Levov had done it: a Jewish boy living the American dream and marrying "a shiksa" (Nadal 1). The perfection of Dawn contributes to the perfect live of the Levovs, making love another successful aspect of the Swede’s life. Seymour Levov has lived his entire life with ease and…show more content… Seymour Levov does not understand why she became this way, and why she would rather live in such a terrible place when she could have a perfectly clean and nice home. Merry has changed everything she can about herself, to make herself the opposite of her father. “...she is an emaciated adherent of the Indian religion known as Jainism, and she carries her religious principles to such a morbid extreme that she does not bathe for fear of harming the microorganisms that reside on her skin. She is so revolting that the Swede vomits when he sees her...” (Hogan 1). Seymour is disgusted by what his daughter has become, the exact opposite of what he has envisioned for his family; she has finally denied him everything he and his wife pushed so strongly for during her entire
