The Human Stain

Plot Summary
[WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD]

From the back of the novel:

"It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would astonish his most virulent accuser. Coleman Silk has a secret, one which has been kept for fifty years from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman. It is Zuckerman who stumbles upon Silk's secret and sets out to reconstruct the unknown biography of this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, and to understand how this ingeniously contrived life came unraveled. And to understand also how Silk's astonishing private history is, in the words of The Wall Street Journal, 'magnificently' interwoven with 'the larger public history of modern America.'"

Letters in The Human Stain


In general, writing plays an important role in The Human Stain. Coleman Silk spent years working as a professor and tries (but fails) to write a memoir. The whole novel is told from the perspective of a novelist, Nathan Zuckerman. However, some of the most interesting writing comes in the form of letters and e-mails. The most important of these correspondences come from women in Coleman’s life.

The first, Steena, is his first white girlfriend. At the beginning of their relationship, she writes him a poem that he misreads, thinking she has discovered his racial passing. Years after Coleman reveals his race to her and Steena ends the relationship, she sends him a letter essentially apologizing for her past decisions.

Delphine Roux, his rival professor also writes two crucial correspondences. The first comes anonymously, but Coleman immediately recognizes her handwriting. She accuses him of sexually abusing Faunia, a young, illiterate janitor he has developed a relationship with. She also writes an e-mail describing her ideal man (who resembles Coleman) that she accidentally sends to her colleagues.

Pages Analyzing The Human Stain
The Human Stain: Book or Letter?

Letters v. Emails: The Showdown

How Trustworthy are Letters?

Outward Layers: Fashion in Conjunction with the Envelope

The Dialects of Passing

Illiteracy

Different “Languages” in The Human Stain

The Human Stain and Passing as Metanarratives