The mother with the knife in her hand forcing him to eat represents the difficulty of raising her children and teaching them social norms. The Jewish people make their voices heard louder by representing the minority to obtain their social position in society. These stereotypes are Roth's Jewish joke. His complaint, his identity consists of the Jewish joke. As Alex complains to his doctor, “I'm living this in the middle of a Jewish joke! I'm the son of the Jewish joke, only it's not a joke!” (36, 37). He mentioned in the middle that it means he is in conflict between two cultural forces. Portney's opinions, as all of her teachers are similar to her mother. The social model he learned from his teacher and parents and his self-critical consciousness have established a superego in his mind. Now his ego is dark in finding his own identity and worrying about the Jewish minority, its thousand-year history and its representation in the contemporary.