PARADISE SOUGHT: ADAMIC IMAGERY IN SELECTED NOVELS BY SAUL BELLOW AND KURT VONNEGUT, JR. by STEVEN MARC GERSON, B.A., M.A. A DISSERTATION IN ENGLISH . Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved Chairman of. the Committee - ,.;- - - - -c. - t \44 <1a c<:rC'lz<S \~ ' < ' I'S?V\ yu..o '-&\ > < Accepted ~n o~he d)aduate School December, 1977 I > '-'•/' ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Dr. V/alter McDonald not only for the instruction he gave me while I was a student in his classes but also for the understand­ ing and assistance he provided while I worked on my dissertation. I would also like to thank Dr. Vt'arren Walker, Dr. Richard Crider, and Dr. Peter Abernethy. I especially want to thank Dr. J. Wilkes Berry who helped me scholostically and, more importantly, was a friend to whom I could always turn. My family also deserves my thanks, inasmuch as they supported my quest for a Ph.D. in a variety of ways. Finally, I reserve my most heartfelt thanks for my wife Sharon, to whom I owe everything and to whom I dedicate this dissertation ii CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 11 I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. SAUL BELLOW 43 J,b^ Adventures of Augie March 46 Herzog 69 Henderson the Rain Kina 84 Mr. Sommler's Planet 101 Summary 122 III. KURT VONNEGUT, JR. 125 A. Illusions of Paradise 127 The Sirens of Titan 127 Cat's Cradle 142 Slaughterhouse-Five 150 Mother Night 165 B. Adaptation to the World 178 Player Piano 178 God Bless You. Mr. Rosewater 195 C. Summary 214 IV. CONCLUSION 218 BIBLIOGRAPHY 224 111 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Numerous modern American novels written after World War II hove been discussed primarily as negativis- tic novels of the absurd, entropic post-waste land ven­ tures, or hopeless black-humor revelations of a grotesque society. The critics who make such assertions also con­ tend that post-war novelists seem to employ a variety of negative and imprecise methods which ore tantamount to the novelists' negative themes. Many modern American novels, however, con be viewed from a different perspec­ tive. They can be seen as more positive than negative and as employing a consistent and intelligible imagery through which such oblique affirmation is revealed. In­ terestingly, a great number of American novels published between the mid-1950's and the mid-1970's employ the myth Significant critics making such assertions ore Charles B. Harris, Contemporary American Novelists of the Absurd (New Haven: College and Univ. Press, 1971 ); Ray­ mond B. Olderman, Beyond The Waste Land: A Study of the American Novel in the Niheteen-Sixties (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1972); and Max F. Schultz, Black Humor Fic­ tion of the Sixties: A Pluralistic Definition of Man and His World (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1973). of on American Adam who fruitlessly seeks an American 2 Eden. Through the imagery implied in this myth, the novelists develop a recurrent theme--the need to accept and adapt to life's tragedies and complications rather than to attempt to escape them. Though a number of novelists employ Adamic imagery in order to develop this theme, few novelists use the imagery as consistently as do Saul Bellow and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Whereas other novelists employ Adamic imagery in only a few selected instances. Bellow and Vonnegut employ it in the majority of their novels. Vonnegut depicts protagonists who ore Adamic and seek G paradise in which they can hide in no less than six novels; Bellow employs Adamic imagery significantly in no less than four of his novels. Because Bellow and Vonnegut employ the imagery so consistently, they reveal more completely the devel­ opment of modern Adamism than do other novelists. That is, because Bellow and Vonnegut use Adamic imagery so Besides John Steinbeck's East of Eden, which obviously is concerned with Adamic imagery, among other examples of novels employing this imagery are Joseph Heller's Catch-22. John Berth's The Sot-Weed Factor. Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Thomas Berger's Little Big Man, and Richard Brau.tigan's The Abortion. copiously, they are able to vary the ways in which their protagonists can be construed as Adamic and thus reveal the brood ramifications of modern Adamism. Furthermore, because Bellow and Vonnegut use Adamic imagery in a num­ ber of novels, these authors ore able to supply a broader scope of remedies for escapism than ore other authors who employ the imagery to a lesser degree. Though American Adamism certainly is not a new topic, it surprisingly has not been extensively explored as it relates to these two modern American novelists. 3 In order to show that Adamism relates to Bellow and Von­ negut and that the modern American Adamic myth reveals a consistent affirmative theme, one must first define what is meant by "myth," discuss the various and often over­ lapping myths upon which much of American literature is dependent, show how the modern American Adamic myth dif­ fers from these earlier myths, delineate the varied images 3 The most thorough discussion of the Adamic myth OS seen in nineteenth-century literature is R.W.B. Lewis' The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy and Tradi­ tion in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: The Univ. oT Chicago Press, 1955) . David V/. Noble' s The Eternal Adorn and the New World Garden: The Central Myth in the Ameri­ can Novel Since 1B30 (New York: George Broziller, 1968), revises and updates the myth slightly; Frederic I. Car­ penter supplies an interesting overview of Adamism in his article "'The American Myth': Paradise (To Be) Regained," PMLA, 74 (December, 1959), 599-606. which are involved in the creation of modern Adamism, and then show how this modern myth is evident in the selected works of Bellow and Vonnegut. Though "myth" includes a number of diverse qualities, it best con be understood as possessing two distinctions. First, it involves a traditional tale, allegory, or parable which is believed to express a supposed philosophical truth about mankind. In this sense, Holman in A Handbook To Literature defines myths as "dramatic or narrative embodiments of a people's perception of the deepest truths." Similarly, Henry Nash Smith states in Virgin Land, a classic study of the American West as myth, that "myth" is on image which is the fusion of concept and emotion and which is a "col­ lective representation rather than the work of a single mind." It is therefore a shared experience on the level of an archetype; one myth can be employed by many men to express similar desires. John McAleer further explains this point by defining myth as "the image a particular Hugh C. Holman, A Handbook to Literature (New York: Odyssey Press, Inc., 1972), p. 334. Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1950), p. vii. age gives to its central ideas."^ Despite the fact that "myth" entails the presentation of a shared truth, the second distinct quality of a myth paradoxically negates or at least qualifies the first. "Myth" also implies a false ideal. As Northrop Frye points out, "The fact that myth operates at the top level of human desire does not mean that it necessarily presents its world as attained or attainable by human beings." Therefore, though "myth" of course has many religious and philosophical qualities, for the purpose of this study "myth" can be limited to in­ volve on unattainable goal which nonetheless con be viewed as expressing the collective desires of on era. Throughout the history of American literature, and especially in the nineteenth century, a variety of often overlapping myths that seem peculiar to American thought have been evident. Primarily, however, three myths have dominated the critical discussion of nine­ teenth- and twentieth-century American literature, and no fewer than fourteen authors have written complete John J. McAleer, "Biblical Symbols in Ameri­ can Literature: A Utilitarian Design," English Studies, 46 (August, 1965), 310. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957), p. 136 books on the subject. These three myths of America are concerned with the American dream, the American frontier and V/est as symbol, and early American Adamism. Like other myths, these three distinctly Amer­ ican myths do attempt to express the character of on age and reveal a quest for unobtainable goals. In this v/oy, the three myths coincide with the modern American Adamic myth. However, the myths of the American dream, the frontier and West as symbol, and early American Adamism, which incidentally deal almost exclusively with the Amer­ ican renaissance, differ greatly from modern American Adamism. The earlier myths of America, in depicting their protagonists as either dreamers, frontiersmen, or early Adams, invest in these protagonists "on air of ad- o venturousness, a sense of promise and possibility." Re­ gardless of which mask the early American protagonists wear, these protagonists are usually innocent, optimistic men who constantly strive forward and resourcefully seek to achieve the American dream of on earthly paradise, which is somewhat realizable due to the immense promise of America. R.V/.B. Lewis, The American Adam: Innocence, Trogedy and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century (Chica­ go : The Univ. of Chicago Press, 1955), p~, V, The modern American Adam, on the other hand, is usually passive and defeated. His promising vistas have been destroyed and his sense of possibility has been negated by his experiences. The modern American Adam seeks only escape into a paradise which usually is illusory; it is often a figment of his imagination or a drug-induced hallucination or the false projection of a deranged mind.