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Ideological Tension in Four Novels by Saul Bellow

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Ideological Tension in Four Novels by Saul Bellow Ideological Tension in Four Novels by Saul Bellow June Jocelyn Sacks Dissertation submitted in fulfilmentTown of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts atCape the Universityof of Cape Town Univesity Department of English April 1987 Supervisor: Dr Ian Glenn The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgementTown of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Cape Published by the University ofof Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University Contents Page. Abstract i Acknowledgements vi Introduction Chapter One Dangling Man 15 Chapter Two The Victim 56 Chapter Three Herzog 99 Chapter Four Mr Sammler's Planet 153 Notes 190 Bibliography 212 Abstract This study examines and evaluates critically four novels by Saul Bellow: Dangling Man, The Victim, Herzog and Mr Sammler's Planet. The emphasis is on the tension between certain aspects of modernity to which many of the characters are attracted, and the latent Jewishness of their creator. Bellow's Jewish heritage suggests alternate ways of being to those advocated by the enlightened thought of liberal Humanism, for example, or by one of its offshoots, Existenti'alism, or by "wasteland" ideologies. Bellow propounds certain ideas about the purpose of the novel in various articles, and these are discussed briefly in the introduction. His dismissal of the prophets of doom, those thinkers and writers who are pessimistic about the fate of humankind and the continued existence of the novel, is emphatic and certain. His alternative to apocalyptic thinking and writing presents a view both of li and of the role of the novelist in the twentieth century. Chapter one considers the plight of Joseph, the protagonist of Dangling Man. In writing his first novel, Bellow set out to prove his American assimilation, and thus Joseph is a prototype of the alienated man (then in literary vogue) in an American, not a European context. His Existential traits suggest comparisons with Sartre's Roquentin and Camus's Meursault. But even in this early work, Bellow's Jewishness disallows a total commitment to certain aspects of modern life. For example, Joseph's community consciousness and ii his awareness of a social responsibility offset and oppose his complete alienation. The Victim is closely examined in chapter two. Like Joseph, Asa Leventhal embodies the thinking and behaviour of one who inhabits a moral and spiritual wasteland, but this is only a partial consideration of his characterisation. Confronted with anti-Semitism, Leventhal begins a painful exploration of his identity. The moral growth which results suggests an interpretation of self that has more in common with the Jewish definition of man than that of Existentialism. Chapter three considers both the ideas and the characterisation which imbue Herzog with a vibrant force. Moses Herzog seems to epitomise the modern intellectual, suffering an emotional and intellectual breakdown, but is he not "cured" by administering to himself certain pragmatic tenets of Judaism? His moral development and his awareness of a spiritual dimension indicate an instinctive adherence to the temporal laws and the faith which governed his Jewish forebears. It can also be argued that his opposition to so many of the writers and thinkers who have influenced life in the twentieth century is grounded in the philosophical tenets of Judaism. Chapter four will focus on the role of Arthur Sammler who, in Mr Sammler's Planet, enjoys the intellectual and moral freedom of the enlightened liberal until Hitler brands him Jewish. Sammler's re-evaluation of certain aspects of Enlightenment thinking which have had dire social and political consequences encourage him to turn. towards the Christian mystic, Meister Eckhardt. But to transcend his humanity is not the final answer for Sammler. His representative iii role as survivor of the Holocaust, his feelings for Israel, the morality he admires (in Elya Gruner, for instance), and finally practises, all suggest that Sammler's answer to the question: "how should a good man live; what ought he to do?" may be expressed in the precepts of Judaism. Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude towards the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research, University of Cape Town, for financial assistance. I wish to thank my supevisor, Dr. Ian Glenn, for his valuable advice and encouragement, and Associate Professor Bernard Steinberg for his willingness to lead me into hitherto unexplored avenues of Judaism. This dissertation could not have written without the active support of my family. In particular, I would like to thank my parents for their faith in me, Ben, for never losing his sense of humour and sense of perspective, and the children for their lively interest in my work. Introduction Bellow and the Prophets of Doom Writers of fiction have been taking on the role traditionally played by religious leaders, philosophers, metaphysicians. They have returned in deep need to the most primitive poetic purpose: to know; to try to know even when they know not; to invoke knowledge; to ransom the god within by peeling off their skin. They have been driven to asking the ultimate questions. And those who love fiction must nowadays love it partly becaus it concerns itself with final matters. f These comments by Herbert Gold are particularly relevant to Saul Bellow, who voices his concern about the role of the novelist in the twentieth century in numerous essays and interviews. In "Where Do We Go From Here: The Future of Fiction," he states that novelists now have lithe universe itself to face, without the comforts of community, without metaphysical certainty, without the power to distinguish the virtuous from the wicked man, surrounded by dubious 2 realities and discovering dubious selves." His disagreement with novelists such as Lawrence, Joyce, Celine, and Thomas Mann, who believe that a terminal point has been reached for humankind, is~emphatic and firmly held. 3 Interviewed by Gordon Harper, he asks whether lithe apocalyptic interpretation" is true. "The terminations did not fully terminate. Civilization is still 114 To another interlocutor he says that there is "a general feeling abroad that we cannot justify our existence. If I shared 2 that feeling, I shouldn't be writing novels."S He opposes "the intellectual vogue of 'wasteland ideologies, I" concerned about its pessimistic attitude towards life and its fect on the literary concept of the Self. 6 His own response to existence is hopeful and affirmative: "[E]ither we want life t,.o continue or we do not." But if we do, "we are liable to be asked how. In what form shall li be justified? That is the essence of the moral question."? This question is particularly relevant to the modern concept of the Self, which so often emphasises man's impoverished spirituality, his impotence and despair, while Bellow would prefer to see man "in the image of God, man a little lower than the angels," to stress his dignity and nobility.8 He agrees that "undeniably the human being is not what he commonly thought a century ago." The nineteenth-century Romantic idea of the Self has been annihilated by "stoicism, nihilism, anger, comedy, vengeful violence." But "[t]hequestion nevertheless remains. [Man] is something. What is he?,,9 Bellow believes that the novel, if it is to survive and thrive, "requires ne~ ideas about humankind.,,10 If novelists have not lost faith in humankind, their writing is an expression of love. He affirms that if "we do care, if we believe in the existence of others, then what we write is necessary.,,11 He is confident that certain novels do attempt "to create scale, to order experience, to give value, to make perspective and to carry us towards sources of life, towards life-giving things.,,12 Writers who provide "that sense of order, those indispensable standards which in other ages did not originate with novelists or playwrights" 3 are those who uphold the moral function of art. It is these writers who fulfil the reading public's demand for "an inordinate amount of goodness," who counter the Joyces and Flauberts--those who "explicitly ected the moral purpose.,,13 That Bellow's own novels are written with explicit moral purpose has not gone upnoticed by numerous ?{Qbeo-t 14 critics, such as~Alter, John J. Clayton, and Irving Halperin. What Bellow is positing is a philosophical division between twentieth-century novelists. The writers he opposes belong, in the main, to what has been defined by Frank Kermode in The Sense of an Ending and by Zbigniew Lewicki in The Bang and the Whimper as the apocalyptic t ra d lOt' lon. 15 In his essay "The Apocalyptic Temper," Robert-Alter comments that "we bear with us, in ways we don't always realize, the spiritual freight of the past." He writes that the "imaginative modes" of novelists who write in the pre-millennialist apocalyptic tradition "are deeply embedded in a Christian world view, a Christian ethics and politics." They assume the spiritual and moral relevance of the New Testament Book of Revelation to the nightmare of twentieth-century history.16 This attitude, pinpointed by Alter, encourages the individual to withdraw completely from history, to succumb to spiritual and moral feteness, to entropy.17 Supposing that nothing can be done to avert catastrophe, people become passive about history and human existence. This failure to confront history and wrestle with its choices reduces the personae in apocalyptic literature to impersonal types, to hypotheses, whether comic-ironic (as in Thomas Pynchon's ~, John Barth's The Sot-weed Factor), or brutally erotic (the protagonist 4 in William Burroughs's The Naked Lunch}.
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