As a Jewish American novelist, Bellow’s Jewish experience and Jewish cultural tradition, lay great influence on him, and find expressions in his fiction writings. On the one hand, there is evidence of this Jewish background in his work. The Victim deals largely with the Jewish sense of persecution and the Jewish yearning for brotherhood; the early scenes of Augie March portray the lives of the Urban Jewish poor and lower middle class; the characters in Seize the Day are recognizable New York Jewish types; and in Herzog there is the portrayal of a Jewish childhood and an emphasis on Jewish family feeling. Simply speaking, Bellow’s comedy, intellectualism, moral preoccupation and alienation, his concern with the family and with rough Eastern European immigrants, his obsession with the past and with the dangler of an alien world, his emphasis on purity, his sense of the unreality of this world as opposed to God’s — all of these elements bespeak his deep Jewish concern. On the other hand, Bellow’s Jewish background, to some degree, determines his belief in man and in the possibility of meaningful existence. Bellow is not only a part of the affirmative Jewish tradition; he is self-consciously a part of it. Bellow has said that the “Jewish feeling” within him rejects the belief that man is finished and that the world must be destroyed. It is a yea-saying that Bellow longs to express in his work. The open concern with goodness pervades Bellow’s work. Joseph believes his only talent is for goodness; As a learns what goodness means; Tommy longs to be good. What is required is not certain actions but a goodness of heart, an openness to others. The strong family ties and the sense of community are responsible for the fact that the solitary protagonists of Bellow’s fictions discover a harmonious existence of means of love or putting down the burdens of the past, or by overcoming their self-imposed guilty feeling.
Just as Jewish culture greatly influences Bellow’s literary creation, so does the American cultural tradition. American literature is full of rebellious innocents combating a hostile world. The spirit of literature is to defend the individual’s significance and freedom, to affirm human dignity. While alienation is integral to American fiction from Irving and Cooper to the present, yet it is a fiction which believes in the significance of the individual. But integral also to American fiction are a return to society and an affirmation of human possibilities. “Marcus Klein shows in his brilliant After Alienation that contemporary American literature also swings between the poles of alienation and accommodation; the hero is fearful of losing his identity yet longs for a union of self and society” (SBDM, 40). The outsider does not want to stay outside. At the end of Invisible Man the hero chooses to return to the community to play a “socially responsible role rather than to remain in isolation” (SBDM, 41).
Bellow is clearly a part of this tradition. His heroes are American, often Jewish intellectuals always very intelligent. They all sense the disintegration and erosion of the self and society. They recognize that many of the cultural, social, and intellectual foundations of the contemporary world are crumbling. In Bellow’s novels, therefore, the individual is seen in conflict with society and with himself. But Bellow remains well within the humanist tradition. Indeed he is conscious of the chaos of the world and of the arbitrary quality of civilized society, hut he sees no choice for man but to go on living among those elements. He sees escape or refusal as impossible or impractical. Society and civilization, whatever their drawbacks, are still the only solution mankind has been able to come up with. The best example is Henderson the Rain King. The protagonist Henderson travels to Africa in search of a truth. After a series of adventures, he finally returns to the American that he belongs to.
Just as Jewish culture greatly influences Bellow’s literary creation, so does the American cultural tradition. American literature is full of rebellious innocents combating a hostile world. The spirit of literature is to defend the individual’s significance and freedom, to affirm human dignity. While alienation is integral to American fiction from Irving and Cooper to the present, yet it is a fiction which believes in the significance of the individual. But integral also to American fiction are a return to society and an affirmation of human possibilities. “Marcus Klein shows in his brilliant After Alienation that contemporary American literature also swings between the poles of alienation and accommodation; the hero is fearful of losing his identity yet longs for a union of self and society” (SBDM, 40). The outsider does not want to stay outside. At the end of Invisible Man the hero chooses to return to the community to play a “socially responsible role rather than to remain in isolation” (SBDM, 41).
Bellow is clearly a part of this tradition. His heroes are American, often Jewish intellectuals always very intelligent. They all sense the disintegration and erosion of the self and society. They recognize that many of the cultural, social, and intellectual foundations of the contemporary world are crumbling. In Bellow’s novels, therefore, the individual is seen in conflict with society and with himself. But Bellow remains well within the humanist tradition. Indeed he is conscious of the chaos of the world and of the arbitrary quality of civilized society, hut he sees no choice for man but to go on living among those elements. He sees escape or refusal as impossible or impractical. Society and civilization, whatever their drawbacks, are still the only solution mankind has been able to come up with. The best example is Henderson the Rain King. The protagonist Henderson travels to Africa in search of a truth. After a series of adventures, he finally returns to the American that he belongs to.
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