Tommy and Olive love each other not only because they are physically attracted, but also because they share the similar predicament which finally leads to their mutual adorations:
When she would get up late on Sunday morning she would wake him almost in tears at being late for Mass. He would try to help her... with shaky hands; then he would rush her to church and drive in second gear in his forgetful way, trying to apologize and to calm her. She got out a block from church to avoid gossip. (94)
Whenever Tommy is in a desperate situation and suffers insults from his wife, he immediately thinks of Olive, eager to plunge himself into her arms for consolation. As he is deserted by society and his father and has left his wife, Tommy needs Olive to replace his wife for his troubled heart. His love for Olive is mingled with hypocrisy and selfishness.
Carrying on a clandestine love affair with his mistress, still haunted by his wife, Tommy can not get rid of his feeling of loneliness. Whenever he is, he feels out of place. Therefore, Wilhelm agrees “with the saying, that in Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn’t tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California, He himself had been one of these objects” (14-5).
All through the story of his day, Tommy summons into memory the critical mistakes of his past, among them the decision to go to Hollywood, the changing of his name, his elopement and marriage, the investing of his savings with Tamkin. He feels guilty and suffers from this past burden. Meanwhile the anxiety about what Margaret and his father think about him tortures him. He can not solve his emotional problems (Olive, whom he adores, is tired of waiting for a divorce; Margaret has turned the children against him; she demands money and refuses to give him a divorce) as well as his financial one (he has lost his job and Dr. Adler offers advice rather than money). He has married suffering, dangling in deep misery.
The very title of Seize the Day indicates how Tommy, like Joseph, has run from reality, Dr. Tamkin tells Tommy:
The spiritual compensation is what I look for. Bringing people into the here-and-now. The real universe. That’s the present moment. The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real — the here-and-now. Seize the day. (66)
To seize the day, to live in here-and-now, is to live with joy and live in harmony and complete one’s own life. One should not waste it lamenting and suffering from past mistakes. It is only at the end of the novel, when all Tommy’s defenses against reality have been stripped away — Margaret has been unmerciful, his pills are nearly gone, his father has wished him dead, his money is at an and — that he begins to face reality, the reality in which he and his beings live. Stripped bare, he confronts reality for the first time in the novel.
By the end of the novel, Tommy has to undergo three Ordeals that will purge and redeem his soul. First, the land and rye figures on the stock market drop and Wilhelm realizes he is wiped out financially. The second Ordeal ends when Wilhelm is finally and completely rejected by his two doctors, Dr. Adler and Dr. Tamkin. Lastly, his unfinished telephone call to Margaret seems his final break in communication. She hangs up and he tries to rip the phone from the wall. He is cut apart from the world—without position, money or human contact.
Of course, Tommy, like all of Bellow’s heroes, does not want to cut himself off from other men. Just as Joseph longs for a “colony of the spirit” (DM, 32) and believes that “goodness is achieved not in a vacuum but in the company of other men, attended by love” (DM, 75), so Tommy longs for merger into community, and knows moments of loving commonality.
When she would get up late on Sunday morning she would wake him almost in tears at being late for Mass. He would try to help her... with shaky hands; then he would rush her to church and drive in second gear in his forgetful way, trying to apologize and to calm her. She got out a block from church to avoid gossip. (94)
Whenever Tommy is in a desperate situation and suffers insults from his wife, he immediately thinks of Olive, eager to plunge himself into her arms for consolation. As he is deserted by society and his father and has left his wife, Tommy needs Olive to replace his wife for his troubled heart. His love for Olive is mingled with hypocrisy and selfishness.
Carrying on a clandestine love affair with his mistress, still haunted by his wife, Tommy can not get rid of his feeling of loneliness. Whenever he is, he feels out of place. Therefore, Wilhelm agrees “with the saying, that in Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn’t tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California, He himself had been one of these objects” (14-5).
All through the story of his day, Tommy summons into memory the critical mistakes of his past, among them the decision to go to Hollywood, the changing of his name, his elopement and marriage, the investing of his savings with Tamkin. He feels guilty and suffers from this past burden. Meanwhile the anxiety about what Margaret and his father think about him tortures him. He can not solve his emotional problems (Olive, whom he adores, is tired of waiting for a divorce; Margaret has turned the children against him; she demands money and refuses to give him a divorce) as well as his financial one (he has lost his job and Dr. Adler offers advice rather than money). He has married suffering, dangling in deep misery.
The very title of Seize the Day indicates how Tommy, like Joseph, has run from reality, Dr. Tamkin tells Tommy:
The spiritual compensation is what I look for. Bringing people into the here-and-now. The real universe. That’s the present moment. The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real — the here-and-now. Seize the day. (66)
To seize the day, to live in here-and-now, is to live with joy and live in harmony and complete one’s own life. One should not waste it lamenting and suffering from past mistakes. It is only at the end of the novel, when all Tommy’s defenses against reality have been stripped away — Margaret has been unmerciful, his pills are nearly gone, his father has wished him dead, his money is at an and — that he begins to face reality, the reality in which he and his beings live. Stripped bare, he confronts reality for the first time in the novel.
By the end of the novel, Tommy has to undergo three Ordeals that will purge and redeem his soul. First, the land and rye figures on the stock market drop and Wilhelm realizes he is wiped out financially. The second Ordeal ends when Wilhelm is finally and completely rejected by his two doctors, Dr. Adler and Dr. Tamkin. Lastly, his unfinished telephone call to Margaret seems his final break in communication. She hangs up and he tries to rip the phone from the wall. He is cut apart from the world—without position, money or human contact.
Of course, Tommy, like all of Bellow’s heroes, does not want to cut himself off from other men. Just as Joseph longs for a “colony of the spirit” (DM, 32) and believes that “goodness is achieved not in a vacuum but in the company of other men, attended by love” (DM, 75), so Tommy longs for merger into community, and knows moments of loving commonality.
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