Saul Bellow and His Works

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I think this passage is worthy to read throughout the whole novel. It reflects the protagonist Mr. Herzog’s changes of his inner heart and his behavior. The whole novel is talking about a middle aged man named Herzog and his miserable life experience. At the very beginning, he was a healthy man with a stable job, a good salary as well as a happy family. But his destiny was totally altered by one thing. His second wife persuaded him to move back to city. He actually was happy about it after his best friend also persuading him. But in the end it turned out to be a ruse. His second wife and his best friend had an affair behind him. When they returned to the city, his wife threw him out, and took away almost all his money and assets as well as his lovely daughter. Then he started to be crazy. He wrote lots of letters to his friends and his family members as well as some strangers but he never sent them out. At first, he wanted to get back his daughter’s custody, and he went to the courthouse. He saw and experienced lots of strange things. Then he decided to kill his second wife and her lover and run off with his daughter. But he changed his ideas when he saw his friend giving his daughter a bath and realized that she was in no danger. He wanted to leave his daughter , so he took her to go to aquarium. But he met a car accident and somehow was charged with possession of a loaded weapon. His brother picked him up, and wanted to send him into an institution. But suddenly Herzog appeared to be a normal person. He stopped writing letters and stared to fix up his house. After he pulling through all these bad things, he finally realized that he could not only focus on his inner struggles. He must look at the outer world. This novel didn’t simply talk about Herzog’s relationship with his wife and friends, but it did talk about this character’s relationship with the society, in other words, this world. He used to be an isolated individual, he didn’t know how to adapt to this society. After all the bad experience, he realized that sometimes he must learn how to survive in this cruel and strange society. It tells us if you don’t have a clear purpose for life, you can’t succeed.

After reading these two works from Saul Bellow. I think he always likes connecting his own experience with his novels. He always makes his novels set in his hometown, Chicago. He usually creates his leading role like himself and take himself as prototype. However, he always denies this point. Actually, his novels are more like autobiographical books: the same location, Chicago; the same background, they all came from Russia and they are all Jewish. Especially, in Herzog, his own experience is more like this plot. His second wife had an affair with his best friend. Mr.Herzog shared the same experience with him. From his novels and other works, we can clearly learn his attitude towards this society. He can analysis the weakness and the ugly part of the modern society. The themes of his works usually reflect spiritual degradation and humanitarian crisis of the modern society. He is good at creating picaresque novels. His novels usually use normal people as the characters, and his novels have a little meaning of anti-hero. He wants readers can get something valued from his works. He uses the simplest words to express his ideas and his novels usually are written in a colloquial philosophical style. This can help readers more understand what he wants to spread.

In Herzog, by using the character Mr.Herzog’s experience and sufferings he expresses the anguish and confusion of the middle class and the intellectuals in the modern society. Also, his works can vividly illustrate that people easily get psychological and mental problems in the rapid development of society. People more focus on their own benefits and neglect others’ benefits. Even some people want to get more benefits by harming others. This is crazy. People only concern about their inner struggles and forget to connect with this modern society. Maybe you think Saul Bellow’s works are more cruel and more realistic, but I want to tell you it is the real world. You can disagree with him because you think his ideas are too pessimistic and cruel. However, you can’t deny it, because it does exist and it becomes an important part of your life, and everyone’s life.