Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; 10 June 1915 – 5 April 2005) was a

Canadian-American writer of Jewish origin. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts.He is the only
writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times and he received the National
Book Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in
1990.

In the words of the Swedish Nobel Committee, his writing exhibited the mixture of
rich picaresque novel and subtle analysis of our culture, of entertaining adventure, drastic and
tragic episodes in quick succession interspersed with philosophic conversation, all developed
by a commentator with a witty tongue and penetrating insight into the outer and inner
complications that drive us to act, or prevent us from acting, and that can be called the
dilemma of our age. His best-known works include The Adventures of Augie March,
Henderson the Rain King, Herzog, Mr. Sammler's Planet, Seize the Day, Humboldt's Gift and
Ravelstein. Widely regarded as one of the 20th century's greatest authors, Bellow has had a
huge literary influence.

Bellow said that of all his characters Eugene Henderson, of Henderson the Rain King,
was the one most like himself. Bellow grew up as an insolent slum kid, a thick-necked
rowdy, and an immigrant from Quebec. As Christopher Hitchens describes it, Bellow's fiction
and principal characters reflect his own yearning for transcendence, a battle to overcome not
just ghetto conditions but also ghetto psychoses.Bellow's protagonists, in one shape or
another, all wrestle with what Corde (Albert Corde, the dean in The Dean's December) called
the big-scale insanities of the 20th century. This transcendence of the unutterably dismal (a
phrase from Dangling Man) is achieved, if it can be achieved at all, through a ferocious
assimilation of learning (Hitchens) and an emphasis on nobility.

Saul Bellow was born Solomon Bellows in Lachine, Quebec, two years after his
parents, Lescha (née Gordin) and Abraham Bellows,emigrated from Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Bellow's family was Lithuanian-Jewish his father was born in Vilnius. Bellow celebrated his
birthday in June, although he may have been born in July (in the Jewish community, it was
customary to record the Hebrew date of birth, which does not always coincide with the
Gregorian calendar). Of his family's emigration, Bellow wrote:

The retrospective was strong in me because of my parents. They were both full of the
notion that they were falling, falling. They had been prosperous cosmopolitans in Saint
Petersburg. My mother could never stop talking about the family dacha, her privileged life,
and how all that was now gone. She was working in the kitchen. Cooking, washing,
mending... There had been servants in Russia... But you could always transpose from your
humiliating condition with the help of a sort of embittered irony.

A period of illness from a respiratory infection at age eight both taught him self-
reliance (he was a very fit man despite his sedentary occupation) and provided an opportunity
to satisfy his hunger for reading: reportedly, he decided to be a writer when he first read
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

When Bellow was nine, his family moved to the Humboldt Park neighborhood on the
West Side of Chicago, the city that formed the backdrop of many of his novels. Bellow's
father, Abraham, had become an onion importer. He also worked in a bakery, as a coal
delivery man, and as a bootlegger. Bellow's mother, Liza, died when he was 17. He was left
with his father and brother Maurice. His mother was deeply religious, and wanted her
youngest son, Saul, to become a rabbi or a concert violinist. But he rebelled against what he
later called the "suffocating orthodoxy" of his religious upbringing, and he began writing at a
young age. Bellow's lifelong love for the Bible began at four when he learned Hebrew.
Bellow also grew up reading William Shakespeare and the great Russian novelists of the 19th
century. In Chicago, he took part in anthroposophical studies at the Anthroposophical Society
of Chicago. Bellow attended Tuley High School on Chicago's west side where he befriended
fellow writer Isaac Rosenfeld. In his 1959 novel Henderson the Rain King, Bellow modeled
the character King Dahfu on Rosenfeld.

Bellow attended the University of Chicago but later transferred to Northwestern

University. He originally wanted to study literature, but he felt the English department was
anti-Jewish. Instead, he graduated with honors in anthropology and sociology. It has been
suggested Bellow's study of anthropology had an influence on his literary style, and
anthropological references pepper his works. Bellow later did graduate work at the University
of Wisconsin–Madison.

Paraphrasing Bellow's description of his close friend Allan Bloom (see Ravelstein),
John Podhoretz has said that both Bellow and Bloom inhaled books and ideas the way the rest
of us breathe air.

In the 1930s, Bellow was part of the Chicago branch of the Works Progress
Administration Writer's Project, which included such future Chicago literary luminaries as
Richard Wright and Nelson Algren. Many of the writers were radical: if they were not
members of the Communist Party USA, they were sympathetic to the cause. Bellow was a
Trotskyist, but because of the greater numbers of Stalinist-leaning writers he had to suffer
their taunts.

In 1941 Bellow became a naturalized US citizen, after discovering upon attempting to

enlist in the armed forces that he had immigrated to the United States illegally as a child. In
1943, Maxim Lieber was his literary agent.

During World War II, Bellow joined the merchant marine and during his service he
completed his first novel, Dangling Man (1944) about a young Chicago man waiting to be
drafted for the war.

From 1946 through 1948 Bellow taught at the University of Minnesota, living on
Commonwealth Avenue, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

In 1948, Bellow was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship that allowed him to move to
Paris, where he began writing The Adventures of Augie March (1953). Critics have remarked
on the resemblance between Bellow's picaresque novel and the great 17th Century Spanish
classic Don Quixote. The book starts with one of American literature's most famous opening
paragraphs, and it follows its titular character through a series of careers and encounters, as
he lives by his wits and his resolve. Written in a colloquial yet philosophical style, The
Adventures of Augie March established Bellow's reputation as a major author.

In 1958, Bellow once again taught at the University of Minnesota. During this time,
he and his wife Sasha received psychoanalysis from University of Minnesota Psychology
Professor Paul Meehl.

In the spring term of 1961 he taught creative writing at the University of Puerto Rico
at Río Piedras[ One of his students was William Kennedy, who was encouraged by Bellow to
write fiction.
 Bellow lived in New York City for a number of years, but he returned to Chicago in
1962 as a professor at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. The
committee's goal was to have professors work closely with talented graduate students on a
multi-disciplinary approach to learning. Bellow taught on the committee for more than 30
years, alongside his close friend, the philosopher Allan Bloom.

There were also other reasons for Bellow's return to Chicago, where he moved into
the Hyde Park neighborhood with his third wife, Susan Glassman. Bellow found Chicago
vulgar but vital, and more representative of America than New York. He was able to stay in
contact with old high school friends and a broad cross-section of society. In a 1982 profile,
Bellow's neighborhood was described as a high-crime area in the city's center, and Bellow
maintained he had to live in such a place as a writer and stick to his gun.

Bellow hit the bestseller list in 1964 with his novel Herzog. Bellow was surprised at
the commercial success of this cerebral novel about a middle-aged and troubled college
professor who writes letters to friends, scholars and the dead, but never sends them. Bellow
returned to his exploration of mental ianstability, and its relationship to genius, in his 1975
novel Humboldt's Gift. Bellow used his late friend and rival, the brilliant but self-destructive
poet Delmore Schwartz, as his model for the novel's title character, Von Humboldt Fleisher.
Bellow also used Rudolf Steiner's spiritual science, anthroposophy, as a theme in the book,
having attended a study group in Chicago. He was elected a Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1969.

Propelled by the success of Humboldt's Gift, Bellow won the Nobel Prize in literature
in 1976. In the 70-minute address he gave to an audience in Stockholm, Sweden, Bellow
called on writers to be beacons for civilization and awaken it from intellectual torpor.

The following year, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Bellow for
the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the
humanities. Bellow's lecture was entitled "The Writer and His Country Look Each Other
Over."

From December 1981 to March 1982, Bellow was the Visiting Lansdowne Scholar at
the University of Victoria (B.C.), and also held the title Writer-in-Residence.

Bellow traveled widely throughout his life, mainly to Europe, which he sometimes
visited twice a year. As a young man, Bellow went to Mexico City to meet Leon Trotsky, but
the expatriate Russian revolutionary was assassinated the day before they were to meet.
Bellow's social contacts were wide and varied. He tagged along with Robert F. Kennedy for a
magazine profile he never wrote, he was close friends with the author Ralph Ellison. His
many friends included the journalist Sydney J. Harris and the poet John Berryman.

While sales of Bellow's first few novels were modest, that turned around with Herzog.
Bellow continued teaching well into his old age, enjoying its human interaction and exchange
of ideas. He taught at Yale University, University of Minnesota, New York University,
Princeton University, University of Puerto Rico, University of Chicago, Bard College and
Boston University, where he co-taught a class with James Wood (modestly absenting himself'
when it was time to discuss Seize the Day). In order to take up his appointment at Boston,
Bellow moved in 1993 from Chicago to Brookline, Massachusetts, where he died on 5 April
2005, at age 89. He is buried at the Jewish cemetery Shir HeHarim of Brattleboro, Vermont.

Bellow was married five times, with all but his last marriage ending in divorce. His
son by his first marriage, Greg Bellow, became a psychotherapist; Greg Bellow published
Saul Bellow’s Heart: A Son’s Memoir in 2013, nearly a decade after his father's death.
Bellow's son by his second marriage, Adam, published a nonfiction book In Praise of
Nepotism in 2003. Bellow's wives were Anita Goshkin, Alexandra (Sondra) Tsachacbasov,
Susan Glassman, Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea and Janis Freedman. In 2000, when he was 84,
Bellow had his fourth child and first daughter, with Freedman.

While he read voluminously, Bellow also played the violin and followed sports. Work
was a constant for him, but he at times toiled at a plodding pace on his novels, frustrating the
publishing company.

His early works earned him the reputation as a major novelist of the 20th century, and
by his death he was widely regarded as one of the greatest living novelists. He was the first
writer to win three National Book Awards in all award categories.

The author's works speak to the disorienting nature of modern civilization, and the
countervailing ability of humans to overcome their frailty and achieve greatness (or at least
awareness). Bellow saw many flaws in modern civilization, and its ability to foster madness,
materialism and misleading knowledge. Principal characters in Bellow's fiction have heroic
potential, and many times they stand in contrast to the negative forces of society. Often these
characters are Jewish and have a sense of alienation or otherness.

Jewish life and identity is a major theme in Bellow's work, although he bristled at
being called a Jewish writer. Bellow's work also shows a great appreciation of America, and a
fascination with the uniqueness and vibrancy of the American experience.

Bellow's work abounds in references and quotes from the likes of Marcel Proust and
Henry James, but he offsets these high-culture references with jokes. Bellow interspersed
autobiographical elements into his fiction, and many of his principal characters were said to
bear a resemblance to him.

On the other hand, Bellow's detractors considered his work conventional and old-fashioned,
as if the author was trying to revive the 19th-century European novel. In a private letter,
Vladimir Nabokov once referred to Bellow as a "miserable mediocrity." Journalist and author
Ron Rosenbaum described Bellow's Ravelstein (2000) as the only book that rose above
Bellow's failings as an author

As he grew older, Bellow moved decidedly away from leftist politics and became identified
with cultural conservatism. His opponents included feminism, campus activism and
postmodernism. Bellow also thrust himself into the often contentious realm of Jewish and
African-American relations. Bellow was critical of multiculturalism and once said to an
interviewer: Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans? I'd be glad to read
him. Bellow distanced himself somewhat from these remarks, which he characterized as off
the cuff obviously and pedantic certainly.He, however, stood by his criticism of
multiculturalism, writing:

In any reasonably open society, the absurdity of a petty thought-police campaign provoked by
the inane magnification of discriminatory remarks about the Papuans and the Zulus would be
laughed at. To be serious in this fanatical style is a sort of Stalinism -- the Stalinist
seriousness and fidelity to the party line that senior citizens like me remember all too well.

Despite his identification with Chicago, he kept aloof from some of that city's more
conventional writers. In a 2006 interview with Stop Smiling magazine, Studs Terkel said of
Bellow: I didn't know him too well. We disagreed on a number of things politically. In the
protests in the beginning of Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night, when Mailer, Robert
Lowell and Paul Goodman were marching to protest the Vietnam War, Bellow was invited to
a sort of counter-gathering. He said, 'Of course I'll attend'. But he made a big thing of it.
Instead of just saying OK, he was proud of it. So I wrote him a letter and he didn't like it. He
wrote me a letter back. He called me a Stalinist. But otherwise, we were friendly. He was a
brilliant writer, of course. I love Seize the Day.

Attempts to name a street after Bellow in his Hyde Park neighborhood were scotched by local
alderman on the grounds that Bellow had made remarks about the neighborhood's current
inhabitants that they considered racist.

Awards and honors

 1948 Guggenheim Fellowship

 1954 National Book Award for Fiction
 1965 National Book Award for Fiction
 1971 National Book Award for Fiction
 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature
 1980 O. Henry Award
 1986 St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates
 1988 National Medal of Arts
 1989 PEN/Malamud Award
 1989 Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award
 1990 National Book Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to
American Letters
 2010 Inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.

Bibliography

Novels and novellas

 Dangling Man (1944)

 The Victim (1947)
 The Adventures of Augie March (1953)
 Seize the Day (1956)
 Henderson the Rain King (1959)
 Herzog (1964), National Book Award
 Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970), National Book Award
 Humboldt's Gift (1975), winner of the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  The Dean's December (1982)
 More Die of Heartbreak (1987)
 A Theft (1989)
 The Bellarosa Connection (1989)
 The Actual (1997)
 Ravelstein (2000)

Short story collections

 Mosby's Memoirs (1968)

 Him with His Foot in His Mouth (1984)
 Something to Remember Me By: Three Tales (1991)
 Collected Stories (2001)

Plays

 The Last Analysis (1965)

Library of America editions

 Novels 1944–1953: Dangling Man, The Victim, The Adventures of Augie March
(2003)
 Novels 1956–1964: Seize the Day, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog (2007)
 Novels 1970–1982: Mr. Sammler’s Planet, Humboldt’s Gift, The Dean’s December
(2010)
 Novels 1984–2000: What Kind of Day Did You Have?, More Die of Heartbreak, A
Theft, The Bellarosa Connection, The Actual, Ravelstein (2014)

Translations

 "Gimpel the Fool"' (1945), short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer (translated by Bellow
in 1953)

Non-fiction

 To Jerusalem and Back (1976), memoir

 It All Adds Up (1994), essay collection
 Saul Bellow: Letters, edited by Benjamin Taylor (2010), correspondence
 There Is Simply Too Much To Think About (Viking, 2015), collection of shorter non-
fiction pieces

Works about Saul Bellow

 Saul Bellow's Heart: A Son's Memoir, Greg Bellow, 2013 ISBN 978-1608199952

 Saul Bellow, Tony Tanner (1965) (see also his City of Words [1971])
 Saul Bellow, Malcolm Bradbury (1982)
 Saul Bellow Drumlin Woodchuck, Mark Harris, University of Georgia Press. (1982)
 Saul Bellow: Modern Critical Views, Harold Bloom (Ed.) (1986)
 Handsome Is: Adventures with Saul Bellow, Harriet Wasserman (1997)
 Saul Bellow and the Decline of Humanism, Michael K Glenday (1990)
 Saul Bellow: A Biography of the Imagination, Ruth Miller, St. Martins Pr. (1991)
 Bellow: A Biography, James Atlas (2000)
 Saul Bellow and American Transcendentalism, M.A. Quayum (2004)
 "Even Later" and "The American Eagle" in Martin Amis, The War Against Cliché
(2001) are celebratory. The latter essay is also found in the Everyman's Library
edition of Augie March.
 'Saul Bellow's comic style': James Wood in The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and
the Novel, 2004. ISBN 0-224-06450-9.
 The Hero in Contemporary American Fiction: The Works of Saul Bellow and Don
DeLillo , Stephanie Halldorson (2007)
 "Saul Bellow" a song, written by Sufjan Stevens on The Avalanche, which is
composed of outtakes and other recordings from his concept album Illinois
 The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915–1964, Zachary Leader (2015)

Augie March’s adventures stems from the paradoxical element of his character

opposed to the element of taste that he is forced to face in his life. By nature he is a

honest being but he is compelled to lead a life of a liar on various characters and

situations he is to interact with his course of life .The philosophy abut life that one to

remain honest but in reality one to practice dishonest in a factor he imbibes form his

grandmother Lausch. By imbibing and practicing his grandma’s piece of advice gets

him only disappointment and disillusionment. This is due to his lack of foresight and

unsophisticated sense of idiocy of his knowledge about honest would get him what he

expected to get. His elder brother Simon by nature very shrewd and intelligent was
able to climb up well on the ladders of material success out of his market minded

consciousness of wading through competitions of business activities. His mother

Rebecca happened to be a simple minded woman who bore three male children from an

imbecile husband. One among her boys was an idiot lacking all abilities of

proving his success in the material world. It is from her grandma Lausch Augie

imbibed the philosophy that in Augie life one had to earn respect rather than love.

During his formative years his respect was lost at various situations like her ma’s

cousin Anna Coblin turned him out of his stay in her house for blowing on her son’s

saxophone then his inability to continue the job. He got out of his brother Simon’s help

in the domesticity of his boss and finally becoming a servant at Deevar’s department

that got him fixed out of the job due to his ill luck of considering him an alley to his

friend Jimmey’s stealing money. Slowly he realized both the town. Chicago he lived

and his association of his domestic sphere gave him no scope to lead a honest life.

His mother’s and his brother’s failing health his grandma’s foul temper and his elder

brother’s selfish interests. Augie failed to get any harmony which he longed and

made him embrace suppressions out of the disappointments, worries , frustrations and

anxieties caused out of his relationship with his home. Further Grandma Lausch’s

philosophical influence on Augie had it telling effect upon his character that was beset

with such situations linked with fate that earning in life respect better entity than

making love. His first love experience with his friend Jimmy Klein’s cousin, Clem

Tambrow got him only severe scolding that was greatly responsible in his second

attempt of his love making with a tailor’s daughter Hilda Novinson . Because of these

two abortive attempts of love Augie failed to catch up his Grandma’s teachings of

getting the best out of the worst experiences. Where as his brother Simon, learnt this

teaching well and came up well in the material ladder of his life. Even the loss of his

tooth in one of his street fights took him to great heights by manipulating this flaw a

tool of success.
 The chance Occasion of Augie meeting Einhorn the commissioner and founder

of a great family of legacy and becoming his close associate during his schooling days

further more deepened and broadened his ideology of delving deep into the strata of

respect him one’s life rather than giving stress on love He too like his aunt played, Pivotal

role in the lives of others shaping and moulding them into their plan and design . He

had a son Einhorn otherwise called Einhorn through his first wife and Dingbrat, another

son born to another wife. In addition to these two he had one more son called Arthur .

Because of Augie close association he considered him also another son of him. Above

all these qualities of him he fell madly in love with Lollie Fewter His life became

miserable because of the Great Depression. He was fated to reduce to this economic

circumstances due to this ill-fated period of life. What Augie ought to have desired for his

material well- being out of his association got thwarted . This led him to get in touch with

Gorman and his troupe who were all anti-social elements in trying their luck on

robbery, thievery and such like asocial activities. Still Augie earned his respect from the

son of Einhorn called Einhorn Senior after the demise of Einhorn . Ironically after his

high school graduation Einhorn senior took Augie to a brothel. Thus from his early days

till his stage of high school graduation Augie’s respect out of his remaining honest had

become a question similar to a square peg in a round hole. Whereas his brother Simon

out of his dishonest practice slowly gradually and steadily climbed in the material ladder

capable to wield influence in the society around him. Its face value but practicing

dishonestly happened to be the order of the day a philosophy , an ideology put to practice

his aunt, Einhorn and by his brother Simon. His aunt and Einhorn expected him to remain

in opposition to all aspects in life. But Augie misunderstood this ideology of them and

remained honest in all situations he was made to interact with as well as with all

characters he was moved with.

It was in the matter of love with Esther Frencher at Benton Harbour his benefactor Mrs

Renling stood in his way and directed him to make love to her elder sister , Thea instead of
Esther. Both Thea and Esther considered him to be a gigolo to Mrs Renling. It was in

his association with these girls Augie’s hands were tied due to his wrong assumption of

his own self about which the assumptions of them were right. Thus his meekness and low

estimate of his own self and others estimate matters he was made to interact with always

superior got him only disappointment and failure.

His greatest flaw in his character is what critics called Whitmansque insight that

he assumes about others what he assumes about himself finally landed him in

consequences ,contrary to his expectation of success. He was at a loss to influence others

to his won design and shape and fell on easy prey to the Machiavellian objective

characters like grandma, Einhorn, Mrs Renlings, Thea ,Simon and a host of others.

Whereas his brother’s love affair with classy Flexner out of his own Machiavellian

tactics defeated her by his choice of identifying with a wealthy lady charlotte Magnus

of materialistic outlook, established his marriage with her by his sprit of business

acumen. In the America world what the society cared for is money and material

advancement for which the individual had the skill and talent to bend others to his wit

and whim by making them. Bow to climb and reach the materialist goal to achieve this

and what is required is judgement which Augie lacked. It is in his association with

Mimi Villiar as his room mate he had the chance occasion for him to save her from her

abortion It is because of his concern for her she showed brought a total break in his

love affair with Lucy. Mimi got him introduced to a law student Grammack also a CIO,

union organizer. This helped him to faster a new love relationship with Sophie Gratis,

a Greek chambermaid in a luxury hotel. While he was making love with her he was

disturbed with the presence of Thea Fenchel. This brought in division in between Augie

and Sophic. Then Aguie’s interest on Thea got developed out of his stay with her Both

decided to leave for Mexico after she getting her divorce from her husband called Simitty

Her plan to make money appeared to be funny and that is by training a big eagle to

capture big lizards. Augie became in Thea’s design. Thea’s love for action and Aguie’s
slowness in matters of taking decisions and put them into practice. His grip on her

slowly got loosened for which an accident occurred to him during the training session of

the eagle. It was during his stay at Mexico he had the occasion to meet Stella his law

student friend who briefed him for his escape from her friend Oliver who tried to bully

her life with his gun it was at his occasion he realized that he and Stella were beings born

to fit into other schemes .In all matters especially on matters of love Augie’s action

springs out of his personal self letting loose the face that society wished him to look at .

Thea’s expectations of him got punctured out of his interest shown to Stella for her

separation from his boyfriend. It was in the matter of decision Augie’s fate hung heavily

on him that his choice of possibility of a decent life in the family of Magnus ( his

brothers in – Laws) out of his passivity of relationship with Mimi. Similarly his passivity

shown to Stella got him permanent break of the from Thea who otherwise , though

whimsical and indifferent would definitely serve him better companion in life capable

to sheer his life on to his safer grounds with a clear purpose in life an material

achievement. In the life and of his material achievement.In the choice of his relationship

between Thea and Stella. His estimate on Thea irrespective of her kind care and attention

she should crushed in him an impression that was only a recruit in domesticities where

as Stella much better than her. Augie in began to melt at the sight of a fair sex like Mimi

and Stella when they were subjected to untold misery in case of Mimi- her abortion in

Stella’s case the threat of her life from her own pet lover. In the final chapter he was

confronted with two more Machiavellian characters Mintouchin and adorable companion

and Basteshaw- a despicable associate of him like Simon .It is because of his link with

them he got a better perspective on his wife Julia which he started showing respect as well

as started showering love upon his mistress Stella unlike other Machiavellian

character.Augie was be friended with Mintouchin by unflinchingly collecting details of

Thea that helped Augie a lot that instead of staying still in his association with Thea. He

had to take a chance on what he was as a well directed being of drive by his own efforts.
Instead of waiting for others to push him rest of the Machiavellian pushed him into his

arena of activities out of their personal whims but never tried to put reason into him about

the action he was intended to take in his course of life. It was Mintouchin alone put him

the reason of the consequences of Augie’s pet theory of opposition. At his meeting

Mintouchin failed to recognize his problem that he never took a chance to overcome the

problem but pinned his hope of expectations on others to solve his problem. Here only

he also realized that the basic constituent clement required either in social links or

domestic links the individual had to share his or her fate with others to get his problem

sorted off well. The element of growth in the character stems out of his holding

accountability with them and not in remaining alienated, Basteshaw a typical Machiavellian

character wanted to bend everything according to his whim. He believed he could

change the course of the life of humanity by applying force when caught up in the ship

wreck situation his pet theory on force to bend the situation got blasted when he realized

the love of Augie shown on him at the critical love alone happened to the long lasting

saving factor in life. In spite of Augie’s experimentation with various job, and there by

his collecting of knowledge fail to change his real nature and that his character in his fate-

perhaps matures into good enough fate. All the Machiavellian influence on him like his

Garndma, Simon, Einhorn, Mrs. Renling ,Joe Gorman, Thea Fenchel and finally

Mintouchin failed to carve a nicher in his character became in him there is an innate

purity, that preserved his individual self. It is good to remain honest. But in the

phenomenol world it is the opposite alone being dishonest alone brings success. Augie’s

passion to remain honest did not blossom well out of his disreputable occupation,

Skimming money from department store, participating in a robbery, heading east with Hoe

Gorman and finally ended with managing black market dealings. In all these matter he

had no wish that is rooted in character but he had to face problems to overcome in his

fated life to lead on whether nurture possible to shape the character against the native is

a million dollar question and that in shown by Bellow in this novel.

 A philosophical Romance dealing with the quest of the protagonist realizing

meaning in life not out of his financial and physical but of his rich ancestry and heritage

but of association with the primitive nature found in Africa.His social instinct other wise

called wasp disturbed him psychologically. In spite of his distinguished family having a

rich father and famous author amassed him riches to the tune of there million dollars he

was tossed up with a strange sensation with “ I want”, I want” about which he had not

answer out of his normal activities . This inner voice “I want” disturbed his poise that

resolved in the death of his house keeper due to his uncanny shouting .This urged him to

leave for Africa where he could got an answer to his primitive self of existence. He

believed his inner primitive nature would find solace , comfort as well as provide him a

plausible answer out of his choice living close in the primitive Africa . with his servent

Romilayu he reached Arnewi tribe region who were all gentle and meek. They were out

disturbed by the frong menace occupying in their reservoir only source of their drinking.

They all suffered out of thirst and many of their cattle died out of thrist . He met the queen

of the tribe who taught him the value of grun- tu- molani leading a life by providing

relief to he needy. He bomed the reservoir and its cistern got blasted of draining all

water. He was humbled by his good intention. Next he visited another tribe called Warrire

and became friendly with the King Dahfu. Here he brought rain out of lifting a huge

Sungo Sativa in their rain ceremony. It was the belief of Dhafu that a connection between

the external and internal aspects of man and animal like a powerful lion for which suitable

experiments had to be conducted . Dahfu took Henderson as his guinea pig for his

experimentation and died in the course.

Bushman the chief priest of the tribe hated Dahfu and his philosophy of powerful

man and powerful beast could lead a life of harmony planned a mischief that took the life

of Dahfu. His belief that his lion. Possessed the spirit of his father of properly nurtured

would have its strength of sprit to his friend Handerson got a bosted. Any how

Henderson and Romilayu escaped from the tribal region and left the land. Henderson
took the cub Dahfu other wise possessed with the spirit of him. It was at this point

Hendeson much awaited meaningful answer for his inner voice.

Suddenly surfaced making him realize that out of love shown on all objects of

nature throw on ,there would be a meaningful existence. It is after the inner realization he

took up to the study of the medicine thereby , serving humanity in a manner worth to be

shown out of the parlance of love. Africa has awaked Henderson, so the possibility of

love seems natural enough .In a sense it has washed him, clean renewed him given him

that seemed higher innocence through experience so that the concluding image of man

and child appropriately complements as it superseded man that of man and beast. What

Henderson had in him the political trait,he born superior since he rich had his identification

with Dafhu. Dahfu was a kind of psycho analytic Rabbi a sermonized, moralizing citizen

. He was not an artist out of his aristocratic cult but a political leader. By humbling ego

to nature he alienated from his ego self and found trek with the beastial nature ever

establishing its supremacy on other object. The Theory that the entire body conditioned

had its influence from animals as reiterated by rich had its impact in Bellow’s creation

of Dahfu. The life principle as spontaneous emission of powerful emotion had its genesis

in the natural world of beasts our that was to a certain extent bordered in the portrayal of

Dahfu about which Bellow did not give any full conformation out of his portraying

Henderson with his romantic iconography in his stay in the loin’s den. Atti- The lion of

Dahfu had a ferocious glare on him that flickered in Henderson an energy spark

incarnated in him that made him to surrender to almighty at this awful moments.

Acknowledging in him the religious impulse that saved his skin from any disaster.

Further the Jewish tendency of religions will that mercy-the justice of truth would be

done not by the individual will not by the will of god. This belief in Henderson as he used to

say that he would be reunited with his dear parents and such a thing could happen had its

genesis him Jewish tradition. Further his religious tradition was a matter of the heart’s
affection rather than of orthodoxy. With his association of Dahfu, Atti, the grun tu- molani

along with his inner voice I want finally landed him on hard won .

Inner calm-the realization of forgiveness .The realization of soul existed in man and beasts

dawned on him that both objects of nature ( Man- beast ) out of mutual love shown to each

other could lead a harmonious and meaningful life without give room to any mutual

quarrel and mutual revenge.

Herzog was written against the background of the growth of materialism due to

the impact of two world wars resulting a total blow on religious faith and moral values.

The evolution of a mass society during the post was America led to minimal status of

individual, his loss of his self and sense and also identity of his goal in his life. Consequent

to this cut throat competitive spirit of materialism, man became a drifter, a wonderer,

man had neither peace nor harmony with the neither outside world Consequently he

became an alienated and isolated being. The eternal quest for identity came to stay in man

who found neither a sense of social release nor a personal joy. The nuclear holocaust the

persecution of Jews in Europe in Nazi concentration camps the uprootedness of Jews over

3000 years and the different socio cultural traditions of the American Jews contributed the

blossoming of Jewish American literature having in it the theme of sufferings as its pivotal

centre . Among Jewish writers of this period time Bernard Malamud, Isaac singer,

Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow was unique in his choice of narrative focusing in it the

Clements of humanism and realism. His portrayal of subtle human tensions with minute

focus of attention gained him a name of great explorer in the creed of psychological

idiosyncrasies while other Jewish writers by telling how man lost in self-identity there by

forced force to lead life in a faceless society. But bellow was different in his focus who

expounded the theory that the self of the individual was not lost and that the modern

society not waste land. There by his heroes were not hopeless beings of despair out them loss

of identify but possessed in their spirit of selves against all odds or ordeals of life. These
assertions of their selves- a prominent theme got moulded into another theme of suffering.

It is out of their sufferings all of them learnt life of positive tendency in of life.

This story of Herzog thus opened up by revealing to the reader how his mind was

thwarted at his divorce with his Madeleine. His loss out of their divorce he believed was

due to his friends and relatives who all remained impartial in their views by supporting

his wife and not taking into account and iato of his personal faults he had on her. He also

pandered over his philandering tendencies shown to many women - Wanda – in Poland,

Ramona in Manhattan, Zinka the Japanese student Sano Oguki- His intimacy with

Ramona was the longest one. But she did not touch his heart as deeply as his affair of

Madeleine. He then started to love with her but found her to be a domineering wife- They

had become friends with an intellectual Valentine Gershbach and his wife Phoebe.

Gershbach’s intellectual talk allured Madeline to such an extent that she shared bed with

him secretly. Herzog was shocked to know this matter. She also confessed that she

couldn’t live with him that she had no love for him. Herzog became tensed and to each

this tension he started writing letter and this own the focal point in the novel. He did not

tell any story in these letter but he had revealed his mind how painful it was for him on

realizing his wife’s adultery and how his intellectual mind, thanks to his profession as a

professor tried to gloat on this ugly matter and transcend its limits due to his knowledge in

philosophy, politics, psychology and international relations, science and technology.

As a result they became this index of his mind. These letter were philosophic

monologues. In addition to revealing his personal suffering out of his wife’s desertion

Herzog intellectual mind gave went to the values and problems of the society addressing

the ideal philosophies of Hegel and Nietzsche as well as ideal politicians like Nehru and

Eisenhower. Out of corresponding such ideal stalwarts in their respective fields. Herzog

enumerated how the present day society of him led in course in the direction of valueless

of objectives. Even if this contest he never last sight of accepting the positive values

expounded by them and believed in his own conviction to cling such values whatever might
be the course of the rotten society around him to its destination. As a professor he gave vent

to his emotions by finding intellectual solutions to problems out of his two broken marriage

one with Sen Marco and the other with Madeleine his life was isolated and adding fuel

to fire he had a snapped relation with his friends brothers and relatives. Two daughters

born to him out of these marriages- Daisy born to him and Sen Marco, June born to him

and Madeleine he was not lucky enough to lead a happy life with them. He brought a

house in Berkshires, left his job and moved to Chicago- all these things he did out of his

Madeleine’s pester- Finally she kicked him out of his house . All these letters were

soaked in his grievance of failure as father, husband, and professor. These letters served

as vehicles of the narration helped to expose Herzog’s past in a series of pictures

independent of time sequence. For him the shift from the pain of isolation to the Joy of

self assertion was a hard task. His mental torture caused by his foolish wife of passion

triggered him an emotional inner void and thereby he was thrown to tread on hellish

sufferings . The more he suffered the more his mental horizon got widened. This served

him to accept gracefully the hard realities of life and moulded him to submit himself to

such sufferings there by sublimating his own self not to yield to sufferings but to emerge

victoriously out of the sufferings as a victorious balanced being of existence. The fear

of his daughter, June might have got killed by Madeleine on account of her living

with Gersbach his disturbed his mental balance that resulted in the idea of killing

Madeline. While visiting them with the murder rage he saw Gersbach bathing June and

Madeline washing dishes watered his firy rage and in the place of furry, love blossomed.

But Madeliene got him arrested for his foul visit. It was in this act of her hatredness he

realized that Madeline in all three years of association with him harboured only hatredness

this incident . Suffering widens his mental horizon and made him embrace humanity out

of love. His personal tragedy ironically made him look at humanity as a being of love

instead of hatredness. Shakespearian greatest philosophy , The rarer action is in virtue

and not in vengeance dawned on him steering his life on the turbulent sea of suffering by

accepting life not a bed of roses but a path trodden with thorns.

In Humboldt’s Gift the protagonist Citrine exhausts his energy out of mystically

looking at the mundane earthly life contained the impression of eternity if is in this novel

Bellow out of his ripe experience is able to portray lucidly the mater of life and spirit

fight against the emptiness of death in order to achieve the philosophical essence that

life and death are meaningful co- existence as one transcendental reality.The proganist

Citrine in this novel drives himself in the direction of the sprit which happened on the plane

of common place reality of evil death and madness of the world of the reality. It is in this

mundane , vulgar and rift- raft transactional world of Chicago as experienced by

Citrine, Chicago. Otherwise a waste land .the place of segregation between mind and spirit

is in its complexing , abandoning man to lead a dehumanized life. It is a place devoid of

culture. But to Citrine but Chicago is not totally degenerated place. It has with in it signs of

positive values of eternity. Bellow believes Chicago offer scope for beings like Citrine to

ponder on metaphysical thoughts and this aspect is found noising in New York. There

by personal salvation is possible in Chicago. Citrine’s guru Humboldt because of higher

sensibility and thought tried his best to graple with the higher spiritual plane without

getting spoiled out of his physical touch of Chicago wasteland. He was ridiculed by the

society he lived in. He was not properly understood by the society and became a

laughing stock . Citrine realized that all along his proximity with Humboldt lost his

balance due to the successive radiance of success that dampened his spirit, brought

lethargy to his soul obfuscating his vision. But the receipt of gift from his guru Humboldt

carved a niche in his deeper layer of conscience that elevated him to find a meaningful

relationship of his self with soul as well as a meaningful relationship between his

spiritual self of his mentor.

Both Humboldt and Citrine were great masters of art. Both helped others in

mutual esteem and love. Humboldt helped him a lot for his financial elevation. He hoped
Citrine would help during the period of financial crisis. This did not happen and

Humboldt died, when Citrine touched the depth of financial crisis. At that hour he gave

him some of his manuscripts and requested him to use it for his material gain. It was this

gift from his guru Citrine got him unprecedented material success that made him aware

of his guru’s gift signifying love and forgiveness that got him a solution to the problem

of death. He realized the spiritual essences of love and forgiveness practiced in life

soaked in all wasteland character of evil would steer the course of life in the midst of

wasteland with its deplorable sinking in the pit of death out of the redemptive spiritual

practice of self, love and forgiveness.

While all the people in the Chicago society succumbed their individuality to the

fashionable systems infected with sex malaria it is only Citrine tried his best to

overcome all the negative forces out of his unflinching Renata, Citrines’ wife got

divorced from her first husband a seller of funeral lots. She did not live with Citrine also

but left him to see another companion Flonzalay a very rich man. Thus Renata’s life tossed

between wealth and death sapping her energies on this zig zag life. She was perversive in

her sex pursuits. When Citrine and Renata were disturbed in their intimacy Citrine left

to her to talk to his friend Thaxter she could not control her sex instinct and started

masturbating her self taking Citrine’s foot into her crotches. Her mother Senora too

was a victim of lust. She was so prodigal with her body in her youth and she did not

even know by whom she conceived Renata. Citrines sex adventure with her life Herzog’s

sex adventures with many was a matter for him to see through the certainty of uncertainty

in order to realize the unreality fleeting aspects of beauty and fading physical attraction.

Citrine’s affair with another criminal Rinaldo Cantabile brought out the cut throat

exploitation found exhibited in the Chicago soil ,In a gambling Citrine’s car was

captured by Rinaldo who was ready to give it back to him provided that he had to help

complete doctoral thesis of his learned wife on the topic of Humboldt with ready supply

of material on Humboldt for her. He also smelled the materials given to citrine by
Humboldt had scope to hit the buleward taxi for which he was ready to arrange a girl

for him to share his on bed in his. The sex malaria exhibited in them incident showed

clearly how people like Cantabile thought about death without seriously considering its

real worth. In a similar manner when his brother Ulick out his death bed due to heart

attack did not understand Citrine’s soothing words on death. He consoled Ulick by saying

that death is not the end factor of one’s life and there existed a still more life after death

about which many in the world was not aware of . It was because lack of knowledge

about life after death people in this world wanted to commit crimes for material

advancement and became sinners doomed have a blissful life after death. Steeped in lofty

tenets Humboldt’s life is pulverized under the heavy burden of complete materialsm but

still he clings to these high tenets tenaciously out of his grip on arts. Revealingly he is

able to find and answer to his death question in humane act of Humboldt of forgiving

Citrine for his over taking materialy while he was alive and also out of his benign act of

gifting with his manuscripts as a gesture of his precious love and forgiveness. Citrine

gets realized the essence of their two factors love and forgiveness a harmonious bridge

connecting the dead and the living. Citrine too decided to perpetuate his benign action

among the dead and partially provided a link between their failed and unfinished mission in

life out of his gesture of love and forgiveness.

Having had his unshakable faith on the immortality of human spirit Humboldt

provided his manuscripts to Citrine and Kathleen not a dubious action of him but to bring

the element of harmony of togetherness in their lives got separated out of the cut throat

materialism. In the view of Citrine this double gift given to him and his wife by

Humboldt was a gesture of creating a possibility of mingling these two gifts into one to

have them semented on the bondage of true love. undoubtedly Humboldt clearly brought

out his action of gift the indisputable and indomitable factor of human beings not a

natural but super natural.

 What Citrine did to Humboldt out of ridiculing him in his plays while he

was alive Citrine after totally surrendering before the ideals of love and forgiveness

taught to him out of his exhumed his Guru Humboldt’s gift he exhumed the graves of

Humboldt’s mother and Humboldt and reburied in more spacious place, binding them as

they had to be bound together, Citrine could not do any more favour to Humboldt as he

was dead and that is why what best he could do got he best of all best gesture of actions by

uniting the graves of Humboldt and his mother. This token of Citrine’s love shown to

Humboldt was none other than his respentence for all indifference he showed on him

while he was alive. As a human as well as a Jew Citrine’s tendency keeping the graves

of Humboldt’s and his mother abreast was his genuine expiation for his indifferent

attitude in a manner suitable to a Jew wronged as person and ask pardon for his immoral

defect departing from the ethics of Jewishness. All characters is this novel like Denis,

Ulick, his wife and his brother lost sight of their own indifferent identities and were

wasted away by the ruthless material tidal waves he alone remained solid and stoic on

account of the romantic Jewish feeling resisting the wasteland despair and persisting hope

in the unknown. In the care of Humboldt the Jewish identity became a nightmare that

made a roofless being of existence. In the case of Citrine the implanted at his center of

self the element of schlemiel like innocence that guided him in his adventures. In spite

of having had in his fortune and disasters he was bet by his members of family friends

and professional peers Citrine showed love with others that was his saving grace for him to

lead a balanced life in the midst of a turbulent life saving his child under his care while his

wife Renata left for Spain to get married to Flonzalay his typical Jewish trait did not

forsake this child ( a boy) . His genuine family affection, emotionalism and sentimentalism

are all rooted in his Jewish creed. It was the fit for Humboldt the manuscripts. Symbolizing

love and forgiveness that got him a permanent answer to the mystical loneliness that

what would be the fate humans after death leading such a life of misery would be well

rewarded redeemed resurrected out of showing love and forgiveness on others while
they were alive. Immortality of man is possible out of twine practice of love and

Forgiveness.

In his Second Novel, The Victim, Bellow presents another protagonist, Asa Leventhal, who,

like Joseph , seems to be dangling: alone in his apartment with his wife away, he is in a social

vacuum, almost floating along with the everydayness of his life. Asa is similar to Joseph in

his felling of alienation, for as Joseph is a comprehensive, alienated thinker, Asa is the

defensive, outcast Jew. Both Joseph and Asa are ultimately Searching for identity and

freedom, and the many obvious parallels between the two books seems to indicate that The

Victim has developed as a direct outgrowth of the ideas presented in Dangling Man.

Asa’s problem of finding himself is primarily a problem stemming from his ideas

regarding his rather pre-carious position in the world.

Asa’s conviction that he somehow is merely lucky to have avoided being one of the

lost or ruined seems to make him always conscious of the need to defend his somewhat lowly

position in society.

In wanting to hold to his unstable position in life, Asa has a distinct feeling of

“differentness.” He falls short of valuable understanding and association with other s mainly

because his life is too ego- centered. He can think only of himself and his sense of being

different in his effort to establish a knowledge of himself. He almost violently recoils from

any human involvements, and he always has a feeling of distrust or despair when he involves

himself with others. His desire to exclude other from the narrow world in which he maintains

a feeling of semi pseudo –safety is exemplified in his portrayal.

Asa does not have the slightest desire to flash he prefers to stay away from external

involvement in his almost perverted attempt to protect himself from the outer world.
 Asa adequately acknowledges that he believes freedom in total introversion is not

effective. Thre is certainly something left out of a life of geocentricism practiced to the extent

of excluding everyone. But , Asa, like many people in search of themselves, feels that any

commitment to persons or to institutions is an act of conformity and by any movement

toward conformity , Asa’s differences seem to be intensified. For example, when he has

an unusual feeling of responsibility for his brother’s son , who is dying of some

unexplainable fever Asa constantly fears becoming involved with the family. He worries

too much about what Elena’s mother will say to him, what his employer will think about

him; and, at the hospital , he is unusually concerned about what the doctor will say to

him. Any outside contacts seem to enhance Asa’s feelings of insecurity, and when it is

possible to do so , he avoids becoming involved with others.

His tendency to lock himself in from the world is also based on his strong sense of

guilt—a feeling particularly apparent by his habit of thinking that he is always in the

wrong place at the wrong time. He can never be too sure that his luck will not run

out, and he always considers his self as a potential outcast or ruined person. His failure

to achieve security is a result of his total failure to understand that his ego and external

world actually need each other. Because of his fear of becoming involved in others’

lives. Asa cannot face the external world. He tires, in the center of his limited world,

to maintain a certain degree of existence, an existence that is only slightly realized by

his knowing that he is not a ruined man and intensified even less by his fear of

becoming such a man.

Asa, with no profound connections to life, would easily become like Joseph if it

were not for the appearance of Kirby Allbee. Allbee represents the intrusion of the

outside world, even if in a rather perverted form, into Asa’s confined and self-

submerged existence. In all of his crudeness and even madness, Allbee threatens Asa’s

somewhat unstable sense of confined security, become Allbee is the personification of

what Asa has, only through some deterministic Luck, escaped. The situation is
intensified by the fact that Allbee invades Asa’s privacy with the accusation that Asa is

the cause of Allbee’s deplorable condition. Even through Asa tries to ignore Allbee’s

demands and accusations, much he same as he tirs to remain uncommitted to everyone,

Asa finally is forced to recognize Allbee as an important factor in his life.

Perhaps the reason that Asa cannot refuse to listen to Allbee ensues from

Asa’s inherent sense of guilt. The success, of his permanent bond with a strong

attempt to unite within himself all of his so-called attributes to enable him to find,

within himself, his individuality is constantly threatened by his insecurity and guilt.

Therefore, if he can somehow determine the origin and character of his insecurity, he

can, perhaps , ultimately find the reality and selfhood he needs. Asa’s ambivalence toward

Allbee is typical of his simultaneous attempts to join and efforts to reject a responsible

position among others. Asa does not want to accept the responsibility of Allbee’s

situation, yet he cannot dismiss the thought that he, in some way, could be responsible.

Throughout his experience with Allbee, one sees Asa’s failure to establish proper

relationships, not only with Allbee but also with the whole realm of the external world.

His inability to communicate with the world results in his failure to establish proper

relationships within his won consciousness. Asa tries to have a typical existential non-

concern for Allbee’s situation. He seems to convince himself that Allbee and all

intruders cannot make a difference to him. In fact, his situation is much the same as

that of the existentialist. Asa’s freedom in this case is his freedom from commitment

and his adherence to a limited.

View of his world and of himself. He does not have room, in his narrow

conception of the world, for others nor for an attempt to establish a true sense of the

world of others. Asa, therefore, cannot understand the intrusion of others into his world,

and Allbee’s forceful presence serves both to further confuse Asa and to drive him to

an even more definitely introverted quest.

 In Asa’s impenetrability, he seems to choose mediocrity over any true effort to

find himself. He tries, in his routine of everyday life, to shut Allbee out of his mind.

His total rejections of Allbee is the only defense he has, and he uses it as a defense

against Allbee as well as against the rest of the world. Asa cannot understand that if

he would make an attempt to find his place in the world instead of trying to fight the

seemingly unbearable forces of the world, he could come to an understanding which

would rapidly remove his feelings of guilt and his insecurity. However, he takes refuge

in his routine, and it is not until Allbee tries to commit suicide that Asa begins to feel

some of the implications of the importance of attaining proper communication with

external phenomena. With Allbee’s attempted suicide, it becomes apparent to Asa that

the ridiculous situation Allbee has forced upon him could not be forced upon anyone

with a true sense of himself and of his world situation.

Asa recognizes the need for external communication, but he is so engulfed by his

own fears and geocentricisms that he cannot accept the challenge confronting him by

participating in the world. It is evident to Asa that Allbee suffers, an through his

experience with Allee, Asa is conscious of intense evil and suffering that he had never

before become “involved” enough to know. However, Asa also realizes the dangers fo

becoming involved; and even though he approaches consciousness, he soon disregards it

for the superficial safety he finds in his confined, evasive world. He realize that his

evasiveness will not lead him to a true sense of his inner self, But Asa cannot extend

his consciousness to include the external world, not only because he doubts his ability

to live with the vision that would await him. But also he is unable to understand that

such a projection of consciousness into the world is the only way for a true

understanding of himself and a true sense of being.

Since Asa fails to accept the challenge presented by the outer world, he knows

that he must rely on his old way of life, his preservation of superficial reminders of his

existence. Therefore, he completely rejects Allbee.

 He goes back to his old habits, old routines, and old insecurities. He is promoted, and

his promotion is his idea of another example of his luck in avoiding ruin and doom—a luck

that must be guarded by avoiding outer conflicts. Asa does not find his selfhood: he simply

exists in his limited world without a true understanding or sense of his relationship either to

his world or to himself. Even in all his madness, Allbee has a sense of life: he does not avoid

conflict, and he has true feelings of despair, passion, and love, because he accepts important

relationships between himself and his world.

Asa’s rejection of the external world is more complex than Joseph’s isolation, because

Asa has a sense of what he is missing by the absence of proper communication. Joseph is

glad to be regimented, because he cannot stand his loneliness in isolation; Asa chooses his

routine because he does not have the courage to make the necessary changes in his life to

achieve proper communication and relationships. He is afraid, but he cannot forget the

glimpse of true consciousness he felt by briefly encountering a sense of relationship with his

outer world. Both Joseph and Asa search for true and valuable knowledge of themselves; and,

even though the circumstances surrounding their quests take completely different forms, they

both fail to accomplish.