Jewish Ethics VS Jungle Law

The protagonists in Saul Bellow’s early six novels suffer by their Jewishness in modern American society dominated by Christian values and ethics. It seems that the reasons for their sufferings come from the uncompromising nature between a belief based on Jewish family love and blood ties, the Jewish consciousness of Being the Chosen People on the one hand and Americaness on the other hand, a belief based on individualism and the“Law of Jungle”aiming at gaining the maximum profits for each individual. Moreover, Judaism is a regional ethnical religion with a limited population, while Christianity is a religion involving masses of people all over the world. Jews have to merge themselves into Christians’world in order to preserve themselves from being alienated by the majorities. Unfortunately, in doing so, they take the risk of becoming rootless and of losing Jewish traditions. Saul Bellow explores in his early six novels his protagonists’predicaments and ways to their salvation, and has reached a code of fortitude, tolerance and love to achieve harmony.Through the detailed study of Saul Bellow’s early six novels, which are Dangling Man(1944), The Victim(1947), The Adventures of Augie March(1953), Henderson the Rain King(1959), Herzog(1964) and Seize the Day(1956), this dissertation probes the theory of cultural conflicts revealed in them. In the preface, the dissertation introduces the correlative theories, defines the key words of concepts, and gives a survey to the study on the topic abroad and domestically. The Preface also presents the structure of the dissertation. The body of the dissertation consists of five chapters. Chapter One shows the crux of the argument between Jewish culture and American culture. It illustrates the features of the two cultures theoretically and analyzes anti-Semitism in a broad sense. Chapter Two probes how Bellow’s early six novels incorporate the Jewish culture and samples Jewish culture by blood ties and chosen consciousness. Chapter Three illustrates the features of American culture in details, namely a culture based on the jungle law of“the fittest survive”and advocates individualism, which is completely different from the Jewish culture. Chapter Four probes the huge stress Jewish protagonists felt in Bellow’s early six novels by studying the conflicts from contradictory values between Western world and Jewish tradition. Chapter Five lays out Bellow’s protagonists’endeavor to find the ways of solution to solve the predicament American Jews face. By the way of exploring, they find love can solve problems. With love, people may get peace in heart. With love Jews should live with other people harmoniously. Bellow’s early six novels are the mirrors to examine the world via Jewish experience. However, Bellow’s early six novels are much more than Jewish. They are also mirrors to show the life of Americans, Europeans and of the peoples elsewhere. His novels seem to tell us multicultural peoples’harmony is the best state of human existence, that echoes the proclamation of“TO BE DIVERSE WHILE UNIFIED’’.