Henderson The Rain King: An Allegory Of Kierkegaard's Existentialism

Among Saul Bellow's works, Henderson the Rain King possesses the most extensive sense of life though it has been commentated the least so far. On the basis of the existentialist analysis of the significance of the literary character Eugene Henderson, the three-part structure of the novel and its plot, the present thesis finds that the novel is actually an allegory which advocates the Christian existentialism of the 19^th-century Danish theologian and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.Henderson the Rain King is an existentialist novel with the theme to advocate the statements of existentialism, a trend of thought which was extremely popular in the West in 1950s. With the help of Henderson, "the absurd seeker for high qualities", Bellow, on one hand, presents us the spiritual crisis modern people universally face in a society of affluence; on the other hand, he vividly expresses human perpetual pursuit for reality which contains love. Henderson's three experiences in America and Africa actually stand for the three ways or stages of life in Kierkegaard's Christian existentialism, that is, the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious. In America, he lives a comfortable life in the mid-century affluence society, but he is often threatened by death, feeling no happiness at all. His rich but unhappy life in America symbolizes the aesthetic stage, the combination of pursuit of pleasure and feeling of dread. The rational life way of the Arnewi corresponds to the ethical since the responsible Arnewi commit their life way to the universal truth grun-tu-molani, going for the good and against the bad. However, the ineffectiveness of the universal truth in application simultaneously makes the rational life bitter. King Dahfu of Wariri practices the highest stage, the religious, of which the spirit of Caritas is characteristic, for he exchanges good for evil by keeping the blow to himself. Henderson's choice of Dahfu's practice apparently shows Bellow's appreciation of the last stage. Echoing to Kierkegaard, Bellow thinks that the religious stage is nothing else but the practical way leading modern...