The Analysis Of Narrative Strategies In Herzog

Saul Bellow is regarded as a representative figure in contemporary American Literature and a vanguard of contemporary fiction in the wake of Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. In 1964, the publication of Herzog marked the confirmation of Bellow's status as "major" American novelist. In this work Bellow explored the situation of the intellectuals in American society. The theme is significant and presented with intensity. His works always lay bare the incompatible contradiction between individual and society, ideal and reality in the modern society and show the dilemma situation that individuals' value and dignity meet for the alienation environment. Hence, the people's existential condition and psychology are open up before the readers' eyesBellow's remarkable achievement in Herzog lies in narrative technique. The goals of narratology are clear: to discover, describe and explain the mechanics of narrative, the elements responsible for its form and functioning. With the employment of narratology, the paper explores the actual functioning of narrative technique in Herzog as it contributes to understanding the novel's theme and character.First, in narrative point of view, Bellow's use of strategic shifts in person and internal focalization embodies well the situation of the protagonist, and makes us, learn more about Herzog's inner and outer world especially his confusion of reality.Secondly, as far as the narrative time is concerned, Herzog has three narrative levels. The very beginning part of protagonist's narration is the first level from which Herzog recalls his own experiences of the past five days. This makes up the second level. During the recalling of the past five days, Herzog looks back on his life-long experience and this retrospection constitutes the third level of the novel. It includes the considerablethoughts on philosophy, history and culture. This only underscores the turmoil of Herzog's hyperactive mind.Thirdly, in narrative space, Bellow provides a vivid objective space from regional environment to social cultural context. In the meantime, tracing the psychological time;psychological space exposes to us a modernist world that is stereoscopic and three-dimensional.Fourthly, by creative and successful employment of irony, Bellow reveals people's depression and helplessness in modern society. Herzog is also able to expose many of the comic flaws of his own character, including the diagnosis of his ludicrous chronic vanity. After reading the novel, readers can understand the writer is extraordinary broadminded to give the self-irony. Herzog is worth the great work of castigating the modern society with the help of sarcastic writing skill.Finally, it is through monologues especially Herzog's unsent mental letters that writer show solicitude for the problems of philosophy, history and culture. By this special writing skill, Bellow cleverly introduces the abstract ideologies in the novel that is rich in profound thoughts, depicting modernist condition of existence and the protagonist's inner feelings of outer world, reflecting the crisis of bourgeois humanism.In a word, Herzog belongs to a modernist fiction with characteristics of temporal anachrony and temporal space as main body. Narrative analysis to Herzog has practical value, which contributes to thorough comprehension of its theme. At present, narratology has been more and more valued and gradually applied to analyze modernist fictions, thus becomes an important critical theory of contemporary literature.