Saul Bellow's Humanistic Concerns For The Jewish Intellectuals

Saul Bellow is regarded as another master after Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner in American literature. In 1976, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for"his human understanding and subtle analysis of the contemporary culture that are combined in his works"by the Swedish Academy. From his first published novel Dangling Man in 1944 to the novel More Die of Heartbreak published in 1987, Bellow concerns for the modern man's existence and fate all the time. In his novel Herzog which was published in 1964, Saul Bellow portrayed a typical image of a Jewish intellectual for the first time, showing the readers his existential dilemmas in the modern society. From then on, Bellow insists on exploring and portraying the spiritual characteristics of these characters, revealing their existential situations under the special historical environment in the modern America, and their exploration and thoughts on the fate of mankind in the process of their seeking for the footholds in the society. Bellow shows his profound humanistic concerns for and sympathy of their existential dilemmas and spiritual crisis, and he doesn't forget to show a way out for his tormented Jewish protagonists for their spiritual salvation. In fact, Saul Bellow's humanistic concerns are not only for his Jewish intellectuals, but also for the modern man and the fate of humankind from the visual angle of existential philosophy. In order to show the readers how Saul Bellow's deep humanistic concerns for the Jewish intellectuals are revealed in his novels, the author of this paper tries to expound them as the following six aspects...