The Confusion And Sublimation Of Jewish Identity In Herzog

Saul Bellow, the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1976, is often accepted as one of most outstanding American writers as Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. Herzog is Bellow's pivotal novel written in his middle age. It describes how a Jewish intellectual Moses Herzog ultimately finds a new identity after he loses himself in a multi-culture society.On the basis of theoretical framework of this research, the author of this thesis attempts to make a detailed analysis of this important novel of identity, aiming at directing an immigrant to keep an independent self in a multi-culture society.This thesis consists of five chapters: the first two chapters are the brief introduction to Saul Bellow and two main theories. In the third chapter the author dwells on Herzog's confusion of two identities from the perspectives of manifestation of Native, Herzog as Other, and confusion of two identities. The fourth chapter explores the ways of self-salvation, including escape, getting rid of visible and invisible control, a call of love and responsibility to family, and a return to nature. The last chapter is the conclusion.