Searching For Balance In Nature

Saul Bellow (1915 -2005) is considered one of the most important novelists in the American literary world, following Faulkner and Hemingway. His works contain a wealth of social content and deep philosophical thinking, and he is a writer with a tendency of modernist realism. On one hand, he inherits Dresser, Tolstoy and other writers of realism of certain traditions, portraying modern city life and mental status of modern man in the United States ,as well as made a full reproduction of art the social conditions in the United States; On the other hand , his work is not confined to portraying real life, but reveals and explores the phenomenon behind the widespread confusion of human existence; his novels have a clear philosophical tendency, that is the focus of his novels are metaphysical propositions about the world the significance of life. As an immigrant Jewish writer in the United State, Bellow's works are beyond the traditional Jewish culture and local culture of the United States. Bellow's novels reflect two distinct characteristics: First, they fully conform to the spirit of modern art, giving enough attention to human psychological world; second, his focus of attention is those general problems of human life. In 1976, he won the Nobel Prize because of his "human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work".Henderson the Rain King is one the most representative novels of Bellow in the mid-term of his writing career. This paper attempts to give a re- interpretation on Bellow's novel Henderson the Rain King. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, to argue that the moral philosophy adopted by Henderson, the protagonist, and Dahfu, king of the Wariri, and the "master-image" of Henderson, is closely parallel to the transcendental philosophy of dialogue and "double consciousness"; or that, like Emerson and Whitman, Henderson and Dahfu express faith in the union of the physical and the spiritual, body and soul, reason and emotion, self and society, death and immortality, Second, to maintain that the journey of Henderson is a journey in transcendence, it enables him to shed the inner excesses of his self, as well as the excesses of modern American culture, and to restore "equipoise and calm of mind". The first part is a general introduction of Saul Bellow and a literary review. The second part gives a review of 19th century American Transcendentalism and lays the theoretical basis of the thesis. The third part tries to find evidence in Bellow's life experience, delivering, and speeches to prove that Bellow is in close relation to 19^th American transcendentalist philosophies. Besides, this part also finds a connection to the moral philosophies on Beliow's heroes. The fourth part is the main part of the thesis; it gives a comprehensive analysis of the novel Henderson the Rain King and tries to interpret it using the "double consciousness" philosophy and finds its relation with Thoreau's Walden. The fifth part is the conclusion.