Rootless Boredom

Saul Bellow's famous novelette, "Seize the Day," not only describes an American Jew's one-day experience, but also reveals what he has encountered in most of his life through clever plot design and layout. Through the main character's experience of failure and mistakes in the real world and his boredom and despair in his spiritual world, the author expresses the theme of 'rootlessness' of the modern American Jewish community and their crisis of survival and spiritual loss.In order to better express the theme of "rootlessness", Bellow selected and arranged the narrative materials brilliantly throughout this entire novel. This article attempts to conduct a narrative analysis of this novel and is structured as follows:The first part briefly introduces Saul Bellow, his novel "Seize the Day" and the expression of theme of "rootlessness" from the perspective of his cultural identity and the content of his work.The second part mainly introduces the "Shlemiel" narrative style of "Seize the Day". The formation of this style is deeply related to the sufferings of Jewish people in the history.Through an analysis of the image of the main character in this novel, or in other words, "Shlemiel", I will discuss how Bellow used this type of narrative style to portray the true circumstances of modern American Jews.The third part mainly analyses the narrative mode of "Seize the Day". It is started by introducing the three types of structure modes in Western novels. The narrative mode of "Seize the Day" is picaresque and Bellow developed this model by making the characters wander in his external behavior as well as in his spiritual world. Therefore the physical and spiritual wandering seems to melt into one perfectly on the main character.Part four mainly analyses the narrative methods of "Seize the Day" from three perspectives. First, it is argued that the narrative vision of "Seize the Day" should be classified as non-focus. The use of such vision can help the narrator get hold of the mental feelings of every single character on the scene in a very deliberate way, and manifests the main character's no sense of belonging and rootless condition to the greatest degree. On the other hand, by analyzing the use of the stream of consciousness in this novel, it can be seen that there are three patterns of narrative discourse: indirect speech, free direct speech and free indirect speech. The use of different narrative discourses can lead readers to experience the rootless spiritual wandering of the character in the real circumstances from multiple angles. Moreover, an analysis of the art of time (the use of a flashback) in this novel is presented in order to explain how half of his life and the social relations of the main character are revealed.The last part of this paper analyses the profound meanings of the novel ending and explores its emotional and formal aspects in order to discuss how the ending reflects the inherent temperament of Bellow as a Jewish writer and how it echoes the theme of "rootlessness".