The Alienation And Restoration Of Human Nature

Saul Bellow is one of the most outstanding writers in American literature history. In his more than four decades of creative career, Bellow has written eight novels, published many collections of short stories, and won a number of literary awards. In the creative thinking, Bellow insists that literary works should reflect the truth of history. His works profoundly reveal the spiritual crises in the contemporary western world, and put forward the problems faced by the capitalist civilization. In the writing methods, he is good at blending the innermost feelings with the external activities, and interweaving the realistic description with the historical recollection.Herzog is one of Saul Bellow's representative works. And its main content reflects the humanitarian crisis of the bourgeoisie in the modern society. In this work, the author combines the protagonist's inner world with his external circumstances, which makes the readers clearly realize that Herzog's own spiritual crisis is essentially one kind of the malady of the age. Since its publication, the work has received widespread critical attention. As the work is pregnant with meaning, the scholars are able to analyze the work from different angles. And the contents of the analyses mainly focus on: the spiritual course of the protagonist, the alienation of the main character, the plight of the modern people, the Jewish elements in the work, the autobiographical nature of the work, the narrative techniques of the work, and so on. These reviews have analyzed the themes of the work and the forms of the manifestation of the themes from different levels and aspects. At the same time, these studies have provided the possibility to research the themes of the novel from broader view. As a result, bearing all the above factors in mind, the author of this thesis analyzes the themes of the novel from the angle of "the alienation and restoration of human nature", by using the postmodern existentialist psychoanalysis of Eric Fromm.In order to provide the foundation for the analysis of the themes of the novel, the article first introduces and analyzes Herzog the work itself, the background of the creation, and Fromm's theory. And then, it analyzes the phenomena of the alienation of the human nature from the aspects of "the loss of true love", "the alienated personalities", as well as "the chaotic spiritual state of the society". In this way, it reveals that the crisis of the contemporary western civilization is the fundamental cause of the social diseases of the western world, the alienated relationship between human beings, and the alienated personalities. Afterwards, the article analyzes the protagonist's and other characters' pursuit of human nature, and their restoration processes from the angles of "the pursuit and regaining of true love", "the reconstruction of healthy personalities", and "the harmonious relationship between man and nature". Meanwhile, in order to further deepen the themes, the essay analyzes the ideal social conditions of the protagonist in part three of the article---The Restoration of Human Nature. And then, it concludes that the true love of mankind is the answer to the survival problems of human beings. Moreover, only a sane socio-cultural environment can provide a guarantee of a truly sound personality, and make the essence of human nature shine forever.