Wilderness Hunchbacked Monk

Saul Bellow, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1976, is considered to be the most important writer following William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway of contemporary American literature. Saul Bellow gave a profound and multi-dimensional description of the ambivalence and conflict which the Jews of various kinds suffer realistically, mentally and spiritually. The characters, especially the heroes or heroines who have the intensive consciousness of hardship, feel solitary and mentally at a loss, confronted not only with the setbacks of the real life but also the crisis of the mental world of values. The most distinctive feature is the embarrassing situation of their cultural identity, which Saul Bellow realized acutely and put on the platform of his thinking. Saul Bellow was quite clear in mind that in the melting pot of different cultures of the United States, the Jewish culture never remained pure. Rather it has become a mixed one, incorporating some elements of the American culture and rejecting some of its own. The American Jews, embodying the identity and consciousness of both the Americans and the Jews, demonstrate a double identity and consciousness, which in Bellow's novels means the cultural identity is no longer a pure process of recognition of one single culture but a construction of a series of identities and the coordination, conflict, revision and replacement of the double consciousness which is contradictive in itself. Based on the theory of cultural identity in the post-colonialism literature and analyzing the cultural identity of the characters in Saul Bellow's novels, this thesis probes into the arduousness of the American Jews and the profound cultural connotations of in the novels, on this looks into the more profound connotation of the cultural identity: the exploration of selfness.Partâ… :Theories on cultural identity.In the context of the globalization and cultural diversification, there are tremendous theories on cultural identity, which has become a hotspot of research of the post-modernism. This part gives a tentative summary of various theories of cultural identity. First it gives a definition of cultural identity, one of the key words of the thesis. Then in this part an analysis is made of the cultural identity recognition theory in the post-colonialism context, i.e. the constructivist cultural identity. And last in this part a framework of analysis in this thesis is sketched out: the cultural identity recognition part of the post-colonialism theories, i.e. Homi Bhabha's view of ambivalent and hybridity cultural identity and Du Bois's ideation of double consciousness.Part II :Cultural identity of the characters in Saul Bellow's novels.The living conditions of the characters in Bellow's novels are an epitome of those of the whole American Jews. The heroes are confronted not only with the mental crisis but in the first place with the crisis of their identity. Having realized this situation in which the American Jews suffer the crisis of identity, Bellow placed this question on a platform of thinking. Having read the Saul Bellow's masterpieces, the author of this thesis holds that while the characters in Bellow's novels bear more or less the double identity, an individual may display more of one than the other identity. Following this the author classifies the attitudes of the characters on their identity into three categories: first, those who long to have an American cultural identity, such as Ruela in Herzog and Simon and Augie March and Siemon in The Adventures of Augie March; second, those who vacillate between the American and Jewish identities, such as Herzog in Herzog and wales in Seize the day; third, those who maintain the Jewish identity, such as Herzog's parents in Herzog, Ravelstein in Ravelstein and Juliese in Humboldt's gift.Part III :The origin of harassment of cultural identity.The issue of cultural identity recognition is one that every individual or entity inevitably faces living in another culture, which is particularly true for those who scatter in another culture. This is a problem which the American Jews face as well. As Homi Bhabha puts it, the issue of cultural identity is basically an issue of culture, which is related to the contact and exchange of different cultures and recognition and interpretation of the differences between cultures. Therefore, the probe into the cultural identity of American Jews is inevitable associated with the complicated relationship between the American culture and the Jewish culture. Based on this, this thesis intends to give an analysis of the such elements which affect the cultural identity of the characters in Bellow's novels as the historical situation of the Jewish race, the cultural harassment of the American Jews and the life experiences of Saul Bellow.Part IV: The implication of the cultural identity in modern times.The issue of cultural identity of the characters in Bellow's novels signifies the American Jews'choice between the American cultural identity and the Jewish cultural identity originates from the meditation of such philosophical questions as"Who am I?""Where am I from?""Where am I to be?"Furthermore, it reflects enquiry of mental location and search for the essence of selfness. This part is divided into two sub-parts: (i) The Jewish race: which embodies the sufferings of all human beings. The Jewish people embody the sufferings of all human beings, which makes them bound to transmit the sense of dissimilation, fantasy and dislocation. (ii) Saul Bellow, who had been searching for the essence of selfness. The humanity which Saul Bellow embodies makes his novels more concerned with the mental issues of the modern people. He not only reveals the search for personal identity of the American Jews but also makes this issue more transcendental and popularized, displaying the search for self crisis and essence of modern people.