The Plight Of Intellectuals In Chicago:

The American novelist Saul Bellow has successfully portrayed a series of anxious and sensitive intellectuals in metropolis and repeatedly emphasized the gap between the intellectuals’professional ideals and practical compromises, between high aspirations and low opportunism. In his masters Herzog and Humboldt’s Gift, Bellow presents the struggle and vexation of the intellectuals in Chicago.The thesis mainly focuses on the unhealthy atmosphere the intellectuals confront in Chicago and the plight they suffer. Chapter1examines the main characteristics of Chicago reflected in Herzog and Humboldt’s Gift. Chicago turns out to be a city permeated with frequent crimes, sexploitation and money worship which contribute to destroy people’s normal life and inner peace. Chapter2concentrates on the intellectual protagonists’disordered life. Influenced by the unhealthy atmosphere in Chicago, they take to bad habits and result in divorce and frustration in academic career. Chapter3addresses the intellectuals’ spiritual torment. In a pragmatic society the value of art is determined by the market rather than by its artistic value. Therefore, the intellectuals are caught in a dilemma in deciding whether to keep loyal to art or to cater to the masses. If they compromise to the reality, they end in feeling guilty of squandering their talent; but if they determine to follow their heart, they are quite likely to hug poverty and loneliness and taste the agony of remaining his talents unappreciated. Thus, the intellectuals could hardly avoid the spiritual torture.With a close examination of the two novels, the author finds the unhealthy atmosphere in Chicago quite relevant to the plight of intellectuals. It brings them both physical and mental chaos. The struggle of the intellectuals in the novels suggests that it is not easy for an intellectual to follow pure art, truth and his authentic self in metropolis. To follow their dreams, they are badly hurt in Chicago and struggle to find a way out of spiritual crisis.