The Alienation And Return Of The Jewish Protagonist In The Novel Of Saul Bellow

As one of the most representative author of Jewish literature, Saul Bellow is productive for he published 13 novels and a number of short stories, essays and scripts during his sixty-years career of creation. And he wins the 1976 Nobel prize for literature by his bountifully humanistic digestion and sophisticated analysis for contemporary culture.Bellow's works are of district themes and unique style, and attract great attention from readers and critics. Basing on his life experience, he sculptures numerous Jewish intellectual images. Although the fates of these protagonists are not the same, the living difficulties they face and the spiritual regression they experience are similar. Basing on intensive reading of text, this paper makes an integrated analysis on the alienation and regression of Jewish protagonists in cultural shock of his works and explores their choice of life value.This paper is divided into five parts. The introduction part introduces Bellow's life and his composition and the significance of this paper, and summarize the domestic and foreign research on Bellow and his works.The first chapter discusses collisions of cultural factors between Jewish and American in Bellow's works. Bellow, who is deeply influenced by the culture of both Jewish and American, integrates Jewish merits like quick-adaption, equilibrium, solidarity, wisdom, optimism and humor in the essence of Jewish traditional culture and American personalities like individualism, pragmatism and materialism in the essence of American culture into his works. With huge differences between these two cultures, such integration is doomed to generate kinds of conflicts in values, faiths and behaviors, and brings various confusions into the life of American Jewish.The second chapter analyses the living dilemma of the Jewish protagonists, namely different manifestations of alienation. With all the pressures from cultural shock and social life, they become mental anxiety, lost in life, insensible to the meaning of existence and irrespective of the hope in life. They are unwilling to abandon Jewish traditional culture, while cannot accept modern American culture. They only can swing between these two cultures, and alien from society, others and even themselves.The third chapter mainly discusses the regression after the alienation of Jewish protagonists in cultural shock, namely the choice of life value. Although they endured numerous hardships, they still remained a glimmer of hope for life, and finally they return to love, the true, the good, the beautiful and the traditional morality. They embraced the reality bravely, and complete their personal transformation. However, they were urged to concern the fate of the Jewish people by their great sense of responsibility. In order to assure the succession of the Jewish culture, they opted for American Jewish culture, which holds both adherence and concession, and eventually finished their common choice for live valueThe conclusion part generalized the perspective and description of this paper, summarized the significance delivered by Jewish protagonists that created by Bellow and emphasized the viewpoints.