On New Humanism In Bellow's 'Herzog'

The discussion on the tone of Bellow's works and the writer's orientation has never stopped since Bellow published his first novel "the dangling man" in 1944.A majority of critics regard Bellow as a humanist or a humanitarian,or as John Clayton mentions,the defender of human beings.All these critics believe the tone of Bellow's novel is positive,optimistic and affirmative.Nevertheless,these kinds of criticisms have always been questioned and challenged.This phenomenon can be attribute mainly to two reasons.On one hand,Bellow's cultural and ideaistic background contains traditional Jewish culture,the contemporary American culture as well as existentialism in Europe,which brings great challenge to interpret Bellow's works.On the other hand,perhaps more importantly,almost all the critics who relish Bellow as a humanist or a humanitarian ignore the precise definition of these concepts.Accordingly,i choose the representative work of Bellow,'Herzog' as my research objective.On the basis of learning the achievements of the domestic and foreign scholars and by adopting close-reading of the novel,the thesis first presents the relationship between Bellow and existentialism and reexamines the definition of Humanism,then cuts into the concrete actions of Herzog and analyzes the failure and depression of the hero.The thesis tries to prove that the ending of the story----Herzog rests in his old house in the countryside and stops imparting his thoughts to others----directly manifests Bellow's humanism.In other words,the hero of the novel has found a 'middle way' of a humanist.Accordingly,my thesis is composed of three major parts:The first part,"existentialism and humanism",is the theoretical basis of the whole thesis.On one hand,this part analyzes the existentialism shown in some of Bellow's important works.On the other hand,this part points out that the influence of traditional Jewish culture on the writer makes Bellow's work not only represents existentialism,but has some relationship with humanism as well and analyzes the humanism theory of Rabbitt.The second part."Herzog as a victim" utilizes the first three actions in the novel as research objective.This part tries to analyze the outside circumstance faced by Herzog by using relative humanism theory and analyze the mental type of Herzog as a victim by using Clyton's theory and Sartre's existentialism theory.This part is a transition part of the former and latter part of the thesis and will set the stage for my next analysis.The third part,"humanism in Herzog" proves that the ending of the novel,which shows that Herzog stops dangling and uttering any voice to others,is the result of humanistic compromise and represents Bellow's humanism.