A Study On The Artistic Construction Of Alienation Images In Humboldt's Gift

Humboldt's Gift is one of the most outstanding novels of the Jewish American writer — Saul Bellow.The novel mainly describes the fate of the poet Humboldt and the writer and playwright Citrine.In the modern society where money worship is prevalent,they suffer physical and psychological torture and generate alienation from roles,values,and habitual behavior.Based on the theory of alienation and adopted the method of text analysis,this thesis tries to find out the alienation images in Humboldt's Gift from three aspects,namely,alienation from role,alienation from value and alienation from habitual behavior and then focuses its artistic construction method.This thesis is divided into three parts,namely,the introduction,the main body and the conclusion.The introduction part briefly presents the research background,the author's life and his works,the novel Humboldt's Gift,the evaluation and research of the work from domestic and foreign scholars as well as research purposes and significance which is followed by the origin and development of the theory of alienation and the deep understands of it,which lays a foundation for the later analysis of the concrete manifestation of the theory of alienation in Bellow's novels.The main body of this thesis,first of all,focuses on the embodiment of the role alienation in the novel and the method of constructing the role alienation.Humboldt and Citrine are representatives of intellectuals who should focus on knowledge and writing,but in a materialized society,they are gradually alienated from their roles,not focusing on academic research,especially Citrine.In terms of the construction method of role alienation,in the construction of role alienation,especially the alienation of the role of Citrine,Bellow breaks the traditional constructive skills but uses the stream of consciousness,thus profoundly describes the inner world after Citrine's alienation of role.Then,this thesis analyzes the embodiment of value alienation in Humboldt's Gift and the construction method of value alienation.In Humboldt's Gift,the values of the protagonists Humboldt and Citrine are alienated to varying degrees,separating themselves from the real world and being alienated by popular mainstream culture.Some of the things they do are also contrary to their values.In the construction of value alienation,Bellow uses irony and humor to describe the behaviors,dialogues and inner world after the alienation of Humboldt and Citrine,and the description of the protagonist's situation after the alienation of values is vivid.The last part of the main body is an analysis of the alienation of habitual behavior and its construction method.The habitual behavior alienation in this chapter is closely related to their Jewish identity.Humboldt and Citrine are both Jewish Americans,deeply influenced by Jewish culture,thoughts and way of life,but in the United States,which ignores spiritual civilization and only pays attention to material development and money,they begin to do something different from previous habits and gradually be alienated.In the construction of habitual behavior alienation,Bellow adopts a large number of contrastive techniques,especially in the strong contrast between the protagonist's ideal and objective reality,further highlighting the alienation of protagonists and producing a strong artistic effect.In addition,the contrast in the novel includes the contrast between life and death,the contrast between spiritual pursuit and material pursuit,and the sharp contrast of some scenes,which to some extend construct the alienation of habitual behavior.Finally,it is concluded that the alienation images in the novel can be classified into three categories: role alienation,value alienation and habitual behavioral alienation.Role alienation is constructed through the stream of consciousness.The value alienation is constructed through irony and humor.Habitual behavioral alienation is artistically constructed by contrast.