| Saul Bellow(1915-2005), a Canadian-born Jewish-American, is regarded as the most important figure in contemporary American literature after Earnest Hemingway and William Faulkner, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Lterature in 1976. During his nearly half a century writing career, Bellow has created 13 novels, a good number of short stories, plays and essays, and has won many awards.Death is an unavoidable and profound problem. To pay attention to death is to show better concerns for life. Bellow, who always focuses on human's existence and development, regards death as the vein of his creative works and as the centre of his caring for art. By revealing his view of death, he questions the meaning of life, and demonstrates his concerns over reality. Deeply influenced by the Jewish view of death and Existentialism, Bellow considers death as the most important point to rethink about the meaning of life. In the face of death, he firstly affirms the significance of life and existence, then the significance of keeping selfhood and searching for individual value in the harsh reality, and encourages people to seek a meaningful life. At the same time, Bellow and his protagonists can always get strength from the Jewish values such as family value and memory, love and foregiveness to overcome death crisis, which shows Bellow's love for life and his optimism for living.The purpose of the present thesis is to reveal Saul Bellow's affirmation of the significance of life by analyzing Herzog's death anxiety in his representative work Herzog.The introduction gives a brief introduction of Bellow and his works, makes a general survey of literary review on his works both at home and abroad, and shows the analytical approach and feasibility of the present thesis.The body consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the sources of Saul Bellow's view of death. Because of his personal death experiences, Bellow pays special attention to death problem, and he is deeply influenced by the Jewish view of death and Existentialism.Chapter 2 interpretes Bellow's exploration on the meaning of life by analyzing the death anxiety in Herzog. Defeated in his marriage and trapped in death anxiety, Herzog shows an amazing persistence both in his quest for selfhood and in his endeavor to work out his individual fate. He suffers and experiences pains. But he never gives up the hope of living and tries hard to question the meaning of life. Then at last, by self-analysis and taking action, he overcomes his death anxiety, finds the calmness in his mind, and regains the true existence as a human being.Chapt 3 analyzes the things that Herzog, also Bellow, affirms in his anxiety:affirmation of existence and a meaningful life, affirmation of keeping selfhood and searching for individual value, and affirmation of Jewish values such as family value and memory.The conclusion reaffirms Bellow's searching for the significance of life and selfhood, and emphasizes his concerns over human beings and human's spiritual pursuit in the materialized world. He believes that human beings can defeat all kinds of death threats, find back selfhood, and begin a new meaningful life. |
