Narrative Of Chicago In Bellow’s Novels Humboldt’s Gift

Soul Bellow is regarded as one of the most famous writer in America after ErnestHemingway and William Faulkner, and then got the Nobel Prize for Literature inOctober 1976 marked by his“human understanding and subtle analysis ofcontemporary culture”in his works. The creation of Bellow’s mostly inextricablylinked with the city in which he lives. Bellow’s thought about the personal experiencein the progress of American urban modernization and the thought about the urbanontology. From his first book Dangling Man, Bellow points out that what he writesabout are the prosperous but abnormal modern cities and the living conditions of thepeople in the these cities. It is this kind of“dangling”living conditions of the modernurban people that Bellow thinks about in his works. It is inseparable with his profoundunderstanding of Chicago he lives. But critics at home study Saul Bellow and hisworks from a standpoint of urban which seems relatively few. So this thesis mainlyfocuses on Bellow’s description of urban in his works, mainly consists of three parts:The first part of this thesis starts with Bellow’s city complex for Chicago. Itfocuses on the discussion of the karma between Bellow and Chicago, the experienceof Bellow in that city, and analyzes the reasons why Bellow focuses on the creation ofthe works about the city and how he explicates the roles of the city in his works.The second part of this thesis takes Humboldt’s Gift as the cutting point to readChicago which is in the post-industrial era. It chooses several spatial landscapes, suchas streets, skyscrapers, slums etc., to reappear a state of chaos, dirty and iniquity ofmetropolis in the post-industrial era, to reveal the social problems like the wealth gap,ecological pollution and crimes in American cities as well as to dig Bellow’s nostalgiaemotions for the text reconstruction of his memory hometown.Finally, this thesis takes Chicago, a metaphor of America, as the background toexamine the entire American society. It analyses the living conditions and pressures ofthe modern people, and dominate in the money, the city people’s anxiety and madness caused by materialized and alienation, which makes people have declined emotions.Meanwhile, it analyses the dilemma of the mid-class intellectuals in the dual situdtionof elite culture and popular culture in the context of urban consumption.In a word, there is a beam of universal light in the deep heart of Bellow lightingup the city which is full of the worship of the golden calf and materialism and tryingto find a way out for the walled-in city of Theodore Dreiser .