Dilemma And Ways Out Of Dilemma-an Interpretation On The Theme Of Humboldt’s Gift

Saul Bellow has been widely acknowledged as one of the best writers in modernAmerican literature. He has written a great number of novels, short stories and playsin his life which have greatly richened the human spiritual civilization. Being amaster of describing human beings’ dilemma, especially the intellectuals’ spiritualcrisis in a materialistic and pragmatic society, Bellow’s novels have won him manyawards at home and abroad, and in1976, one year after his Humboldt’s Gift in print,he receives the most influenced awards for literature: the Pulitzer Prize and theNobel Prize for Literature. Ever since, Bellow and his works have attracted muchattention of the critics as well as the scholars abroad and at home.Humboldt’s Gift, on which this thesis focuses, in many ways is regarded asBellow’s richest, most outstanding and complex work. It further consolidates hisstatus of being a master of describing human beings’ dilemma through the portrayingof the artists’, especially the Jewish American intellectuals’ survival dilemma inmodern pragmatic American society, and displays Bellow’s profound humanisticconcerns and sympathy for his protagonists. However, Humboldt’s Gift has not yetreceived the due attention from researchers at home, comparing with Bellow’s otherworks such as Dangling Man, The Adventures of Augie March and Herzog, etc.The thesis plans to apply the famous Jewish philosopher Martin Buber’sphilosophical theory on the dilemma of modern man and culture to interpret the themeof Humboldt’s Gift. Buber states that the dilemma of modern man and culture resultsfrom the unbalance of I-It relation and I-Thou relation and man’s I-It rather thanI-Thou attitude toward the world and life. First, this thesis holds that, the dilemma theprotagonists faced in Humboldt’s Gift, such as the awkward position in Americanmainstream society brought by their Jewish identity, the interpersonal crisis, and thespiritual crisis, on the one hand, results from the external factors such as the changingrole of modern intellectuals in a society emphasizing pragmatic effects, and theanti-Semitism existing in modern American society; while on the other hand, which is more crucial, it results from the protagonists’ internal factors: their distorted valuesand attitude toward the world as well as the people in a material-driven society, i.e.they plant an I-It relation into the interpersonal communication and disregard thesubjectivity of others. Then, based on Buber’s philosophical thought that modern mancould shake off the dilemma through the transcendence from I-It attitude to I-Thouattitude, and the information Bellow conveyed in and out of his work, the thesisconsiders that, sticking to Judaism in foreign lands, cultivating a healthy personality,and regaining the poetic imagination through getting close to nature should be thegood ways for the protagonists to pull them up from the dilemma. Finally, itconcludes that, being a writer with high sense of responsibility and echoing thesummons of his times, Bellow examines and considers the existential dilemma ofmankind; the issues revealed in Humboldt’s Gift are not limited to the dilemma of theJewish American intellectuals in a modern world, but also the typical crisis of thewhole modern civilization as well as the existential dilemma of the modern world.