A Study Of The Self-Construction Of Jonah And Moses Herzog In Bellow's Herzog

Saul Bellow(1915-2005)was one of the most important and influential novelists in America after the World War ?.Of all his works,Herzog is the representative.It was selected as one of the best postwar novels in English.Studies on Herzog at home and abroad mainly focus on the Jewish protagonists,theme,artistic technique,female image,Jewish intellectuals,existentialism,which seldom concern for the father and son in the novel.In the novel,Bellow focused on the description of the process of seeking self of Father Jonah and his son Moses.To be specific,the thesis writer finds that there are three steps of the process,from “being alienated” to “being awakening” to “self-construction”.However,the end of their process of seeking self is different.The thesis attempts to further dig the profound thoughts about the father-son relationship in Herzog.In the argument,Sartre's existentialism theory in the “bad faith” “free choice”,“responsibility” and other related theories will be applied.By analyzing Jonah's and Moses' different process of self-construction,embodied in the alienation of the self,the seek for self,and then to the construction of self,the writer aims to reveal the seeking of self of new Jewish immigrants and Saul Bellow' concern and thinking about the fate of Jewish immigrants.This thesis consists of three parts: introduction,main body and conclusion.In the introduction,a general overview of Herzog research,thesis statement,the explanation of key terms,introduction of the theories and thesis structure of the thesis are included.The main body includes two chapters:Chapter One scrutinizes the process of self-construction of Father Jonah,which is from“being alienated” to “being awakening” to “being failure in self-construction”.As a Jewish immigrant in the absurd society,Jonah is confused due to the differences between Jewish traditional culture and American culture.The loss of his confidence and inner anxiety are the reasons for his alienation.Poverty and personal ideals,however,make him awaken.In order to seek self,Jonah makes countless “free choices”,and he even deceives himself for “bad faith”.But in the end,because of the broken dreams and the cruel fact lead to the failure ofself-construction.Chapter two expounds the process of Moses' self-construction from “being alienation”to “being awakening” to “being successful in self-construction”.As a Jewish intellectual born in the United States,Moses is gradually breakdown and being alienated,which makes him escape,escaping from family responsibility and social responsibility.During the five days of“escape”,he quests self and seeks self in his memory and letters.For real existence,Moses starts trying to construct self,and escapes from the unreal existence in modern industry and gets rid of the bondage in life.Eventually,Moses makes free choices and takes“responsibility” while returning to the family and the nature,where he gets successful self-construction.After the argumentation of the two chapters,the thesis writer draws the conclusion that in the absurd world,Jonah and Moses are anxious and they deceive themselves,then they are gradually alienated.They make free choices for escaping the alienated self and are awakening to seek self.As the representative of two generations of Jewish immigrants,they have respective responsibility.For the first generation,father Jonah wants to inherit tradition while Moses,as the offspring of Jewish immigrants,bears the responsibility for the combination of traditional culture and American culture at that time.Although Jonah's self-construction is finally a failure,but his positive attitude and a bold attempt is the embodiment of the excellent quality of Jewish immigrants.At the same time,to some extent,his self-construction is helpful for Moses.Bellow expresses his caring about Jewish immigrants by shaping successful image of Jewish immigrants.This thesis is innovative in implying existentialism theory in the analysis,which offers new research view for the following studies.Besides,the thesis explores the different processes of Jonah and Moses,which tell the fact that there is only one way for being successful in self-construction,at first,to reexamine self and then to seek self by making free choices and taking responsibilities for his own and for the whole society.