Escape From Freedom:Dangling Man's Reconciliation With The Community

As the modern spokesman for humanism,Bellow advocated for the Romantic time when humanity and man's mind were valued.The combination of his Jewish origin and American experience made him jump out of the circle of modern literary trend.He developed his own writing field to save modern man from the cage of confusion and impotence.This thesis holds that Bellow's difference from other modern writers is the possibility of better life between his lines and his persuasion for the dangling men to reconcile with the community.Though the modern city in his work is always frustrating as the modern ritual,his endeavor is to give vivid description about the mental wanderers' psychological quest and their mental entanglement.This thesis chooses Bellow's maiden work,Dangling Man,and tries to display the first Bellovian hero's journey to true freedom.From Joseph's alienation from others,pitching into his mental world to his suffering in the pursuit along with frequent quarrels and death threats.His fancy about “ideal construction”corrupts;he is trapped by self-doubt.On the one aspect,this thesis analyzes this psychological passage,demonstrates Joseph's transforming process.On the other aspect,by using Fromm's Mechanism of Escape,Joseph's escaping behavior will be explained in detail: his rush into the army to seek safety,finally escaping from the unbearable pressure of self-determination.His journey ends in the cancellation of freedom.From the perspective of psychology and sociology,combining Joseph's experience and Fromm's freedom theory,this thesis tells the modern man's entanglement with freedom.They cannot handle their own freedom and stand the loneliness brought by it.In the end,they usually choose to rely on a stronger existence to look for peace.What this thesis means to express with the research of Joseph's“frustrated journey to find pure freedom” and Fromm's psychological analysis of freedom,is that only through spontaneous effort and love in the community can one gain true freedom.The freedom predicament accompanies human.This predicament is supposed to end in the reconciliation with the community.Otherwise,Joseph's story can be most of the modern men' s story.