II. Historical Background

　　III.    Emergence: after WWII

　　IV.     Jewish Point of View

　　1.Jews believe that God has sent perpetual sufferings to his chosen people to strengthen and purify them, and they are the ※chosen people§.

　　2.Humour is a prominent aspect of Jewish point of view. It is often a twisted kind of comedy to keep them from despair. Jews are able to laugh at themselves, so some of their best humour is self-mocking.

　　3.Jews lay emphasis upon the power of intellects. The power to understand their own experience to judge their own life rationally to think well is considered a high virtue.

　　4.Self-teaching is at the heart of almost all Jewish novels. The Jewish heroes often try to seek a rational interpretation of the world through their own experience in it.

　　V.  Saul Bellow

　　1.life

　　2.works

　　（1）Dangling Man

　　（2）The Adventures of Augie March

　　（3）Henderson the Rain King

　　（4）Herzog

　　（5）Mr. Sammler＊s Planet

　　（6）Humboldt＊s Gift

　　（7）The Dean＊s December

　　3.point of view

　　（1）Saul Bellow＊s strength lies in his faith in man and man＊s ability to offer a ※spirited resistance to the forces of our time§. As he sees it, modern man has lived through frustration and defeat, managed to grapple with destructive historical pressures, and striven for ※certain durable human goods§ 每 truth, freedom, and wisdom.

　　（2）He is highly critical of modern life in which the old value system is no longer functioning. His major characters are all concerned to find a way that would keep American civilization from going under. They body forth Bellow＊s credo that art has ※something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos§, and that ※a novelist begins with disorder and disharmony and goes toward order by an unknown process of the imagination§.

　　4.characteristics of his heroes

　　Most of Saul Bellow＊s heroes are marginal men, alienated or absurd characters caught between their own inadequacies and those imposed upon them by their friends and society. Most of them are Jewish intellectuals or writers who try to discover the queerness of existence and overcome it. Struggling with the impersonality of the physical world, agonized by their own awareness of morality, his protagonists laugh at their own deficiency with irony because it relieves despair. The hunger for community, yet they hold back because that world have to betray the sanctity of their private self in order to achieve it.

　　5.style: realism + modernism