The Themes of Quest in the Novels of Saul Bellow: A Study

Quests recover essential things to human life in encounters between cultures, with alien surroundings, people, animals, nature, or the Other; namely, the waking of the individual in the knowledge of himself, knowledge about others, the world, and the meaning of life. The most unusual, and dividing factor is the very sense of the extreme often so comic, rather the protagonists are burdened by a speculative quest, a need to understand their particular destiny within the general problem of human destiny. This compulsion, even when it is unconscious, as is the case of Asa Leventhal in The Victim or Tommy Wilhelm in Seize the Day, or mocked in himself as it is by Augie March, is the motivating energy. And in ¿Henderson the Rain King, the cry "I want! I want!" forces the hero to desert his family for Africä. The process of self-teaching thus becomes the heart of the book and the key to their self discovery of others. The book throws light on Bellow's novels and renders a whole commonplace of wisdom in the crisis era that has been Bellow's subject and opportunity.