Henderson The Rain King and The Adventures of Augie March: Human Quest in Saul Bellow's Novels
Henderson The Rain King and The Adventures of Augie March: Human Quest in Saul Bellow's Novels
Henderson The Rain King and The Adventures of Augie March: Human Quest in Saul Bellow's Novels
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until all the bad is burned out of him. This is Africa of the mind where
values can be reconsidered and reality subjected to new perspectives.
The third stage of Hendersons life is his account of his experiences
with the natives of the Arnewi and the Wariri - his desperate attempt to
become better. In Africa Henderson returns to the primal bases of life and
feeling, in nature, culture, and the animal kingdom. The hero has grun-tumolani, a native term indicating that you want to live, not die. With his
grun-tu-molani, his will to live, his belief that truth comes in blows, he
journeys into the complex places of consciousness. Henderson is longing to
perform a benefit, has a great desire to do a disinterested and pure thing to
express his belief in something higher(HR 188), to work the right stitch
into the design of [his] destiny before it was too late (HR 186), to
complete his own life. The Arnewi are cattle raisers. When Henderson
enters their village, he finds them in tears and sadness, because their water
supply has been contaminated by the mysterious appearance of frogs.
Henderson couples his desire to live with the necessity to eliminate the frogs
from the cistern. He is now eager to start on what he considers his personal
project. The remedy is a home-made bomb which he fashions with childish
enthusiasm. The hero is overcome with frustration when he fails, - he blows
the frogs out of the water, the end of the cistern is also blown out, and all the
water escapes into the arid soil. Henderson cannot understand his everlasting
failure to achieve something of value. At this point, the hero experiences
dismemberment: I wish it [cf. the bomb] had gone off in my hands and
blown me to smashes [] This was how I left in disgrace and humiliation,
having demolished both their water and my hopes (HR 111-112). Robert
Dutton offers a good insight into the reasons of Hendersons failure saying
that technological and scientific achievement persuaded man of his godlike
abilities that he does not possess. Mans misapprehension of his limited
potentialities can drive him in spite of good intentions, to destroy the value
of life itself. Briefly, Bellow says that man is not God (HR 99-100).
Hendersons adventures in the land of the Wariri marks the fourth and
final stage in his existence when he comes to a Great Awakening and
welcomes a newborn world. Here the hero undergoes two tests of his
personality and learns lessons of life. First, Henderson succeeds in lifting up
Mummah, goddess of rain, and is therefore appointed as the Rain King. The
hero gains victory because at this moment he relies on himself and trusts his
own strength and power to do it. The success is the first move towards
bursting the spirits sleep: My spirit was awake and it welcomed life
anew [] Life anew! I was still alive and kicking and I had the old grun-tumolani (HR 193). Bellow makes a comparison between Hendersons failure
with the Arnewi and his success with the Wariri. In the case of Mummah,
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point of his life Augie does not have a unique self - in fact, he is a faceless
hero. Augie does not even know where he belongs as he is a friend to people
of all kinds: grinds and criminals alike. His problem is that in search of
something better he leads an uninvolved existence, does not get deeply
involved in any experience for long. Augie is an objective observer of life
unable to affirm his ideals in life situations that he has to face. Scattering
those ideals, Augie fails to find something durable in the family, from his
friends, outside the law, within the university, or on the road. In Bellows
worldview, it is exactly human involvement, the coalescence of selflessness
and selfhood which create human nobility. The hero confuses his having no
commitments no money, profession or duties with freedom. It is through
involvement that a person can realize his human potential, create his
selfhood, define his self. Evidently Bellow is saying that with or without
enthusiasm, some work is to be done, some direction and function assumed.
The critic Dutton is right when he points out that there is no identity, no
integrity, no better fate, no creation, of children or anything else, without a
social commitment (51).
After Augies beloved Thea decides to leave him, the hero has a certain
revelation. He realizes that all his life he has had an inferiority complex, was
feeble and poor, some silly creature, laughing and harmless. Therefore,
to come out differently (AM 401), - to conceal his weakness, to mislead
others, Augie played their games. In other words, he has never been himself.
The hero makes an attempt at self-examination:
Now I had started, and this terrible investigation had to go on.
If this was how I was, it was certainly not how I appeared but
must be my secret. So if I wanted to please, it was in order to
mislead or show everyone, wasnt it, now? And this must be
because I had an idea everyone was my better and had
something I didnt have. But what did people seem to me
anyhow, something fantastic? I didnt want to be what they
made of me but wanted to please them. Kindly explain! An
independent fate, and love too what a confusion! (AM 401)
In this passage Augie has an insight into his problem. When this
realization dawns on him, the hero makes up his mind to quit his pilgrimage.
His biggest wish becomes to find the axial lines of life, which is the
preoccupation of Bellows all heroes. Augies great hope, he says, is based
upon getting to be still, so that the axial lines can be found. When striving
stops, the truth comes as a gift bounty, harmony, love, and so forth (AM
514). The axial lines could be discovered in the stability of a persons life,
his ability to arrest the moment, get the most from every experience, foster
harmony with himself (Scott 101149).
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Augie learns many truths about himself from other people. Likewise,
his friend Clem Tambow tries to prove to Augie that he has a nobility
syndrome (AM 434) and therefore, he cannot adjust to the reality situation.
The hero, as he later finds out, is in search of Man with a capital letter. He
discovers that man longs to be more than he is. But life is all there is, it
depends on him how he will learn to arrest the moment, seize the day,
pull himself together to find his niche in life, which would help him fulfil his
human potential, as Mans character is his fate (AM 3). Saul Bellows
philosophy of life is marked by his affirmation of the worthiness of human
existence, a firm belief in man, his ability to burst the spirits sleep, his
reason and inner strength to be his own redeemer.
Bibliography
Bellow, Saul. The Adventures of Augie March. New York: Penguin Books,
1984.
Bellow, Saul. The Contemporary Writer: Interviews with Sixteen Novelists
and Poets, ed. Dembo L. S. and Pondrom, Cyrena N. The University
of Wisconsin Press, 1972.
Bellow, Saul. Distractions of a Fiction Writer. In Against the Dying
Novel, ed. Granville, Hicks. New York: Macmillan, 1962.
Bellow, Saul. Henderson the Rain King. New York: Penguin Books, 1962.
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Dutton, Robert R. Saul Bellow. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982.
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1964.
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Dame Press, 1973.