2016 3rd International Symposium on Engineering Technology, Education and Management (ISETEM 2016)
ISBN: 978-1-60595-382-3
Analysis of Saul Bellow’s Surpass of Emerson in Light of
Henderson the Rain King
Dingming Wang1, Dini Zhang2
Abstract
Saul Bellow inherited a lot from American Transcendentalism especially Ralph Waldo Emerson’s
theory of American Transcendentalism. However, through analysis of the novel Henderson the Rain
King, this paper tries to illustrate that Saul Bellow’s value of love and union is a proof of his surpass of
his literary predecessor Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Keywords: Henderson the Rain King, Transcendentalism, Saul Bellow, Emerson
1. Introduction
The novel Henderson the Rain King is a proof of Saul Bellow’s surpass of himself in writing and his
transcendence over Emerson’s theories of Transcendentalism. Saul Bellow’s major novels are set in
cities, mainly in his own home city of Chicago, that “cultureless city pervaded nonetheless by mind”.
Bellow himself once acknowledged the city’s deep influence on his fiction: “I don’t know….how I
could possible separate my knowledge of life such as it is, from the city. I could no more tell you how
deeply it’s gotten into my bones than the lady who paints radium dials in the clock factory can tell
you”[1]. His writing has focused on the spiritual exploration of intellectuals under the urban setting. As
a writer with strong sense of social responsibility, Bellow has been trying to observe to question, to
probe the reality through his protagonists. Because of his familiarity with the city life, Bellow often
makes the setting of his fiction in a city. Sometimes the protagonists’ spiritual exploration is confined
even in a room. In his first novel Dangling man, the protagonist Joseph feels himself imprisoned in a
room: “I, in this room, separate, alienated, distrusted, find in my purpose not an open world, but a
closed, hopeless jail. My perspectives end in the walls” [2]. The process of the hero’s spiritual
exploration is only in his own daily. Joseph’s mental journey ends in joining the army which makes
him not perfectly be transformed. In this sense, Joseph’s spiritual exploration proves to be a failure.
However, in his fifth novel Henderson the Rain King, Bellow chooses Africa as the place for the
protagonist’s spiritual exploration. Moreover, Henson’s escaping from America to Africa is not the
end of the story. After obtaining inspiration and wisdom from Africa, Henderson returns to his
hometown. Henderson’s successful return partly proves Saul Bellow’s emphasis of love and union.
2. Saul Bellow’s Value of Love and Union
In fact, Bellow has attempted to integrate self and urban world in his early writing but in failure. Critic
Barbara Rader has examined the exploratory nature of heroes in Bellow’s writing and claimed: “The
Bellow hero, however, subject to a diverse, stratified, and embattled social order; such integration is, of
course, difficult, if not impossible.”[3] Instead, he must seek some other alternative means of
1
English Department, College of Literature and Law, Sichuan Agricultural University, P.R. China, 625014;
[email protected]
2
English Department, College of Literature and Law, Sichuan Agricultural University, P.R. China, 625014;
[email protected]
transcendence over the “political, economic, and technical upheavals of this century that have created
uncommon discord and stress in a society already discordant and rife with contradiction” [3].
Considering its setting, Henderson the Rain King is an exception among Bellow’s major novels.
In this novel, Bellow does not continue to confine his hero’s spiritual exploration in a specific city but
a broader and more open place—continent of Africa instead. Bellow’s invention of Africa does not
only display his amazing quality of imagination but also shows his attempt to seek a new means for the
transcendence of his protagonist and modern man as well.
Henderson the Rain King is Bellow’s fifth novel and can be seen as a transitional one among his
nine novels. Bellow has always said Henderson the Rain King is his favourite novel[4]. In an interview
with a newspaper in 1964, Bellow observes that Henderson, an “absurd seeker of high qualities”, is
most like himself of all his characters. After the examination of the novel, critic Gilbert Porter even
suggests that “the novel is close to being a kind of autobiography, of Bellow himself, and Bellow’s
spiritual opposite, who, in a modern, even a Yeatsian way, is also Bellow himself”[5]. In this sense,
Henderson is not only a caricature of all Bellow’s characters but also Bellow himself both as a man and
a writer. And Henderson the Rain King is often regarded as Bellow’s first mature novel for the reason
that it reflects main characteristics of Bellow’s writing.
Bellow’s novels comprise a kind of tension which makes up contradictions. First, Bellow never
excludes from his fiction the chaotic of modern life. However, Bellow rejects the tradition of wasteland
in modern literature. Henderson’s alienation and anxiety reflects that Bellow never excludes from his
fiction the chaotic of modern life. As Michael K. Glenday said, “what distinguishes Bellow from many
other contemporary American novelists is the tension he manages to create between the actual world
and the trust he puts in man. He does not exclude from his fiction the violent, chaotic, corrupt, and
dangerous world he sees out there; he plants his characters firmly in it. But he does not describe the
situation as totally hopeless and absurd; nor does he give an interpretation of history as ineluctably
leading to utter destruction…”[6]. Secondly, in spite of their loneliness, desperation and alienation
from society and even their wives, Bellow’s characters are “high qualities seeker”. They are the
“dissatisfied idealists, the bourgeois longing to fulfill their life, to transform themselves and the world
into something nobler[7]. The ways of their seeking vary which reflect the process of Bellow’s attempt
to find cure for modern man’s spiritual crisis. His first novel Dangling man reflects the theme of
searching for the value of individual freedom, the meaning of moral responsibility, and the demands of
social contract [8]. Alienated by the society and tortured by boredom, the protagonist Joseph could find
no way but writing a diary to let out his frustration. Joseph’s exploration ends in joining the army. On
the surface, Joseph’s joining the human brotherhood alleviates his pain of alienation from society.
However, what is not in doubt is that his returning to human community is at price of losing his
selfhood. Bellow’s next character, Asa Leventhal in his novel The Victim is also a solitary who feels
burdened by a constant struggle against the world as in the case of Joseph. In this novel, Bellow also
raises the question as in the Dangling man—the relationship of the individual and the mass. The
protagonist Asa Leventhal is a city Jew who is guilty of his city, his job, Asa assumes that everyone is
blaming him which makes him a “victim.” Another “victim” Kirby Allbee also blames Asa of having
intentionally deprived him of his jobs years before, which leads to his poverty and family tragedy.
However, years later, both “victims” have undergone a change. For Asa, the burden of guilt and his
struggle is much lighter than before. When meeting Allbee, Asa does not consider him as a persecutor
any longer. And Allee is externally happy and semi-successful. Thanks to an “expansion of the heart”
and recognition of his merely human status, Asa has changed.[9] However, despite his change, Bellow
emphasizes that Asa’s change is partial and incomplete.
Bellow, who values individuality as high as Emerson did, is not in favor of man’s loss of his own
selfhood. So in an interview, he expresses his dissatisfaction with his early novels.
I haven’t much use for my earliest writing. Dangling Man and The Victim don’t amuse me. It’s true
that I was stirred, moved, or as the young now say, turned on, in the writing of these books. They
were real enough, but I was still sitting for my qualifying examinations (Roudane 1984:265)[10].
However, Bellow’s exploration in his early novels heralds his first mature novel Henderson the
Rain King. In the novel, Henderson’s spiritual journey to Africa is also Bellow’s exploration in writing,
which makes him turn to the nineteen century American transcendentalism for the remedy of modern
man’s spiritual crisis. Bellow’s affirmation of man’s capacity for change and transcendence is more
obvious in this novel. The purpose of Henderson’s African journey is to avoid the “death of his soul”.
At the end of the novel, Henderson gets his own rebirth. Bellow also emphasizes the important role
nature and soul play in man’s transcendence. What’s more important, in the end of the novel,
Henderson believes in the transforming power of love and community. Saul Bellow in the novel places
great importance on the love and union which is a proof his surpass over Emerson.
3. Saul Bellow’s Surpass of Emerson
In respect of individualism, however, Bellow does not completely agree to his literary predecessors
Ralph Waldo Emerson. American transcendentalism emphasizes that the individual is the most
important element in society and that the ideal kind of individual is self-reliant and unselfish. It holds
that there was greatness in all human beings and needed only to be set free and people should depend
on themselves for spiritual perfection. Bellow follows American transcendentalism and his literary
predecessor Emerson and values individuality as high as Emerson did. He believes literature should be
place importance on man’s value. In 1966, he said: Modern fiction has taken it upon itself to show
experience as ever-new and ever-valuable. The very form of fiction is that of experience itself.
Everything is to be viewed as though for the first time. The representation of things is imperative, for
the things of a modern man’s life are important. They are important because man’s career on this earth
is held to be important. Literature has been committed to the importance of this assertion for a long
time. Bellow’s emphasis on the importance of individuality can also find the expression in Emerson’s
assertion. Emerson ennobled man as a fountain of divine truth, a piece of the godhead: to rely on the
self is finally to rely on the godhead of which each one is a part. “Bellow is like the American romantic,
particularly in their mixture of realistic detail and fable or parable using symbolical or allegorical
machinery. It is a mixture which derives partly from the attempt to “reconcile high principles with low
fact”—a problem Bellow finds in American writing generally, particularly in Emerson, Thoreau, and
Whitman” [7]. However, Henderson’s return to his family, his community and society illustrates
Bellow’s some kind of disagreement with his literary predecessors and abandonment of
individuality .He keeps faith in mutual love among human being and has confidence in human being
the possibility of union with other people. In this sense, Bellow denied his literary predecessors
Emerson who over-emphasized individualism which calls for a total separation and alienation of self
from society.
T.S. Eliot, a great poet and critic, contended in his famous essay “Tradition and Individual Talent”:
“when we praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles any one else. In
these aspects or parts of his work we pretend to find what is individual, what is the peculiar essence of
the man. We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet’s difference from his predecessors, especially his
immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be
enjoyed”.[11] Bellow’s acceptance and surpass of Emerson’s theories of American literary
tradition—American transcendentalism reflects that he has tried to find remedy from American culture
tradition for Henderson on one hand, but on the other hand, he has discarded the over-emphasis of
individualism. Bellow places great importance on “love” which he considers as a key element to cure
modern man’s mental crisis. In this sense, Bellow’s exploration in the novel Henderson the Rain King
is a great success during his literary career.
4. Conclusion
The ending of the novel Henderson the Rain King illustrates Saul Bellow’s belief that the
transcendental conception of individualism should be modified in the contemporary society. Largely as
a result of his travel in Africa, Henderson bursts the spirit’s sleep and overcomes the excessive anxiety
over death. By the end of the novel, Bellow arranges that Henderson returns to his family and his
community. Most important, Henderson returns with his discovering the absolute power of love—love
not only for his wife Lily but also for others even the earth itself. Although Bellow values individuality
as highly as his transcendental predecessors, he abandons it in the novel because he considers it as an
undesirable burden keeping people from love. Henderson’s story suggests Bellow’s faith in mankind’s
potential in transcend himself by achieving a harmonization of mind and nature; in the affirmation the
value of the individual but avoid the over—glorification of the self; and in possibility of establishment
of a society based on union of people and their love.
References
[1] Saul Bellow, Gray Rockwell “Interview with Saul Bellow,” Tri Quarterly 60, pp.15,1984.
[2] Saul Bellow, Dangling Man. The Vanguard Press, Inc. 1972.
[3] Barbara A Rader. “Rite of Passage: The Quest of the hero in Saul Bellow’s Novel”. Diss. Rice
University,pp.210, 1985.
[4] Miller Ruth, Saul Bellow: A Biography of Imagination, New York: St Martin’s Press, pp.122,
1991.
[5] Gibert Porter, “The Idea of Henderson”, Twentieth Century Literature, Vol.27, NO.4 Winter,
pp311, 1981.
[6] K. Glenday Michaelk, Saul Bellow and the Decline of Humanism. Basingstoke, Hampshire:
Macmillan, pp151, 1990.
[7] John Jacob, In Defense of man. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, London, pp166,
pp421979.
[8] Wu Lingying, Marginal Protagonists’ Journey: A Study on Saul Bellow and Ralph Ellison. Central
and Sauth University Press, Changsha, pp32, 2001.
[9] Saul Bellow, The Victim New York, Penguin Books, pp65, 1978.
[10] Mattew C Roudane, An Interview with Saul Bellow, Contemporary Literature 25.3,
pp262-80,1984.
[11] http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.htm 2008-03-04