Literary Analysis on Seize the Day by Saul Bellow to Describe, Analyze, and Interpret - Essay Example

Order 336322 Topic: literary analysis on "Seize The Day" by Saul Bellow to describe, analyze, and interpret Outline A young man, Tommy Wilhelm, gets the wrong start in life. Having missed the royal road to the path of success, nothing turns out favorable for him. He has the will to grow in the materialistic world, but it is too late. Finally, he turns towards the inner world in search of real peace and happiness. --------------------------- The wise saying goes, ‘it is better to deserve without receiving, than to receive without deserving.’ “Today man is destroyed by the inner conviction of uselessness, and no amount of economic growth can compensate for this loss.”(Schumacher, 1977, Back Matter…) Aggrandizement for wealth and material success is considered as the be-all and end-all of life by a big chunk of humanity. Without evaluating the self, one’s own abilities, individual races after secular achievements, thinking that there is no world beyond the external world, the world as interpreted by the power of one’s intellect. Many are not willing to accept that the inner world exists within every human being. God, call Him the Omniscient Power, All-pervading Reality, Light-Consciousness or any other name that various religions hail him, can not be comprehended by one’s intellect. Howsoever great may be one’s intelligence, one can not understand him through the mind-apparatus. The mystery of Nature is beyond description and intellectual arguments. The final frontier of logic and reasoning is mind. The primary duty of the mind is to confuse the human being. The scale of materialistic civilization has two measuring points-success or failure. It eulogizes the successful and condemns the failure! But it ignores the process of living by an individual. How one has faced life in is trails, tribulations duty and beauty. The protagonist of the novel, introduced to the readers at the age of mid-forties, has the wrong start and finds it difficult to cope up with the challenges of life. He is unable to join the mainstream of society and finds himself a loner. …then some thing happens on a particular day, about which his mind has forewarned him! How Tommy Wilhelm encountered the predicament and made efforts to meet the cumulative pressure that has been building up within his inner self? “As a young man he has rejected his father’s profession, medicine, tried for a career in Hollywood, been tricked by a phony talent scout, ended up in sales and lost his sales district due to nepotism.” (Cronin, 2003….)A college dropout, married and divorced, with two children, his finances are in a mess. He somehow wishes to recover the lost ground and wishes to get rich, with the last savings that he owns. Fraudulent Dr. Tamkin plays upon his psychology well. He promises to multiply his savings in the commodity market. The silver lining is, he has fallen in love again with a woman named Olive, but the life itself doesn’t hold the olive branch for him. What will happen to an individual when one is a financial wreck and emotionally imbalanced? When one undergoes such grim experiences, anyone would become cynical. “Having quit his longtime job, left his wife and children, and taken a room in a residential hotel, Wilhelm seems intent on unburdening himself of the attachments and responsibilities that limit his freedom. He shares with Huck Finn the belief that personal autonomy somehow leads to personal fulfillment.”(Penguin….) A career in Hollywood is the dream of every aspiring youngster, male and female. God creates a beauty but rare, for he must create a thousand hearts to suffer! Similarly amongst many thousands of failures, one successful actor emerges from Hollywood, with none to cheer the unsuccessful ones. Tommy had reached the portals of Hollywood, much against the will and warnings of his parents but his guiding star at that time was the wily and duplicitous Maurice Venice, the talent scout, who promised moon to him, on the strength of his good looks. Later he rejected him after Tommy was unable to clear the screen test. From the ‘devil’ of Hollywood, Tommy now moves to the ‘deep sea’ of secular life. Dr. Tamkin arrives like the avalanche in his life. Tommy finds a ‘fatherly’ figure in Dr. Tamkin, certainly a fraudulent and questionable “psychologist” who succeeds in trapping Tommy. The good conversationalist foxes him to invest in commodities market, claiming expertise in stock handling. His titles and claim has the member of the Detroit Purple Gang, impress Tommy. He is all the more impressed by his philosophical platitudes. The entry of Dr. Tamkin in to Tommy’s life is the entry of wrong man at the wrong time! He was going through a period of crisis in his life. Parent’s love denied, wife separated, financial position in doldrums, frustrating Hollywood experience, fired from the job of salesman—what more annoying circumstances are required to make one total wreck? He needed some morel support, leaned on Dr. Tamkin, and he fell into his trap, who cashed his opportunity. Stock market is generally is the meeting place for the profit-crazy people, who think and calculate money, money and money only. In reality, Tommy was the right man at the wrong place. The modern man versus the magic of materialistic civilization: Being silent within and the feeling of isolation within are two different levels of the inner world of an individual. The former has the correct estimate of life and the latter is unable to gauge the vicissitudes of life properly. To a reasonable level, this body-mind-intellect equipment can be repaired in the ‘garage’ of life, but beyond a level, the ‘vehicle’ has got to be condemned. It can not be made road-worthy again. In philosophy, an important question is often asked. Which is better in life—renunciation of action or participation in action? Tommy needs to know that participation in action is the best course for him. Crisis like the ones faced by Tommy are part of the materialistic civilization. The only answer for them is to face them squarely. Though the theme of the novel is isolation, Tommy should have known-- isolation what for and at what cost? His main drawback was his inability to judge himself. Any failure is not the end of the story. One needs to take corrective measures and confront the situation. He should have, instead of confronting the parents, should have found an amicable way to mend fences with them, as nobody would understand and support him more than the parents. They would not have let him down the way Dr. Tamkin did. Stock market is the symbol for failure for a novice and who allows another man to handle the investment portfolio. Generally new entrants like Tommy enter the stock trade with a view to make quick profits, which mostly ends in losses. Wilhelms financial troubles have more than practical implications. He feels that "everyone was supposed to have money" (p. 30), and his interaction with Dr.Tamkin convinces him that with a modest capital, properly invested will lead him to prosperity.“Tommy is hoodwinked by a Dr. Tamkin into giving up power of attorney in a stock market scheme and loses his last dollar, upon which his wife calls to demand money. Distraught, but self controlled, Tommy is carried into the street crowds by a wave of energy and into a funeral of a man unknown to him. Looking down into the casket, Tommy sees his own future and the futility of ambition. He weeps forlornly in the understanding that all men end this life in death.”(Saul Bellow….) Dr. Tamkin is the perfect subject of parody. He comments about the unending conflict between the true soul and the pretender soul that is influenced by the forces and demands the external world. He says, “But, there are two main ones, the real soul and a pretender soul. Now! Every man realizes that he has to love something or somebody. He feels that he must go outward…” (Bellow, p.70)This is comparable to the conflict between divine and the evil forces. The external world will always be problematic. It is compared to the ocean where waves shall always be there. Nevertheless, comparison can be made to the external world of objects and the internal world of a human being for understanding the issue in proper perspective. Whenever an individual fails to discriminate as to what is proper and what is improper, demoniac tendencies take hold of the inner world and they begin to exert their evil influences. A confused mind can not arrive at correct decisions and that was the problem with Tommy. The enormous suffering of humanity on all counts during and after World War II provided enough stock and shocking material for the sensitive and creative writers. It was a period that saw the worst form of cruelties, one section of humanity pitted against the other, many families were destroyed ,many had to start life afresh from the scratch, forced immigration disrupted the social order in unexpected directions, the horrors seen and experienced was beyond the imagination of the toughest soldiers. The rich countries did enjoy the fruits of economic boom but the mood of the common man was somber. The pressures of the outside world were too much to cope up with. The entire novel is written in retrospect, as to what was going on within the mind of Wilhelm. His sadness and frustration were without any tangible solutions. Unable to find perfect inner or outer discipline in the society, he had to carry on with the available discipline. Finally, with no hope of finding happiness in the world of objects, inner introspection was the best course left for him. Wilhelm, after his bitter experiences with life, knocks at the portals of spirituality (his efforts to understand the inner world) The problem with the present generation is that they are so much engrossed to achieve materialistic success at all costs and think that the issues like inner search are the projects to be taken up after retirement at the old age. Now, what’s wrong in the reward-seeking attitude of the younger generation? Let’s analyze his issue scientifically. Every action has the reaction and the intensity of the reaction is in proportion to the intensity of the action. Over this, no dispute exists between the scientists and the spiritualists. One of the rare agreements between the two contending forces; the two opposing forces; the forces that do not see eye to eye with each other normally! The misunderstanding of the younger generation is in demanding instant results. Nature doesn’t work that way. A baby born today will not turnout to be an Engineer or a Doctor tomorrow. A seed sown today will not become a sapling the next day and a tree the day after. An individual is not free in the matter of obtaining the fruit of his actions. The timings are controlled by the Supreme Power. When you are assured that the rewards are in proportion to the merit of your actions, where is the scope for worry and anxiety? The right thing will happen for one at the right time. One will get what one deserves! There can never be a mistake in the calculations of the Supreme Power for rewards or punishments! Worry about your productivity—think not much about percentage of bonus! If such practicalities about life were taught to Wilhelm right from childhood by his parents of his teachers, he would not have landed into the miserable plight of spending his life in confusion and uncertainties in different stages of his life. Finally at a stage when “he desperately wants the help of his father, both emotionally and financially, but he can never obtain it.”(Astrakhan…) Olive, the true symbolic love, arrived in his life when it was too late. Olive tree signifies peace. True love is the harbinger of peace. But Wilhelm’s problem this juncture is that he can no marry Olive, because his wife will not grant him divorce. Conclusion: “The possibilities for self-creation, material success, and absolute freedom are the basis of a powerful American myth, one that can just as easily destroy as empower those who embrace it.”(Penguin....)The problem with Wilhelm was that he took support from wrong individuals to secure the head start in life. Initially, it was Maurice Venice, the talent scout of Hollywood, and finally Dr. Tamkin, the psychologist, and the half-baked philosopher. Wilhelm has "never . . . succeeded in feeling like Tommy, and in his soul had always remained Wilky" (p. 25).One can not prosper in life by placing implicit faith on others and leaning on them heavily. One should lift oneself by one’s own efforts. When one finds it difficult to trust others, works one’s ways of one’s own, think that it is the beginning of knowledge and the opening of the road to prosperity. When one is in difficulty and no one is willing to help, take it that the journey of progress has commenced! . *********** Works Cited: Astrakhan, Laura Kate; Plot summary: Seize the Day, by Saul Bellows - -Retrieved on November, 19,2009. Bellow, Saul; Seize the Day; Penguin Classics, May 27, 2003 Cronin, Gloria. "Seize the Day". The Literary Encyclopedia. 27 November 2003. [http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2189, accessed 19 November 2009.] Penguin Reading Guides | Seize the Day | Saul Bellow... – Retrieved on November, 19, 2009. Saul Bellow: Novels 1956-1964: Seize the Day, Article by: Inglish, Patty. Retrieved on November, 19, 2009. Schumacher, E. F; Small is Beautiful- a study of economics as if people mattered; Radha Krishna, 1977. Read More