Water Imagery In Saul Bellow's Seize The Day
This research paper on Saul Bellow’s novel Seize the Day is Qualitative research which is descriptive in its literary form. Its objectives is to throw light on the symbolic function of water imagery and how it serves different purposes at different points in the novel and dominates Wilhelm’s ‘pretender soul’ and real soul that entangled between the enormous life seems to offer and the unromantic reality of the world. The present research paper gives a psychoanalytical reading of the representation of the protagonist Tommy/Wilhelm Adler’s character.The other aspects discussed in this research are the link between water imagery and history. Saul Bellow is a Jewish American author and greatly influenced by Jewish philosophy and humanism. As an ‘imaginative historian’ he resists to …show more content…
The second chapter, entitled “Operational Definitions and Theoretical Framework” offers a short literature review with working definitions of the critical term used in the paper (e.g. masochism, Bildungsroman elements) and relevant short discussion of the theories the paper cashes in on ,namely post-modernism and Marxism. The third chapter titled “Water as Orgone energy” offers a critical reading of the novel concentrating on three major characters Tommy Wilhelm, Dr. Adler and Dr.Tamkin. The fourth chapter, “Water imagery as Reckoning, Reconciliation, and Redemption’’ assuming a Psychoanalytical perspective. The fourth chapter contends water imagery as drowning in materialism of American society. The fifth section, “Conclusion” summarizes the major argument of the paper that the water imagery echoes baptismal rituals rather drowning, it is triumph rather failure of Tommy Wilhelm. By “healing surrender of the armored self”, Tommy Wilhelm at last actually achieved seize the
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