| dc.description.abstract | Saul Bellow's pervasive satire of intellectuals and explainers and his reliance on imagery to create non-verbal communication (the unforgettable pickpocket) causes readers to assume that he takes an anti-rhetorical stance in his novels. The endings, considered by some critics to be non-dramatic, even entropic, in which the protagonist usually concludes the novel in a scene of silence or reluctant one-liners, also seem to indicate that Bellow advocates abandoning the rhetorical self, the role-playing or social self, in favor of the serious self, the attentive soul or philosophic self, as defined by Richard Lanham in The Motives of Eloquence. Bellow, as a writer, however, cannot be anti-rhetorical. His novels illustrate the necessary, regenerating struggle between the two selves as Bellow forces his main characters to abandon private narrative and engage in rhetorical occasions with various reality-instructors in order to discover the fully human life and to avoid becoming a villainous or absurd caricature as so many of the minor characters are. In spite of all the specious and dangerous manifestations of rhetoric in the novels, Bellow's insistence on human connections and agreements, on life as a covenant relationship, in which one must fulfill certain terms or complete assignments, reveals his ambiguity toward language itself. Language is the essential element for expressing the serious self or for making and keeping the agreements or contracts in the business of life. Saul Bellow's ambivalence toward language is, therefore, affirmative, a recognition and a celebration of the possibility, complexity, and richness of life. | |
