论文总字数：33577字
摘 要
《更多人死于心碎》是美国作家索尔贝娄的作品，它并不为人们所熟知。迄今为止, 国内外有关贝娄及其作品的各种评论层出不穷, 但研究重点主要集中在对《赫索格》及《勿失良辰》等最主要的代表作品的主题、技巧及人物分析上, 而对充分展示了其后现代主义特色的优秀作品《更多的人死于心碎》的研究则相对较少。
本文将采用文献研究的方法，从黑色幽默、讽刺以及文学典故的使用等三个方面来解读小说《更多的人死于心碎》中的后现代主义因素, 旨在反映现代西方人生存的精神荒原。本文着重分析《更多的人死于心碎》这部小说中黑色幽默的使用、讽刺以及文学典故的使用, 进而论述作品的后现代主义因素，以及他们是如何表达后现代主义思想的。
通过对后现代小说的分析可以帮助读者更好的阅读后现代主义作品，加深对其的认识，促进后现代文学在社会中的普及与应用。而且，后现代的研究可以帮助作家更好的把握后现代的写作手法，在写作时能灵活的运用这些手法从而推动后现代主义文学的发展。最后，本文有助于加深读者对当前社会的理解，由于现今大多数后现代主义作品都表现出批判社会的态度，并且后现代主义将我们所处的客观社会看为一个无理性的混乱的充满愤世嫉俗与怀疑的社会，这将在一定程度上起到催人梦醒的作用。
关键词：更多人死于心碎；后现代主义视角；精神荒原
Contents
1. Introduction １
2. Literature Review ２
2.1 Related studies abroad ２
2.2 Related studies in china ３
3. The analysis of More Die of Heartbreak from the perspective of post-modernism ３
3.1 The usage of black humor ３
3.2 The sarcasms ５
3.3 The usage of literary allusions ７
3.4 The spiritual wasteland reflected by the post-modernism factors ８
4. Conclusion １０
Works Cited １１
1. Introduction
Saul Bellow who won the Nobel literature prize in 1976 is regarded as the greatest American writer in the late 20th century. His novels have crossed over fifty years and have combined the modernism, realism and postmodernism to some extent. Although Bellow is regarded as a conservative among the postmodernism writers, he successfully changes the writing techniques and language usage of the postmodernism. As for Barth, Bellow is an ideal postmodernism writer, “he doesn’t merely criticize or merely imitate, and he is the father of the modernism in 20th century or the grandfather of the pre-modernism in 19th century. Many of the scholars and researchers have done relative studies on Bellow, but most of those researches focus on his most famous representatives, such as the Seize the Day and Herzog, while very few works have researched on the theme of postmodernism reflected in More Die of Heartbreak. This paper will mainly adopt the literature analysis method and the literature review method so as to analyze its usage of black humor, sarcasm, and the usage of literary allusions and further analyze the theme of postmodernism features revealed in this novel. This paper is both important in terms of theoretical and practical aspects for it has offered a new research perspective for the related researches on this work in the future and it has also acted as the references for carrying out teaching and research of this work from a new direction.
The novel More Die of Heartbreak superficially describes the emotional life of the narrator Kenneth and his uncle Benn who suffer from emotional setbacks and injuries. But in a deep aspect, this novel fully displays the spiritual troubles faced by the intellectuals in the highly materially developed western modern world from the hidden. Kenneth is a Russian literature professor and his emotional life is not satisfying. He proposed to his child’s mother for several time but he was refused again and again. But he would not accept the feelings and love of his tender and considerate girlfriend Dita. His uncle Benn’s emotional life is more complex. Benn who is an idealist and the famous botanist dreams to have a pure love and a traditional family where he could enjoy the happiness of a family. He always pursues his ideal mate and traditional family, but to his sadness, he would feel depressed by his emotional setbacks. After his first wife died of disease, he keeps living alone for as long as fifteen years. During this period, he suffers a lot from the emotional failures and troubles, later he came across the young and beautiful woman called Matilda. He felt so happy and satisfied for this young woman, thinking that he found his ideal companion. But he didn’t realize that he was induced to the trap designed by the Matilda family. Matilda only admires his social position and relies on him to come into the upper social class. In order to maintain his inner fancy dream, he abandoned his belief and creed to argue for money with his uncle, which led his uncle’s death. As a result, Benn was caught in terrible feelings out of his self-accusation and self-reproach.
2. Literature Review
Since it came out in 1987, More Die of Heartbreak has long been studied by the Chinese and foreign researchers. The following part is going to discuss the former researches on this novel which can offer as references for this study. Based on the literature review, this paper attempts to study this novel from a new aspect.
2.1 Related studies abroad
William Gaddis in his book review expresses his feelings to welcome “the calamitous wit of the Herzog and Adventures of Augie March (Martin Amis, the well-known American writer also comments Bellow’s More Die of Heartbreak as the “greatest book written by the greatest writer in America” (p329) Faye Irene Kuzma (1998) the American scholar also studies this book from the aspect of existentialism and he said he writes in the realistic way Stendhal, Dreiser, Tolstoy and Flaubert wrote, he digs into the world as being absurd and chaotic and of modern people’s impotence towards life. (p436) some critics hold this book concentrates on the extreme materialism of the modern western society. John Jocab Clayton (1979) states that “there is no world more fragmented, materialistic and isolated than the writer of More Die of Heartbreak. (p12) G. Neelakantan also claims that the “Bellow’s novel, clearly and directly in the master of money, sex, death and policy, seems to exorcize both feeling and thought. (1996, p122) They have recognized the excess of American’s spiritual wasteland and materialism in their inner world. Besides, American critics, such as Jeffrey Meyers, Paul Gray, William Gaddis and Alfred Kazin have studied it since it came out. However, most of their works and studies focus on the theme of the tragic character in their marriage in the post-industrial society, the female image, and from the Freudian’s psychological ideas. Faye Irene Kuzma (1990) publishes a paper called Negotiated Identities in Saul Bellow’s Three Novels from Bakhtin’s Double-voiced Hybrid to prove Bellow’s novels don’t include a passive authorial claim but the interactivity of voice can be detected. American scholar Stephen Tanner (2005) researches on the influential factors of the bible on this book and another critic Chris Louttit (2005) studies on the tramp theme revealed in this novel.
2.2 Related studies in china
Generally speaking, the researches on the More Die of Heartbreak start in recent years in china. Some of the Chinese researchers study this novel from the perspective of religious philosophy and Jewish culture. Critics have also concentrated on the masochism and the power relations from Michel Foucault’s definition of power revealed in it. Zhang Jun (2010) in his paper mechanism of masochism and its social functions in More Die of Heartbreak，claims that only after the American Jewish nationality returns to their Jewish ethic tradition and religion and can reasonably think over the reasons of masochism can they find the way to realize self-redemption, reach the spiritual Canaan and out of masochism. Zheng Zhihui (2014) in her paper, an interpretation of More Die of Heartbreak under the horizon of consumer society, claims that the Bellow has showed the readers hope of having a bright and wonderful future for current seemingly absurd heroes to chase after an ideally spiritual paradise with order and peace. And she also holds that Bellow explores the status of the people’s spiritual wasteland in the material world. So far, many of Saul Bellow’s novels have been translated into Chinese and some of them have acted as the teaching material in college. However, the researches on this book from the post-modernism are relatively less. Thus, this paper can offer as a reference for the related topic for the future studies on this novel. And moreover, based on the fact that this book has been collected into the teaching material in some college in china, this paper offers both the teachers and the students a new perspective to understand and appreciate this book.
3 The analysis of More Die of Heartbreak from the perspective of post-modernism
3.1 The usage of black humor
The early works of Bellow are full of irony, humor and kind ridicules, but the More Die of Heartbreak is full of the severe scenes with black humor. The appearance of the black humor comes from the juxtaposition of the absurd character and the real characters and the come across of the funny scenes with the strict scenes. Irene describes Bellow’s expression pattern like this “his tone is mixed up with comedy and tragedy, funny and terrible tones… he uses various methods to misguide the readers because he would change into laughter suddenly from the black description, and swift from terrible scenes into the farce and the presentation of the strange and wired situations. (Safer 20). Irene clearly states the expression method used in More Die of Heartbreak. In this novel, Bellow uses black humor to describe the cheating among people, the boring life, the fall and corruption of the society. Therefore, he skillfully combines the black humor with the historical events and the third world to satirize the society through mixing up the philosophical thinking with the plain conversations, the frightening scenes with the released scenes.
The narrator of this novel Kenneth always shows his thinking towards life and politics and when he narrates the terrible soviet labor concentration camp, he talks about the Kolyma camp that “the guard there let the prisoners play a strange game which always locate them on the edge of the death. They let two prisoners climb out to a newly-buried official’s grave and ask them to take the underwear and socks of the dead whose body has already been hard and decayed. All these clothes can be used to exchange bread which can maintain their life for several days. (21) The scene of the cold dead is terrible and frightening, but for the prisoners those are just the source of foods, such a bright contrast drives the readers’ fear away and they may develop an absurd feeling towards such description and the mercy towards the victim. When Kenneth compares his uncle’s scientific research with the prison in Sterzwill he said “there the fee used to keep two prisoners can afford the living fees of two botanists. But in the public’s opinion, the excitement brought by the two prisoners is much bigger than that of the scientists for they are likely to make riot, arson, killing the prison police by using ropes and inserting the rod into the head of the police, which are much exciting.” (16) But on the other hand, he declares seriously that “it is a great thing to be a scholar in America.” The black humor is successfully created by Bellow through putting the philosophical thinking, which inspires the internal contradiction of the readers.
Another example to show his black humor is his description towards the miserable country which belongs to the third world. When Kenneth visits her mother who acts as a missionary in east Africa, she anxiously listed some miserable situations she witnessed the Somali people were in: “the refugee camp made for two thousand people are lived by four thousand refugees. The civil army from Ethiopia, located on the border, seized the children and raped the girls, the Somali officials attempted to force the refugees back, so the Menjisido army which aimed to implement a greater atrocity could complete their task.” (109) the description of the miserable refugees there was ended by Kenneth’s ironic comments that “however, her own son is here to give a lesson to her. On this point, he is much like his father, in terms of the enjoyments in life; the second enjoyment which follows the sex is to teach.” (109) while the conversation about the refugees who are at the edge of death is talked over a feast with famous pork can and first-class apple wine.” (107) the black humor of this scene comes from the contrast between the noble ideal and the humble reality.
3.2 The sarcasms
Another post-modernism writing skill adopted by Bellow is the sarcasms. Bellow’s sarcasms are regarded as the post-modernism because of the following reasons. First of all, the traditional sarcasm mainly will center on a certain situation, event and people; second, the traditional sarcasm generally offers a kind of method, a media or at least some reformatory hope. But in Bellow’s sarcasm there is no center. At first, he satirizes the people in the middle and west as a whole and then he criticizes everything in the middle and west. Therefore, his sarcasms are event-oriented, random and collective without a clear center. Besides, Bellow doesn’t offer any media or method to promote the reformation instead he let Benn get into the struggle and fights with the insidious and sly people, letting the readers understand clearly that the viciousness takes the guide.
Bellow shows his talent in sarcasms. When he satirizes life and politics in the middle and west, he differentiates the theme of sarcasms by using different tones. When he talks about the life in the middle and western American, his tone tends to be tender and relaxing, which can been shown by his frequently used kind jokes. However, while talking about the political corruptions, his tone changes to be mean, harsh and merciless. Kenneth’s father questions about Kenneth’s attachment to the life in west and Middle American “I can’t figure out why you have to bury yourself in the mid-west America. Don’t forget that even if Paris doesn’t show the wonders of life, it is still Paris.” (40) He thinks “it is a kind of going back to the ancestors and there is not a tint of bourgeois.” Moreover, “the people there can’t even write the word “fortune god”, which is what the fortune god like.” (31) Kenneth also jokes about his foreignness in middle and western American “some Iranians drive taxi, some Koreans and Syria people run the vegetable markets and some Mexicans are waiters, while the man who came to fix my TV is an Egypt and some of my students who come to my Russian class are Japanese. (27) Kenneth’s marginal sense and foreignness are right from Bellow’s sarcasms on the American’s rootless feelings. Kenneth was born in paris and educated there. After moving to America, he finds himself is located among the Asians, Africans, middle easterners, the middle Americans and south Americans. After satirizing people in the middle and western America, Bellow spicily satirizes the rampant corruption in the society. He bitterly blames the abandonment of people’s dreams and the corruption of the governments which no longer puts the people’s interests in front of the officials and the country, instead, the corruption and governmental lies are becoming the commonly recognized social conventions and the acceptable behavior pattern in the daily life. He describes the seamless corruption which leads to the rampant viciousness and crimes. Kenneth’s granduncle Harrod who is a shameless person like the mafia member and he keeps bragging there are many bankers, lawyers and federal officials serving for him. The main hatchet man of Harrod is the Armando lawyer who was once helped by Harrod to be a lawyer. Thus Armando helps to decide a beneficial adjudication for him, making it possible for Harrod to successfully win the real estate business and realize his conspiracy.
Another post-modernism sarcasm is the criticism towards the authorities. Bellow doesn’t depict those leadership who is wisdom and considerate and always puts the interests of the country and the people in front of their own interests, instead, he depicts a state governor called Armando whose biggest interest is to seek interest and honor for himself. It is said that he is in charge of the all the big jury in federal regions, but he seldom shows up when he is in urgent need, for example when the panic of salmonella came, it is said that he was on a vacation. As a result, he was widely accused by the mass public, in order to regain his reputation and fame, the state governor hosts a parole hearing of a rapist who was once sentenced to be guilty so as to prove himself is doing his business in front of the public. This government official who is good at making a show is in charge of the whole hearing and most of the time he is asking questions carefully and prudently and displaying his adept skills which seem to be impeccable in the court. In front of the jury, he must act as the terrifying censor, and in front of the camera, he looks so great, noble, dignified, strong and smart, he is as smooth as silk in the appearance but his inner world can’t be coarser any more(305). He spends much time in asking the details of the rape process and cli ngs tightly to underwear dressed by the victim of the rape. The restless uncle Benn said “such kind of show for the governor himself is exciting; after all, he is a state governor.” (309) Bellow just wants to create the sense of humor through these scenes. Through the creation of these humors, Bellow wants the readers to experience the scenes which revealed the corruption situations in the society he describes.
3.3 The usage of literary allusions
Like many other post-modernism writers, Bellow takes advantage of the literary allusions to criticize the reality, the traditional romantic pattern and the sexual relationship as well as the failure of the family life in the 20th century. He mentions the Ellen Poe’s poem to Helen for several times, which becomes the sarcasm pattern goes throughout this novel.
In More Die of Heartbreak, Bellow makes full use of this poem to test the transformation essence of two heroes in different situations, attitudes and relationships. (Polin 15) through borrowing the Ellen Poe’s to Helen, Bellow has laughed at the traditional opinions about the ideal women’s features. He satirizes the traditional understanding of the superficial beauty and attractiveness, the idea of regarding woman as a faithful mate and a helper; moreover the woman is the inspiration source of the man’s successes and achievements. Bellow has created humor by adopting these allusions in various and intelligent ways. The most obvious one which uses Poe’s allusion is to express the relationship between Benn and Matilda. At the early stage of their relationship, Benn was deeply attached to Matilda and compared her to the “dear one” in Poe’s poem and highly praised “your beautiful purple blue hair and graceful and charming face” (19) Bellow has laid the foundation for the sarcasm later in the first usage of allusion, he writes “ Kenneth says “ uncle will be bound to love her purple blue hair for he is studying botany”, which makes the readers associate the career of the botanist Benn and the beautiful Helen in Troy. The mentioning of Poe’s affection towards the beautiful Helen aims to remind the readers of the “glory of Greece or the greatness of Rome”. On the sharp contrary, this material and self-centered Matilda only reminds the readers of the greatness of the electrical tower which best represents her materialism and honor of money.
3.4 The spiritual wasteland reflected by the post-modernism factors
According to Bronner, the writing features of the post-modernism are contradictory, randomness, incoherence, analogy extension, the combination of reality and fancy.
Contradictory refers that the later sentences would turn over the former sentences. Random arrangement means the post-modernism writers may randomly arrange the things so as to present the absurdness of the life and story. The incoherence means there is no logical connections between the chapters or sections of a novel. The creation and reading of the post-modernism is a kind of randomness, for example Johnson’s fixed-free novel lets the readers to flexibly find the reading order. The analogy extension intentionally extends an analogy into a story.
The absurd hero’s absurd pursuit is the post-modernism writing skill. The absurd hero desires to build an orderly and meaningful world and to realize his true self. However, he finds himself in a broken and chaotic world. The traditional value, acting as the out of date thing, has been laughed at and abandoned. David Galloway believes that the absurd hero is the true rebel because he insists on seeking for the meaning and order in a meaningless world, his absurdness becomes his protest towards the world. (2001) In his protest, the absurd hero seeks for justice, harmony and peace but in such an absurd and meaningless world, he finds he was turned down, teased at and reduced to setbacks everywhere.
The absurd hero created by Bellow is often regarded as the victim of the society and the other people. They are depressed, strange in behavior and are full of wired ideas and they show mercy on themselves, hesitate at the edge of vanity and realistic world and persist on their ideal dreams which are denied by the life and realistic world (163). The essence of Bellow’s works is that he deeply believes the source of the problems comes from people’s divorce from political and social world. (134) In the More Die of Heartbreak, Benn is such type of people who breaks away from the reality and society. The traditional hero generally has the fearless courage, mighty power and definite goals and they pursue success and finally achieve their success in a noble way. On the contrary, the Benn written by Bellow is a world famous botanist and know every plant even the moss in the icy world of north and South Pole, but he is a misfortune and helpless character in this novel who is getting troubled by the females. The absurdness in Benn is because he wants to find the meaning of living in this chaotic world.
Benn’s relationship with three women, Karoline, Dara and Matilda provides as the main ironic comedy for the absurd world they are in. Benn spared all his efforts to find an ideal marriage companion but he always suffered from the setbacks and the cold, indifferent and material world, in the end he achieved nothing and no ideal woman, for they either didn’t match with each other in personalities or the one party can’t meet the demands or inner desire of the other party. there is one scene in this novel that Benn was looking at the cartoon which set the grave as the background. The dialogue between the couple in the cartoon picture is “you are not happy, aren’t you? Dear? Oh, yeah, yes, I am not happy at all.” (10) This drawing is the mirror of Benn’s real life. Karoline was a beautiful and wealthy non-Jewish woman who crazily chased after Benn. However, Benn chose to get away from her by rapidly retreating to Japan and his lectures there. Faced with the love from Dara, a woman who is an alcoholic and single middle aged and tried to seduce Benn, Benn chose to retreat again and this time he fled to Brazil, hoping to find shelter in his lectures. Dara represents another little disaster in Benn’s emotional life. However, the relationship with Matilda proves Benn is an absurd hero of the post-modernism. Benn was attached to this beautiful lady who was like Helen described under Poe’s pen. Thinking that he has found the ideal partner and desirable romantic love, he hasn’t realized that he has been caught in by the trap of this beautiful woman who relied on him to climb to the upper social class. Because of their absolutely different temperament and view of value, their relationship is full of contradictories. Benn desires to get the ideal love and traditional family life, instead, Matilda was crazy about going after the vanity and celebrities through the fame of Benn. At the beginning of this novel, Benn compared her to Helen in Poe’s poem and after their relationship went bad, he began to tear apart her in his psychological world. Later he thought “there must be a kind of metabolism system, a kind of system which is figuring out schemes and trap for him.” Through the change of Matilda’s beautiful image into a horrible one, Bellow depicts Benn’s broken and torn-apart life. Their relationship also ends in a humoristic and miserable way. Benn said helplessly: “now only the dark night and ice can help me, night makes me see nothing while ice is a kind of dose of correction for me”. The ironic meaning is that the coldness and darkness of the North Pole is the home and shelter he has been searching for the long time, because the best way to protect heart from failing is to freeze it.” (Knight, 20)
4. Conclusion
In the novel More Die of Heartbreak, Bellow changes from the traditional realism pattern reflected in his early works to the post-modernism them and writing skills in this novel, he successfully makes use of the black humor, sarcasms, and literary allusions to describe the setbacks suffered by the absurd hero and the thoughts drawn out from those experiences. In this novel which is full of sarcasms and black humor, the hero described by Bellow spares efforts to seek for the meanings of living and happy traditional family life, but he finds that he can’t compromise to the society and thus he has to seek for “new reality” and hopes to accidentally find happiness in a uncertain place in the future. Sarah Cohen comments on the theme and comedy of Bellow’s novels by saying “Bellow’s comedy has destroyed the ‘abundant, serious superfluous words, it has not uncovered the secret of life, but his comedy sharpens our senses towards life and enhances our awesome to his novels. (cohen 223). In the More Die of Heartbreak, the post-modernism writing skills such as the black humor, and the usage of sarcasm are to show Bellow’s ironic attitude towards the society at that time. Moreover the presentation of the fall of society and human beings prove Bellow is a excellent post-modernism writer. Postmodernism is the collective spirit of the contemporary western world and it is also a worldwide cultural tide. Its brave denial and absolute doubt about the objective world are some noble thinking qualities. The narrative pattern especially in a way of satire, black humor, and illusions used to explain the postmodernism is quite different from the modernism. The postmodernism objects to the single, fixed logic, formula, principle as well as general regulations to state and rule the objective world, advocates innovation and reformation, stresses openness and diversity, tolerates and acknowledges differences, which is beyond the critiques of the modernism. In the postmodernism novels, the meanings are only produced man-made differences of language signs, the writing of imaginary text is merely a kind of language game, and any kind of text is open and unfinished which largely relies on the readers understandings, showing a kind of popularization tendency. The postmodernism novelists think that the reality is not skin-deep and the people and the things in objective world include the inner world and they hold that the human’s subconscious and unconscious activity are more important that the reality in the outer world, and the inner world reflects the more important and more essential reality than the objective outer world. Thus, the postmodernism overturns the concept of “pure novel” and blurs the dividing line with other genres with the time across the past, now and future and the uncertain characters names and identities. In the postmodernism novels, there is no objective and transcendental meanings, the so called meanings are only produced by the man-made differences of the language signs. As a result, the postmodernism novels surpass the limitation of pure literature and public literature, elegant literature and general literature and show a tendency of popularization.
Based on the above analysis, this research can help the readers to better appreciate about the postmodernism novels and deepen their understanding about the work and promote the popularity and application of the postmodernism in literature. Besides, the research on postmodernism can help the writers to better master the postmodernism writing techniques through analyzing the writing skills and understanding the writing theory. As a result, the writers can apply these writing skills more flexibly in writing, and in this way, the postmodernism literatures can be pushed forward. At last, the research of postmodernism novels can deepen our understanding about the current society. Since nearly all the current postmodernism works show the critical attitude towards the society. Thus, the postmodernism works which regard our objective world as an unreasonable and chaotic world that is full of cynicism and doubts can wake people up to some extent.
Works Cited
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