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  Saul Bellow has been continuously interested in how man"s life could be defined in the modem society. Accepting the apocalyptic view of history, the contemporary writers tend to be pessimistic about the future of man. However, in the modem literary traditions of despair and alienation, he makes an attempt to affirm reality and defend man. He insists that man"s life is much damaged but it can be healed and recovered because he has his firm confidence in the essential human values and dignity.
  Tommy Wilhelm, the protagonist in Seize the Day is alienated from his father, his wife, his friends and acquaintances. He is miserably estranged in the dehumanizing situation of the modem society. He is trapped between past and future and embarrassed between he guilty feeling of past failure and the anxiety of the future. Wilhelm experiences many sufferings, but they enable him to accept his circumstances and even to realize brotherhood in the end. In the process of Wilhelm"s undergoing all sorts of hardships, reality instructors, who often appear as major characters in Saul Bellow"s works, play important roles in realizing his situation and furthermore, his reality. They are Dr. Adler, Dr. Tamkin, Margaret including New York, etc. Wilhelm tries to throw off all the burdens of his own past to get of his isolation, and he is accidently swept into a funeral parlor in the crowd, where he weeps of stranger"s death with all his heart. Crying from deeper feeling before the dead man, Wilhelm has a kind of catharsis, spiritual ecstasy through the imagery of drowning in the water. The death of stranger is regarded as a symbol of his own death and every man"s death. His tears also destroy his pretender soul and open his heart to the true soul and communion with nature and man, ending his long desperation and alienation. He finally understands the basic relationship between himself and all human beings. Bellow presents a hope to man who is emasculated by a great dehumanizing pressure of modem society. He also shows the situation of alienation which the individual is faced with in modem society and at the same time presents the way of overcoming it.

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