摘 要

《寻找格林先生》是索尔·贝娄著名的短篇小说之一，它包含了深刻的社会现实与丰富的哲理思辨。索尔·贝娄将萨特存在主义与犹太性很好地结合在一起，创造出对荒谬的独到见解，形成了独特的犹太存在主义。他在寻找格林先生中描绘了一个处于社会边缘的知识分子的思考与见闻，希望通过人的思考，在混乱和痛苦中找到生存的意义。因此，本文以萨特存在主义为基础，分析《寻找格林先生》中荒谬与冷漠的社会现实以及格里布最终形成的本质，为人类在荒谬与虚无中找到生存的希望提供了借鉴。本文由五个部分组成。导论部分简要介绍作家背景及国内外研究现状。第二部分则概括存在主义的起源与发展，侧重于萨特及其存在主义理念。第三部分是运用“存在先于本质”的理论分析美国大萧条时期人们的生活现状。第四部分基于 “他人即地狱”和“个人选择绝对自由”阐明格里布本质的形成过程。虽然格里布在做出选择的过程中会受到不同的存在价值观的影响，但是格里布最终会形成自己的本质，那就是敢于承担自己的责任。最后一部分是总结贝娄的存在主义思想。

关键词： 《寻找格林先生》；萨特存在主义；生存意义

Abstract

Looking for Mr. Green is one of the most excellent short stories of Saul Bellow; it contains profoundly social realities and is rich in philosophic theories. In the story, Saul Bellow well combines Sartre’s Existentialism with Jewishness and explains his understanding of the absurdity. Finally, he creates a uniquely Jewish Existentialism. Moreover, He depicts the thinking and experiences of a marginalized intellectual, for he hopes that the intellectual will finally find out the survival significance during the chaotic time through the process of thinking. Therefore, based on Sartre’s Existentialism, this paper aims at analyzing the absurdity and loneliness in Looking for Mr. Green and at illustrating the essence developed by Grebe, and then intends to teach humans how to realize their existence in absurdity and nothingness. This paper can be divided into five parts. The first part includes the background information of Saul Bellow and literature reviews. The second part is to summarize the origin and development of Existentialism, especially focuses on Sartre and his Existential concepts. Then, in the third part, this paper will analyze human Existential conditions during the Great Depression by using the first concept—"existence precedes essence". Two theories are used in the fourth part, including “hell is other people” and “man is free to choice”. They can be used for illustrating the forming process of Grebe’s essence. In other words, although others’ Existential values have influence on the process of making choice, Grebe finally can form his essence by taking his responsibility. The last part is to conclude Saul Bellow's Existential thoughts.

Key words: Looking for Mr. Green, Sartre’s Existentialism, survival significance

Contents

1Introduction 1

1.1 Saul Bellow and his works 1

1.2 Literature review 2

2 General Study of Existentialism 4

2.1 The Origin and Development of Existentialism 4

2.2 The Main Concepts of Sartre’s Existentialism 5

3 Human Existence in Looking for Mr. Green 7

3.1 Absurdity 7

3.1.1 Environmental Absurdity 7

3.1.2 Subjective Absurdity 8

3.2 Loneliness 9

4 The Formation of Grebe’s Essence 11

4.1 Grebe, Raynor, Staika and Existential values 11

4.1.1 Grebe and Raynor 11

4.1.2 Grebe and Staika 13

4.2 Self-realization of Grebe 13

5 Conclusion 16

References 17

Acknowledgements 18

Existentialist Values in

Looking for Mr. Green

1Introduction

1.1 Saul Bellow and his works

As the earliest American Jewish writer, Saul Bellow is the most respected and loved novelist in the 20th century. In 1925, He was born in Lachine, Quebec, Canada. His father was a Jewish merchant who migrated from Russia. From an early age, he could contact with Jewish tradition and culture due to his family background. Not only could he speak English and French, but he learns Hebrew and Yiddish as well. It lays a solid foundation to write in Yiddish in his later literary creation. After he finished study in the University of Chicago, he furthered his education at Northwest University to learn sociology and anthropology. This educational experience enables him to portray the characters’ psychologies carefully and to conduct a profound reflection on contemporary society from the perspective of humanism.

Generally speaking, it is difficult to find an American Jewish writer who is more productive and influential than Saul Bellow in American history. Up to now, he has published 11 novels, and almost every novel has received literature awards as well as highly evaluations from critics. His first and highly praised novel, Dangling Man, which was published in 1944. Domestic and international scholars attach great importance to the loss of identity and Jewishness which is rooted in the protagonist Joseph. Then Bellow achieved instant fame after the publication of The Adventure of Augie March (1953), which enabled him to win the National Book Award for the first time, and established his literature status. Later he wrote a series of novels and short stories, from Seize the Day (1956) to Henderson the Rain King (1959), Herzog, (1964) and Humboldt's Gift (1975). These works mostly reveal the spiritual anguish of bourgeois intellectuals, and reflect the mental crisis in the contemporary American “affluent society”.

1.2 Literature review

Oversea comments on Bellow’s novels can be traced back to the 1940s, starting from the publication of Dangling Man, and reached its peak in 1976 when Bellow won the Nobel Prize for literature. Foreign scholars even establish a special research institute and the Journal of Saul Bellow to comment Bellow’s latest masterpieces. However, Bellow’s works are not so popular in domestic study, because of fewer translations and insufficient studies. Entering the 21st century, the enthusiasm to evaluate Bellow’s writings has rapidly declined, mainly manifested in two aspects. One is the constantly decrease of published papers and monographs about Bellow; another is that the research works are less adequate than before (Qiao, 2012). Therefore, the historical oversea productions about Saul Bellow are the most valuable resources for further researching his literary creations. In contrast, domestic studies on Bellow’s works flourish at this time. They analyze these works from disparate perspectives, such as thematic study, writing techniques, characters analysis and motif exploration (Zhang et al., 2016).

Looking for Mr. Green is one of Bellow’s earlier short stories. Dangling man, Herzog and Humboldt's gift are the three most frequently discussed masterpieces by scholars from all over the world. Compared with those three novels, Looking for Mr. Green is the less popular one. It depicts human’s living existence in the United States during the Great Depression which causes a lot of unemployment. A young intellectual Grebe serves in a relief station and is responsible for sending relief check to the people who live in the black ghetto. He is repeatedly hit a brick wall on the way to look for a black man Mr. Green who never appears in the whole story. But he still keeps his resolve, and firmly believes that he could find him. As the implicit narration of Waiting for Godot, the absence of Mr. Green increases the complexities of the novel.

Meanwhile, the themes of Bellow’s works are diverse and complicated, resulting in various reviews on Looking for Mr. Green. At first, researchers concentrate on the theme of identity and Jewishness in it. Although Bellow doesn’t experience the turbulent time in Jewish history, his works contain strong Jewish birthmarks influenced by his family tradition. Howe (1946) suggests that Jewish writers always touch the restless of Jew; even they are separated from Jewish life. It is easy to discover that the most primitive Jewishness and the distinctive mark exist in Bellow's early works. “The allegorical analysis of Looking for Mr. Green” by Wang (2008) provides specific evidences in analyzing the Jewish culture in Bellow’s works. In addition, some studies primarily focus on Bellow’s mythological and religious themes. Study on the Messiah’s Salvation in Saul Bellow’s work by Wu and Li (2015) associates protagonist Grebe with the image of Christ, reveals that people anticipate the revisit of Messiah. Later, Existentialism becomes the mainstream ideology after World WarⅡ, to some extent, contributes to Saul Bellow’s writings. As a result, the intellectuals tend to study Looking for Mr. Green from the perspective of existence. There are the two influential papers to interpret the Existential elements in this novel: the Quest for the Real in Looking for Mr. Green by Rodrigues (1974) and Existential Analysis on Looking for Mr. Green by Zhao (2010). They analyze the theme of how Grebe searches for self-existence in the absurd and indifferent world. However, scholars don’t analyze Looking for Mr. Green systematically by utilizing Existentialist theories at present.