earticle

영어

Saul Bellow's second novel, The Victim is dealt with the process of self-acknowledgment and humble acceptance of self. The theme of this novel is the casting-off' of his self-imposed burdens by learning to accept himself and others rather. than to judge and blame by learning to have an open heart. Bellow wishes to reveal the true beauty and dignity of the human being. The novel, in at least one way reverses the situation of Dangling Man. Joseph, obseph, obsessed with his philosophical needs, finds his personal experience falling apart. But Leventhal has it torn apart by personal experience. The most threatening of his experiences are those involving Kirby Allbee, a former. acquaintances who suddenly reappears with shrill accusations that Leventhal has ruined his life. Leventhal's experience are the objective correlative through which Bellow explores the central problem of moral responsibility. Allbee is Leventhal's anti-self, everything that Leventhal most fears he could himself become; self-destructive, a failure a drifter, a drunkard, a man who has lost his wife, a lecher, and a madman. But through the growing sense of the reality of other, through his growing awareness of their kinship with him. Leventhal has become, in Schlossberg's terms, "human". Consequently, to become human means to realize a sense of the unity of all persons, the essential alikeness of all persons, each mysteriously containing all. This is where the movement toward perception of the others as real, toward identification with others, toward acceptance of self, and of others, has been leading. It is the vision of victim and victimizer as one.