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영어

This paper aims to examine various aspects of irony and identify that they play the most important role in understanding this novel. Bellow shows us that he intended to represent the dehumanization caused by the competitive life in money-oriented society and to pursue the empathic relationship with other people through various aspects of irony. The first layer of irony is that Bellow allows Wilhelm as a social failure to make a serious search for the meaning of life. In appearance he is a social failure. He is dependent and asks his father to help him financially. But Wilhelm criticizes his father’s vanity and concern about his physical success. In reality he is a social failure with an ability to love while his father is a social success without an ability to empathize with other people. The second layer of irony is that Wilhelm’s spiritual ascent is paralleled by downward movement of image of drowning man. The third layer of irony lies in Bellows’s description of human relations. In the case of Wilhelm’s wife she hits him although he loves his wife. His wife’s sadism deepens to intensify his isolation. In relation with his father, although Dr. Adler as his father is a perfect man in terms of social success, he fails to give his son much love. As a result, Saul Bellow shows us a positive vision of empathic life for survival instead of self-centered life in money-oriented society through multiple layers of irony.