Henderson The Rain King English Literature Essay

This passage is very important to the novel, because it is where the queen starts to admire Henderson believing that he has a large strong personality, and that his mind is full of thoughts. Moreover she believe that he possess some fundamentals of Bittahness. It is also reveals to Henderson the Grun-tu-mulani.

Context: In Africa Henderson finds Charles traveling style too pampered and he decides to leave Charlie and his wife behind and set off with Romilayu (An African guide that was promised to own Henderson Jeep if he guides Henderson). Henderson and Romilayu travel together for a few days, until they reach the Arnewi tribe. Henderson meets the tribe prince Itelo and wins his respect by defeating him in a wrestling match. After winning against Itelo Henderson meets his mother queen were she starts to admire Henderson and describe his personalities, and his desires by just looking at him.

Impact: In this passage, the Queen starts to tell Henderson him two things. First she says: “world is strange to a child. You not a child” (84) Henderson begins with a true interpretation of this romantic truth, that all his decay had dated from his childhood. Henderson responds that “The world may be strange to a child, but he does not fear it the way a man fears. On the other hand he marvels it, and then Henderson starts singing a song from Handel’s Messiah. Then the queen starts to tell him about “Grun-tu-molani”, “Man want to live” (85). This is the purpose of all life, animal and human, is just to live, to be. Henderson has had this life principle within him. It is avidities vitae. He agrees and adds “not only I molano for myself, but for everybody. I could not bear how sad things have become in the world and so I set out because of this molani”. This will affect the story greatly in the next few pages, because this is where Henderson starts to believe that he can help the Arnewi tribe by bombing the frogs. This is seen as a bad omen since it has been mentioned early in the book that whatever Henderson try to accomplish, fails with unknown reasons like he is cursed or something.

The author used a combination of metaphors and similes in this passage to send the message to the reader that something important is going to occur in the next pages. For instance a metaphor is used in the middle of page 84 ” Trouble stinks”. This metaphor shows that troubles are hand to handle with and unbearable. The writer used the word stinks to describe it since a smell that “stinks” is unbearable. Moreover troubles are not gases that

The main points of this review are Henderson is a strong example of tendency. Moreover the reviewer thinks that it was intended as a comic. I agree that Henderson is a strong example of tendency with the protagonist being Henderson drive towards something that he seem to find it impossible to clear beyond which is the voice deep inside within him ” I want, I want”. On the other hand I disagree with the fact the Henderson was intended to be a comic, since comic books tend to have pictures and the hero’s tend to have super powers and are unbeatable. While the book Henderson can be rephrased as a book that covers some of the aspects of life. Furthermore, women struggle to have a voice in the novel. This is shown that Bellow’s narrator does not settle with women through women or nature, but that he relies in males to solve his problems. This concludes that no matter how many situations the protagonist encounters, women will not be taken seriously as a solution. The novel creates a mythic quest in order to resist racism and promote racial harmony. This is shown when Henderson begins his quest sharing in white prejudices against Africans. Though they are generous prejudices, they are deep-rooted, come across as very patronizing, and tend to suggest rational incompetence on the part of Africans.

In addition I didn’t like the book, since it doesn’t have a lot of actions and most of it was Henderson weeping to find the answer that will satisfy his ” I want, I want” calling inside his heart. I guess that teenagers were not the target audience that Saul Bellow intended to write this novel to; there were a lot of complex literary devices that are hard to understand its symbolism. In addition in order to understand the novel completely, the reader must have some background information about Christianity since some phrases are hard to understand by people that are not Christians.

Henderson the Rain King is not my favorite Bellow novel: Henderson’s sojourn in Africa is unconvincing and borders on Orientalism, the novel’s symbolism is heavy, and some disjointed sections feel superfluous, as when Henderson writes letters to his wife, Lily, in Chapter 19, or when he discusses the lion hunts with King Dahfu. Still, even Bellow batting below average scores more hits than most writers at their best, and in rereading Henderson I remember why I like Bellow so much-he’s so alive, and his characters ceaselessly try to expand their own lives and learn to encompass this big thing we call life. Granted, they’re always unsuccessful at the latter, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s an impossible quest just to understand life-especially humanity in all its varieties-let alone encompassing it, is probably impossible.

This might feed into what Bellow, like some other great novelists, so disliked about academic research and writing, as academics by definition try to define and elucidate, while so much of Bellow’s writing shows why some major factors of life simply can’t be elucidated. Therefore, academics and critics like me are ourselves going on a futile quest in our attempts to comprehend Bellow, who wrote novels like Henderson that show why the explaining isn’t possible; as Sam Tanenhaus wrote regarding the Library of America edition of Bellow, “It may be heretical, or just foolish, for a book review editor to admit it, but there are times when criticism is beside the point.” Indeed, and it makes me wary in writing this. No wonder Bellow liked Blake’s poetry, as I see some of the same defiance of full explanation in Blake, especially his later work. Henderson is a particularly strong example of this tendency, with the protagonist’s constant drive toward something he can’t seem to articulate beyond “I want, I want,” forming a base for the unnameable: what does Henderson want? Life? Experience? Knowledge? Something else?

Much of Henderson is, I think, intended as comic, given its outlandish events. Still, those events, like the lion hunt or the moving of the statue, are too symbolically endowed for my taste. They seem more like a statement of Henderson’s character than necessary events to the novel. Such scenes also parallel to too great a degree Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces. That book came out in 1949 and Henderson in 1959, and during the period between them Bellow might have read or at least heard about Hero. Many of its elements show in farcical ways: the call to adventure is through narcissistic desire that leads to departure from the United States for Africa; failure in the blown-up water cistern; initiation in the form of moving a statute; and eventual success, after a fashion. Henderson is more concerned with himself than anyone or thing else, however, and rather than reconciling himself with his society he thinks that, “this is the payoff of a lifetime of action without thought” when he’s forced to imitate a jungle beast. As he says elsewhere, noting the ridiculousness of his own situation, “If I had to shoot at that cat, if I had to blow up frogs, if I had to pick up Mummah without realizing what I was getting myself into, it was not out of line to crouch on all fours and roar and act the lion.”

Yet in Henderson those comic aspects are also a critique of the quest narrative, as Henderson can’t find wholeness or completion. He searches for an abstraction layer not available through travel, even when elements of home-the United States-follow him: “It was just my luck to think I had found the conditions of life simplified so I could deal with them-finally!-and then to end up in a ramshackle palace reading these advanced medical texts.” The issues keep coming: “And though I’m no expert I guess he’s [King Dahfu] thinking of mankind as a whole, which is tired of itself and needs a short in the arm from animal nature.” If that weren’t enough, he continues: “Anyway, I begin to ask (or perhaps it was more a plea than a question), why is it always near me-why! Why can’t I get away from it awhile? Why, why!” Why indeed: it’s a question religion doesn’t answer, or at least not satisfactorily anymore, and that philosophy seems to have failed at answering despite its numerous and increasingly verbose attempts, and that novels pose and don’t seem to answer. In the mythology Campbell discusses, you come back from your quest whole and ready to take your place in the adult community or you die and uphold the standards of that community or you transcend life; in Henderson and later, ironic texts, your quest is forever incomplete, because like Henderson, you can’t answer that pivotal question that becomes an exclamation: “Why, why!”

Why, why! indeed, and Bellow keeps setting up the questions through exploration without giving answers. The closest he comes, I think, is in Ravelstein, where Chick marvels at the “creature” that is Ravelstein while also being resigned to accept his fate. Whether this is an improvement on the manic energy of earlier Bellow novels or a depressing acceptance of the end is a matter of perspective on which I have no opinion. But, like the master, I will try to frame the issue, even if the issue has a habit of being larger than that frame. And so the critic struggles with Bellow like Itelo wrestling with Henderson, and even champion critics don’t seem able to win. But this preoccupation with trying to explain Bellow stays with me, and this is not, I suspect, my last word on the subject, even if my attempts are as futile as Henderson’s.