Comparison Of Oedipa Of Bellow And Bellow's The Dangling Man

Bellow and Pynchon are great authors who have widely succeeded in creating characters in their novels who are in search or in need of something; from themselves to answers, knowledge, and power to name a few of the many. These characters tell a story in which the question of perceived individuality within a community receives an answer. Both of the characters of Oedipa of Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and Joseph from Bellow’s The Dangling Man have similarities between each other and their own specific qualities. It is in the way that the audience perceives these characters versus the way that these characters perceive themselves in the midst of their community that there lies an answer to the individual’s place in their society.

Saul Bellow’s The Dangling Man is a novel that contains no specific plot line, but rather follows Joseph and his narrative and thoughts as he depicts the American point of view during the time of the Great Depression. Joseph dangles between civilian and military life during the time of his journal, hence becoming the dangling man who is a “man without a purpose, without a job, without direction” (Possler, 21). In a way to describe its broadness, The Dangling Man is a novel of the city of Chicago and World War II in which, at the same time, it is a novel of a city and of a war; a novel of supposed choices wherein reality there are no such choices. Joseph, himself being the “Dangling Man”, is someone who is neither a stranger nor an outsider; his life could be described as a man who is in a situation where action and life is simply movement drained of meaning. He describes his being as a “narcotic dullness” (Pynchon, 13). This is what makes Bellow’s novel a great example of an individual’s relationship in ...

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...es; they are stories about characters who attempt to find themselves, something to hope for more than their initial situation. Joseph and Oedipa go about this process in vastly different ways; even so, the way in which they perceive their place in society helps the reader place how they think about themselves and other people around them. The reader is able to interpret their thoughts on this subject of society by how they act around people in their communities, how they feel about them and how they treat them. It is imperative to understand the characters’ thoughts, how they see themselves versus how the audience sees them to build the important relationships within the novels. Bellow and Pynchon did great jobs in creating these characters and their various dynamic relationships they have, questioning and prodding at the idea of individualism within a society.