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English Speaking Literature after the 2nd World War

T.P N8: Seize the day:

The outcast as a hero:

The figure or image of the Hero has changed since the beginnings to our currentreality; and literature, as the time demanded, has fluctuated from the strong,

honorable, courageous man to our conflicted, worried, and full of flaws modern

man.

Is it true that ancient heroes such as Odysseus or Thesseus were presented as

almighty, powerful, honorable men that were always looking for a greater purpose

in life, something that went beyond them. These invincible semi gods were

confronted to a higher quest that at the end made them more honorable or

magnified their true self. But as the time passed, this perfect image of the idealized

man was turning into something more tangible than this idealistic being portrayedin the odes or legends. As a contrast to these mythological beings appeared our

contemporary hero; a man that is as common and simple as a normal person can

be, a man full of flaws and doubts and with all the characteristics of a mortal

average man, a figure with no outstanding characteristics but a determination to

struggle and to find his place in life as well as in society. This new hero was a

contradiction to the utopian image of ancient men, due to the fact that this

contemporary man carries with him a predicament more complex than the ones

pursuit by the previous heroes that of finding his true self and being able of stand

it.

Literature has known how to cope with the imminent change of this so long

appreciated image of the powerful and glorious man. Among some examples of this

profound change, Saul Bellow captures the essence of the contemporary hero in his

novel Seize the day. Here, the main character is Tommy Wilhelm , a man in his

mid-forties, temporarily living in the Hotel Gloriana on the Upper West Side of

New York City, the same hotel in which his father has taken residence for a number

of years. He is out of place from the beginning, living in a hotel filled with elderly

retirees and continuing throughout the novel to be a figure of isolation amidst

crowds. Tommy has just recently been fired from his job as a salesman, he is a

college drop-out, a man with two children, recently separated from his wife, and heis a man on the brink of financial disaster.

Seize the day is a reflection of the times in which it was written. The novel was

written in a post-war world. WWII created several factors that serve as a backdrop

to Wilhelm's isolation in the novel, an isolation that represents the feeling of many

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during the time period. In the novel, the hero becomes an outcast; a man rejected

by his family and society as he was unable to fulfill his place in it.

As the main character decides to stay in isolation, he is forced to turn inward. This

isolation and inner struggle is the predicament of modernity. But although our hero

has not the inner skills as the ancient heroes had, Bellow points out that thepredicament of modern man goes far beyond the typical pessimism, cynicism, and

isolation because it has the potential of reaching understanding and love. This

means that in spite of the fact that we are presented to a quite complex and

doubtful wondering hero, he has the latent dexterity to overcome the predicaments

he may face.

Therefore, the protagonist incarnates a common man, the simple everyday man

that struggles to cope with his reality.

When it came to concealing his troubles, Tommy Wilhelm was not less capable than the

Next fellow. So at least he thought and there was a certain amount of evidence to back

him up. He had once been an actorno, not quite, an extraand he knew what acting

should be.

(I, 3)

These firsts lines imply that not only does Tommy Wilhelm "keep up appearances,"

but so does everyone else. In other words it points to the masks and the many

layers of the "modern man." The author chooses an ordinary man to represent his

hero to accomplish in the reader a sense of reckoning and an inspirational thought

that any reader can feel empathy for this common man that as the rest of the new

generation wants to achieve the goal of recognition of his true self and by others inthe current society he lives in.

So, through this image of the new hero, where the outcast is thought as the

embodiment of the weakling and yet the admiration figure, the author chooses to

encounter the reader with his/her mirror in the simply task of putting the

previously flawless man to a reachable and unadorned figure of a man capable of

committing mistakes and with the same worries as the contemporary man and

woman living in a society.

Laura Orellana

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