Tommy Wilhelm’s Deception of Reality
Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day symbolizes the complexity of American culture in the 1950s. During the post World War II era, America is experiencing a rapid economic growth. Also, America is experiencing the beginning stages of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. In Seize the Day, Bellow uses setting, characters and imagery to symbolize the psychological detachment of American’s during the corresponding time period. In Seize the Day, Tommy Wilhelm is portrayed as a middle aged man who is living in New York City. Tommy Wilhelm moves to New York City after being laid off from his sales job and divorced from his wife. In a financial dilemma, Wilhelm decides to invest in the stock market with Dr. Tamkin. Dr. Tamkin proves to be a fraudulent character after he loses all of Wilhelm money and disappears. Despite many failures, Wilhelm makes a final attempt to reach out to his father for assistance. After being denied financial assistance from his father, Tommy has a revitalizing insight regarding the meaning of life during a stranger’s funeral.
New York City is the perfect setting for symbolizing the psychological mindset of America during the 1950s. Bellow describes New York City’s setting as “the great, great crowd, the exhaustible current of millions of every race and kind pouring out, pressing round, of every
age, of every genius…” (111). Bellow describes New York City as a chaotic image to symbolize the lost state of Tommy Wilhelm. According to Gilbert M. Porter, the “setting and time-present form the frame which contains Wilhelm’s reflections on time-past and its effect on his current situation” (107). Through the outlook of Wilhelm, one can picture the detachment he experience...
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...lm with a hippopotamus to suggest another metaphor. Wilhelm is indirectly compared to the semi aquatic mammal to emphasize Porter’s “drowning man” (105). The symbol of water continues to dominate the imagery in Seize the Day throughout different levels of consciousness.
Bellow’s Seize the Day is a work of fiction that represents the perspective of the modern American during the corresponding time period. Like Hemingway’s “Lost Generation”, World War II left the American people feeling a sense of disconnection with humanity. Through the protagonist of Tommy Wilhelm, one can see the failure’s correlated with society. Also, through the character of Wilhelm, one can see the misconception of fate. Wilhelm realizes that correcting external problems requires a direct internal fixation. Through the tears of the protagonist, Bellow provides the reader with hope.
Thus placing the film fully emersed in the old, mysterious, dreamlike settings of the city, they are equally balanced with modern technology and the collective past gives viewers a sense of definite decay, with no sure centre for future (Spotto 277). Through Hitchcock’s films Americans could reminiscence and ruminate about their past-a kind of nostalgia and longingness is created. When Scottie meets Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) in the shipbuilders’ office at the Embarcadero, what he says is striking: “The things that spell San Francisco to me are disappearing fast,” Elster complains quietly and referring to the old maps and woodcuts in his office he continues, “I should have liked to have lived here then-colour, excitement, power, freedom” (qtd in Spoto 280-281/qtd from the film). Here his speech echoes urbanisation that has gripped America and he also expresses a typical American sentiment of longingness for the past well expressed. And the sadness of the old things “disappearing past” is deliberately introduced to effect in Scottie and in us who are urged to identify with him, a nostalgia for bygone era (Spoto 281). Hitchcock has taken the film keeping in mind the viewers of postwar America who were nostalgic. Artist should be able to read the mind of the people. Taine has already pointed out the importance of ‘the man, milieu and
The Fifties by David Halberstam is a phenomenal account of one of the most influential decades in the history of the United States of America. From the war in Korea to the opening of E.J. Korvette, it seems as though Halberstam scrutinizes the nineteen fifties with the utmost care and respect. In doing so, he also creates a vivid portrait of American life in the decade. However, Halberstam's writing style is not always straightforward and at times can be confusing, especially to readers without some prior knowledge of the events that took place during the fifties. Though the book may be confusing at times, it is still a marvelous collection of the events that defined the fifties and the decades that followed.
History textbooks seem to always focus on the advancements of civilization, often ignoring the humble beginnings in which these achievements derive. How the Other Half Lives by journalist-photographer Jacob A. Riis explores the streets of New York, using “muck-racking” to expose just how “the other half lives,” aside from the upbeat, rich, and flapper-girl filled nights so stereotypical to New York City in the 1800s. During this time, immigrants from all over the world flooded to the new-born city, bright-eyed and expecting new opportunities; little did they know, almost all of them will spend their lives in financial struggle, poverty, and crowded, disease-ridden tenements. Jacob A. Riis will photograph this poverty in How the Other Half Lives, hoping to bring awareness to the other half of New York.
The author skirts around the central issue of racism by calling it a “class struggle” within the white population of Boston during the 1960s and 1970s. Formisano discuses the phenomenon known as “white flight”, where great numbers of white families left the cities for the suburbs. This was not only for a better lifestyle, but a way to distance themselves from the African Americans, who settled in northern urban areas following the second Great Migration.
Often, we find ourselves facing dramatic events in our lives that force us to re-evaluate and redefine ourselves. Such extraordinary circumstances try to crush the heart of the human nature in us. It is at that time, like a carbon under pressure, the humanity in us either shatters apart exposing our primal nature, or transforms into a strong, crystal-clear brilliant of compassion and self sacrifice. The books Night written by Elie Wiesel and Hiroshima written by John Hersey illustrate how the usual lifestyle might un-expectantly change, and how these changes could affect the human within us. Both books display how lives of civilians were interrupted by the World War II, what devastations these people had to undergo, and how the horrific circumstances of war were sometimes able to bring out the best in ordinary people.
That summer he sweated from the humidity which in 1940 everyone in Brooklyn sweated from; then he sweated from the hot ovens at Carlo Amato’s pastry shop in Bensonhurst four or five nights a week; then he sweated from the hot ovens at a pastry shop Downtown every day of the week except on Sunday, when he usually slept until noon. From Downtown, Giovanni Vitale came home at the end of the workday on the BMT subway to his wife, Lisa, to their three kids Anna, Steve, and Johnny. After dinner they would all listen to the Philco. Then Giovanni and the eldest kid, Johnny, eleven, walked three long blocks and two short blocks, past the old people who fanned themselves on the stoops, to Carlo’s shop on Seventeenth Avenue (4).
Dumenil, Lynn, ed. "New York City." The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History. N.p.: Oxford UP, 2012. Oxford Reference. Web. 8 Apr. 2013.
In Jane Jacobs’s acclaimed The Life and Death of Great American Cities, she intricately articulates urban blight and the ills of metropolitan society by addressing several binaries throughout the course of the text. One of the more culturally significant binaries that Jacobs relies on in her narrative is the effectively paradoxical relationship between diversity and homogeneity in urban environments at the time. In particular, beginning in Chapter 12 throughout Chapter 13, Jacobs is concerned greatly with debunking widely held misconceptions about urban diversity.
The 1920’s and 1950’s both shared the optimism that the conclusion of a war brings, and consequently both began very prosperously. While the materialism of the 20’s faded into the economic depression that followed, and the glow of the 1950’s was dimmed by the onset of communist fever, both decades proved to be successful and iconic in the way that they brought about massive prosperity, and because youth found new ways of expressing themselves and inviting progress. Unfortunately not all outcomes were good, and both eras triggered an onslaught of racial tension that would continue well into the future.
After WWII played out, population shifts occurred in the US. With southern traditions, and music, coming into contact with new urban based music, the audience that followed it, and mixing the sounds of the “boogie woogie” of rhythm and blues, the soulfulness of gospel, and throwing a dash of country twang in there, the recipe for Rock ‘n’ Roll was finished, and a whole new genre created. “The sound of the city”. Although an exciting new period for a lot of 1950s youth, “th...
The 1950’s were a deeply nostalgic time period for many Americans. This was a time of new technologies, economic expansion, a better standard of living and a growing middle class. By 1960, an estimated sixty percent of Americans enjoyed what the government defined as a middle-class standard of living. An increasing amount of people had access to television, air conditioning, dishwashers and air travel. America was being cultivated into a suburban nation because of cookie-cutter housing developments like the Levittowns. The number of homes doubled during this decade. While the white working class saw their status and wages improve,not everyone was reaping the benefits of this uplifting time. Many people were excluded from the prosperity of the
The 1950s seemed like a perfect decade. The rise of suburbs outside cities led to an expansion of the middle class, thus allowing more Americans to enjoy the luxuries of life. The rise of these suburbs also allowed the middle class to buy houses with land that used to only be owned by more wealthy inhabitants. Towns like Levittown-one of the first suburbs- were divided in such a way that every house looked the same (“Family Structures”). Any imperfections were looked upon as unfavorable to the community as a whole. Due to these values, people today think of the 1950s as a clean cut and model decade. This is a simplistic perception because underneath the surface, events that took place outside the United States actually had a direct effect on our own country’s history. The rise of Communism in Russia struck fear into the hearts of the American people because it seemed to challenge their supposedly superior way of life.
Themes in modernism literature focus on the big issues of the early 20th century. Through the themes of the writing pieces the authors are able to convey his or her opinion on the changing world around them. In “Chicago” by Carl Sandburg and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, the authors show the rise in violence in the 1920s and the effect it has had. America was changing, many of the ways where for the better, technological advancement, but quite a few were for the worse, like the crime and violence.
When you associate anything with New York City it is usually the extraordinary buildings that pierce the sky or the congested sidewalks with people desperate to shop in the famous stores in which celebrities dwell. Even with my short visit there I found myself lost within the Big Apple. The voices of the never-ending attractions call out and envelop you in their awe. The streets are filled with an atmosphere that is like a young child on a shopping spree in a candy store. Although your feet swelter from the continuous walking, you find yourself pressing on with the yearning to discover the 'New York Experience'.
The works of the most successful writers of this generation literally became bibles to those who thought they had lost their identity but had rediscovered themselves in these books. To such people, these novels became their defining elements, and by resurrecting their individualism, they had found a point of departure from which they could finally rebuild their lives. In the period following the First World War, one novel emerged as the dominant literary work that best captured the disorder felt by the common man. It is semi-autobiographical, written by an individual who felt as disillusioned and abandoned by society as the rest of the generation