Fundamental human similarities in motivation are at the heart of novelist Saul Bellow's works. Bellow was a Jewish author born in Chicago, and as such his protagonists often belong to a similar demographic, young Jewish Chicagoans. Despite the uniformity of Bellow's protagonists, his minor characters fit into a much broader demographic. In The Adventures of Augie March, the coming-of-age novel follows young Augie as he adventures from Chicago to Mexico and beyond, encountering a diverse cast of characters. In Dangling Man, the protagonist Joseph is a Canadian-born man living in Chicago, who quit his job to await the draft and enter World War II. The novel recounts his experiences with his wife, the members of his condominium, and his wealthy brother, Amos. The protagonists of Bellow's Uniform have a similar background experience due to their shared demographics, but their experiences and opinions are also shaped by the variety of characters they encounter, who represent a wide range of social, political, and economic segments . Saul Bellow uses the juxtaposition between socially and economically stratified characters to demonstrate that all people have universal motivations for humanity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In his books, Bellow often uses feelings of pride to show similarities between characters of different social or economic standing. For example, the disagreements and arguments between Joseph and Amos show the pride that they both possess, despite Amos' obvious social and economic superiority. When Joseph visits Amos' house, they begin to argue about whether Amos helped Joseph financially by giving him a "Christmas present" of $100. Amos insists that his brother, who refuses the gift, put an end to his stubbornness by saying, 'Why can't you accept it? Nonsense, you can't refuse it. I'm telling you, it's a gift." He took the bill impatiently. "Be a little more stubborn, okay? You're always up in the air. Do you know how much I paid in income taxes alone last year? NO? Well, this It's not a drop in the ocean. I deprive myself of nothing to give it to you." … 'You're the most stubborn idiot I've ever seen. You can't stand being helped even a little by anyone.' (below 48) Nonetheless, Joseph continues to refuse. “'But what will I do with it, Amos? I don't need it.'” (Bellow 48). Both men possess similar pride, despite their juxtaposed economic differences, revealing that pride as a motivation transcends these differences. Pride appears once again as a unifying factor in The Adventures of Augie March. The first episode of pride that unifies the characters in the novel is when Augie and Thea feel very proud of Caligula, their bald eagle, and express this pride even in more sophisticated company. In the presence of an esteemed newspaper editor, they show great pride in Caligula. Initially, the successful newspaper editor is not interested in writing about their dick and dismisses them: “And yet here he was dressed like a killer, with a new convertible and this beauty who was supposed to be an actress. And he was indeed the editor of Wilmot's Weekly. Of which he now said, 'We are interested mainly in political articles'” (Bellow 390). Despite the importance of the man in front of them, Thea and Augie's pride in the bird leads them to support it and its importance, and they do their best to explain its importance, even to someone of higher social status. high. In Robert Dutton's "The Adventures of Augie March," Dutton talks about Augie's abundant pride, saying, "In any case, we wonder about Augie's 'better fate' and hisenthusiasm, about his high ideals regarding the potential of man, about his generous acceptance of all living things, and certainly about his oppositional pride.” (Dutton 56). Augie's pride is demonstrated once again when he turns down an offer of adoption from a wealthy family, the Renlings, despite them being relatively poor. Augie is against the idea of ​​adoption because, although it would greatly help him both financially and socially, he believes it would suppress his individuality. He expresses that fear of suppression in the novel, saying, “Seeing that I could not be with the Renlings unless I became their adopted son, which I now knew would suffocate me…” (Bellow 169). This discussion of "choking" shows that despite Augie's lack of wealth, he too is driven by a deep, universal, innate human desire for individualism, and has too much pride, another universal quality, to accept their offer. uses feelings of pride to show universal motivations by showing fear of death and an obsession with legacy in several characters. While waiting to be drafted into Dangling Man, Joseph stagnates and reflects on what he is doing with his life. He also ponders whether his life will have any kind of impact and struggles with the idea of ​​his own mortality. While looking through his apartment, Joseph comes across an old photo of his grandfather and sees himself and his mortality in the photo. “Even later I came to believe that (and this was no longer an impression but a dogma) that the painting was proof of my mortality. I was standing on my grandfather's bones and those of those who had preceded him on temporary loan. But he himself, not the future past, loomed over me. Over the years it would claim me little by little, until my fists shriveled and my eyes stared. (below 84). Here, Joseph struggles with the realization of his own mortality and the evanescence of his life, as he sees how he is slowly withering away as a borrowing of the lives of previous generations, and how he too will soon die. Joseph's realization is what he worries about for the rest of the novel and shows the universal nature of humans who fear and worry about death. In Ralph Beret's "Repudiation and Reality: Instruction in the Fiction of Saul Bellow," Beret discusses how Joseph's being at home while he waits for the draft allows him to dwell on the subject of his future and his legacy. “The adequacy of Joseph's position is thus underlined, since he is given the opportunity to devote the totality of his energies to deciding the nature of his future commitment.” (Cap 1). Beret shows how Joseph's isolation allows Bellow to show the universal human concern for the future and legacy, and to critique it more clearly by creating the best possible scenario for it to show itself. The idea of ​​a universal human concern with death is also present in The Adventures of Augie March, when Augie suffers a serious injury, it leads him to think and have realizations about the nature of life and death. While recovering from the accident, Augie comes very close to death and contemplates the brevity of life and his legacy. “Death discredits. Survival is the entire success. The voice of the dead goes away. There is no memory. The power that has been established fills the land and destiny is all that survives, so whatever it is is right. (Below 556). Here Augie realizes that his only legacy is life, and that he must survive and live rather than worry about death, despite seeing it universally motivate his peers. Despite his seemingly critical view of the mortal concern, and his new revelation, the wayAugie Thinking About It shows first that it affects Augie just as it universally affects all human beings. Probably the most important unifying factor that Saul Bellow demonstrates to be universally motivating to human beings in his novels is money. The most prominent example that shows how money is universal regardless of socioeconomic class is when Augie watches people go about their daily activities in Mexico. As he observes them, he realizes how they are universally motivated by common goals despite superficial diversity: "Here was a vast humanity weaving or digging, or carrying, gathering, standing, serving, returning each day to its occupations and being honest or joking or crying or hypocritical or mesmeric, and money, if not the secret, was still next to the secret, as relative of the secret, or associate or representative before the people" (Bellow 427). Augie realizes that money is both an opportunity and a sin, and that all people are attracted to and influenced by it, despite differences in social status, economic prosperity, or even geographic location. A second example of money as a universal motivator is when Joseph goes to get his coat repaired and is surprised when he is now charged for a service that is usually free. When he realizes the price increase, Joseph has an epiphany about the nature of money itself, and its role in society. He talks about how money motivates everyone, even those who don't have it, and prevents unity and at the same time provides it through universal pursuit, saying: “Life is hard Vae Victis! 81). Despite having enough money to support himself, Joseph is against the principle of sharing with those who do not, motivated by a universal desire to hold on to his money that motivates him as well as the richest and also the poorest members of society around the world . The final example that shows Bellow's use of money and economic inequality to show universal human motivations is when Augie is taken to see a prostitute by Einhorn on his eighteenth birthday. After the experience, Augie reflects on what it really meant beyond the simple sexuality of the act. “I knew it was just a transaction. But that didn't matter…. Paying didn't matter. Nor use what others used. This is what city life is all about. And so it had not the splendor that it should have had and there was no epithalamium of gentle lovers” (Bellow 133). The prostitute does not have the splendor that Augie expected because she is the symbol of the entrapment of the city of Chicago itself. Just as the city, along with the need to have and earn money, forces Augie to resort to immoral methods to earn it, such as crime and loss of innocence, Einhorn, the human personification of money in the book, forces Augie to lose his innocence through the prostitute. Einhorn represents money through the loss of innocence imposed on both him and money. This loss of innocence through the desire for money is shown to be universal and innate in multiple places, such as in Augie's crime of needing money and Einhorn's push for Augie to use a prostitute. In Martin Amis' article "A Chicago of a Novel", Amis explains the many odd jobs Augie is forced to do in pursuit of money, just as he is forced to use a prostitute by Einhorn. Parentless and penniless: the basic human material. Penniless, Augie needs a job. If the novels of another great Chicagoan, Theodore Dreiser, sometimes seem like a long succession of job interviews, then Augie March often resembles a surrealist catalog of apprenticeships. Over the course of the novel Augie becomes(in order) a flyer distributor, a paper boy, a dime store packer, a newsagent, a Christmas extra in a toy department, a flower delivery man, a butler, a shoe salesman, a saddle salesman, shop clerk, gummed paint peddler, dog cleaner, book scavenger, coal yard helper, surveyor, union organizer, animal trainer, gambler, literary researcher, commercial machinery salesman, sailor, and a war profiteer's middleman" (Amis 1). The many odd jobs Augie takes show the universal desperation for money he experiences, as well as the loss of innocence in the pursuit of money that some jobs cause. Another thing Bellow uses to show universal human motivations is a universal search for identity and purpose in his characters At the end of The Dangling Man, Joseph is finally drafted and finally finds a purpose for himself. In the last line of the book, when Joseph is sketched, he is happy to find a new purpose within the military book after living as a “Dangling Man” for so long, saying “I am in other hands, relieved by self-determination, the freedom erased. Long live regular hours! And for the supervision of the spirit! Long live regimentation!” (below 143). Joseph had been living aimlessly for the entire book, having just quit his job at the exposition. He spends the novel desperately searching for purpose, and his obviously extreme and incredibly enthusiastic optimism about the regimentation of the army shows how innate the search for purpose was in Joseph, and how desperate he was to find one. Augie also spends a lot of time searching for an identity and purpose in his life. He uses his adventures to try to find a niche where he can find his individual purpose, without relying solely on the niche. Augie also talks about excessive individuality and how this can be exactly like having no individuality at all. “But I also had the idea that you do not take such a broad position that a human life is impossible, nor do you try to bring together irreconcilable elements that destroy you, but first try which human you can live with” (Bellow 283 ). Augie is arguing that while it is necessary to have a position and be an individual, having an extreme position just for the shock factor, or simply having one, is itself non-individual. In his critique Soul Bellow, Craig Raine discusses how being with extremely diverse characters, those who have succeeded in the universal search for personal identity, leads to Augie's search for individuality. On the other hand, there are the impracticalities of pure feeling, of idealism, which at first are embodied by brother Simon, on whom "Tom Brown's school days for many years had an influence which we were unable to allow us." The Mexican eagle also conforms to the pattern, proving, after all, one hundred percent less ruthless; “well, it was hard to tell from the wilderness that there was humanity mixed in with it.” Augie himself is caught between the two poles, although there is no doubt that his final destination will be in the field of those who have feelings. (Raine 32) Seeing all these characters who have found their identity and have been successful in their universal search, which transcends their social and economic differences and touches them all, pushes Augie to continue the search for his own identity. Bellow also uses Antagonism and competitive behaviors in his characters to represent that competitiveness is a universal human motivation. Motivation is demonstrated in Dangling Man when Joseph confronts his old friend in a diner. Joseph is ignoredfrom an old acquaintance and the negligence irritates and makes him angry. When his friend asks Joseph why he gets so angry, Joseph answers stubbornly, saying, "Because I feel like making trouble." (under 19). Joseph is unable to fully explain why he is so angry because what he is experiencing is innate to humanity and cannot be adequately expressed in words. He further justifies his anger by suggesting that the person he is arguing with has violated his personal human rights. “I'll tell you what it entails. I have the right to be spoken to. It's the most basic thing in the world. Simply this. I insist." (under 20). Joseph's self-defense is further evidence of the innate nature of the competitiveness he feels. The universal motivations of antagonism and competition are also seen in Joseph fighting with Amos' daughter. While visiting Amos' house, Joseph gets into an argument with his more successful brother's daughter. Amos' daughter, who grew up in wealth and has been used to it all her life, does not like the poorer Joseph and they argue. “Despite our antagonism, I had until recently tried to influence the girl, sending her books and, on her birthday, recording albums” (Bellow 41). Their differences in age, gender, social status and life experience show that the feeling of competition they are experiencing is a real universal human motivation. The final universal human motivation that Saul Bellow displays in his works is Love. Love unites many of Bellow's characters, both platonically and romantically. One of the clearest examples of the former is Augie's relationship with the wealthy Einhorn. Despite his extreme wealth, Einhorn needs Augie to keep him company. Augie works for Einhorn, but also develops a special bond with him, and is his companion over the years. “But it was my only function among hundreds, some even more humble, more personal, others requiring intelligence and training, secretary, deputy, agent, comrade.” (below 124). Bellow shows that Einhorn, the very personification of the upper class and money, needs companionship and love, and that these are universal motivations in humanity. Another example of love uniting different characters is in the relationship between Augie and Thea. Their love for each other despite different socioeconomic backgrounds demonstrates the universality of love. Thea grew up in a much “better” family in terms of socioeconomic status, yet they are still deeply in love with each other, despite these differences. “He thought he understood everything about me, and it was amazing how much he knew; the rest he made up for with confidence and relied on closed eyes and quick strikes. (below 345). It is shown that their love is not much inhibited by their socioeconomic differences and they are still able to understand each other as human beings, as love is a universal motivation of humanity. In “A Chicago of a Novel” by Martin Amis, Amis explains how Thea is very different from the other characters in the novel. “Thea is both lover and mentor, perhaps an unsustainable combination. Augie is now used to eccentrics, as is the reader; but Thea, a wealthy, single-minded young woman, is eccentric simply because she wants to be, not forced into strange shape by heredity, personal history, or blind circumstance. (Amis 120). Despite the difference in their characters, due to the universality of their motivations towards love, Augie and Thea are able to form a close bond with each other. Through his works, Bellow describes universal motivations that affect all humanity; in fact, Bellow demonstrates true continuity in human experience despite superficial inequalities or diversity. Its characters are creatures of a previous historical era, yet we are still able to. 2016.