The Immersion Library

When striving stops, the truth comes as a gift – bounty, harmony, love, and so forth. Maybe I can’t take these very things I want.

Augie March, or perhaps we may call him the American Arkady from The Adolescent or even Will Hunting, documents his buldingsroman in which he realizes, I hope, that he must come to terms with himself rather than the American rat-race of his nurturing; win the self-efficacy battle royale between what the world wants him to be, what he believes has value, and what he simply is. Whatever his fate, he alone must qualify himself as a success or failure – even if he suffers the great curse of never knowing.

To my mind, Bellow dissects his narrative into three parts – first, a memoir style. In this first section, the reader may find the read arduous, lacking a traditional fictitious plot with action and dialogue but robust in long sentences and block paragraphs. We learn of Augie’s childhood and adolescence, his family, his city and friends. The second section picks up with episodes more fitting to an entertaining novel as Augie ventures out into the the world as a hobo and Mexican ex-pat. Finally, during the last section, we meet odd characters with wisdom beyond what one would expect from Augie’s adventures. So odd, in fact, that Bellow risks the reader’s suspension of disbelief and could feel that Bellow forces the story to fit his ideas rather than Augie’s story; as if suddenly dipped into an ancient philosopher’s allegory. However, the arc of the narrative matches the arc of Augie’s journey and struggle; constantly growing himself but never towards a perfectly fit destination.

To me, Augie seems like a man constantly looking in one direction while surrounded by those who would grab his chin and redirect his attention towards survival within America. As an immigrant growing up before and through the Great Despression, each stage of his life falls under the influence of some great conductor with whom Augie never fully aligns himself in his mind but does so in his behavior. Grandma Lausch seems like all good parents who travel back in time from the future and try to save their children from a horrible fate. Einhorn, physically feeble and crippled but bold in economic strategy, depends on Augie for a vicarious life of nobility and success. Mrs. Renling wants the satisfaction of helping a needy young man. Clem. Mintouchian. Basteshaw.

What I wanted was to have somebody living with me for a change, instead of the other way around.

Above all others, Augie prized his relationships with Simon, his brother, Thea, his first love, and finally Stella, his wife. Each of these charaters lack Augie’s desparation to assess their value according to satisfying others. Instead, Simon, for example, sacrifices all integrity for riches and material American success. Yet with great hieghts come great falls, but Augie’s arc never swings so stressfully. Augie loves his brother, even though he won’t sacrifice a chance to do the right thing by another in order to stay in Simon’s good graces. Similarly, Augie won’t sacrifice a chance to help another in Mexico even though it costs him his relationship with Thea. And finally, he won’t sacrifice a chance to help Basteshaw who would kill him simply as a process step towards his intellectual goals.

If one tries to interpret each episode in Augie’s life as an isolated symbol of the great American coming-of-age experience, one risks missing the bigger question of discovering individual meaning in the seemingly random journey through life. However, one must consider the story of the eagle. While in Mexico, he and Thea attempt to train an eagle. Consider the eagle as America and the ridiculous venture to train it. Is this not what every citizen tries to do with the freedom America affords? How can I bend America to my will? After all, this is what America promises! And yet the eagle completely dominates every aspect of Thea and Augie’s lives. Who’s training who?

Chiefs and tyrants of the public give no relief from self-consciousness. Vanity is the same thing in private, and in any kind of oppression you are subject and can’t forget yourself; your are seen, you have to be aware. In the most personal acts of your life you carry the presence and power of another; you extend his being in your thoughts, where he inhabits Death, with monuments, makes great men remembered like that. So I had to bear Caligula’s gaze. And I did.

One might also consider how the eagle might represent Augie as well. Up to this point in his story, all his nurturers have been training him for a useful, enriching life while his nature, as with all birds, is to fly free and uninhibited, living by impulse. And when snakes, often associated with the American eagle symbol, scare him he can let others suffer the consequences of his failure to do as he was trained.

While the eagle symbolizes America, does it not also symbolize Augie? And if so, is not Augie himself a symbol of the American experience? And if so, is not the American experience more nuanced than we’d like to stereotype – open to meager existences with lowly individual discovery?

In the third act, Augie finally wrestles with his great intellect – constantly making allusions to mythology, ancient characters and stories, as well as historical figures – and his passion for love and feelings. Aimlessly adrift and hopeless in the ocean, as many would assess Augie’s life, Bellow gives us a violent struggle worthy of The Old Man and the Sea between he and Basteshaw – his final showdown between love and intellect. This analogous episode forces Augie and the reader to consider the potential of helping mankind with grand, intellectual possibilities and helping oneself to reconnect with their love. Yet which is more selfish? To seek a global legacy or remain true to individual love?

Ultimately, Bellow portrays a developing man who, like all of his, has no idea what he’s doing. Some pretend and some convince themselves of reaching their goals. I personally relate to many of Augie’s hundreds of thought processes. Yet at the end, I can only relate to the idea that self-discovery is the only great story; one that no other person cares to glorify as they endeavor on their own; one that may never illuminate the world or set it free in a big Mexican sky. I would rather climb to the pinnacle of my Self rather than the peaks of America.