『학생처장의 12월』(The Dean’s December)에 나타난 휴머니즘

Abstract

The Dean’s December deals with the subjects of human existence and value about which Saul Bellow has been concerned in his early novels, comparing two cities of Chicago and Bucarest and criticizing social and political problems more positively. Today in the United States,there are full of falsity and hypocrisy, and someone should take up the mission to get hold of the reality of modern man and to find out the truth of manliness by uncovering falsehood. Saul Bellow thinks that the mission must be a writer’s role, and Corde, the protagonist, carries out the mission as a spokesman of Saul Bellow. Saul Bellow creates Corde having objective view without prejudice as non-Jewish protagonist differently from his early works and makes him try to reform this society with moral activity based on humanism. Especially in the modern society, mass media has been oblivious of its duty of leading public consciousness. Nevertheless, in this novel, Saul Bellow tries to solve the social problems by appealing ordinary people with the help of the feeling that humanism plays the role of cure for modern man.