Saul Bellow “Henderson the Rain King”

The novel “Henderson the Rain King” by the American prose writer, Nobel Prize winner in literature in 1976, Saul Bellow, is addressed to everyone who has ever lost interest in life and felt an all-consuming uncertainty. The same feelings overwhelmed at some point the main character, and he, fortunately not burdened with the need to earn a living, fled from the hateful routine to Africa. About what he experienced there, and whether the trip helped to overcome the personality crisis, read the novel Henderson the Rain King.

Saul Bellow short biography
Born in 1915 in Quebec to a family of Jewish emigrants who were lucky enough to leave the Russian Empire before the start of the revolution. A few years later, the family moved to Chicago – Saul Bellow considered this city to be truly native, here in the future he localized the action of most of his works.
The Bellow family was very religious, in his youth Saul began to resist the “suffocating orthodoxy” as he called it, and eventually became a staunch atheist, although he never abandoned his roots and was proud of them. He began writing short stories and essays at an early age. Studied anthropology and social sciences at the University of Chicago. After receiving his bachelor’s degree, Bellow lectured at several universities and began working on his first novel.

Published in 1944, Between Heaven and Earth was a success and immediately brought fame to the young author. The problem of self-identification in a world where everyone is bound by dozens of social and moral obligations, which Bellow touches on in the first novel, later became the main theme of his work.”Henderson the Rain King” plot

Eugene Henderson is a man with tremendous vital energy, which he does not know where to direct. He is rich and can afford anything without regard to the financial side of the issue. But what? What should he do? In what area to realize your huge potential? Henderson is confident that he is capable of extraordinary achievements, one has only to choose a direction and start acting.

The novel begins with the phrase “Why did I go to Africa?” – thus, the first-person narrative gives the impression of a diary and makes Henderson’s adventures more believable. On the other hand, it opens up for the author the full range of possibilities associated with the use of the classic unreliable narrator.

So, sometimes straying and breaking the chronology, Henderson tells us about life before his big adventure, about how he decided to leave civilization and go to the very places where untouched nature is still preserved in order to try himself in the simple life of primitive man. The fate of Henderson before the trip was similar to hundreds of destinies of his generation: he participated in the Second World War, he had disagreements with his father, several unsuccessful novels, marriage and divorce, difficult relationships with children.