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Dangling Man

1996Saul Bellow

4.7/5

What happens if you are caught between two commitments?If you have time to look at the world from an unoccupied position? What will you see?What will you discover of our common humanity?Are you still engaged in the questions your generation asks, if you are not actively participating?Can you understand the world better while you are inside it, or do you need to establish distance between yourself and everyday business to define its essence?If it requires you to step out to see the patterns, but you are not part anymore, does that mean that you can’t be part of humanity and understand it at the same time? Catch 22?“I have a right to be spoken to!” yells the protagonist at one point, utterly frustrated with the reaction of his environment to the fact that he resigns from his work in order to join the army, but remains in a vacuum while waiting for the official procedures to take place.Thinking is a way of communicating, but it also separates the reality of one human being from another. Having a lot of time to think and observe is enlightening, and incredibly depressing.The protagonist goes through alienation from different groups, first in his head, then in verbal outbursts, which constitute the last reactions in a long chain of causes and effects in his mind, but come as a complete surprise to his family and friends, who do not follow his preceding thoughts, and only judge the ultimate anger and frustration he shows. Family, friends, Communist party, social groups, all are reevaluated from the perspective of an outsider.“Preferring embarrassment and pain to indifference”, the lonely man starts to pick fights within the family and in the local environment to feel part of it, to feel real.Between the outbursts of desperation, some interesting discussions temporarily lighten his mood:What is life? What is worthwhile? Is it meaningful to continue carrying out nonsensical tasks, justified by the prestige of a workplace in a 53 storey building? Or is the only important work in the world that of art and imagination… ?The novel is written in the form of a diary moving between long philosophical reflections, in the spirit of “the wretched must suffer”, and short unimportant entries, filling in the banalities of life: “January 16th, fairly quiet day”, thus showing the swinging back and forth of feelings and thoughts.As the alienation from the active world grows, the questions in the diary become more urgent:“You can’t banish the world by decree if it is in you!” Self reflection is part of the development as well, and recognition of the narrator’s own arrogance in categorising people according to those who have worthwhile ideas and those who don’t. Part of the issue is the anonymous urban trauma: lack of human spirit in the too overwhelming, crowded human, treeless world of the city, leading to longing for nature as a means to rediscover humanity.In an act of hopelessness, the protagonist gives up his lonely freedom and speeds up the process to join the army, recognising a defeat in front of himself and the freedom he could not handle:“I had not done well alone!”On his last civilian day, he exclaims: “I am no longer to be held accountable for myself, freedom cancelled.”“Long live reglementation!”Worthwhile read, very sad, I would have wished for him to cherish the rare opportunity to have time to think and be creative, but I guess the message is true in essence: Man cannot live with others, and not alone either. Happiness is a very thin line between the two opposites, and it is easy to lose balance, both inside and outside the hamster wheel of daily occupation!

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