Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

King Saud University

Deanship of Higher Studies
Department of English



A Postcolonial Reading of Some of Saul Bellows Literary Works


A THESIS
Submitted to the Department of English, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Master of Arts in English Literature.


Prepared by
Ohood Foad Anbar
ID# 424221247

Supervised by
Prof. Ebtisam Ali Sadiq

2009
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2009



I
Acknowledgment

All thanks due to Allah for His blessing and graces. Neither words nor deeds should prove
adequate to express my gratitude to Allah for the gift of knowledge and for guiding me
throughout writing this thesis. I would like also to express my special thanks and
gratitude to my advisor Professor Ebtisam Ali Sadiq for her patience, dedication, valuable
guidance, constructive criticism and for enriching my thesis with her insightful remarks.
I'm greatly indebted to my husband for his endless support and for helping me in various
ways in this research. Thanks due to my parents who taught me my first letters for their
generous love and steady support in my educational pursuit. Without my parents and
husbands keen interest in my progress, I would not have reached this stage. Finally, I
would like to express my gratitude to my kids for being a constant challenge in pursuing
my higher studies.
















II


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III
Abstract
The introduction oI postcolonial theory into the Iield oI literary criticism inspired new
readings oI Western colonialist literary texts. This thesis attempts to read two oI Saul Bellows
travel piece and expose the colonialist elements in them. A new dimension will be opened up to
people who celebrate the humanistic values oI his Iiction. Reading Henderson the Rain King
(1959) and To Jerusalem and Back (1976) Irom a postcolonial perspective helps disclose Bellows
biased humanistic values which exclude the Arabs and AIricans Irom its scope. This thesis
highlights Bellows colonialist discourse and struggles Ior an assertion oI an ethnic identity through
a demeaning representation oI the Other.
The thesis is divided into two chapters besides the introduction and the conclusion. Chapter
one examines Henderson the Rain King and exposes Bellows latent colonialist representation oI
the AIricans which demeans them by emphasizing their biological and cultural diIIerences Irom the
white man. It also highlights the role Bellows crisis oI identity plays in the text.
Chapter two continues to tackle Bellows question oI identity in To Jerusalem and Back
while Iully investigating Bellows maniIest colonialist ideology with regards to the Palestinian-
Jewish cause. It highlights his racist attitude towards the Palestinians. The thesis Iinally provides
hypotheses Ior the conversion in Bellows colonialist representation Irom latent in Henderson the
Rain King to maniIest in To Jerusalem and Back.











IV

Table of Contents


Page
Acknowledgment I
Abstract II
Table of contents IV
Introduction:
Identity and the Other

1

Chapter One:
Henderson the Rain King: Masked Racism

10

Chapter Two:
To Jerusalem and Back: Unmasked Racism

57

Conclusion

100

Bibliography

105




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Introduction
Identity and the Other
The twentieth-century American writer Saul Bellow (1915-2005) is an author of thirteen
novels, a play, a number of book reviews, a collection of short stories as well as several critical
essays on literature. Son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Bellow grew up in the slums of Montreal,
Canada, before moving with his family to Chicago in the USA. He began his academic life studying
English literature, switching later on to Anthropology and Sociology. Bellows multicultural
background aided his remarkable intellect and added richness to his literary works. He was awarded
several prizes for his work including the Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes in 1976.
Bellow has a keen interest in the suffering of humanity. His fiction includes blistering
criticism of post World War II life in modern America. It has been claimed that he is one of the
greatest humanistic authors of his time. He is also an ardent socialist who believes that it [is] the
rights of the individual that [matter] (Atlas 65). His concerns about humanity and advocacy of
individuality are, however, dualistic in nature as they include certain races and exclude others. His
portrayal of the suffering of some human beings remains incomplete because it makes an Other
of some nations, a colonial practice objected to and exposed by postcolonial literary theory and
criticism.
In the colonial discourse, the concept of the Other (the reference to people outside the
self) is integral to racial representation and the colonialist enterprise. The concept of otherness
derives its significance from diversity between opposite poles of power. It is instrumental to the
marginalization of the colonized and self-identification of the colonizer. Bill Ashcroft exposes this
colonialist meaning saying that it can refer to the colonized others who are marginalized by
imperial discourse, identified by their difference from the centre and, perhaps crucially, become the
focus of anticipated mastery by the imperial ego (Post-Colonial Studies: They Key Concepts
170). The colonizers creation of the Other as peripheral creates him as a center. The purpose of
establishing difference between the colonizer and the colonized maintains the colonial relation
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which is characterized by the superiority of the colonizer and inferiority of the colonized. Othering
is necessary to the colonizers self-definition. Without the presence of the colonized as the
Other, the colonizer cannot practice hegemony in a way that attests to identity.
Bellows racial presentation of the Other is essential to the formation of his identity. His
othering practice suggests the perception of him as a racist, although he denies being a racist. On
being asked about the relations between the Jews and Blacks in America, he replied: I do not
consider myself a racist, and I think people who call me a racist are very wrong (Singh 6). His
fiction, as this study attempts to prove, contradicts this statement. His racialized attitude towards
both Arabs and Blacks places his fiction at the centre of controversy.
Bellow segregates between his people, Jews and Americans, and Arabs and Africans. He
depicts the American and Jewish people in his work as victims. Americans are victims of World War
II and the various antagonistic forces of modern society. The American protagonists of his fiction
usually suffer depression, self-alienation, failure, dismay, self-loathing, self-punishment and spiritual
agony as a result of the upheaval of both World War II and modernism. In addition, Jews are
represented as victims of the injustices of Arabs and Nazis persecution.
By contrast, there seems to be a stream of racism and prejudice against Arabs and Africans
that runs throughout his fiction. He strategically devalues their cultures and dehumanizes them by
representing them as uncivilized, barbaric and sluggish. His misrepresentation and segregation
compel a postcolonial reading of his fiction, for it is important to expose how Bellows presumed
humanistic presentation denigrates Africans and the Arabs of Palestine, in favor of Americans and
Jews.
Hence, this study falls within the frame of postcolonial criticism as it intends to expose the
colonialist ideology in two of Bellows works: Henderson the Rain King (1959) (this book will be
abbreviated henceforth as HRK) and To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account (1976) (this book
will be abbreviated henceforth as TJB). These two works retrospectively expose Bellows colonialist
ideology and his racism against the Africans and the Arabs. Interestingly, both works are
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Travel Literature: Henderson the Rain King is a fictional travel piece and To Jerusalem and Back: A
Personal Account is a personal travel account.
Travel is often synonymous with a longing for the unknown: an opportunity for
geographical, religious, cultural and cartographical exploration and documentation. In the colonial
discourse, the travelers quest is for a new and different nation, in its thoughts or land. It is more of
a desire to know the Other and a tendency for comparability. This element of comparability, as a
general mode, may or may not show all the time, but it is evident in Saul Bellows two selected
works.
The travel writer works with a binary system of comparison. The comparability factor of
Travel Literature creates a perpetual comparison between the travelers background and the places
being explored. He can be either subjective or objective. Susan Bassnett suggests that the travel
writers background formulates his thoughts, travel writers constantly position themselves in
relation to their point of origin in a culture and the context they are describing (sic) (99). Her
suggestion alludes to the subjective involvement of authors in writing travel accounts and the
possibility of authors developing hegemonic discourse. This is applicable to Bellows work as will
be seen in chapter one and two.
Travel Literature is actually closely related to the colonial encounter. Colonialism was a form
of expansion that the Europeans took in many parts of the world, especially in Africa and Asia during
the nineteenth century under the cover of exploration. The late nineteenth century was the time of
high colonialism 1875-1914 (Boehmer 3). It was marked by military subversion, political
domination, capitalist exploitation, cultural hegemony and racial discrimination. The colonizers self
image was that of a civilizer and conqueror of primitive peoples and lands. Opposition to
Eurocentric attitudes within the colonies was violently and forcefully suppressed. Consequently, the
colonized began to speak of the liberation of the colonies.
Postcolonialism is a political theory that articulates and encourages resistance of
colonization. Elleke Boehmer defines postcoloniality as that condition in which colonized peoples
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seek to take their place, forcibly or otherwise, as historical subjects (3). Postcolonialism attacks
the inequality in power relations and the falseness of the imperial dream of analyzing the colonized.
It emphasizes the subverted peoples need for identity and freedom. As a theory of literary
criticism, postcolonialism is a deconstructive appraisal and evaluation of colonialist works. My
thesis adopts a postcolonial prospective in order to expose the colonialist ideology in Henderson the
Rain King, and To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account. These two works by Bellow are
selected for their components of colonialist literature. They include stereotyped language and
images of domination and subordination as well as suggest rightness of colonization and superiority
of certain cultures.
Henderson the Rain King contains an unfavorable portrayal of Africa and its people, which
Bellow carefully masks. To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account demonstrates an overt western
misanthropy and an unjust perception of the Arabs. Bellows colonialist attitude and its diverse
manifestations deserve attention. This study will attempt to expose, from a postcolonial perspective,
the contradiction between the surface claims of the text and its underlying colonialist ideology in
Henderson the Rain King, and the manifest colonialist ideology in To Jerusalem and Back: A
Personal Account. It also seeks to locate the implicit and explicit colonialist ethos within the selected
works, highlighting in the meanwhile the role ethnic identity plays in his fiction.
The issue of identity is deeply rooted in the debate of postcolonialism. In postcolonial
discourse, culture represents identity. Culture means being and becoming. According to Edward
Said, culture is a source of identity. It includes a refining and elevating element, each societys
reservoir of the best known and thought . . . (Culture and Imperialism xii). He derives this
definition of culture from Matthew Arnold. According to Arnold, culture homogenizes: the society
returns to its best known traditions and thoughts to differentiate it from other societies. Culture,
thus, gives the society its own unique identity.
The situation is complicated when the construction of one national identity rests on the
process of deconstructing or belittling other cultures. Such a hegemonic practice can lead to
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clashes between nations. The subverted groups usually struggle to achieve identity. The practice of
belittling others, however, may drive some people to disclaim their ethnic identity in order to avoid
the stigma of cultural inferioritybeing the Otherand to seek instead to belong to the centre of
power.
Identity plays an important role in the life and art of Saul Bellow. He is highly aware of
ethnic identity as an identifier of the individual, as well as a determining factor of the individuals
fate. Therefore, he insists on being identified as an American writer rather than a Russian, Canadian,
or Jewish immigrant. He seems keen on rejecting any classification of himself as a minority member
and refuses to be marginalized (Cronin xi). Bellow voices his rejection of Jewishness in several
interviews. Unwilling to be fettered by his past, he refers to his roots in an interview in 1973 with
Joyce Illig as tangled old wires (107). More emphatically, Bellow asserts in an interview with
Rockwell Gray in 1984: I knew there would be no place for me as a Jew in that kind of civilization
(220). Bellows inferiority complex stimulates him to assimilate into the dominant American culture.
Nonetheless, many scholars assert that Bellow is Jewish to the marrow. In his
biographical work, Bellow, James Atlas indicates that however secular, American and universal,
[Bellows] work was profoundly rooted in his identity as a Jew. His characters, so robustly
American in their actions and appearance, were [yet] unmistakably Jewish in their sensibilities and
the intonations of their speech (291). In short, there is a contradiction between what Bellow really
is and what he claims to be. Although he renounces his Jewishness, he cannot escape it because,
the marginal Jew oscillates forward and backward, out of his group and then back into his group
(Stonequist 33).
Bellow assimilates into one group but his attention turns back to another. His self-
conception as both Jew and American generates a crisis of identity, as he fluctuate[s] from one
position to anotherat one time reaching a satisfactory adjustment, then being thrown back again
into a condition of conflict (Stonequist 123). This fluctuation between ethnic identitiesin terms
of national origins can be seen in Henderson the Rain King and To Jerusalem and Back.
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Bellows American ethnicity is brought to the fore in the former whilst his Jewish ethnicity
supersedes in the latter.
The intense conflict of Bellows double consciousness and ethnic adjustment is mirrored in
the paradox of his character and writing, thus creating ambivalence. Everett V. Stonequist in The
Marginal Man locates ambivalence of attitude and sentiment at the core of the marginal
personality (146). Because of Bellows racial and cultural hybridity, he develops a divided loyalty
between old identity and new identity with an ambivalent attitude. This duality and paradoxical
nature accounts for Bellows contradictory opinions and actions.
Gillian Bottomley confirms the prominence of Bellows ethnicity in his fiction: [T]he most
illustrious graduate in anthropology at the University of Chicago is the Nobel laureate Saul Bellow,
whose novels include brilliant accounts of . . . the nuances of ethnicity (1). He projects his
persecution as a Jew and minority member on third world nations, namely the Africans and Arabs.
Bellows position as an immigrant, and feeling of estrangement, accounts for the racial segregation
in his fiction. He imposes his ethnicity through a colonialist and racialized discourse. His
colonialist discourse, categorizes, evaluates, ranks and differentiates between groups (Wetherell
43).
Colonial discourse reproduces images of powerful binary oppositions: self/Other,
white/black, dominant/subordinate, civilized/primitive, etc. Binary oppositions, in the colonial
discourse, are open to the charge of being reductional and over-simplified, swallowing up all
distinction in their rather two-part structure (Hall 235). They are, however, crucial for all
classification because one must establish a clear difference between things in order to classify
them (Hall 236). Halls speech suggests the correlation between binarism and classification thus
leading to the idea of dichotomies. Fanon finds dichotomy a characteristic element in creating the
colonial world: The colonial world is a world divided into compartments (37). The dichotomy
concept finds its counterpart in Abdul R. JanMohameds ideology of Manichean allegory. This
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ideology is dualistic: In the post-colonial studies, Manicheanism is a term for the binary structure
of imperial ideology (Ashcroft, Post-Colonial Studies: They Key Concepts 134).
Besides binary oppositions, the colonial discourse involves rhetoric. As argued by many
scholars, colonial discourse appears in subversive rhetoric. Spurr believes that the colonial
discourse, designate[s] a space within language that exists both as a series of historical instances
and as a series of rhetorical function (The Rhetoric of Empire 7). Boehmer also asserts the
association between rhetoric and colonialist discourse. According to him, the colonialist discourse
can be taken to refer to that collection of symbolic practices, including textual codes and
conventions and meanings, which Europe deployed in the process of its colonial expansion and, in
particular, in understanding the bizarre and apparently unintelligible strangeness with which it
came into contact (50). The colonizer uses language persuasively in his colonial enterprises to
express his colonialist ideology with regard to the colonized place and its people.
As an instrument of power, the colonial discourse has a purpose that is to construe the
colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origins, in order to justify
conquest and establish system of administration and instruction (Bhabha 101). In other words,
colonial discourse becomes a tool of ethnic belittling to rationalize colonization. Chris Tiffin and
Alan Lawson affirm in Introduction: The Textuality of Empire, the function of colonial
discourse as a vehicle for taunting (4). Spurr provides another objective: Colonial discourse . . .
naturalizes the process of domination: it finds a natural justification for the conquest of nature and
of primitive peoples, those children of nature (156). Thus, the objective of colonial discourse is
to justify or naturalize European colonization and emphasize the difference between the colonizers
and colonized. The tendency to naturalize colonization is part of Bellows nature. Colonial
discourse, I believe, implies the language that is chosen strategically to obliterate the identity of the
Other in order to build ones own identity. It is a medium through which the hierarchal structure
of power is established to indicate difference between the colonized and the colonizer.
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The infrastructure of Bellows racist and colonialist discourse is manifested in his creation
of binary oppositions through racial stereotyping and othering processes. Stereotyping is a
characteristic feature of the colonial discourse. It eliminates heterogeneity and assumes
homogeneity within the object perceived or described. To stereotype is to generalize and form
prejudices. Bellow develops negative stereotypes when it comes to the Other but positive ones
when he refers to the Jewish or American race. The Arabs are reduced to terrorists and savages,
and Africans to primitives. The infrastructure of Bellows stereotypical thinking is fantasy among
others. Homi Bhabha believes that fantasy is at the core of stereotyping:
The stereotypes, then, as the primary point of subjectification in colonial discourse,
for both colonizer and colonized, is the scene of a similar fantasy and defencethe
desire for an originality which is again threatened by the difference of race, colour
and culture . . . the stereotype is not a simplification because it is a false
representation of a given reality. It is a simplification because it is an arrested,
fixated form of representation that, in denying the play of difference (which the
negation through the Other permits), constitutes a problem for the representation of
the subject in signification of psychic and social relation. (107)
Bhabha not only regards fantasy a major component of stereotyping but he also criticizes
stereotyping because it entails fixation and obliteration of distinctiveness. Stereotyping develops a
fixation behavior with regard to the Other and denies his individuality. Hall stresses the
importance of fantasy to stereotyping, stereotypes refer as much to what is imagined in fantasy as
to what is perceived as real. (263). Stereotyping is a significant colonial practice to create the
Other.
The concept of the otherness is predominated by the inequality of power in relations and the
binary logic. Boehemer argues that the concept of the Other . . . signifies that which is unfamiliar
and extraneous to a dominant subjectivity, the opposite or negative against which an authority is
defined (21). It serves as a means to justify dispossession of the natives within the colonial
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relation (Boehemer 51). The colonial other operates the imperial binary logic of domination and
subordination. Psychologically, it is a kind of projection where the negative characteristics of the
self are most projected on the Other. Essentialist ideas are at the heart of the debate regarding the
Other. The colonizers notion of the Other is determined by certain negative characteristics
that control his view of the Other. The Other is usually reduced to a few essentials, fixed in
nature by a few simplified characteristics (Hall 249), thus denying the distinctiveness and
individuality of the Other and homogenizing them.
This thesis intends to explore Bellows racist ideology pertaining to Africans and Arabs in
order to expose how his essentialist ideas guide his demeaning depiction of both races. It will also
examine his authorial intervention in these two works. With this as my focus, a postcolonial
evaluation of Bellows texts is expected to show Bellows relentless othering process and
stereotyping of these races. I will attempt to offer an explanation of the contrastive modes of his
colonialist representations and seek to locate the implicit and explicit colonialist themes within the
selected works.
In chapter one I shall probe Bellows latent colonialist themes, through the application of
various rhetorical models. The intention is to expose Bellows linear presentation of Africans, a
presentation that undermines the humanistic claims often accredited to Bellow. I will focus in
chapter two on the authors deliberate presence in and intense relation to the text. I will examine the
relationship of the work to his Jewish ethnicity, and how othering and stereotyping Arabs are
necessary factors in the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. This process will further
question his presumed humanistic values. The concluding chapter offers an assessment of both
works, again, from a postcolonial perspective. It also will attempt to provide an explanation as to
why Bellow masks his racism in Henderson the Rain King and unmasks it in To Jerusalem and Back.



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Chapter One
Henderson the Rain King: Masked Racism
In Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow creates a latent racial discourse which serves to
support American ethnicity through a negative portrayal of Africa and its people. This chapter
explores how American ethnocentrism has the lead in Saul Bellows representation of the Africans
in Henderson the Rain King. Bellow puts the Africans at the bottom of the ladder of the human
race through a covert stereotyping and othering processes which help his protagonist, Henderson,
assert identity. Henderson leaves to Africa full of uncertain feelings about his past and what he
wants to do at the present. His colonial enterprise in Africa allows him to achieve self-fulfillment
through de-civilizing and dehumanizing the Africans.
The latent colonialist ideology of Bellow in Henderson the Rain King necessitates special
techniques to detect it. I will use Edward Said and David Spurr as guides. Emphasis will be put in
this chapter on the rhetorical modes of the work in order to reflect the hidden levels of Bellows
colonialist ideology and racialized discourse of Africa and its people. These modes are produced
and reproduced in the authors discourse.
To expose Bellows latent racial politics of representation in this work, there is a need for
Saids contrapuntal reading as a way to expose the deep colonial implications hidden in the text.
Such reading helps reveal the other dimension that remains unspoken in the story. I am also
concerned with the authors strategic location in the text which is a way of describing the
author's position in a text with regard to the Oriental material he writes about (Orientalism 20) in
order to unveil Bellows masked colonialist ideology in the novel. Bellows presence in the text is
indisputable and makes it essential to read the text from a postcolonial perspective.
I also seek to examine Henderson the Rain King through the prism of David Spurrs The
Rhetoric of Empire (1993). Spurrs book suggests some rhetorical modes that are appropriate tools
for a contrapuntal reading which will help assess Bellows work from a postcolonial perspective.
Spurr offers twelve rhetorical modes present in journalism, travel writing and imperial
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administration. He devises separate chapters to discuss surveillance, appropriation,
aesthesticization, classification, debasement, negation, affirmation, idealization,
insubstantialization, naturalization, eroticization, and resistance. I will utilize some of Spurrs
rhetorical modes that are relevant to this study such as surveillance, debasement, affirmation and
eroticization. Because rhetorical modes usually overlap as Spurr indicates (4), other modes such
as classification, negation and idealization will appear in this study as subcategories of others.
For example, debasement encompasses classification whereas idealization is a repetition of
affirmation. Without these modes the invisible colonialist modes will remain dormant and
Henderson the Rain King will be read only as a humanistic text or as a whimsical fantasy.
Spurr believes that tracing colonial discourse is the key to disclosing the colonialist themes
in travel writing and imperial administration. It operates through the rhetorical features. His
definition of the colonial discourse emphasizes language as an important factor in the identification
process:
[L]iterary works once studied primarily as expression of traditionally Western ideals
are now also read as evidence of the manner in which such ideals have served in the
historical process of colonization. The particular languages which belong to this
process, enabling it while simultaneously being generated by it, are known
collectively as colonial discourse. (1)
In retrospect, colonial discourse refers to the language that is used strategically to serve the
colonizers hegemonic purposes. It is a tool of subversion that reflects the colonizers desire to
master.
I will deal in this chapter with Bellows colonial discourse and his strategy of debasing the
Africans by means of stressing their biological discrepancies which aims at affirming the
protagonists American identity. Bellow employs particular association of traits to cast the
Africans as ethnically sexual and exotic beings. I will also rely on dialogue analysis to further
examine the repressive communicative method inherent in his racialized and colonialist discourse.
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Bellows American ethnicity is a prominent feature of his works. Americanism has had a
pervading influence on him because his father was all for Americanism, as he used to tell him,
this really is the land of opportunity; youre free either to run yourself into the ground or improve
your chances (Cronin et al, 256). Bellow has inherited his fathers enthusiasm for America.
James Atlas emphasizes Bellows love for Americanism, claiming that the process of becoming
American [was] one of his major themes (19). Bellow insists on being identified as only an
American writer. He simply chooses not to be an Other and to become an American instead.
Bellows immigrant position is integral to his ethnicity and racialized discourse. Realizing
the position of America as a superpower, Bellow pronounces in an interview with Rockwell Gray
(1984): Therefore all the greater was my enthusiasm for embracing this American democracy with
all its crudities (220). He adopts Americanism for the freedom it allows and the universality of
American democracy, I assume American democracy to be a cosmopolitan phenomenon (Gray
220).
World War II, however, comes as an opposition to such principles. Therefore, Bellow
criticizes the outcomes of post World War II life in modern America. His interest in the suffering
of Americans as a result of the war and modernism abounds profusely within Henderson the Rain
King. The text is highly charged with humanistic concerns of the fallen conditions of the American
man. He sympathizes with Eugene Henderson who belongs to a privileged class endowed with
language, education and wealth. Eugenic is a Greek word which means of a good offspring
(Webester 399). The name implies one of a good background or lineage. Henderson brags about
his inherited imperialist practices: My ancestors stole land from the Indians. They got more from
the government and cheated other settlers too, so I became heir of a great state (HRK 21). He is
born a millionaire due to his ancestors imperialist exploitation of the Indians. This speech
foreshadows the later revelation of Hendersons imperialistic approach towards the Africans and
his exploitation of them. However, Henderson has a displacement that compels him to venture into
Africa. Hendersons experience with the two African tribes, the Arnewi and Wariri, that he
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encounters in his trip, is rich with features of hegemony and is masked by fantasy about people and
place. The American centrality is high in scale when juxtaposed against his depiction of a
peripheral Africa.
Henderson is solipsistic. His interest in Africa springs from his narcissistic needs. His
main reason is that he feels worthless, a bum (HRK 3). His other reason for leaving to Africa is
his need to face up to his life: But if I am to make sense to you people and explain why I went to
Africa I must face up to facts (HRK 3). I believe explanation of the matter of Africa as facts
sounds like a very early defense against any accusation of prejudice feelings towards the Africans
or racism on the authors or Hendersons side. Lack of purpose is another reason for Hendersons
journey: Well, then, it must have been about eight years after the war ended, I was divorced from
Frances and married to Lily, and I felt that something had to be done. I went to Africa with a friend
of mine, Charlie Albert (HRK 22). He attributes his emptiness to the chaos of modern American
life: America is so big, everybody is working, making, digging, bulldozing, trucking, loading, and
so on, and I guess the sufferers suffer at the same rate. Everybody wanting to pull together. I tried
every cure you think of. Of course in an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a
form of madness (HRK 25). Cultural chaos is another drive for Henderson. He hopes to find a
remedy for his dissatisfaction and to escape the turbulent style of American life. He will use every
possible way regardless of the means. He will debase, classify, stereotype, negate and eroticize the
Africans in order to affirm and idealize himself. All go as part of the process of reconstructing his
identity.
Henderson decides to leave behind his civilized, but chaotic, American society in search of
self-assertion in the abyss of Africa. Donald W. Markos states: Henderson often seems to stand as
a symbol for America itselfan America in need of change (Bach et al, 109). This symbolic
function mirrors the primacy of Bellows ethnocentrism in the text. Frank Farley theorizes that
America is a T country because its culture encourages the risk-taking explorer (qtd in Gallagher
164). The way Henderson ventures into the unknown suggests that he is a Type-T, a thrill
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seeking person who likes risk, change, intensity, complexity and novelty, things that are indicatives
of his American identity. Henderson, in his quest, resembles Bellow who was a great believer in
the quest for the essential self (Atlas 73). Bellow has turned to sexual and mystical teachings to
discover his own self.
Another reason for Hendersons departure is in fact due to his housekeepers sudden death
at his place: So Miss Lenox went to the cemetery, and I went to Idlewild and took a plane [to
Africa] (HRK 40). Her death makes him selfishly think of his own, fear it and try to escape it.
There is a significant connection between the author and his protagonist in the previous response to
death. Just like Henderson, Bellow also fears death: when his closest friend Sam Rosenf[i]eld
(Atlas 235) died in 1956, he did not attend the funeral. Once again, when Pat Covici, his publisher,
died in 1964, Bellow admitted that he loathes funerals.
Going against the theory of Ronald Barths Death of the Author (1977), Bellows position
in the text is deeply complex; his writing mirrors his beliefs. Sara Cohen postulates this presence
as typical of Bellow: Bellow permits his protagonists to be his intellectual conscience (15). I
find Henderson no exception to this rule because he articulates Bellows American ethnicity and
colonialist ideological position which are shaped by his immigrant status. His presence in this
work provides a tension about that presence. Bellow confesses to Maggie Simmons (1979):
Luckily for all of us, we work from deeper motives, impulses of which we are not conscious
(Cronin et al, 167). Consequently, I believe, he manipulates Henderson to articulate his own
colonialist stance from the Africans. He hides behind him. Bellows incontrovertible presence in
the novel is an imperial display of power.
As a matter of fact, Bellow has a special affection for Henderson. He uses his
characterization to diffuse details of his own life in the novel, such as his psychological, social and
marital struggles. Henderson and Bellow can be considered more or less the same person in this
literary work. Eusebio L. Rodrigues hints at this saying: Bellow has been accused of writing a
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15
solipsistic fiction, dominated by the consciousness of one individual who is presented uncritically
and who, in important respects, may be Bellow himself (Bach et al, 122).
Hendersons colonialist intentions are stated from the beginning: But I had come to this
continent to stay. He is so convinced that he can find what has been lacking in his own life in
Africa so he decided to take it one way (HRK 42). This is one place where he can find peace
with himself: Anyway, since I had come to this place under the circumstances described, it was
natural to greet it with certain emotion. Yes, I brought a sizeable charge with me and I kept
thinking: Bountiful life! Oh, how bountiful life is. I felt I might have a chance here (HRK 43).
Yet, his statement: At the same time I couldnt help being aware of the discrepancies between us,
(HRK 89) discloses that his presence in Africa promotes his awareness of the racial and cultural
discrepancies between America and Africa and betrays as well the colonizers sense of superiority.
He cannot get over the difference which he finds daunting and irrepressible. He needs to recognize
the Other as savage in order to identify himself as civilized. This fact creates the savage/civilized
dichotomy that is necessary to the colonizers existence. Spurr highlights the essentiality of this
difference in the colonial relationship: The colonizers traditional insistence on difference from the
colonized establishes a notion of the savage as the Other, the antithesis of civilized value (7).
Hendersons attachment to the principle of class as definer/signifier of the persons
position in society is both bourgeois and colonialist ideology. It is situated at the heart of race
purity. Class is important to him as a means of social division and segregation: When it came
time to marry I tried to please [my father] and chose a girl of our own social class (HRK 4). He
also bombastically states, for when it comes to struggling I am in a special class (HRK 68).
Class is the criterion by which he classifies and judges people. He describes the African Mtalba,
the queens sister, as typical of a certain class of elderly lady (HRK 71). He demands to be
judged by the same criterion. He asks Itelo, the prince of Arnewi, about the tribes opinion of him:
Do they have a good opinion of me, Itelo? Is that a fact? I said. / Very good. Primo. Class A.
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16
they admire how you look, and also they know you beat me (HRK 75). The black man is using
the white mans rhetoric. Henderson puts words into Itelos mouth to highlight his own superiority.
Comedy and fantasy are two techniques that Bellow uses to mask his colonial ideology and
manipulates his readers. Bellows fantasy about Africa is extravagantly colonialist in its idiom and
scope. Bellow derives ideas from books but the exaggeration springs from his imagination.
Boehmer argues that because colonial authority expressed its dominance in part through medium
of representation, a colonialist work of imagination functioned as instrument of power (51).
Imagination enables the colonialist writer to move freely between spaces and times to create the
degrading influence he intends. It empowers him to depict unusual images and episodes to serve
his colonialist aims. The effect of these unusual descriptions in Henderson the Rain King casts
Africa in exotic lights characterized by primitivism.
Comedy functions subtly to distract readers attention away from the colonialist
underpinning of the novel. It creates an ambivalence that precludes genuine understanding of its
bearings. Sara Cohen believes that: Bellow chooses the comic mode, since it does not depict man
in either extreme (HRK 6). Her belief exposes Bellow because it asserts his internal desire to
disguise his real intentions. Frequently, Henderson resembles a clown with his impetus actions,
painted smile and artificial jollity. The elements of comedy also manifest themselves in
Hendersons peculiarity of cloth, inappropriate behavior, disproportionate body size, hilarious
dramatic sense of events and absurdity of behavior. Circumspectly, Bellow infuses such elements
from the beginning to cloud suspicions about his protagonists real intentions.
When Henderson ponders over his fallen conditions, he dramatically cries listing all what he
thinks is important to him in life, my parents, my wives, my girls, my children, my farm, my
animals, my habits, my money, my music lesson, my drunkenness, my prejudice, my brutality, my
teeth, my face, my soul (HRK 3). He describes how he ridiculously spends the afternoon on a
ladder to shake out books for money which his father uses as bookmarkers. He admits it is
charitable of his father to forgive his enormous bodybuilding: At birth I weighted fourteen pounds,
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17
and it was a tough delivery. Then I grew up. Six feet four inches tall. Two hundreds and thirty
pounds. An enormous head, rugged with hair like Persian lambs fur. Suspicious eyes, usually
narrowed (HRK 4). He is sarcastic. He absurdly narrates how he once fell off a tractor while
drunk and ran himself over and broke his leg. He brags about the way he embarrasses his wife,
Lily, with his inappropriate cloth and eccentric attitude:
Lily is, for instance, entertaining ladies and I come in with my filthy plaster cast, in
sweat socks; I am wearing a red velvet dressing gown which I bought at Sulkas in
Paris in a mood of celebration when Frances said she wanted a divorce. In addition
I have on a red wool hunting cap. And I wipe my nose and mustache on my fingers
and then shake hands with guests, saying, Im Mr. Henderson, how do you do?
And I go to Lily and shake her hand, too, as if she were merely another lady guest, a
stranger like the rest. (HRK 5)
Knowing that Lilys father has committed suicide, he teases her with his threat to do the same.
Furthermore, his sudden and impulsive departure to Africa in quest of identity does not present a
serious image of him; he appears rather comically impulsive. In Africa, he becomes absurdly
attached to his white helmet by ridiculously making meticulous adjustments to it all the time. He is
using it as a hiding place: My white helmet, with passport, money, and papers taped into it, fell off
. . . (HRK 64). Bellow deploys this comic aspect to trivialize the seriousness of Hendersons
ethnic prejudice against the Africans and mask his manipulation of them as a means to escape his
crisis of identity.
Hendersons quest for assertion of identity in Africa compels him to degrade the natives
through racial othering and stereotyping. The rhetorical modes implied in Henderson the Rain
King are revealing agents of his othering and stereotyping of the Africans. They expose his
masked colonialist ideology. One of the rhetorical modes evident in Henderson the Rain king is
Spurrs surveillance. By surveillance, the colonizer masters the gaze over landscapes, bodies,
interiors and persons as suggested by Spurr. It involves inspection, scrutiny, observation and
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examination in a way that makes the colonizer feel powerful. This visual observation provides
Henderson with knowledge of the colonized. It reflects his colonial knowledgeable position
(Boehmer 71). It is a kind of command over the colonized. Spurr agrees with Boehmer on the
advantage of the colonizers commanding view as it offers aesthetic pleasure on the one hand,
information and authority on the other (15). In the colonial world, to know is to control. Spurr
emphasizes the hegemonic nature of surveillance: To look and speak to not only implies a position
of authority; it also constitutes the commanding act itself (14). It gives the colonizer the sense that
the colonized are manageable. This colonial achievement is valuable to Hendersons identity.
Surveillance is an essential part of Hendersons colonial relation to the Africans. His visual
observation determines the nature of his relation to the Africans as well as helps reconstruct his
identity. His first practice of surveillance is of landscapes. Henderson invokes Romilayu, a native
guide, to show [him] uncivilized parts of Africa. There are very few of these left (HRK 281).
His remark sounds imperialistic because it corresponds to the colonizers dream to find
undiscovered lands. He describes the African landscape with a colonial imaginative eye that grants
him knowledge and authority. In the colonialist discourse, nature is opposed to culture and
civilization (Spurr 156). Hendersons Africa is depicted as exotic and untamed. Hendersons
geographical and environmental surveillance of the landscapes denotes American superiority over
the humble nature of Africa:
Africa reached my feelings right away even in the air, from which it looked like the
ancient bed of mankind. At the height of three miles, sitting above the clouds, I felt
like an airborne seed. From the cracks in the earth the rivers pinched back at the
sun. They shone like smelters puddles, and then they took a crust and were covered
over. As for the vegetable kingdom, it hardly existed from the air; it looked to me
no more than an inch in height. (HRK 42)
With a commanding imaginative eye, he lessens the significance of the land by minimizing its size.
This belittling is pertinent to the colonizers desire to control the land.
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The sense of mastery which Henderson feels at first sight initiates him to place savagery
next to delicacy in his perception and description of landscape:
The water here was very soft, with reeds and roots rotted, and there were crabs in the
sand. The crocodiles boated around in the lilies, and when they opened their mouths
they made me realize how hot a damp creature can be inside. The birds went into
their jaws and cleaned their teeth. . . . On the trees grew a featherlike bloom and the
papyrus reeds began to remind me of funeral plumes. (HRK 43)
This ambivalent attitude towards nature is part of Bellows masked racist strategy. The reader
cannot determine whether Henderson likes or dislikes it.
But dark images hover over nature in Hendersons Africa. Nature is gloomy and sterile:
The mountains were naked, and often snakelike in their forms, without trees, and you could see
the clouds being borne on the slopes. From this rock came vapor, but it was not like ordinary
vapor, it cast a brilliant shadow (HRK 46). Again ambivalence becomes evident. Hendersons
aesthetic description of the mountains also evokes a sense of isolation about the place.
Isolation of place is very important to Bellows protagonists civilizing mission. Henderson
chooses to go into the depth of Africa as he tells Romilayu, his native guide: I told him I would
give [the jeep] to him if he would take me far enough. He said the place he was going to guide me
to was so remote we could reach it only on foot (HRK 44). The isolation and antiquity of the
place fascinate him when he first arrives at the place of the Arnewi: And besides, the antiquity of
the place had struck me so, I was sure I had got into someplace new (HRK 53). This image
suggests the Africans isolation from civilization and the advanced world, making them a special
breed to his colonialist eyes. The act of isolating the colonized makes the colonizer appear
powerful and in control which means that the landscape is fertile for his civilizing mission.
Hendersons observation of the primitivism of the place: This is a very primitive part of
the world. Even the rocks look primitive (HRK 282), is exaggerated in expression. Rocks cannot
be more primitive in Africa than elsewhere. Primitivism is the very reverse of modernization.
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20
Unconsciously, Hendersons sense of American modernization surfaces by emphasizing the
primitivism of Africa. This indication of the place as well its people as primitive grants dominion
over the earth to more advanced people; the land shall belong by natural right to that power which
understands its value and is willing to turn it to account (Spurr 156). In this case, Henderson is
such power when he practices his dominance through surveillance.
Henderson is proud that it was all simplified and splendid, and I felt I was entering the
pastthe real past, no history or junk like that. The prehuman past (HRK 46). Ambivalence
surfaces in simplified and splendid. Simplified is a reductionist strategy to facilitate invasion,
penetration and appropriation. Henderson is appropriating history in a colonialist manner. His
crisis of identity that resulted from the chaos of modern life in America impels him to deconstruct
the Others identity as a way to overcome his crisis. Bellow situates the Africans in a pre-historic
status which indirectly demeans their culture and subsequently honors his. It is a central element in
the constitution of the self in opposition to the Other.
Henderson is really entranced by the prehistoric effect of the place: Ive visited some of
the oldest ruins in Europe and they dont feel half as ancient as your village (HRK 55). He also
compares its antiquity to that of Egypt: [T]he last plague of frogs I ever heard about was in
Egypt. This reinforced the feeling of antiquity the place had given me from the very first (59).
He likes to believe that the place is beyond geography and history: And Im still not convinced
that I didnt penetrate beyond geography. Not that I care too much about geography; its one of
those bossy ideas according to which, if you locate a place, theres nothing more to be said about
it (HRK 55). By locating Africa beyond geography and history, Henderson enhances his civilized
image and highlights the Africans savageness. Spurr believes: The discourse of negation denies
the history as well as place, constituting the past as absence, but also designating that absence as a
negative presence: a people without history is one which exists only in a negative sense; like the
bare earth, can be transformed by history, but they cannot make history their own (98).
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The fact that Bellows African land is given no name deepens the sense of fantasy about the
place and allows Bellow to legitimize his colonial fantasy. Said rationalizes: For there is no doubt
that imaginative geography and history help the mind to intensify its own sense of itself by
dramatizing the distance and difference between what is close to it and what is far away (55).
This fact accounts for Bellows reliance on imaginative geography. It helps him fantasize Africa
and its people. Thus imaginative geography is a projection of his fantasy of Africa which might
involve misrepresentation.
This fantasy about the place being beyond geography and history significantly saves
Henderson from any skeptical and polemical notes against his reproduction of Africa and its
people. Ellen Pifer assumes that beyond history and geography, (101) is a mechanism of
salvation. Here, it liberates Henderson from his fear of death. I also believe that Hendersons
journey to a place beyond history and geography is a kind of liberation from the restrains of
conventional time and space. Hendersons Africa does not abide by rules. His journey is thus an
escape from rationality. In short, by placing Africa beyond history and geography, Bellow places
Henderson in a free zone thus allowing him the liberty to flaunt his superior ontological position
and use the African as a medium for his colonial desire.
Hendersons imperial response to Africa extends from place to climate. His surveillance of
the African weather reinforces indirectly his American ethnicity. Although Henderson does not
refer to the American weather, his contradictory feelings towards the African weather show that he
is unconsciously comparing between it and the African weather. Henderson initially praises the hot
weather of Africa: To begin with, the heat was just what I craved. Much hotter than the Gulf of
Mexico . . . (HRK 43). He, however, refers later on to the place as a baking heat (HRK 47).
Hendersons craving for heat in the first quote contradicts with his description of it as baking in
the second quote. This contradiction creates an ambivalence that confuses the readers about his
feelings towards the matter. The ambivalence exposes his attachment to his American ethnicity
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and helps mask the colonialist ideology in the text. Henderson wants to underline Africa as a
tropical place in comparison to America.
Going into the interiors of Africa allows Henderson to reflect on some of the Africans
human habitations and rituals. Surveillance of these habitations helps intensify, on the one hand,
the Africans savagery and strangeness and, on the other hand, Hendersons own American
civilization and sense of superiority. His knowledge of the details of African life depicts him as the
all-knowing which is a colonizers practice that implicates power. Hendersons surveillance of the
Africans human habitations provides him with a feeling of power over the place and its
inhabitants, . . . it was within a courtyard and, like all the rest of the houses, round, made of clay,
and with a conical roof. All inside seemed very brittle and light and empty. Smoke-browned poles
were laid across the ceiling at the intervals of about three feet and beyond them the long ribs of the
palm leaves resembled whalebone (HRK 62).
The wrestling tradition of the Arnewi gives Henderson a chance to demonstrate his physical
hegemony over the Africans. Though he allegedly shows resistance to the engagement, he
ultimately triumphs in his physical powers and his ability to conquer his opponent. This hegemony
implies that the Other can be mastered and contained. The incident represents the sore conflict
between the savage/civilized and relation of master/slave:
Dont, Prince. Dont do that. I think I have the weight advantage on you. All the
while I was tryingtrying, trying to classify the [wrestling] event. . . . But in man-
to-man combat I am pretty ugly to tangle with. . . . So lets not fight. Were too
high, I said, on the scale of civilizationwe should be giving all our energy to the
question of the frogs instead. (HRK 65)
Henderson appeals to civilization as an excuse to escape the wrestling game when he in fact
considers it an act of war because he calls in his murder technique (HRK 66). Obliquely,
Henderson accuses the king of being underdeveloped because he insists on wrestling. In contrast,
he polishes his image as a white man from a superseding culture. He ridicules the Arnewis
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customs and their involvement in matters that in his eyes are not as important as the contamination
of their water source. He is driven by his American sense of superiority. Americas political and
economic hegemonic role in the world shapes Bellows ethnicity and his colonialist ideology of the
Africans. He wants to control their course of life by altering their traditions. Hendersons
American hegemony manifests itself in his desire to lead, to stand for freedom, civilization and
order among these African tribes. This feeling of his American hegemony will help him resolve his
cultural crisis.
Despite Hendersons pretentious desire to avoid the wrestling game, he is elated by his
winning: The news of my victory was given out as we left the hut by the dust on Itelos head and
by his manner in walking beside me, so that the people applauded as I came into sunshine, pulling
on my T-shirt and setting the helmet back into place (HRK 71). His rationalization of victory is
imperialistically loud: But I tried to deprecate the whole thing and said to him: I have experience
on my side. Youll never know how much and what kind (HRK 70). It is a typical colonialist act
where the colonizer claims experience, knowledge and civilization as factors that qualify him to
supersede the colonized.
He brings in incidents that show how the Africans are underdeveloped in comparison to him
as he comes from the great outside reinforcing thus the binary opposition of the civilized/savage:
By now she understood that the coat was waterproof, so she called over one of the
long-necked wives and had her spit on the material and rub in the spittle, then feel
inside. She was astonished and told everybody, wetting her finger and laying it
against her arm, and again they started to chant, Ahow, and whistle on the fingers
and flap their hands, and Willatale embraced me again. (HRK 77)
He shows how the Africans are amazed and grateful at his simple gift as they receive the
waterproof raincoat with awesome appreciation. Bellow manipulates Matlbas admiration of
Henderson to reinforce his colonialist superiority concept. Itelo praises him: Oh, she have a
strong affection for you. Dont you see she is the most beautiful woman and you the strongest of
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strong men. You have won her heart (sic) (HRK 80). Henderson arrogantly responds: Hell with
her heart (HRK 80), which is a further enforcement of a supercilious attitude.
Henderson, however, penetrates into the Africans traditions and customs to discredit them:
Several young women were gliding the horns of cattle and painting and ornamenting one another
too, putting on ostrich feathers, vulture feathers, and ornaments. Some of the men wore human jaw
bones as neckpieces under their chins (HRK 146). The Africans are portrayed as savage using
human jaw bones and vulture feathers as ornaments. He penetrates into their traditions not to
appreciate their culture but to indicate their wildness. His gaze captures many other minute details
in an act of mastery to show off his knowledge and civilization.
Henderson, in addition, practices surveillance of people. He highlights the wild
environment of Africa to de-civilize its people. He wants to prepare the readers to accept their
image as wild savages (HRK 167). On his arrival at the Arnewis village, the first African tribe
he encounters, he uses his controlling gaze to establish knowledge of the Africans:
In front of them all was a young woman, a girl not much older, I believe, than my
daughter Ricey. As soon as she saw me she burst into loud tears. I would never
have expected this to wound me as it did. . . . Confronted with this weeping girl I
was by this time ready to start bawling myself, thinking of Lily and the children and
my father and the violin and the foundling and all the sorrow of my life. . . . Behind
the weeping girl other natives were crying along softly. . . . Thus this sturdy, virginal
girl was cryingsimply cryingwithout gestures; her arms were meekly hanging
by her sides and all the facts (speaking physically) were shown to the world. The
tears fell from her wide cheekbones onto her breasts. . . . Everyone, however, went
on crying . . . the rest went not done mourning and covered their faces with their
hands while their naked bodies shook. (HRK 48-50)
The impression this image leaves on the reader is that the Africans are powerless and miserable
people. They are denied the right to speak or express themselves in speech, simply crying,
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whereas Henderson is given power and right to analyze and see through them. His surveillance,
although denigrates Africa and its people, helps him have a better conception of himself and thus to
reconstruct his identify.
Crying as a form of helpless self-expression repeats itself in his comment on their
relationship with their cattle. He tells how the Arnewi are passionately attached to their cattle:
You understand, the Arnewi are milk-drinkers exclusively and the cows are their entire livelihood;
they never eat meat except ceremonially whenever a cow meets a natural death, and even they
consider this a form of cannibalism and they eat in tears (HRK 61). To distance himself,
Henderson interestingly plays on the element of difference by highlighting the strangeness of the
Africans tradition. This idea reminds him not to lose his sense of their difference because it will
deliver him to self-recognition. His commanding gaze becomes offensive when he finds it hard to
appreciate their compassion towards their cattle:
Coming to a corral, we saw a fellow with a big clumsy comb of wood standing over
a cowa humped cow like all the rest, but thats not the point; the point is that he
was grooming and petting her in a manner I never saw before. With the comb, he
was doing her forelock, which was thick over the bulge of the horns. He stroked and
hugged her, and she was not well . . . you have to understand that these people love
their cattle like brothers and sisters, like children; they have fifty terms just to
describe the various shapes of the horns, and Itelo explained to me that there were
hundreds of words for the facial expressions of cattle and a whole language of cow
behavior. To a limited extent I could appreciate this. (HRK 56)
Controlled by his American sophisticated background, Henderson animalizes the Africans because
of their attachment to their cows. Animalizing them is part of his colonizing process to practice his
hegemony over them. It is also part of the resolution of his American crisis. The difficulty to
appreciate this bond between the Africans and their cows reflects his contempt of their primitive
position and aims at enhancing his civilized culture.
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Hendersons surveillance becomes more specific, focusing on the Africans physical
aspects. The African body especially that of the female provides fascinated musing for Henderson:
he is simultaneously entranced and repulsed by their sexuality and biological features. His
commanding view of their bodies reflects their secondary racial ontology to him. Bhaba theorizes:
The construction of the colonial subject in discourse, and the exercise of colonial power through
discourse, demands an articulation of forms of differenceracial and sexual (96). Henderson
uses sexism as well as racism in relation to body as a discriminatory factor to construct the
colonized Other. His surveillance of bodies emphasizes the primitive nature of the Africans:
[W]e were met by a party of naked people (48). He objectifies Mtalba, the Arnewi queens
sister, but then adds charm to that: She is built like Mount Everest but has a lot of delicacy (HRK
97). This opposition creates ambivalence about the colonialist nature of the text.
Hendersons surveillance of people galvanizes him into an act of eroticizing their bodies.
There is an essential relationship between the study of the Other and the concurrent
eroticization of that Other. Spurrs concept of eroticization of the colonized, refers to a set of
rhetorical instancesmetaphors, seductive fantasy, expression of sexual anxiety in which the
tradition of colonialist and phallocentric discourse coincide (170). Eroticization of the African
female body coincides with Hendersons sexual fascination with that body. Hendersons interest in
the sexuality of the Africans is inspired by Bellows practice of Reichianism in 1951. Reichian
therapy encourages free flow of sexuality as the key to health (Atlas 162). It is a source of
emotional release. It is another evidence of Bellows presence in the text.
Eroticization assumes a colonial desire that is reductive in its essence. The native women
are subjected to an open racial evaluation. Hendersons erotic fantasy and attraction to their
sexuality mask his disparagement of the Africans habits. For example, Henderson eroticizes the
queen of Arnewis welcome of him:
Itelo indicated that I should give the old woman a hand, and was astonished when
she took it and buried it between her breasts. This is normal form of greeting here
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Itelo had put my hand against his breastbut from a woman I didnt anticipate the
same. On the top of everything else, I mean the radiant heat and monumental
weight which my hand received, there was the calm pulsation of her heart
participating in the introduction. This was as regular as the rotation of the earth, and
it was a surprise to me; my mouth came open and my eyes grew fixed as if I were
touching the secrets of life; but I couldnt keep my hand there forever and I came to
myself and drew it out. (HRK 71-2)
Hendersons comic reaction to his physical contact with the queen masks his enchantment by their
sexuality. He uses comedy to hide his strong fascination with African womens sexuality. Comedy
is an attempt to cover his sexual excitement. African womens obesity is a mark of sexual beauty
in parts of Africa. Henderson recognizes the tradition but comically critiques it to hide his
fascination with their sexuality:
Mtabla was so heavy that her skin had turned pink from expansion. Women are bred
like that in parts of Africa where you have to be obese to be considered a real
beauty. She was all guised up, for at such a weight a woman cant go without the
support of clothes. . . . [S]he shone and sparkled with fat and moisture and her flesh
was puckered or flowered like a regular brocade. At the hips under the flowing
gown she was as broad as a sofa, and she took my hand and placed it on her breast,
saying, Mtalba. Mtalba awhonto. I am Mtalba admires you. (HRK 74)
Mtabla is both obese and slothful.
An identical situation occurs when Hendersons face is forced to sink into queen Willatales
belly:
Itelo protruded his lips to show that I was expected to kiss her on the belly. To dry
my mouth first, I swallowed. The fall I had taken while wrestling had split my
underlip. Then I kissed, giving a shiver at the heat I encountered. The knot of the
lions skin was pushed aside by my face, which sank inward. I was aware of the old
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ladys navel and her internal organs as they made sounds of submergence. I felt as
though I were riding in a balloon above the Spice Islands, soaring in hot clouds
while exotic odors arose from below. (HRK 74)
Bellow juxtaposes eroticization and comedy in this intimate situation in order to mask Hendersons
attraction to African womans sexuality. Hendersons instinctual sexual arousal is made comic by
the sound of the queens bowls moving. Later on, comedy turns to denigration when he assigns to
her negative qualities such as heavy and colossal thighs and hips, (HRK 98). The situation
implicates three aspects: eroticization, comedy and denigration.
Henderson seems overly concerned with the issue of obesity as he uses different ways to put
emphasis on it. These emphases on obesity not only distract the readers attention away from his
libidinous obsession with African women, they also send a message that obesity is quintessential
among inactive and underdeveloped people, namely, the Africans. Obesity demeans the Africans
presenting them luxurious in a negative sense and slothful manner.
Hendersons sexual discourse on African women combines two contradictory impulses;
sexual attraction and sexual repulsion. His repulsion is another form of denial of the excitement he
felt. Repulsion is instigated by Hendersons consciousness of his own American racial superiority
that causes him to designate such a mechanism of repulsion to deny his own attraction and negate
the factors which attract him.
Hendersons eroticization of the African women becomes more intense with the second
tribe, the Wariri. He becomes more confident of his colonialist mastery. Spurr regards this
knowledge as the ultimate knowledge: [T]he African woman is a text to be opened and closed at
will, and whose contents allow entry into the mysteries of African language; that this language, and
by extension African culture, is itself both contained within and revealed by the female body; that
sexual knowledge of her body is knowledge of Africa itself (171). Spurrs theory is illuminating
when applied to Bellows text. It exposes his racial ideology about the African females whom he
sees as freely open to his observation and assessment.
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Hendersons ethnographic imagination which sexualizes the Africans is evident in sexual
images associated with females nudity and physical strength. Actually, Henderson never let
nudity pass by without highlighting it, naked thighs, (HRK 176) at this gathering of naked
women (HRK 255). It is his way to construct his systematic negation of the Other:
Before I saw Dahfu himself, I was aware of numbers of womentwenty or thirty
was my first estimateand the destiny of naked women, their volupt (only a
French word would do the job here), pressed upon me from all sides. The heat was
great and the predominant odor was feminine. The only thing I could compare it to
in temperature and closeness was a hatcherythe low ceiling also is responsible for
this association. (HRK 153)
In comparing the women to chickens in a hatchery, he dehumanizes them once again, reducing
them to breeders. Paradoxically, he favorably comments on their physical strength, [p]hysical
capacity always stirs me, especially in women (HRK 165). Male chauvinistically, he admires
their fanning of the king and carrying him over their shoulders.
Henderson presents an erotic subservient image of Dahfus wives; not only that they are
nude but also that they attended to [Dahfus] every need and they dried [Dahfus] sweat and
massaged the muscles of his great legs and his panting belly, loosening the golden drawstring of his
purple trousers. I wished to tell him how great he had been. I was dying to say what I felt (HRK
175). He exploits the Harem world to valorize a reprehensible sexual image of the Africans, the
different members of harem, most of them so soft, supple, and black (HRK 160). He portrays
them as libidinal.
However, their sexual charm is a threat to Henderson. There seems to be something about
the togetherness of the females in the kings harem world that erotically charms yet frightens him at
the same. Their unity and sexual power contradict his view of them as miserable and helpless.
Hiding his fear, he highlights them as sluggish:
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His big tufted couch was empty, but the wives lay on their cushions and mats
gossiping and combing their hair and trimming their fingernails and toes. The
atmosphere was very social and talkative. Most of the women lay resting, and their
form of relaxation was peculiar; they folded their legs as we might our arms and lay
back, perfectly boneless. Amazing. I stared at them. The odor of the room was
tropical, like certain parts of the botanical garden, or like charcoal fumes and honey,
like hot buckwheat. (HRK 206)
The conjunction of sexuality and slothfulness suggests some attraction to womens sexual power.
Henderson, thus, appeals to slothfulness to lessen his fear of their sexual power over him.
Henderson discourse on African womens dancing is an erotic experience that reflects his
colonial fantasy: As she sprung dancing, her breasts were fixed, as if really made of gold, and
because of her length and thinness, when she leaped it was something supernatural, like a giant
locust (HRK 175). He draws a graceful erotic image of this dancer yet he critiques her self-
destructive inclination:
Mupi, trying out the music, swayed two or three times, then raised her leg stiff-
kneed, and when her foot returned slowly to the ground it seemed to be searching for
something. And then she began to rock and continued groping with alternate feet
and closed her eyes. The thin beaten gold shells like hollow walnuts, rustled on this
Mupis body. She took the kings pipe from his hand and knocked out the coals on
her thigh, pressing down with her hand, and while she burned herself her eyes,
which were fluid with the pain, never stopped looking into his. (HRK 255)
Eroticization discourse depicts the African as lesser human beings and presents a counter image of
Hendersons civilized being.
Fantasy and the sexual factor are part of Bellows eroticization process. He portrays the
African females as libidinal:
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His ladies! I thought, and looked about me at this gathering of naked women. For
after he had told me that he would be strangled when he couldnt be of any further
services to them, I took kind of a dim view of them. . . . Their hips and breasts suited
their bodies better than any costume could have done. . . . They were painted and
ornamented and perfumed with a musk that smelled a little like sweet coal oil . . .
and the dancers wore colored scarves which waved flimsily from their shoulders as
they sprinted with elegant long legs across the court and basic scratching of the
music went on as the old fellow pushed his bow, rasp, rasp, rasp. (HRK 255)
The stereotyping discourse of the African females sexuality is applied to their king. Hendersons
represents the Wariri king, Dhafu, as equally libidinal and lazy:
He put on a generous large-brimmed hat of the same purple color as his drawers, but
in velvet. Human teeth, to protect him from the evil eye, were sewed to the crown.
He arose from his green sofa but only to lie down again in a hammock. Amazons
dressed in their short leather waistcoats were the bearers. Four on either side put
their shoulders to the poles, and these shoulders, although they were amazons, were
soft. (HRK 165)
He repeatedly highlights these characteristics of the king: And even seated on the backless leather
chair he was still, as on the sofa or in the hammock, sumptuously at rest (HRK 207). The king
himself confesses: The less motion I expend, and the more I repose myself, the easier it is for me
to attend my duties. All my duties. Including also the prerogatives of these many wives. You may
not think so on first glance, but it is a most complex existence requiring that I husband myself
(HRK 155). It is so resonant with the vivid imaginative description of King Dahfu as a Sultan:
He wore his wide velvet hat with a fringe of human teeth and occupied a cushioned
seat, surrounded by wives who kept drying his face with little squares of colored
silk. They lit his pipe and handed him drinks, making sure that he was screened by a
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brocaded cloth whenever he took a sip. Beside one of the range tree an old fellow
was playing a stringed instrument. (HRK 254)
When Bellow shows them as libidinal, he wishes to highlight his sense of their moral inferiority.
This action is intended to increase by contrast his protagonists moral superiority. Picturing the
ruling figure in the country as libidinal and slothful supports Bellows discourse of debasement.
According to the civilized white mans values, libido and slothfulness are negative characteristics
that imply animalism and primitivism. This negative image reflects Bellows strong sense of his
American ethnocentrism which is manifest in Henderson being different from the Africans.
Henderson reluctantly becomes a part of the erotic fantasy of the Harem when becoming the
Wariri rain king: Then the women, whom I had ordered out, came back with some articles of
clothing which Romilayu said were the Sungos, or rain kings outfit (HRK 204). His
involvement, however, does not mean that he is embracing their culture. On the contrary, he is
repulsed by its practices: So then my program, minus one factor: Every morning the two amazons,
Tamba and Bebu, waited on me and offered me a joxi, or trample massage. Never failing to be
surprised and disappointed at my refusal they took the treatment themselves; they administrated to
each other (HRK 239). Hendersons refusal to undergo massage displays his contempt of the
Africans culture. His contempt indicates the superiority of his American culture.
Bellow operates the rhetorical mode of debasement when his protagonist classifies the
Africans and assigns characteristics to them. Classification overlaps with the rhetorical mode of
debasement. Henderson subversively highlights the Africans blackness, negritude, primitivism,
savagery, sluggishness, inability to govern themselves and problem in sanitation. Spurr enlists the
last two aspects as qualities assigned to the individual savage in the rhetorical mode of debasement
(76).
Debasement is a clear othering process that negates the identities of the Africans on a
racial basis. The Africans are viewed in light of a biological and social determinism. The physical
debasement is present in the color of the skin as a signifier of difference and inferiority.
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Significantly, it sustains the concept of the white mans superiority. Hendersons fantasy about
blackness should not cripple the readers from identifying the element of racial inequality
emphasized by his manipulation of the color: His black skin shone as if with the moisture that
gathers on plants when they reach their prime (HRK 214). He racially stereotypes the blackness
of the Africans when he represents them, yet Bhabha denies the simplification of the matter and
consider it, a false representation of a given reality (107). I agree with Bhabhas contention that
such a false representation is a distortion of reality because contrapuntally Bellow subtly
manipulates the reality of their blackness to indicate the difference between him and them. It is
better to call Bellows representation a representation of codified facts that serves his colonialist
intentions.
Henderson applies to the African natives degenerating terms and ethnic labels that have
disturbing racial implications. The discourse of binary opposition white/black is a strong
othering factor. MSC Okolo observes:
Words associated with the black man in the colonial language reveal and confirm an
ideological bias against him and the place he occupies in the structural relationship
existing in society; to continue to accept colonial definitions that debase the black
man is an affirmation, even if disguised, of the continuance of colonialism with its
bifurcation of the world into superior civilized beings and inferior primitive
sub-humans. . . . (3-4)
In the following scene, Henderson highlights the Africans inferiority to the colonizer. The
Africans become objects of spectacle for him:
And now I began to observe the coloring of these people was very original and the
dark was more deeply burnt in about the eyes whereas the palms of their hands were
the color of freshly washed granite. As if, you know, they had played catch with the
light and some of it had come off. Those peculiarities of color were altogether new
to me. . . Just then I deeply felt my physical discrepancies. My face is like some sort
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of terminal; its like Grand Central, I meanthe big horse nose and the wide mouth
that opens into the nostrils, and eyes like tunnels. So I stood there waiting,
surrounded by this black humanity in the aromatic dust, with that inanimate
brilliance coming off the thatch of the huts nearby. (HRK 51)
Henderson is chromatic. Stereotypical distinction between people on the basis of color is called
chromatism in the postcolonial field (Ashcroft, Post-Colonial Studies 37). Henderson makes it
clear that the blackness of the Africans skin reminds him of the differences between the African
race and the white American. His attitude shows the white mans desire to be privileged by his
color. Hendersons reservation of this privilege reduces blackness to stereotype. He never allows
himself to forget the physical discrepancies between himself and the Africans by constantly
referring to them as black. Indirectly, he reminds himself and the readers of himself as a white
man. Racial blackness evinces in many other incidents in this novel. He portrays a nameless
Wariri as: Our black man not only wore a leather apron but seemed leathery all over, and if he had
wings those would have been of leather, too. His features were pressed deep into his face, which
was small, secret, and, even in the direct rays of the red sun, very black (HRK 116). Teun Van
Dijk theorizes: [T]o avoid naming people is one of the moves in a strategy of ethnic distancing
(171). Henderson feels that it is not enough to say that the African man is black but there is a
compelling need to emphasize blackness very black. He re-appropriates vocabulary to function
as racial vocabulary. In another place he says darker (HRK 118). Although he is present in a
pure community of Africans, he ridiculously reaffirms their darkness: From the basic blackness of
the flesh of the tribe (HRK 173), [t]he black-leather angel fellow (HRK 195), [o]f course the
kings extreme blackness of color made him fabulously strange to me (HRK 207). The phrase
[t]he black-leather angel fellow is also repeated on pages 248, 251 and 257. These recurrent
images indicate that Henderson recalls subconsciously his white American community. This dark
depiction results in a stereotyping of the blackness of the African race, Boy, theyre the children of
darkness (HRK 136).
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Bellows delineation of blackness extends to more specific features of blackness. He
intensifies his despising of the Africans black color by emphasizing their negritude features, thus
discounting its significance to them. Lopold Sdar Senghor considers that Negritude is nothing
more or less than what some English speaking Africans have called the African personality (27).
In his words, negritude stands for the African personality. It is some kind of definition of the
African man. This in turn makes it part of the African identity. Thus, when Bellow devalues
negritudes significance, he deconstructs the African mans identity. The inferiority of skin color is
equated with the inferiority of identity.
Henderson deepens the readers sense of the Africans physical discrepancies by cunningly
highlighting their negritudes characteristics. His way highlights the white masters color primacy.
Henderson characterizes Romilayu as follows:
He was in his late thirties, he told me, but looked much older because of premature
wrinkles. His skin did not fit tightly. This happens to many black men of certain
breeds and they say it has something to do with the distribution of the fat on the
body. He had a bush of dust hair which he tried sometimes, but vainly, to smooth
flat. It was unbrushable and spread out at the sides of his heads like a dwarf pine.
(HRK 45)
Romilayu is constituted as an object of spectacle and is necessarily read as an Other. Because of
his race, Romilayus skin is flabby and has wrinkles. The wild nature of his hair makes his head
look strange. The white mans condescending attitude and sense of superiority show in the
emphasis on the biological difference of the Other. Henderson blatantly uses the word negro
as an elimination of individuality: Tall Negro cowherds came up to us with their greased curls and
their deep lips. I had never seen men who looked so wild and I said to Romilayu, my guide, This
isnt the place you promised to bring me to, is it? (HRK 44). This paragraph significantly reveals
the importance of the Africans biological peculiarity to Henderson. The negritude discourse
reminds him of the difference between himself as a white man and them as black. This biological
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difference is crucial to his self-recognition and identification. He needs to stress the African
biological difference to affirm his white identity.
Hendersons obsession with negritude discourse permeates the novel and, more importantly,
functions as a degenerate race mechanism. He employs language as a weapon of stigmatization.
He describes Horko, the kings uncle saying: [h]is hair grew tight and small, peppercorn style, in
tiny droplike curls (HRK 147). The kings negritude features are recursively highlighted in
Henderson the Rain King: His lips were large and tumid, the most negroid features of his face
(154), his pink swelling mouth (168), and [h]is large, swelled lips were more red than was the
case with others of his tribe. Consequently his mouth was more visible than mouths usually are
(184), and his high swelled lips (255). The repetition of ethnic identifiers functions as an
othering mechanism. Bellows concern with negritude postulates a strategic essentialism. He
employs essential characteristics to distinguish the Africans from other races. Stereotypical
employment of essentialist ideas is part of his colonization process. Bellow seems to be
negrophobe.
Hendersons debasement of the Africans implicates their lifestyle as savage and them as
uncivilized and sluggish people. He seems to like the idea that the Africans are underdeveloped
and far removed from civilization. His anxiety at the idea operates the binary opposition of
center/periphery. He becomes frustrated at discovering that Itelo, king of the Arnewi, has gone to a
civilized part of the world and speaks English:
I dont know why I should have been surpriseddisappointed is the word. Its the
great imperial language of today, taking its turn after Greek and Latin and so on . . .
but when this fellow, built like a champion, in his white drooping cloth and his scarf
and middy, addressed me in English, I was both shaken up and grieved. (HRK 52)
The imperialist dream of Henderson to conquer those people seems to collapse. Itelos response to
Hendersons disappointment on knowing that he is a learned man is: I am very sorry. We are
discovered (HRK 53). Henderson cannot digest the idea that the tribe has been exposed to
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civilization. He questions the king sarcastically: I see you have been out in the world anyway Or
is English everybodys second language here (HRK 54). He, nevertheless, does not allow the
thought that they might be civilized to prevail. He attempts to ignore facts and sustain his pre-
notion of them as uncivilized. Thinking of what to tell the queen, he ponders: Should I tell her
that I was a rich man from America? Maybe she didnt even know where America was (HRK 76).
He has difficulty admitting that the Arnewi might be civilized in some way: I figured that these
Arnewi, no exception to the rules, had developed unevenly; they might have the wisdom of life, but
when it came to frogs they were helpless (HRK 87). Hendersons classification of them as weak
empowers him over them. It gives him the right to practice colonial hegemony in a way that
enhances his perception of himself. The natives are used as a mediator of the colonizers desire.
They are a medium for the colonizers self-recognition. Hendersons formation of identity and
discovering of self necessitates disempowering the Africans as well as racial debasement of them.
The rough nature of the Wariri who are described as the children of darkness is employed
to debase their black racial ontology. In spite of the Africans toughness and energy, their
presumably small size provokes Hendersons colonial mode:
These men were smaller, darker, and shorter than the Arnewi but very tough. They
wore gaudy loincloths and marched energetically and after we had gone on for an
hour or more I was less merry at heart than before. I began to feel atrocious toward
those fellows, and for a small inducement I would have swept them in my arms, the
whole dozen or so of them, and run them over the cliff. (HRK 118)
Even when initially impressed with their toughness, Henderson makes sure to highlight their tiny
stature to disempower them. His hegemonic propensities soon dominate and he blindly,
unjustifiably expresses a wish to demolish them altogether.
He later refers to the Warriri as savage and elaborate on this aspect saying, I was among
savages and that I had been quartered with a corpse and had seen guys hanging upside down by the
feet . . . (HRK 161). The frequent use of the word savage is clearly discriminatory because it
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augments the sense of Africans cannibalism. His insistence on reminding himself constantly of
the differences between the Warriri and himself allows the emergence of the savage/civilized
dichotomy. The dichotomy is essential to his self-identification. Bellow fantasizes a ritual
preceding the rain ceremony in a way that depicts the Africans, especially king Dahfu, as
subhuman because he sits before a bowl containing two skulls that had ribbons tied through the
eyes sockets, very long and gleaming, of a dark blue color (HRK 170). Interestingly, Henderson
remarks that one of the skulls belongs to Dahfus deceased father. He cannot hide his disgust at
this ritual: And you saw yesterday what savagery can be if you never saw it before, throwing
passes with his own fathers skull (HRK 210). This remark intensifies the binary opposition of
savage/civilized. Boehmer relates the image of the African savage to the concept of social
evolution: The imagery of the African continent as savage and degraded, a heart of darkness,
therefore, predated Social Darwinist ideas regarding the differential development of cultures (83).
It is an instrument of segregation.
Henderson talks about the effect of the Wariris barbarism on him: I was beginning to feel
the spirit of the occasionpervaded by barbaric emotionsthe scratchiness in my bosom was
greatly aggravated (HRK 171). He mingles erotic dancing with fantasy to underscore the
Africans savageness. He uses the image of the gentian and polyps to fantasize the savage image of
the skulls:
Around them and over them the king and this gilded woman began to play a game
with the two skulls. Whirling them by the long ribbons, each took a short run and
threw them high in the air, above the figures of wood which stood under the
tarpaulinsthe biggest of these idols about as tall as an old upright Steinway piano.
The two skulls flew up high, and then the king and the girl each made the catch. . . .
The women threw her skull. The thick purple and blue ribbons made it look like a
flower in the air. I swear before God, it appeared just like a gentian. In midair it
passed the skull coming from the hand of the king. Both came down streaming
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down with the blue satin ribbons following, as though they were a couple of ocean
polyps. (HRK 174)
In spite of the supposed beautiful image of the gentian and polyps flowers depicted in the above
passage, the use of skull of the deceased father and connection of the gentian and polyps to cancer
destroy that beautiful image. This image shows Africa as place of sickness and death. This scene
increases the readers sense of the Africans savagery.
The overtones of the colonial discourse are evident in the narrators recursive description of
the brutality of the Africans. There exist numerous examples in Henderson the Rain King: [O]lder
people were particularly abusive and waspish (146), bodies hanging upside down. Through a
peculiarity of the light they were small, like dolls (150), a drink made of milk mixed with the
fresh blood of cattle (151), Deep bloody cuts were being made meanwhile on the chest that
belonged to this face. A green old knifea cruel clutch (172), they were wild savages, (176)
The savagery and stridency of these Africans (192), and [b]etween us in a large wooden bowl
lay a couple of human skulls, tilted cheek to cheek (154). All these instances provide evidence
that Bellow is determined to have the Africans perceived as racialized Others.
The colonizers self-idealization and mental conceit materializes in the rhetorical mode of
affirmation. Spurr believes: This rhetoric is deployed on behalf of a collective subjectivity
which idealizes itself variously in the name of civilization, humanity, science, progress, etc, so that
the repeated affirmation of such values becomes in itself a means of gaining power and mastery
(110). Affirmation is a desire to exercise power. Henderson proclaims himself the champion and
the savior of the Africans. This attitude is an idealization of his American ethnicity. He boasts
superiorly his mental capability in solving problems and physical strength during difficult situations
as will be seen below. He is keen on idealizing his image as a benevolent, good man in his own
eyes as well as in the Africans. His self-idealization solicits affirmation through the Other.
Shamelessly, Henderson declares himself the intruding stranger (HRK 195). Hendersons
Americanism, indeed, shapes his dictatorship. Pronouncing himself an intruding stranger unveils
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his interior motives for going to Africa and works to condemn him. The fact that he is a stranger
distances him from the Africans but since he needs them to build his identity and self-knowledge,
his intrusion and negation of them are necessary for overcoming his cultural crisis. He represents
them as dependent entities who are incapable of self-government. His act of negating them is his
path for self-identification. Oddly enough, Hendersons invasive attitude seems parallel to the
actions of superpower administrations or politicians today. Both, they and Henderson, follow a
subversive strategy based on presumed innocence and what is professed as good intention.
Simultaneously, this attitude denies the subjects their autonomy.
Henderson acts as an expert and savior but when things go wrong, he blames others for not
orienting him in the matter beforehand. He chides Romilayu because he fails to tell him that the
king speaks English, . . . as he spoke English, and I had been boasting, Show me your enemies
and Ill kill them. Where is the man-eater, lead me to him . . . I felt extremely ridiculous, and I
gave Romilayu a dark, angry look, as though it were his fault for not having briefed me properly
(HRK 53). He gets unreasonably angry because he expressed himself like an idiot in English when
he thinks that the Africans know no English.
He seeks to win the admiration of African children. He thinks how to amuse the Arnewis
children with a fire show to display his power:
Arent they something? I said to Romilayu. Christ, look at the little pots on
them, and those tight curls. . . . I certainly wish I had a treat for them, but I have not
got anything. How do you think theyd like it if a I set fire to a bush with this
lighter? and without waiting for Romilayus advice I took out the Austrian lighter
with the drooping wick, spun the tiny wheel with my thumb, and immediately a bush
went flaming, almost invisible in the strong sunlight. It roared; it made a brilliant
manifestation; it stretched to its limits and became extinct in the sand. . . . [T]he kids
were unanimously silent. . . .How do you think that went over? I asked Romilayu.
I meant well. (HRK 48)
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Narcissistically, he seeks appreciation for the fire show he performs. He rationalizes to Romilayu
that his intentions are good.
Hendersons good intentions increase and his desire to impress the Arnewi intensifies when
he learns of the contamination of their cistern. The sanitary position is created by the author to
demean the natives. On seeing a girl weeping over the loss of her cattle, he imagines that she
appeals to him for help: The poor soul is in trouble? Is there something I can do for her? Shes
coming to me for help. I feel it (HRK 50). Hendersons sympathy is solipsistic not genuine. He
fantasizes that confessing to strangers is an African custom: Anyway, as we were strangers they
were obliged to come forward and confess everything to us, and ask whether we knew the reason
for their trouble (HRK 51), in order to legitimatize intervention. He sees himself as a benign
savior who has come to mend all the native tribulations. He is convinced that he knows more about
anything than the natives do. His fantasy feeds the colonial relationship and shows the superiority
of his culture.
Henderson feels obliged to intervene: I said to Romilayu, So ask them what they want me
to do. I intend to do something, and I really meant it (HRK 51). Hendersons intervention is
integral to his self-affirmation. Although he sounds apologetic for intervening, it is all an
allegation because he is determined to do something: I dont want to bust into your customs. But
its hard to see all this going on and not even to make a suggestion. Can I have a look at your water
supply at least (HRK 57). He will civilize the natives whether they like it or not because he
believes he knows what they need. Spurr explains this colonialist behavior:
[B]ut even when the western writer declares sympathy with the colonized, the
condition which makes the writers work possible requires a commanding,
controlling gaze. The sympathetic humanitarian eye is no less a product of deeply
held colonialist values, and no less authoritative in the mastery of its object, than the
surveying and policing eye. (20)
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He asserts that the colonizers sympathy is not genuine because it springs from his sense of mastery
and colonialist ideals. This hygiene problem postulates difference and creates a binary opposition
of civilized/savage. It functions as a justification for Hendersons colonialist intervention as well
as a de-civilizing methodology.
Henderson is determined to intervene. His determination to relieve the Arnewi from their
suffering becomes imperially imperative: A man of about fifty, white-haired, was kneeling,
weeping and shuddering, throwing dust on his head, because his cow was passing away . . . at this I
myself was swayed; I felt compassion, and I said, Prince, for Christs sake, cant anything be
done (HRK 56). He first feels sad then the compassion of the colonizer to do goodness stirs up.
He impulsively suggests ways to get rid of the frogs: [W]e could filter them out. We could poison
them. There are a hundreds things we could do (HRK 59). This action is essential to his identity
formation. He reasons out his impetus to Prince Itelo: Look here, Im kind of an irrational person
myself, but survival is survival (HRK 59). It is a very imperialistic logic that he uses.
Hendersons dishonorable way to achieve identity materializes in his claim to help the Arnewi
when he is really doing that to overcome his crisis of identity.
Henderson exploits the poisoned cistern event to enhance his fine self image as a colonizer:
I realized that I would never rest until I had dealt with these creatures and lifted the plague (HRK
61). He falls in love with the idea of himself as their great benefactor (HRK 61). His sense of
obligation towards the Africans resembles superpower countries with their policy and sense of
obligation to intervene in the affairs of other nations.
Henderson speaks with pride about his ability to purify their source of water. It is an
imaginary colonial ability. As readers, we are not informed at any stage that Henderson has the
experience or the appropriate knowledge to handle such a situation. He contemplates the matter
seriously: Meanwhile my heart was all stirred and I swore to myself every other minute that I
would do something, I would make a contribution here. I hope I may die, I said to myself, if I
dont drive out, exterminate, and crush those frogs (HRK 73). The challenge is a matter of life or
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death for him which reflects the crucial nature of this civilizing mission to his self-identification
and affirmation.
Henderson claims that his burning desire to intervene is part of the effect the tribe has on
him: So that at the first sight of the town I felt that living among such people might change a man
for the better. It had done me some good already, I could tell. And I wanted to do something for
themmy desire for this was something fierce (HRK 77). He considers it a step forward towards
self-fulfillment. He links his intervention to universal themes: The earth is a huge ball which
nothing holds up in space except its own motion and magnetism, and we conscious things who
occupy it believe we have to move too, in our own space. We cant allow ourselves to lie down
and not do our share and imitate great entity (HRK 79). Hendersons American hegemony
materializes in his imperialist dream to save the world. His obligation towards the Africans
happens to coincide with his own interests. He voluntarily offers to purify their source of water and
takes complete responsibility for that: Im doing this on my own responsibility (HRK 88). His
confidence reflects an imperialist centrism. He emphasizes his superiority as an outsider through
his presumed saving mission. His dream to win the Africans admiration and gratitude stands for
the imperialist dream to do the subjugated people a favor: And my idea was that when I had
performed my great deed against the frogs, then the Arnewi would take me to their hearts (HRK
98). To help the Arnewi is compelling because he comes from the great outside (HRK 106). The
binary opposition of savage/civilized is actively working here. By showing America as great and
Africa in need of help, Bellow creates by contrast a diminutive image of Africa.
Sure of victory, Henderson daydreams of it: [T]herefore I decided that as my reward for
ridding them of the vermin, I would ask them to teach me to whistle. I thought it would be thrilling
to pipe on me own fingers like that (HRK 73). He reiterates dreaming of victory: Ill annihilate
and blast those frogs clear out of that cistern, sky-high, theyll wish they had never come down
from the mountain to bother you. Not only I molani [live] for myself, but for everybody (HRK
85). He does not live only for himself but also for everybody else. Margret Wetherell illustrates in
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Mapping the Language of Racism (1992) this tendency of the imperialists to forge and naturalize
their imperialist intentions : Dominant social groups have a particular interest in falsity, in
covering over the exploitive nature of their relations with other groups, and in representing these
relations as natural, enduring and in everyones interest (31).
Henderson resolution to purify the cistern from the frogs takes a military form. He
impetuously suggests blasting it: I told Romilayu, the only method that figures is a bomb. One
blast will kill all these little buggers, and when theyre floating dead on the top all we have to do is
come and skim them off, and the Arnewi can water their cattle again. Its simple (HRK 93).
When Romilayu attempt to object to his resolution, he silences him scornfully: What, No, no, sah!
Dont be a jerk, Im an old soldier and I know what Im talking about (HRK 93). Henderson is
motivated by his colonialist ambition. His compelling desire to bring a relief to the Arnewi is a
pure imperialists desire to dominate through benevolence.
Bombastically, Henderson explains how he fulfills his liberating and civilizing mission: I
held the bomb above my head like the torch of liberty in New York harbor, saying to myself, Ok,
Henderson. This is it. Youd better deliver on your promise. No horsing around, and so on. You
can imagine my feelings (HRK 109). Yet, he fails in his mission as the whole reservoir is
destroyed. His presumed good intentions turn destructive in a dramatic way. He blows their only
source of water with his shortsighted vision brought about by mental conceit and cultural
condescension. Henderson causes environmental damage. Ashcroft classifies environmental
damage as, one of the most damaging aspects of Western civilization (The Empire Writes Back
213).
The Arnewis reaction to Hendersons destructive intervention is silence. They evince no
objection or reproach of any sort on their side. Their silence signifies subordination to the
colonizer. Henderson has manipulated their inability to take an action with regards to their polluted
source of water to empower himself over them and increase his self-confidence. He rashly thrust
himself into the action and felt surprised of negative consequences.
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There is, however, no genuine regret on Hendersons part for his destructive act. His
perturbation does not last long. In fact, he only refers to the incident later on because he is
concerned that he might be discovered by the other tribe. He tells Romilayu when they arrived at
the Warriris village: But you wont say anything about the frogs and the cistern, now will you,
Romilayu (HRK 114). He reiterates: You dont think theyve heard about the frogs, do you
(HRK 129). He is only worried about himself. Henderson forgives himself easily for destroying
the source of water. It is a characteristic of Bellow who, was a master of self-exculpation (Atlas
165). Bellow never blames himself for failure of books or his several marriages. In this respect,
Henderson and Bellow are alike.
Indeed, Bellow and Henderson share the same characteristics. Bellow himself affirms the
strong affinity between both of them. When asked by Nina Steers in 1946: Which of your
characters is most like you, Bellow replies, Hendersonthe absurd seeker of high qualities
(Cronin et al, 34). This pronouncement makes the intrinsic connection between them indisputable
and the dividing lines less sharp. In another interview (1979) Maggie Simmons asks him Who
else you feel was a liberating character? He refers to Henderson saying: I got a stupendous break
with Henderson the Rain King. That man [Henderson] was talking through his hat and therefore
could say whatever he pleased. And he turned out to a considerable rhetorician (Cronin et al,
162). Bellow internalizes Henderson. Henderson is a first narrator speaking with the power of
omniscience, assuming an all-knowing perspective on the story being told: presenting private
thoughts, narrating hidden events, and jumping between spaces. Bellow seems to be parodying
himself consciously or unconsciously through his protagonist on having him express implicitly his
prejudice against the Africans. He is present in the images, narrative structure and motifs of the
novel.
Rashly and in an act of avoidance, Henderson leaves the first tribe. Audaciously, he soon
decides to view his negative experience in a positive light:
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And remembering the frogs and many things besides I sat beside the fire and
glowered at the coals, thinking of my shame and ruin, but a man goes on living and,
living, things are either better or worse to a fellow. This will never stop, and all
survivors know it. And when you dont die of a trouble somehow you begin to
convert itmake use of it, I mean. (HRK 114)
The result of the cistern incident is catastrophic, yet Henderson chooses to ignore that. He
concedes that he has done something wrong but he decides to view his destructive act positively
believing that his experience is not negative after all and that he can make use of it. His decision is
pertinent to Teun Van Dijks notion of apparent concession. In a racist discourse, this notion
exists, when it is conceded that we have done something . . . but it is then added that our negative
action is excused or mitigated . . . (170). Henderson mitigates the dreadfulness of his action by his
decision to make use of his negative experience. His act of mitigation is combined with a negative
representation of the Africans. His enactment, though unsuccessful, is contrasted with the
Africans inaction.
His impulsive act to purify the contaminated source of water is similar to Bellows
beginning to make an outline for his writing as he tells Nina Steers (1964): My ambition is to start
with an outline but my feelings are generally too chaotic and formless. I get full of excitement
which prevents foresight and planning. . . . My faults of character emerge in my writing. I like to
think things will work themselves out (Cronin et al, 31). Hendersons and Bellows ways of
thinking are identical in their chaotic drives.
His interaction with the Wariris polishes further his colonialist image. They pay him great
respect and enhance his self-image as a civilized man. Deceptively, he is nice towards the
Africans: I did my best to perform the social rigmarole with Horko. He wished me to admire his
bridge table, and to oblige him I made several compliments on it, and said I had one just like it at
home. As indeed, I do in the attic (HRK 151). He pretends to admire Horkos bridge table
comparing it to his own at home when in fact his is stored up in the attic. This pretence is
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necessary to maintain their respect for his image as a civilized man but he cannot help mocking
them internally for believing him.
Bellow highlights the negative difference between the savage and civilized world. He has
King Dahfu refine Hendersons image on many occasions. He specifically admires his physical
strength, you seem mos interesting person. Especially in point of physique. Exceptional, he
said. I am not sure I have encountered your category (HRK 155). On another occasion, the king
tells him: I think you are like a monument. Believe me, I have never seen a person of your
particular endowment (HRK 155). In the words of the king, Henderson is distinguished as
civilized: Many things since my return I felt lacking which I would not have suspected while at
school. You are my first civilized visitor (HRK 156). Hendersons physical strength and civilized
behavior seem to capture the kings attention the most:
Then the king observed, to my surprise, You do not show too much wear and tear
of the journey. I esteem you to be very strong. Oh, vastly. I see at glance. You tell
me you were able to hold your own with Itelo? Perhaps you were practicing mere
courtesy. At a snap judgment you do not seem very courteous. But I will not
conceal you are a specimen of development I cannot claim ever to have seen.
(HRK 162)
The kings admiration of Hendersons civilized behavior parallels Hendersons admiration of
himself: For I had a certain pride in my strength . . . (HRK 162). The colonial system thrives on
the notion of self-aggrandizement of the colonizer and grateful appreciation of the colonized.
Boehmer contends: Undeniably, the Empire would not have survived as long as it did without the
early co-operation of colonized elites (HRK 115). The African rulersItelo, Dahfu, Mtalba
approbation of Henderson is a kind of cooperation and support of his colonialist interventions.
Bellows fantasy needs this support and admiration of the colonized to complete itself.
On the other hand, Henderson cannot trust the king: As I couldnt trust him, I had to
understand him. Understand him? How was I going to understand him? Hell! It would be like
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extracting an eel from the chowder after it has been cooked to pieces (HRK 161). Although the
king thinks positively of him, Henderson distrusts him. He is suspicious of the kings intentions:
Nevertheless I began to realize that the king would certainly use me if he could (HRK 164). His
suspicion is not momentary because he reflects also later on his uncertainty of the king allegiance:
And now this powerful black personage soothed mebut was he trustworthy (HRK 210). This
mistrust exposes Hendersons real feelings towards the Africans; he can never respect them as his
equal.
Another vital invasive incident occurs when Henderson lifts up the idol of Mummah during
the Wariris rain ceremony. Hendersons pride at his physical strength entices him to fall back into
his colonialist habit of intervention. To mask his colonial intrusion, Henderson calls it a benefit:
My longing to perform a benefit there, because I was so taken with the Arnewi, and
especially old blind-eye Willatale, was sincere and intense, but it was not even
ripple on the desire I felt now in the royal box beside the semibarbarous king in his
trousers and purple velvet hat. So inflamed was my wish to do something. For I
saw something I could do. (HRK 186)
It seems that Henderson is affected by his American cultural and political background in his
compelling desire to perform a benefit. Performing a benefit is a colonialist excuse for intervention
exercised by politicians from superpower countries over less powerful nations. I also think the
whole episode of lifting up the idol of Mummah is a struggle between civilization and savagery. It
allows Henderson to demonstrate feelings of cultural hegemony. Henderson will not accept to be
defeated by the savages. Although he is completely ignorant of the Wariris rain ritual and its
consequences, he cannot think logically at that moment because he seems overruled by his desire to
assert himself: My heart desired only one great object. I had to put my arms about this huge
Mummah and raise her up. . . Never hesitating, I encircled Mummah with my arms. I was not
going to take no for an answer (HRK 192). He is very thrilled over his victory, yet he plays
modest and depicts the thrill of the Wariri instead:
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The Wariri, however, were still demonstrating in my honor, flaunting the flags and
clattering rattles and ringing hand bells while they climbed over one another with
joy. That was all right. I didnt want such special credit for my achievement,
especially considering how much I was the gainer personally. (HRK 194)
The king praises him: You see the Bunam felt sure you would be strong enough to move our
Mummah. I, when I saw what a construction you had, agreed with him. At once (HRK 205). Yet,
Hendersons intrinsic goal is more than admiration. He wants to win.
Blinded by his colonialist mental conceit and feeling of physical supremacy, Henderson
does not investigate beforehand the outcomes of his intervention. The consequence of lifting up the
idol is to become the Wariris Rain King, a religious position, and as a Rain King, he will succeed
the tribes king in case of the latters death. These two positions involve certain political and
religious duties that he has to perform.
On the basis of cultural and political inferiority, Bellow disqualifies the Africans in
Henderson the Rain Kin. He presents them as incompetent to rule, or even to elect representatives
of their tribe members. The intention of Bellows representation of the Africans incompetent
political order is to degrade them. This incompetency is reflected in the Arnewis queens inability
to take an action against Henderson when he ruined the tribes only source of water. It is also
evident in the Wariris insistence to follow the tribal rituals of succession even if they are outdated
and might cause the death of the king. The representation of the colonized community as
politically passive is, thus, integral to the legitimization of a foreigners rule. Bellow negatively
presents Africa so as to justify Hendersons colonialist actions. The image of a static and
disqualified political Africa is part of Bellows subversive colonization process. It comes in
contrast to the image of America as democratic and dynamic. His aim is to intervene in the
Africans political system in order to undermine it.
An aspect of colonialist subversion is control over dialogue. Henderson is the chief arbiter
of representation. Granville Hicks notes how remarkably revealing Hendersons manner of speech
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is: The style is the man, and Henderson is revealed to us not only by what he says but also by the
way in which he says it (Bach et al,101). Bellows construction of dialogue between his
protagonist and the Africans is one sided, that is, Henderson does all the talk while the Africans
listen. Sometimes, the Africans produce fragmented sentences. At the best, the dialogue is
comprehensive and sound when it is in favor of Henderson. He is all authoritarian in this regard.
Bellow chooses to silence the Africans to boost his protagonists hegemonic presence
among them: I made him a salute but he didnt appear to think much of it and his leather face
answered nothing (HRK 116). He has already depicted earlier how the Africans helplessly
express their grief over the loss of their cattle by crying. His way reinforces the notion that the
Africans are emotional, helpless and speechless. It is a deliberate act of silencing that aims at
excluding them from civilization. According to Spurr, language is a measurement of civilization:
For Western thought, one of the fundamental measures of a culture is the quality of
its language. Language comes to be judged according to its richness and
complexity, its refinement from mere cry and gesture, its capacity to make
distinction, its multiplicity of names, its range from particularity to abstraction, and
its organization of time and place. (102)
Henderson further draws the Africans as speechless men using signals to interact with them:
Finally one of the men came down, covered by the rest, and without speech but stoically, as
soldiers usually do, he took the .375 and ammunition and knives and other weapons, and ordered
us to get up (emphasis added, HRK 117). On another occasion, they do not answer Hendersons
questions: Could we see the king? I know a friend of his and I am dying to meet him, I said. . . .
To this no reply was made either (emphasis added, HRK 133). Since language is a measurement
of civilization, their silence makes them appear as savage and he by contrast, since he is making all
the speech, appears civilized.
Though Romilayu supposedly speaks English as a guide, Bellow structures his sentences to
be either grammatically incorrect or wrongly pronounced: I no know, sah. Dem no so people like
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Arnewi/ On theyre not, eh? But you wont say anything about the frogs and the cistern, now will
you, Romilayu? (HRK 114). Notably, Romilayus sentences are answers to Hendersons
questions: Do they keep a lion in the palace?/He said uncertainly, Dem mus be (HRK 129). It
is Bellows way of discrimination. He deliberately highlights their deficient use of English when
he could simply summed it up in good English instead of insisting on presenting it in a dialogue
form. The practice of dialogue presentation places them at disadvantageous position in comparison
to Henderson.
Henderson crowns his assertion of linguistic supremacy with a superseding attitude which
proves that to highlight language impediment is a deliberate strategy. Hendersons conversation
with Romilayu becomes strongly imperative when he is very anxious:
But listen, you go and tell them, Romilayu, that I refuse to sleep in a morgue. I
have waked up next to the dead all right, but that on the battlefield.
And I started to storm at him, Go on, I said. Ive given you an order. Go awake
somebody. Judas! This is what I call brass.
Romilayu cried, Mistah Henderson, sah, whut I do?
Do what I tell you, I yelled. . . . (HRK 136)
Hendersons dominant attitude with Romilayu reveals how he really thinks of him; he thinks of him
as a slave not as a native guide. It is not an egalitarian friendship as Henderson tried to show. The
slave/master dichotomy is a decisive feature of discrimination. Spurr reflects on this salient
attitude: The anxiety of colonial discourse comes from the fact that the colonizers power depends
on the presence, not to say the consent, of the colonized (11). It is a repressive kind of dialogue
that denies the Africans identities and civilization. Bellow constructs language to mirror the
uneven discourse of power relations between the East and the West. He uses dialogue to demote
the natives to an inferior status because their values are incompatible with American values.
Bellows humanistic values are problematic and biased because they deny the African
autonomous being. He denies them their diversity and distinctiveness through stereotyping and
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othering them. Bellows American ethnicity shapes his artistic vision and controls his portrait of
Africa and its people. He offers a convincing account of the American crisis of identity during a
turbulent period, but the way in which a resolution is reached to reconstruct that identity through
dehumanizing the Other is dishonorable.
The text subtly demonstrates the constitution of Hendersons American identity through
othering and stereotyping the Africans. Tony Morrison explains why othering is so crucial to
the formation of American identity: Africanism is the vehicle by which the American self knows
itself as not enslaved, but free; not repulsive, but desirable; not helpless, but licensed and powerful;
not history-less, but historical; not damned, but innocent; not a blind accident of evolution, but a
progressive fulfillment of destiny (52). She illustrates that Africanism is psychologically a
vehicle of salvation for the American person because it delivers him to the ultimate state of self-
fulfillment. It is a definition through negation. Bellow uses the Africans to deliver Henderson to
self-fulfillment.
It would be incomplete, indeed, to read this work simply as an exploration of the self or as a
condemnation of World War II and modernization. The text poses the questions of how much
Bellows humanistic presentation is authentic, how does his protagonist form his identity, rather
than asking why he goes to Africa? Hendersons identity begins to take form on his encounter with
two different African tribes, the Arnewi and Wariri. The interaction with the Arnewi people and
their prince, Itelo, as well as the interaction with the Wariri and their king, Dahfu, reveals to the
readers much about Hendersons real character and interior motives. His exotic experience with
them allows for self-knowledge at the end.
Falling within the canon of colonial literature, Henderson the Rain King is an imaginary
and symbolic colonialist text. Abdul R. JanMohameds concept of the imaginary text is as one
where, the native functions as an image of the imperialist self in such a manner that it reveals the
latters self-alienation. This process creates a fixed opposition between the self and the native.
In the imaginary colonialist text the native stands for evil operating thus automatically the
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Manichean Allegory. The symbolic text shows, the inevitable necessity of using the natives as a
mediator of European desire. Both imaginary and symbolic texts function to articulate and
justify the moral authority of the colonizer and . . . to mask the pleasure the colonizer drives from
that authority (19). The symbolic and the imaginary are both present and overlap in this text.
Henderson feels different from the Africans yet he desperately needs them to form his identity.
Hendersons achieving of identity, of who he is and what he wants to be, is realized through
deconstructing the Africans identity. He endows the natives with wicked and barbaric
characteristics. His discourse about the Other underpins ethnocentrism and thus racism. Teun
Van Dijks suggests that, racism should be in fact called ethnicism (146). I concur with him on
that ethnicity operates prejudice and racism against certain cultures.
To overlook Bellows colonialist representation is to undermine the complexity of his
vision. His humanistic values aggrandize the white American man whereas they ignore or devalue
the humanity of the black man. The distorting effect of the protagonists surveillance of Africa
betrays Bellows interior anxiety at the Africans failing to meet the standards of the American
white mans values. Bellow finds difficulty in understanding the Africans because he cannot
negate the ideology of his culture. As a colonialist author, he strives to assert his ethnic American
identity by thriving on oppositions. The Africans in Henderson the Rain King are made to feel
inferior and treated as inferior in a way that enhances the colonizers self-image. As long as Africa
is judged by Bellows American values, it remains a culturally diverse sphere that exists beyond his
American comprehension. His colonial discourse about them is shaped by the relation of power.
Binarism is deployed to show dominance of the superpower.
Further, the interplay of response to the Other in terms of identity and difference operates
with different degrees of complexity in Henderson the Rain King and accounts for ambivalence in
the text. It helps mask the colonizers gratification at his hegemony. The ambivalence is apparent
in two aspects of the text: (1) the contradiction of Saul Bellows artistic presentations which
manifests itself in juxtaposing comedy and fantasy in the work; (2) the contradictions that mold
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Hendersons discourse which suggest conflicting messages about his ideological and political
stance towards the Africans. Hendersons colonial relationship with the Africans shows distinct
contradictions of both exclusion and inclusion. Ambivalence stems from the contradictory way in
which the Africans are constructed; paradoxically different from the self, yet exotically integral to
identity.
The rhetorical modes expose Bellows biased humanism and his racial politics of
representations of the Africans. That the Africans are inherently black is a fact but the implication
and the proposition of Bellows racial black discourse casts it in a colonialist light. He
homogenizes them into a collective black, savage and lazy to essentialize their difference. He
shows them as incapable of mastering their problems, and therefore justifying the necessity of his
protagonists invasive actions. Simultaneously, they are encouraged to welcome the benefit of the
American rule, support it and succumb to it. The stereotypical image of the Africans as primitive,
exotic, savage, sexual, backward and incompetent to rule evokes cultural, social and political
contempt of them. Bellows work is discriminatory.
Bellows approach to Africa is essentially ethnocentric because he bases his knowledge of
Africa on white mans observations. Anthropology apparently privileges Bellow to codify Africa
and its people. His knowledge of Africa is the result of his study of anthropology, sociology and
reading of books on Africa by white scholars. Conceitedly, he says, Why should I go to Africa?
(Cronin et al, 7). He has not found it necessary to do so. He feels that reading about Africa gave
him enough knowledge to write about it. It is an absolute colonizers mental conceit. His depiction
of Africa draws heavily from the following books: Melville J. Herskovitss The Cattle Complex in
East Africa, Reverend John Roscoes The Banyankole, The Soul of Central Africa, Frederick E.
Forbess Dahomey and the Dahomans, and finally Sir Richard Burtons A Mission to Gelele the
King of Dahomey (Rodrigues 243, 244,245, 255).
Besides, he admits: I have learned there is more truth in my imagination than there is in the
public relations habits of minorities (Atlas 409). He textualizes his fantasy believing that his
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imaginative representation of minorities is more credible than truth itself. Bellows creation lacks
authenticity because he does not write this book about Africa following an empirical exposure to its
people and sites. His representation of this foreign land and its inhabitants is only a replica of
others and a fantasy he creates. The fact that he does not mention real places or specify location is
a proof of the fantasy element in his creation.
Fantasy serves to disguise Bellows imperialist discourse. I agree with Sara Cohen in
regards to the presence of fantasy in the novel, but not in describing it as a whimsical fantasy
(116). I would rather call it a colonial fantasy. Elleke Boehmer lists achievement of identity
(76) among the components of narrative that have the power to speed up the imperial fantasy. A
colonial fantasy, Bhabha says, [o]n the one hand, . . . proposes a teleologyunder certain
conditions of colonial domination and the native is progressively reformable. On the other,
however, it effectively displays the separation, makes it more visible (118). Thus, the presence
of fantasy in a literary text creates ambivalence; the natives can progress in certain colonial
occasions yet they are still helpless and incapable to lead or govern. What makes Bellows fantasy
colonialist is that it pictures the Africans as exotically beautiful, yet also as prejudicially
uncivilized. He forges an imaginative Africa which thwarts a genuine comprehension of it.
Actually, Bellows imaginative portrait of Africa is based upon a sovereign Western
consciousness (Said, Orientalism 8). Said proposes that the American or European scholar who
studies the Orient, belongs to a power with definite interests in the Orient, and more important,
that one belong to a part of the earth with a definite history of involvement in the Orient almost
since the time of Homer (Orientalism 11). According to Said, the Orient/East exists for the West,
and is constructed by and in relation to the West. This Orient is the Other in any colonial
discourse. Bellow portrays the Africans out of his American colonial right to imagine the Other.
His portrait is determined by his essentialist ideas on the Africans. There is a fixation in regards to
understanding the Other.
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Henderson escapes Africa at the end as if he is afraid that the curse of backwardness will
inflict him. The gap between the white and black man remains un-bridgeable. He does not want to
go native. His escape at the end symbolizes his rejection of primitivism and asserts the
irreconcilable differences played by Bellow earlier. To disregard Bellows masked racism and the
dissemination of his colonialist ideas in the novel would be an oversight. Bellow is a creature of
his ethnocentric American culture regardless of his attempt to mask that. It took Bellow some time
to drop his mask and express freely his racist ideology against certain nations as will be seen in the
next chapter.


















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Chapter Two
To Jerusalem and Back:Unmasked Racism
To Jerusalem and Back is a travelling account but unlike Henderson the Rain King it is a
real one: real places, real characters and real issues. Saul Bellows destination now is Jerusalem.
But why did he choose Jerusalem? He did because he was a Jew. The importance of Jerusalem lies
in its religious significance to both the Jews and Muslims. The Jews claim their right to the land
because they think they are descendents of God children of God and His loved ones they want
to regain the Temple and they want to fulfill what they believe to be Gods Promise of Return. The
centrality of the city to Islam is due to the fact that it is the third of sanctities, the first of two
directions, and the prophets night journey to and from heaven was through Jerusalem. Each group
claims its rights to the land based on historical or religious facts.
Bellows ethnicity is a significant force in this travel account. The author is no longer
capable of subverting the question of his ethnic identity in To Jerusalem and Back. His dilemma as
a Jew surfaces in a prominent way that suggests a cultural dimension to the question of Jewish
identity. Bellow in this work is preoccupied with the identity of a nation, the Jewsan identity
that is pertinent to conflict over land.
Bellows Jewish prejudiced national feelings are manifest in his colonialist discourse
against the Arabs. This chapter attempts to show how Bellows ethnocentrism is closely connected
with his racialized colonialist discourse. His racist ideology against the Arabs materializes in his
selection of Pro-Jewish political and academic thinkers to discuss the Palestinian-Jewish cause.
The author encountered in Jerusalem many Jewish intellectuals such as: Mayor Teddy Kollek, A.B.
Yehoshua , David Shahar, Professor Tzvi Lamm, Mikhail Agursky, Morris Janowitz, Yuval
Neeman ,Walter Laqueur, Professor Malcom H. Kerr, Professor Yehoshafat Harkabi, Elie
Kedourie and Professor Joseph Ben-David. The Jewish intellectual community Bellow mingles
with in his journey has a passion towards Israel, Jews and Zionism as will be seen in this chapter.
Bellow excludes the native Arabs from discussion. They are present only through his colonialist
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discourse. Abu Zuluf, editor of El Kuds newspaper, is the only Arab personality allowed to speak
in this memoire because he sings the praises of Israel. The author selectiveness is a Zionist policy
that serves the Jewish cause.
This chapter explores how Bellows discourse on the Arabs is colonialist and racial in its
essence. His discourse incorporates negation and debasement of the colonized, naturalization of
colonization, affirmation and idealization of the colonizers self-image. It manifests itself in the
mechanism of binary structure, stereotyping and othering. This mechanism helps to create
boundaries, classify positions and segregate groups. It shows Bellows anxiety to preserve
difference.
I will deal in this chapter with Bellows imbalanced characterization of four groups: the
Jews, the Arabs, the Pro-Israelis and the Pro-Arabs. He provides a counter image of the Arabs and
Israelis. This chapter aims at highlighting Bellows negative stereotypical representation of the
Arab native in opposition to his positive stereotypical representation of the Jews. He accuses the
Pro-Arabs of ignorance, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, whereas he commends the Pro-Israelis
civilization and efforts to create peace.
As Henderson is the focus of Bellows humanistic concerns in Henderson the Rain King,
the Jews in To Jerusalem and Back are the target of these concerns. Bellow declares his intention
to remain humanistic though he wrongly believes that politics and humanistic concerns correlate:
[P]erhaps to remain a poet in such circumstances is also to reach the heart of politics. Then
human feelings, human experience, the human form and face, recover their proper placethe
foreground (TJB 20). He brings human values to the fore, but he does it only with the Jews.
At the outset, Bellows Jewish ethnicity emerges in To Jerusalem and Back on seeing the
crowd of Hasidim travelling on board with him to Jerusalem: It is my childhood revisited (2).
Unlike the Africans whom he places beyond history, he views the Hasid he meets early in his trip
as a piece of history, an antiquity (TJB 5). By describing the Hasid as historical, Bellow gives
him supremacy and roots.
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Bellow depicts an ideal image of the Israeli Zionist Jews. They are represented as
reformists on a worldwide level. They are unreasonably burdened by their civilizing mission. This
burden affirms their civilization. It is an indication of their presumed cultural superiority and thus
the cultural inferiority of other races. Bellow praises the Jews high moral bearing: Jews are
called upon . . . and call upon themselves to be more just and more moral than others (TJB 26).
He also claims that the European radicals expect the Jews to hold up the moral burdens (TJB
136). This claim to moral superiority is a strategy to affirm the civilization of the colonizer and the
barbarism of the colonized. Bellow always compares the Jews to others making them appear better
than the Other, which fits perfectly in the binary structure of his ideology. Indeed, the Jews
obligation to justice and morality is limited to their cult and allies. It is a biased sense of justice
and morality because it excludes other, the Arabs in this particular instance.
The Jews, in the following passage from To Jerusalem and Back, do not like to think of
themselves as aggressors but rather as victims:
[T]he subject of all this talk is, ultimately, survivalthe survival of the decent
society created in Israel within a few decades. At first this is hard to grasp because
the setting is so civilized. You are in a city like many anotherwell, not quite, for
Jerusalem is the only ancient city with modern utilities. . . . But suddenly the music
stops and a terrorist bomb is reported. A new explosion outside a coffee shop on
Jaffa Road: six young people killed and thirty-eight more wounded. Pained, you put
down your civilized drink. Uneasy, you go out to your civilized dinner. Bombs are
exploding everywhere. (25)
This passage unawaringly reveals an important fact. Palestine was not formerly an Israeli land.
But the attitude is arrogant. Bellows speech about survival demonstrates assertion of a right to the
land despite the fact that the Jewish-Israeli state is newly established. It is not their land; they
occupied it. The passage also ignores the Palestinians motives behind violence, the fact that it is
committed to defend land and identity pertinent to the land. Bellow in this speech portrays the
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Jews as civilized and peaceful in opposition to the Palestinians who are portrayed as barbaric and
hostile. He believes that the Jews cannot live in peace because of the national revolutionary acts
committed against them by the colonized. Ironically, they colonize and expect to be left alone and
live in peace.
Bellow commends the Jews as principled people, committed to a cause and believes that
this is why others feel ill at ease with them:
Jews do, it is well known, make inordinate demands upon themselves and upon one
another. Upon the world, too. I occasionally wonder whether that is why the world
is so uncomfortable with them. . . . And what is it that has led the Jews to place
themselves, after the greatest disaster of their history, in a danger zone? A Jewish
professor at Harvard recently said to me, Wouldnt it be the most horrible of ironies
if the Jews had collected themselves conveniently in one country for a second
Holocaust? This is a thought that sometimes crosses Jewish minds. It is
accompanied by the further reflection (partly proud, mostly bitter) that we Jews
seem to have a genius for finding the heart of the crisis. (TJB 15)
He pictures the Jews in afore quoted lines as colonized not as colonizers. The Jews major crisis
is the Holocaust. Bellow employs the Holocaust historical incident extermination of six million
Jews by German Nazis to gain sympathy. It is Bellows indirect justification of the Jews
occupation of Palestine.
Professor Jacob Leib Talmon also manipulates the Holocaust to make the world feel guilty
about the loss of Jewish civilization: Yes, while the Jews suffered under Hitler the conscience of
the world was aware of them, but when they were dead that awareness also died. Ah, before 1939,
the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe created a rich, vital civilizationa cultural, a literature,
institutions. It all went into the grave and into the ovens (TJB 134). The Israeli Jews ask for
continuous sympathy because of the persecution they suffered at the hands of the Nazis. They
blame the Nazis for the loss of many of them and their civilization on the Holocaust.
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The Holocaust, indeed, should be cursed by the Jews as well as Arabs because each suffers
its consequences. Palestinians pay the price of the Jews persecution at the hands of Nazis. In fact,
Nazi extermination targeted others besides the Jews (Elmessiri 2.339), yet the Jews extensively
manipulate the Holocaust to gain sympathy and legitimacy for their colonization of Palestine. I
believe also that Bellows instrumentalization of the Holocaust incident helps dilute the effect of
the Jewish crimes committed against the Arabs.
Besides the Jews suffering as a race, personal suffering of Israeli Jewish individuals is
dramatically highlighted by Bellow: Yet here you sit at dinner with charming people in a dining
room like any other. You know that your hostess has lost a son; that her sister lost children in the
1973 war . . . many other families have lost children (TJB 25-26). Bellow reiterates that on other
occasions: There are few families in Israel that have not lost sons in the war (TJB 36), and the
neighbors tell you of a war widow who is trying to bring up her children (TJB 57). Such a
presentation is very biased because it ignores the suffering and many losses of Arabs as well as
blaming the Arabs for Israeli loss of lives. During the war of 1973 the number of Arabs killed
ranges between 8,528 and 15,000 whereas that of the Israeli is 2,656. The Arabs loss is more
massive. Yet Bellows humanistic values consider the Jews only which expose his prejudiced
humanistic concerns.
According to Bellow, although the Jews are victims, they are appealingly stoical,
only that Jews, because they are Jews, have never been able to take the right to live
as a natural right. To be sure, many Israelis refuse to admit that this historic
uneasiness has not been eliminated. They seem to think of themselves as a fixed
power, immovable. Their point has been made. They are a nation among nations
and will always remain so. (TJB 26)
The speech attests to the superiority of the Jews. Bellow credits them as a nation who has the right
to exist regardless of oppositions. He normalizes their colonization by identifying it as a right:
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They embraced their most rightful dreams and clung to them (TJB 70). It is an imperialist
dream. This fanatic prejudice makes him a racist.
The Jews are privileged as David Shahar, a novelist, believes in To Jerusalem and Back.
He says that the Jews only have the determination to create peace. They also have been flexible
and positive with regard to its conditions. They continually offer peace but the Arabs reject it
because the Arabs could not tolerate any Jewish state, not even a minuscule one. If a state was
what they wanted, they might have had it years ago. They rejected it. And they invaded the
country from all sides, hoping to drive the Jews out and take the wealth they had created (TJB 37).
Shahars speech depicts the Arabs as aggressive and the Jews as peace loving. The Jews are also
advanced politically and economically and the Arabs crave their wealth. Though he knows that
Shahar might not be saying the truth, Bellow does not deny it or confront him with his falsehood: I
know that some of what Shahar is saying is not true, but I say nothing (TJB 37). Bellows silence
about the matter is strange but can be explained as that Shahars lies are in compliance with his
strategy of creating a Manichean colonial world. Shahars misrepresentation of the Israeli-
Palestine cause suits Bellow who continues to affirm that the Arabs are inflexible and negative in
regard to peace-process:
The Arabs, says Rabin, are not interested in territorial concessions and will never be
satisfied with them. They consider themselves owners and masters of this land. . .
There is therefore no point in making offers, saying to the Arabs we will give you
this or that piece of ground in return for recognition and peace. The hope is that as
the Arab countries grow rich and modernize themselves they will grow less hostile,
more concerned to produce goods than to fight. I say nothing but I doubt it greatly.
(TJB 113)
This discourse puts the blame on the Arabs for the war state between them and Israel on the ground
that they are anti-peace by all measures. The Israeli Prime Minister Rabin shows no faith in the
Arabs. He regards them an impossible case. This fixation is prejudice. Bellow, without
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reservation, links the Arabs backwardness and aggression to poverty. In fact, restriction rules and
curfew laws imposed by the Jewish Israelis on the Palestinians are responsible for the Arabs
poverty and anger; the Palestinians are not allowed to move freely between homeland counties or
other Arab countries. They are not allowed proper education or prosperous trade. Bellow mistrusts
the Arabs as he doubts that they can be better if their conditions become better. Bellows
essentialist ideas about the Arabs ruin all chances of a positive thinking with regards to them. His
colonist discourse naturalizes their aggression and backwardness, thus suggesting their innate
inferiority and debased status.
Bellow uses the binary structure to lecture the Americans on the Arabs aggression and
uncooperative spirit: Very few Americans seem to know, for instance, that when the [UN], in
1947, proposed the creation of two separate states, Jewish and Arabs, the Jews accepted the
provision for the political independence of the Palestinian Arabs. It was the Arab nations which
rejected the [UN] plan, vowing to resist partition by force and assaulting the Jewish community in
Palestine (TJB 115). He claims that the Palestinians refuse peace pacts. He aims at showing them
as politically immobile to demean them. Bellow, however, contradicts himself in regard to the
Palestinians rejection of negotiating of peace proposals with the Israelis because evidently the
matter is vice versa: I know that the government will not negotiate with the PLO (TJB 68). It is
the Jews who reject the discussion of peace with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. This
contradiction in statements indicates Bellows biased humanistic values and racialized colonialist
discourse. He blames the Palestinians simply because he prejudicially believes in the right of the
Jews to exist.
Bellow depicts the Jews as superior in mind and history. Constant emphasis on the Jews
grand history, I think, is intended to serve to legitimize their colonization of Palestine:
Certain oddities about Israel: Because people think so hard here, and so much, and
because of the length and depth of their history, this silver of a country sometimes
seems quite large. . . . To live again in Jerusalemthat is almost like the restoration
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of the Temple. But no one is at ease in Zion. No one can be. The world crisis is
added to the crisis of the state, and both are added to the problems of domestic life.
It is increasingly difficult to earn adequate wages, since from the first Israel adopted
the living standard of the West. (TJB 56-57)
The Jews suffering, Bellow explains, is not limited to the colonized national resistance of
colonization. They suffer economically because they choose to be civilized and embrace a Western
style of living. They have to work diligently to earn decent wages and pay taxes. Suffering is a
ramification of accepting the austere measures of the living standards of the West. Yet Bellow
attests that in spite of the different kinds of pressures the Israelis face, they are not malicious:
Israel is pressed, it is a suffering country. People feel the pressure of enemies. . . Still, almost
everyone is reasonable and tolerant, and rancor against the Arabs is rare. These are not weak,
melting people (TJB 57). According to Bellow, the Jews have no animosity towards their
enemies. The world antagonizes the poor Jews but they are still idealistically virtuous: Even the
Chinese, who know little of Jews, are Israels enemies. Jews, yes, have a multitude of faults, but
they have not given up on the old virtues (TJB 57). Bellow praises Israel as forbearing and
virtuous. This continued defense of the Israeli Jews helps Bellow polish his ethnic identity which
was kept in the dark for a while. It also shows his discriminatory humanistic concerns which
condemn him. Said says it is the norm to exempt Israel of its crimes against humanity, Israel is
not only seen as exempt from blame or responsibility . . ., Israel (like the United States) is praised
for its humanity (The Question of Palestine 45). Western superpowers never blame Israel for its
brutal colonization of Palestine. They never condemn nor denounce Israelis atrocities even when
Israel continues to escalate its atrocities and intensify its siege in the hope that the Palestinians will
flee. Bellows biased humanism towards the Jews ignores the ramifications of their colonial act
against the Palestinians.
Among the ramification comes the appalling massacre of Deir Yassin by Menachem Begin
and David Ben Gurion in 1948 where Zionist soldiers were blowing up Arab nationalists houses to
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set them as examples. Indeed, this dramatic massacre and others were intended to spread horror
and fear among the Palestinians and to force them to leave their country; to depopulate. To the
Jews, the loss of many Palestinians is not a concern. Their chief concern is expanding their
settlement. This loss also seems not among Bellows humanistic concerns because he does not
object to the crimes committed by the Israeli Jews against the Palestinians. The image of
persecuted and deported Jews in To Jerusalem and Back evokes sympathy. Paradoxically, Bellow
never talks about Palestinian Diaspora at the hands of the Jews.
Bellow believes that the founding of a Jewish state in Palestine was inescapable, otherwise
the Jews would be annihilated: Perhaps many of those who had gone through the horror of death
camps wanted to be together afterward. Their desire was to live together as Jews. Anyway it is
idle to speak of alternatives. The founding of a state was inevitable. It was desperate, naked need
that sent Jewish survivors to the Middle East. They were not working out historical problems in the
abstract. They had to face extinction (TJB 160). Although [t]he founding of Israel was not
sinless and pure (TJB 160), he finds in their desire to live together a legitimate reason for their
colonialization of Arab land. Bellow is thus justifying their crimes. He lessens the enormity of
these crimes by depicting them as weak and unjustly treated. Bellow, moreover, accuses the UN of
injustice because, what others have done with a broad hand the Jews are accused of doing in a
smaller way. The weaker you are, the more conspicuous your offenses; the more precarious your
condition, the more hostile criticism you must expect (TJB 161). He alludes to the idea that the
Jews are discriminated against and they should not be held responsible for their small crimes.
Bellows criticism of UN demonstrates the colonizers distorted logic. The Jewish colonizer
recognizes his crimes, yet he refuses to be punished for them. In fact, Israel is pardoned, if not
praised, when it oppresses the Arabs. Bellow does not want the world to be judgmental of the
Israeli Jews in spite of their oppression of the Arabs during 1973 war. He regards Israel crimes
against humanity an inevitable act of survival.
To Bellow, Israel, above all, is a liberal and democratic country:
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While Israel fought for life, debaters weighted her sins and especially the
problem of the Palestinians. In this orderly century refugees have fled from
many countries. . . . but only the case of the Palestinians is held permanently
open. Where Israel is concerned, the world swells with moral consciousness.
Moral judgment, a wraith in Europe, becomes a full-blooded giant when
Israel and the Palestinians are mentioned. Is this because Israel has assumed
the responsibilities of a liberal democracy. (TJB 135)
Indeed, there is a sense of Jewish-Israeli superiority implied in the above passage. Besides the
moral responsibility the Jews hold which is mentioned earlier, they assume the responsibility of a
liberal democracy. These multiple responsibilities show them as extraordinary nation. The Israeli
Jews never fail to be democratic as Bellow says: In the grip of crisis and encircled by hostile
states, Israel has remained consistently democratic. It isnt every country that would permit free
elections in an occupied territory (TJB 169). Certainly, the factor of democracy serves to dilute
the effect of their oppression of the Arabs. It covers their crimes against the Arabs and violation of
their human rights. Bellow ignores the issue of occupation preferring to commend Israels
democracy. The Israeli Jews view themselves as the most democratic country since it absorbs Arab
intellectuals. They are democratic with their enemy in a captivating away: Another Arabist,
Bernard Lewis, later tells me that the Arab intellectuals who speak most freely are to be found in
Israel itselfin East Jerusalem and on the Israeli-occupied West Bank (TJB 144). In other words,
Israeli democracy is a form of hegemony. Bellow does not see in Israels claim to democracy a
contradiction to what it does to Palestine. He finds in such a claim a justification to keep the
Palestinians out of the country. He calls for a close of discussion of the refugees case. He wants
the world to close its eyes to the injustice done to the Palestinians because other nations are doing
the same thing, and because Israel is supposedly democratic, it can do without having to receive
blame for it. The logic is weak, shaky and distorted. Indeed, the idea of democracy is a Zionist
propaganda promulgated to distract the worlds attention away from Jewish sovereignty of the
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native Palestinians. In my opinion, the Israelis claim democracy as a pretext for their
colonialization of Palestine.
A.B. Yehoshua, described by Bellow as a fine Israeli writer, says that in spite of the Jews
transparency, they are, unfortunately, misunderstood because they are different. He accuses the
Arabs and German of insanity when they came into contact with the Jews because they did not
understand them:
To us our Jewish nature is clear and we can feel it but it is hard to say that the
world can understand it, and by a certain kind of logic one can even justify this lack
of understanding, because when you come right down to it the phenomenon of the
Jew is not easy one to understand. For nations which encounter us in a certain
historical situation, like the German and the Arabs, our very existence and the
uncertainty of our nature in their eyes could provide the spark for whatever kind of
insanity was afflicting them at the time. (TJB 161-62)
The difference between the Jews and the Other is what constitutes their role as colonizers.
Besides, it explains their colonial presence in Palestine to the world. It is a reason among others.
As said in Henderson the Rain King, the presence of the colonized matters to the colonizer because
it is crucial to the identity formation of the latter. Since the time of the Greek civilization it has
always been the case that no identity can ever exist by itself and without an array of opposites,
negatives, oppositions: Greeks always require barbarians, and Europeans African, Orientals, etc
(Said, Culture and Imperialism 52). The Jews civilization mission depends on practicing political,
social and ideological hegemony on the Palestinians. Bellows colonialist strategy does not
change. It only became manifest in this memoir.
Bellow explains that because of the depth of Jewish history, the Israeli Jews are required to
work so hard on so many levels:
In less than thirty years the Israelis have produced a modern countrydoorknobs
and hinges, plumbing fixtures, electrical supplies, chamber music, airplanes,
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teacups. It is both a garrison state and a cultivated society, both Spartan and
Athenian. It tries to do everything to understand everything, to make provision for
everything. All resources, all faculties are strained. Unremitting thought about the
world situation parallels the defense effort. These people are actively, individually
involved in universal history. (TJB 46)
Bellow is amazed by what he believes to be the Israelis accomplishment and how they use
resources to better their lives in many respects though they face many challenges, I dont see how
they can bear it (46). It is a magnificent nation to him. He says: I am fascinated by the profusion
and ingenuity of Jewish ideas on the future of Israel (TJB 80). He likes the Israelis future
prospective for their country. He highly estimates the Israelis desire for exploration and
modernization. Simultaneously, he cunningly refers to their persecution by Arabs and Nazis:
The Israelis are great travelers. They need the world. When they feel the needand
they feel it oftenthey are obliged to go far. . . . From the eighteenth century,
European Jews, when revolution began to release them from their ghettos, hastened
to enter modern society; they adored and hungered for itits cities, its political life,
its culture, its great men, its personal opportunities. Even the Holocaust did not
destroy this attraction. (TJB 89)
The Jews love for travel is meant to highlight their love for knowledge and exploration. They are
attracted to civilization and modernization. These two are thematic to Bellows presentation of the
Jews because they are integral to their colonization of Palestine.
Bellow highlights immensely the Jews goodness and charity. He never shows them as
merciless or heartless. They do no evil but when they do that [e]verything bad is done for the best
reasons because [l]ife in Israel is far from enviable, yet there is a clear purpose in it. People are
fighting for the society they have created, and for life and honor (TJB 77,141). Bellows idea of
Israel as country with a sense of purpose is borrowed from Professor Jacob Leib Talmon. He
considers this sense of purpose of first importance (TJB 135). I believe it is important to Bellow
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because it justifies the unbridled use of Israeli power to colonize Palestine and dominate it. Their
professed purpose is civilizing the Arabs.
Bellow refers to the charity of Dr. Z, a Jewish gynecologist: She comforts Jewish brides
from the Arab countries who weep because they have been married two whole months and havent
yet conceived (TJB 97). There are two implications here; first, the Arab Jews are deported and
denied, yet they receive comfort from their Israeli Jews fellows. Second, the Israeli Jews medical
progress is appealing to the Arabs. There is no mention of Israel military forces that regularly
demolish the Arabs houses. Bellow shows the Other here in need of the oppressors. By putting
emphasis on the medical and economic progress made by the Jews, Bellow idealizes them. This
colonialist discourse of idealization reflects the superiority of the Jews and the inferiority of the
Arabs.
Chaim Gouri, a poet and a journalist, used to help an influential Arab family looted by
Israeli soldiers during the Six Day War. Yet, to his surprise, the daughter of this family proved
ungrateful and expressed on one occasion her rejection of cohabitation with the Jews: We will
never accept the presence of Jews in our land (TJB 50). Bellow reflects on the incident: I didnt
say what I was thinking, but the matter was clear enough to me as an American and also as a Jew.
He [Gouri] wished to influence these Arab friends by his goodness. The idea is to clean things up,
to feed the hungry, to build schools and hospitals, to hire workers at high prices to which they are
unaccustomed, to give back looted cars and necklaces, and thus to win all hearts (TJB 50). As a
matter of fact, civilizing the native society of Palestine is a kind colonial authority. It is a typical
colonizers act to patronize the colonized Other. The colonized does not want the colonizers
benevolence because he regards that a colonial intervention. He wants the colonizer out of his
land, a fact Bellow chooses to ignore.
Bellow tries to prove that civilizing is systematic of the Jews. He sets Mayor Teddy Kollek
as an example of the civilizing colonizer. Kollek, a good speaker and observer, a man of action and
graceful manners as characterized by Bellow, takes upon himself different civilizing missions in
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Palestine that are pretty much welcomed by the Palestinians: What is entirely genuine in Kollek,
without admixture, is his love for Jerusalem. Not even his detractors deny it. Christians and Arabs
may not accept the rule of Israel, but they are satisfied with Kollek administration. I am told that
without Arab votes Kollek would not have been-re-elected (TJB 88). Bellow encourages the
Arabs to welcome the benefit of Israeli rule, to support it and subordinate to it. He sets Kollek as a
good example of a good Jewish colonizer. He is represented as a modernizing and civilizing
person who is doing both parties justice:
His impartiality is not seriously questioned; he has built apartment houses,
kindergartens, and schools for Jews and Arabs alike. Kollek learns what the latest
things are and brings them here. Plays are performed for Arab children who never
saw a theater before. For the first time the holy places are equally respected. Kollek
is not so nave as to expect gratitude and cooperation from the Arabs in return. For
one thing, the Arab world would accuse grateful Arabs of betrayal, the extremists
would mark them for punishment. . . . Still, I often think that Kollek wants to show
the world, and especially the Arab world , what good sense and liberality can do; he
wants to persuade everyone that what is feasible on a small scale can be done
wholesale. . . . The Arabs know that there is no meanness or arbitrariness in him. He
has shown by his fairness that coexistence is possible and desirable. He is Israels
most valuable political asset. (TJB 91)
Bellow points out admiringly Kolleks benevolent actions to both the Arab and Jews. He
emphasizes that Kollek does not wait the appreciation of Arabs, though they should be grateful,
because his intention is to teach them liberty and good judgment. In fact, the Jews need the
Palestinians to affirm their presence, identity and practice hegemony. Within this binary logic of
good Jews and bad Palestinians, Bellow does not attempt to create a balance or be just to the
Palestinians. This binary structure reinforces the relation of hegemony, the binary opposition
itself exists to confirm dominance (Ashcroft et all, Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concept 24).
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Benevolence is not only a characteristic of Israeli Jewish individuals; it is also highlighted
in the case of the Israeli-Jewish state. Between 1950 and June 1957: Israel gave more than $ 6
million (TJB 127) to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency fund for the relief of
Palestinian refugees. Indeed, idealization of the Jewish Zionist state attempts to polish its image
before the world and to minimize the cruelty of its criminal acts. Abdulwahab Elmessiri
enumerates 17 massacres that happened after the year 1948 and before the year 1967, among which
were: Kafr Kassem Massacre (1956), Kibya Massacre (1953), Qalqilya Massacre (1953) and First
Gaza Massacre (1955) (7:112-16).
Bellow intensely highlights the positivity and charity of Zionism. Morris Janowitz,
Bellows university colleague, is described as community-minded and busy with ideas for
improving the university and keeping the neighborhood from further deterioration. He is
knowledgeable, intelligent and a supporter of Israel and Zionism. Janowitz has faith in the
entangled fate of Israel and Zionism, the future of Israel rests on the intermingling of the Zionist
impulse with the dilemma of the Jews scattered throughout the world (TJB 166).
Bellow glorifies Zionism as a ramification of Jewish nationalism. He permeates his
enthusiasm for Zionism through Professor Tzvi Lamm of Hebrew University and Janowitz.
Bellows presentation of Lamms Zionist ideas in To Jerusalem and Back refines the image of
Zionism. Lamm, a Zionist idealist, commends the Zionist leaders definite goals: Its leaders knew
how much power they hador had not and adhered to their goals. They were not hypnotized
and paralyzed by their goals. He demonstrates that the aim of Zionism is salvation of the Jews not
redeeming the land although he admits the importance of Gods Covenant, of the Promised land,
the Holy Land: It [Zionism] arose in order to save a people in a critical situation by concentrating
it within one territory, and allowing it to take its political fate in its own hand. Bellow agrees with
Lamm that: Rescue is the true aim of Zionismnot the liberation of the Promised Land but the
rescue of the Jews, repeatedly threatened with annihilation (TJB 66). This attention reveals
Bellows biased humanistic concern; an exclusive concern for the Jews as human beings. It also
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exposes his phobia of death, his fear as embodied earlier in Henderson the Rain King and stated on
many occasions of his friends death.
There are several Jewish Zionist attempts in the Western and Israeli media to make the
Zionists appear innocent and the Arabs guilty. These attempts echo in Professor Hakabis claims
with regard to the Zionist presence in Palestine and the relationship between the Jews and
Palestinians:
The Zionists did not come into Palestine with a plan to expel the Arabs. Zionism
hoped to establish a Jewish state, but when Herzl failed to obtain an international
charter for such a state the Zionists limited themselves to the purchase of land for
cultivation. This land was bought from Arabs, not taken by force. Jews had lived in
Palestine continuously since ancient times. Nor did the arrival of Jewish settlers
from Europe interfere with the Arab struggle for self-determination. Until recently
there was no popular Arab nationalist movement and no struggle for self-
determination. (TJB 151)
The Jews targeted the land for cultivation as a strategy towards colonization. Elmessiri points out
that agricultural settlement was fundamental to the Zionist colonization of Palestine (7.43).
Colonization in any form is parallel with expulsion. If the Zionists wanted to coexist with the
Arabs in Palestine, they were mistaken because colonization can never be accepted. It is like
sharing identity. There should be resistance on the native side.
The false theory of coexistence is further promoted in the text. David Shahar links the
progress of Israel and Arabs with Zionism: This country [Palestine] had been a desert, a land of
wandering population and small stony farms and villages. The Zionist under the Mandate made
such economic progress that they attracted Arabs from other areas. This is why the Arab
population grew so large (TJB 37). With farms and villages, it could not have been a desert. Yet
this is what they liked to believe and propagate ignoring the more serious side of the issue, their
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silencing of the national consciousness and putting down resistance of the Palestinians. They tried
to normalize colonization. Nationalism is not valued when triggered by the Arabs.
Bellow recurrently highlights the colonizers so called success with regards to the land: In
this unlovely dreamland the Zionists planted orchards, sowed fields, and built a thriving society
(TJB 159). He also quotes Janowitz in this regard, Israel has performed exceptionally well; the
growth rate of West Bank agriculture has been very high since 1967, thanks to the Israelis . . .
(TJB 166). Janowitz finds this growth a legitimate reason for Israeli to govern the Arabs. He is
frustrated at the Arabs rejection, but the Arabs do not want to be governed by Israel. They insist
on self-rule (TJB 166). In fact, the Arabs are not alone in their insistence on self-rule. No nation
ever wants or agrees on having outsiders rule it. They do not consider Israeli regime legitimate or
benevolent because they are no more than colonizers in their view. The growth rate of West Bank
agriculture is a lame excuse the Jews use to legitimatize colonization.
Paradoxically, the theory of coexistence is negated by Golda Meir and approvingly quoted
by Bellow in To Jerusalem and Back. She negates their existence in Palestine. She believes that
Zionism caused no harm to the Palestinians because simply: They did not exist (TJB 158).
Bellows agrees with her: Precisely speaking she is right (TJB 158). His agreement is based on
the ground that the word Palestinian is designated by the Arab nationalists who rejected the very
idea of a separate Palestinian entity, insisting that the Arab lands were an indivisible whole (TJB
158). Both deny the existence of the Palestinians in Palestine. Hence, according to them, it is
justifiable that the Jews occupy the land since it is a land with no people. Negating and creating
nothingness of the Other naturalizes colonization and practices of hegemony. Said believes
that both Zionist and British powers created the image of the Palestinians as the Other. He says:
[B]oth British imperialist and the Zionist vision are united in playing down and even cancelling
out the Arabs in Palestine as somehow secondary and negligible (The Question of Palestine 18).
The economic, agricultural and social progress of the Arabs is all attributed to the Zionist
Jews. According to the Jews, it is due to the establishment of a Jewish-Israel that Arab laborers
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enjoy economic prosperity: Their wages have risen, and there is no precedent for the prosperity
they enjoy (TJB 131). These statements imply that without the Israeli-Jewish state, the Arabs
would have been poor and underprivileged. Bellow thus attributes the agriculture and economic
flourishing of Palestine to the Jews colonization of Palestine, ignoring the truth that underneath
their so called civilization and superiority there lie such evils as rape, abuse and bloodshed.
Modernization of agricultural systems would have come around with or without colonization. But
idealization of the colonizer is necessary for the process of colonization and its legitimatization. A
post-colonial reading exposes this stance in Bellow. As a matter of fact, Bellows idealization of
the Israeli Jews proves that he is Jewish to the marrow.
Professor Yehoshafat Harkabi, who is supposed to be a specialty in Arab-Israeli conflict,
pronounces in To Jerusalem and Back the most adverse judgment of the Arabs with regard to land,
showing them as materialistic and dishonest people. He claims they are not as patriotic as they
pretend to be. Harkabi sees that people of the West Bank in 1972 were busy with improving their
economic situations that many were indifferent to the question of their political future (TJB 150).
His saying that the Arabs are not interested in their political fate contradicts the Arabs fervent
national struggle to free their land from the grip of the Jew-Israeli colonizer. He insists on
questioning the nationalism of Arab Palestinians. The Arab Palestinians are pretty much attached
to their land, yet Harkabi says: The Palestinians Arabs gave little evidence of being particularly
attached to the country, and many of their leaders themselves sold land, even while to the outside
protesting against it (TJB 151). I believe the claim that the Palestinians left their land voluntarily
is a Jewish myth to legitimize their colonization of the land. In addition, it is illegal buying of
lands because it was under force. The Arabs lands were expropriated by the Jews who made up
many laws to take lands from the Palestinians based on the Absentees Property Law of 1950 and
Land Acquisition Law of 1953 (Said, The Question of Palestine 98).
David Shipler believes in Arab and Jew that the Palestinians were deliberately and forcibly
expelled by the Jews. And others fled because they were convinced that if the Jews got into their
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villages, they would massacre men, women, and children as they had done in the Arab village of
Deir Yassin in April 1948 . . . (15). The Jews violence against native Palestinians is what led to
their departure. The Jews committed many massacres against Arab Palestinians in order to drive
them away. Therefore, the Palestinians run away to escape from the colonizers oppression and
despotism. It is a Zionist process of creating nothingness of the Other in order, Elmessiri says, to
actualize the Zionist propaganda that Palestine is a land with no people for a people without land
(7.60). Said provides another reason for the Palestinians departure in The Question of Palestine:
If the Palestinians left in 1948, we are told, they did so because the Arab states urged them to do
so in order that after a boasted victory, they could return in triumph (48). According to Said there
was an underestimation of Jewish colonization of Palestine. He attributes the matter to a relative
lack of Palestinian political, organizational response to Zionist effectiveness and, along with that a
psychological mood of failure and terror (101).
Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian, Lecturer at Hayfa University and a peace activist, illustrates
in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine the cruelty of the Jews in colonizing Palestine. He uses the
term Ethnic Cleansing to refer to depopulation and displacement of Palestinians. Ethnic
Cleansing of 1948 was initially a vengeful reaction against the Palestinians national struggle. Yet
it turned shortly into a systematic cleansing act of a whole country: random shooting, killing of
villagers, rolling huge iron balls or tanks full of explosion towards the Palestinian populated areas,
and harvesting souls by any means such as sending exploding cars to be fixed at Palestinians
workshops (Al-Hayat Ser. 2:20). These criminal acts are enough intimidating reasons for the
Palestinians to run away with their lives and leave their lands. The red color in the map below
shows the fast expansion of Jewish Zionist colonization from 1948 to 1967.
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Bellow, however, exonerates Zionist leaders from guilt of their criminal acts by naturalizing their
right to exist: Their sin was that they behaved like other people. Nation-states have never come
into existence peacefully and without injustice. At the center of every state, at its very foundation,
as one writer recently put it, lies a mass of corpses (TJB 160). Thus, Bellow overtly states
violence is necessary to the establishment of the Jewish-Zionist state. He finds it inevitable that the
foundation of one nation is usually built on the grave of another. Bellows waiver of the moral cost
of Israels violence exposes his double humanistic values.
The attitude extends to other Arab nations. Bellow pictures the Arab Jordanians as inhuman
when they resist Jewish colonization of their land: The Jordanians built a road over Jewish grave
(TJB 16). This comment is evidence of Bellows double standard. The manifest contradiction in
Bellows humanistic approach towards different nations is ethnocentric. This ethnocentrism shows
that his humanistic interests are exclusive to his race.
Bellow also quotes Harkabi who acquits Israel of its criminal acts for the sake of its survival
as the following passage indicates:
He [Harkabi] concedes that the Arabs have been wronged, but he insists upon the
moral meaning of Israels existence. Israel stands for something in the Western
history. . . the Zionists were not deliberately unjust, the Arabs were not guiltless. To
rectify the evil as the Arabs would wish it rectified would mean the destruction of
Israel. Arab refugees must be relieved and compensated, but Israel will not commit
suicide for their sake. (TJB 158)
World Assembly of Muslim Youth
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This passage explains why Bellow describes Harkabi as balanced (TJB 157). Harkabi espouses
Israel military might based on its presumed right to exist. He also admits that the survival of Israel
comes first before any other consideration. The creation of an Israeli Jewish state impels false
vague and implicitly scanty compensation for the Palestinians. It is obvious that Bellow supports
Harkabis logic because he calls him balanced. Harkabis prejudiced negative stance attests to
Bellows biased humanistic values and Jewish ethnicity.
James Atlas asserts the persistence of Bellows Jewish identity: However vehemently he
maintained that he was an American writer who happened to be a Jew, Bellow identified strongly
and publicly with the fate of his people (369). Jewishness evokes in him profound feeling of
identification. Atlas attests to Bellows deep attachment to his ethnic root: He clung to his origins
the way he clung to his neuroses; to leave them behind would be to alter his fundamental nature
(294). Bellows ethnocentrism seems inescapable because it is in his basic nature to be a Jew. The
nature of Bellows colonialist discourse becomes visibly antagonizing of the Arabs.
Bellows biased humanism and demeaning racialized discourse appear in his imbalanced
presentations of the Israeli Jews and Arabs. In a colonialist act of debasement, Bellow shows the
Arabs as uncooperative. When Arab students are asked to participate in searching for bombs at the
campus of the Hebrew University, they refuse. He says: In my opinion it was a mistake to ask that
they be part of such patrols (TJB 34-35). Life endangering tasks enlist commitment to political
order and self-sacrifice. These principles are ignored when Palestinians are condemned for not
scarifying their lives to keep a Jewish community alive.
Submission to the colonizer is integral to colonization. The Arabs are portrayed as anti-
peace because they resist colonization: They dont want our peace proposals. They dont want
concessions, they want us destroyed (Shahar, TJB 38). Indeed, this image of uncooperative Arabs
dehumanizes them whereas, according to Bellow, it reflects the civilization of the Israeli Jews. It
suggests the latters superiority. They are always ready and willing to negotiate peace. A
settlement with Israel is impossible. Actually, the Palestinians refuse to negotiate with the Israelis
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not because they refuse peace but because that negotiation means recognition of the Israeli Jewish
state. The Israelis want the Arabs to accept coexistence and to compromise with them, otherwise
they are regarded unethical and uncooperative. Any national feelings are interpreted as hostile acts.
The Arabs are depicted as merciless whose sole aim is to annihilate the Israeli Jews who
presumably make no demand beyond the wish to survive.
Bellow believes that the Jews peaceful life is threatened also by the Arabs terrorism:
Relaxing, breathing freely, you feel what a wonderful place has been created here, a homeplace
for body and soul; then you remember that on the beaches there are armed patrols. It is always
possible that terrorists may come in rubber dinghies that cannot be detected by radar (TJB 62).
Palestinians violence is the answer to the annihilation of their social forms, and the destruction of
their economic system and life by the Israeli Jews. Fanon believes that [a]t the level of
individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from
his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect (49). Yet Bellow never
identifies Palestinians acts as national struggle because that means condemning the Jews.
Bellows colonialist ideology validates stereotyping the Arabs as terrorist because they were daring
enough to resist the Israeli Jews settlement.
David Shahar says in To Jerusalem and Back that the Jews live under a daily threat because
of the Arabs terrorist acts against them: Terrorist violence always threatens and often occurs
(TJB 35). He furiously lectures Bellow on Jews extermination by the Arab. Shahar thinks it is a
conspiracy against the Jews. He imagines France and Britain as accomplices in the Arabs
conspiracy of annihilation against the Jews:
You dont know them. The West doesnt know them. They will not let us live. We
must fight for our lives. It costs the world nothing to discuss, discuss, discuss. And
the French are whores and will sell them all the weapons they want, and the British
too. And who knows about the Americans! And when the Arabs at last have their
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way, perhaps the French and the British will be nice and send ships to evacuate our
women and children. (TJB 38)
Bellows reading of Shahars speech is that the Israelis live with the nightmare of annihilation
(38). Indeed, the Israelis fear of annihilation at the hands of Arabs is unreasonable when the Arabs
are militarily impotent. The Arabs live under a very tight siege. The Israeli forces allow them no
weapons. The Arabs only available weapon at that juncture of history is stones.
In a conversation with Bellow, Professor Tzvi Lamm of Hebrew University expresses also
his fear of annihilation: The forces opposite us are seeking to destroy us: the moderates,
politically; and the extremists, physically (TJB 70). The recurrent discourse on the Jews
annihilation not only echoes Bellows fear of death but also affirms his bond to his fellows. Their
annihilation means the annihilation of his ethnic identity.
The Arabs aim, actually, is not annihilation of the Jews but liberation from the Jews grip.
The Arabs have no choice. Indeed, they should not be blamed for their national struggle against the
colonizer. They want to preserve their land, identity and independence. To accept the hegemony
of the colonizer is unnatural. The colonized people have no means of liberation except violence:
The colonized man finds his freedom in and through violence (Fanon 86). Frantz Fanons
argument on violence in The Wretched of the Earth sheds light on the significance of violence to
the colonized in a way that does not legitimize but explains:
But it so happens that for the colonized people this violence, because it constitutes
their only work, invests their characters with positive and creative qualities. The
practice of violence binds them together as a whole, since each individual forms a
violent link in the great chain, a part of the great organism of violence which has
surged upward in reaction to the settler's violence in the beginning. The groups
recognize each other and the future nation is already indivisible. (93)
The colonized natives violence against the settlers unifies them and molds their character.
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Resistance, identified by the colonizer as violence, thus, effaces differences among colonized
individuals. They all have one purpose that is to fight the colonizers. It sustains them
psychologically because it enforces positivity and liberates their souls. Under the hegemony of the
colonizer, the colonized feels inferior and ineffective but resistance taking the form of violent acts
empowers and redeems him.
Bellow pictures the Arabs as brutally savage knowing only the language of force. He also
cites the speech of Lieutenant General Saad Shazli, who was then the Egyptian Chief of Staff:
My sons, officers and men! The Jews have overstepped their bounds in injustices
and conceit. And we sons of Egypt have determined to set them back on their heels,
and to pry round their positions, killing and destroying so as to wash away the
shame of the 1967 defeat and to restore our honor and pride. Kill them wherever
you find them and take heed that they do not deceive you, for they are a treacherous
people. They may feign surrender in order to gain power over you, and kill you
vilely. Kill them and let not compassion or mercy for them seize you. (TJB 143-44)
Bellows selectiveness of these lines shows his insistence on depicting the Arabs as guilty and
aggressive. He picks up an angry and heated speech of a man of war to epitomize the Arab
character in order to antagonize the world against the Arabs.
Bellow also highlights the speech of the Syrian Minister of Defense, General Mustafa TLas
who promised to reward any soldier who succeeds in killing twenty-eight Jews: I will cover him
with appreciation and honour for his bravery (TJB 170). Bellow uses the soldiers logic to picture
the Arabs as savages. Yet he does not mention the Israeli massacres committed against the Arabs.
Bellow accuses the Arabs of anti-Semitism because they distributed during the war of 1967
in the Sinai desert comic books that, contained anti-Semitic caricatures of the Nazi type and
because the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are distributed in Arab countries in large new
printings. . . (TJB 144). These protocols expose the Zionists plans for colonization which
condemns the Jews. Semitism is a term coined in 1781 by a German linguistic scholar, A. L von
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Schlozer (Shipler 289). The term is derived from the word Shem, one of Noahs three sons. It was
a linguistic designation to Hebrew, Arabic and other languages but in the nineteenth century it
expanded to include race. Accordingly, the Arabs and Jews are Semitic nations. Anti-Semitism,
however, is used mainly to refer to anti-Jewish sentiments. Webster's Dictionary defines anti-
Semitism as opposition to Zionism: sympathy with opponents of the state of Israel. I believe that
anti-Semitism is picked up by Bellow to make the Arabs national struggle against the Jews appear
racially offensive. Actually, when Bellow negates, debases and dehumanizes the Arabs, he should
be called anti-Semitic because the Arabs are Semitic nations. They should receive the same
sympathy the Jews receive.
Pappe demonstrates that the Israeli-Jews used every possible means to prevent expelled
Palestinians from coming back to their demolished houses. The Israeli Jews made the lives of the
Palestinians worse than death by raping Palestinian women, killing their children, using force,
spreading horror, besieging towns, bombing houses and implanting mines in order to stop
Palestinians from coming back. After six months of the initiation of Ethnic Cleansing, the mission
was fully accomplished. The result was 800,000 displaced Palestinians out of 1 million, 531
demolished villages and 11 evacuated civilian districts (Al-Hayat Ser.1:21). This mechanism is a
Zionist terrorism that aims at transferring and displacing Palestinians to prove that Palestine is a
land with no people for people without a land as the Jews claim. Ethnic Cleansing is considered
a crime against humanity and deserves punishment according to the International Law. Yet the
Jewish ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has never been questioned ethically or politically in a
legitimate way. Actually, the Zionist Israelis deserve to be called Nazis because of the horrible
crimes they committed and still commit against Arab Palestinians. Jihad Al-Kazin revives the term
Zionnazi. This term is composed of two syllables Zion and Nazi. It came as a response to
calling the new Arab Conservatives the Islamic Fascists. Al-Kazins aim is to disturb the
Zionists who hate the term Nazi because of the Holocaust (36).
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Issac Rabin, Kedourie and Bellow agree that a compromise with the Arabs would be
meaningless because they want the Jews out and that any prediction that the Arabs modernization
would lessen their anger is wrong:
Successful modernization would make the Arab states feel strong, and this sense of
greatly increased strength might diminish their willingness to resolve the conflict.
The process of modernization also causes strains and tensions in societies and their
political systems. The disorders resulting from modernization have not made the
relations of the Arab states with Israel easier. Of course, the oil strength of the
Arabs will diminish as other sources of energy are developed. The oil billionaires
make sophisticated industrial purchases, but lack training, skill, and organization.
(TJB 144)
As evident from the above passage, there is a belief that modernization will not change the Arabs.
It will empower them to decline peace with the Israeli Jews. It is harmful to the political system of
the Arabs. Underpinning this speech is a wish and maybe an intention, to keep the Arabs away
from modernization. This speech also reveals a demeaning essentialist idea of the backwardness
and ignorance of the Arabs in spite of their wealth. The Arabs are portrayed as good consumers but
not producers.
Bellow notes that the economic conditions of Arab refugees living in camps are very good,
yet that does not diminish their hostility: Many of the refugees are employed, and resettled in
towns and villages. Economic improvement has not, however, calmed the Arabs. It has, if
anything, sharpened their discontents (TJB 150). Bellow fails to perceive or prefer to ignore the
fact that Arabs are discontented because they are refugees. They are denied to return and live on
their homeland. He ignores the denial of rights and privileges pertinent to life in refugee camps.
The economic improvement Bellow claims does not attend to their basic need for good education,
proper work chances, decent transportation means and good medical care.
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To stereotype the Arabs resistance as aggression and unconstructiveness mean to sustain
the binary distinctions necessary for the colonial system. Harkabi differentiates, between the older
generation of refugees with their longing to recover their land and property, their idyll of the days
before the disaster, and the younger generation which has replaced nostalgia with hatred and whose
aim is not to recover the lost villages of their fathers but to return as conquerors and masters (TJB
153). In an essentialist manner, Harkabi seems discontented with both the Arabs positive or
negative attitudes. Within the colonial system, nationalism is explained as terrorism. Fanon is
sympathetically sensitive to the genuine spirit of nationalism and resistance:
But the native's guilt is never a guilt which he accepts; it is rather a kind of curse, a
sort of sword of Damocles, for, in his innermost spirit, the native admits no
accusation. He is overpowered but not tamed; he is treated as an inferior but he is
not convinced of his inferiority. . . . He is in fact ready at a moment's notice to
exchange the role of the quarry for that of the hunter. The native is an oppressed
person whose permanent dream is to become the persecutor. (52-53)
Arab Palestinians defensive mechanism is a natural reflexive behavior per Fanons above
demonstration. The colonized man wants to feel how it is to be in control.
Bellows recurrent colonialist discourse that debases the Arabs is a Jewish Zionist
propaganda that serves to divert the worlds attention from the real cause: Palestine is occupied by
the Jews. Professor Harkabi continues to present a pathetic image of Palestinians: During the
conflict, Palestinian society, which had never been strong, fell apart (TJB 151). He claims that
what destroys Palestinians is that they are not a cohesive nation. He likes to imagine that chaos and
lack of union among Palestinians, rather than colonization by the Jews, are the cause of their
displacement. He exonerates the Jews from the guilt of displacing Palestinians. He says that rich
Palestinians left the country because of the burden of struggle and sacrifices to the workers,
villagers, and middle class. . . . These factors, the collective fear, moral disintegration and chaos in
every domain, were what displaced the Arabs. . . (TJB 152). Bellow claims that Harkabi is
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anything but unfeeling towards the Arabs (TJB 152). It is a confirmation not only of Harkabis
blind prejudice but also of Bellows who approves of his prejudiced ideas. Bellows premeditated
selection of Harkabi proves that he does not want to be just or objective in his presentation of the
Arabs. In fact, Bellow detests being objective: It is so easy for outsiders to say that there are two
sides to the question. What a terrible expression! I am beginning to detest it (TJB 38). His
statement shows ambivalent humanistic stance because it reveals his intention to support one party.
He conspicuously considers only one side; the one pertinent to his roots, the Jews. It is a
premeditated racism. Bellows contradictory presentation provide evidence on his racial colonist
ideology; when the Arabs are heated nationalists, he and other characters in this travel account
brand them terrorist and extremist. Yet when some Arabs are exhausted by the struggle, they are
judged weak. They are condemned any way.
Controversy among the Arabs is another negative element interpreted as division and
highlighted by Bellow to intensely distort their image. The colonialist language appears in
Bellows selection of images to portray the Arabs as divided. He has already represented them as
uncooperative with the Jews in peace-making but to show them as uncooperative with each other
has a more condemning implication. It aims at emphasizing their presumed inferior status and
primitive position.
Professor Malcom H. Kerrs opinion of Arabs solidarity is that
longstanding Western myth holds that the Palestine cause unites the Arab states
when they are divided on all else. It would be more accurate to say that when the
Arabs are in a mood to cooperate, this tends to find expression in an agreement to
avoid action on Palestine, but that when they choose to quarrel, Palestine policy
readily becomes a subject of dispute. (TJB 154)
According to Kerr, the Arabs are not united as it seems to be. He makes the issue of Arab
solidarity a toy to them, which worsens their image. This stereotyping shows a distrust of and
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loathing for the Arabs political leadership. In fact, the Jews are frightened of the Arabs alliance
because that means their most horrible fear; annihilation.
Bellow highlights controversy among the Arabs to empower the Jews: It would be in
Israels interest to deal with the Arab states separately, says Kedourie. Coalitions are sometimes
fatally cumbersome in negotiations (TJB 145). Although this division among the Arabs is
criticized, the Jews prefer it because it promotes their interests. It would be easy for the Jews to
destroy the Arabs politically, socially, economically and militarily when they are divided.
Bellow turns to Professor Malcom H. Kerrs book to explain the struggle in 1970 between
the Palestinian guerrillas and the army of Jordans King. He is being selective of incidents to
reflect the Arabs division. The Palestinian fedayeen in Amman know only the language of force:
The Jordanian government, after its 1967 defeat, had to accept the various Palestinian resistance
groups but tried to control and contain them. Hussein wished to avoid a fight; some of the
Palestinian organizations also wished to keep the peace. . . (TJB 155).
Bellows colonialist racialized discourse on the Arabs extends to discredit Arab leaders. He
epitomizes the inner struggle among the Arabs in the clash between the revolutionists/ Palestinian
guerrillas (Habash and his followers) and Husseins Jordanian army. Kerr says that in Husseins
Jordanian army,
they had built up a reservoir of special resentment against the arrogant attitudes of
the Palestinians. The political tension was mixed with social difference between the
proud men of the tribal background, trained under the paternal eye of the British,
whose whole life and livelihood had been based on loyal service to the Hashemite
crown, and the slick urbanites, the socially mobile, ideologically facile, irreverent
young men who led the resistance movement. . . . In mid-September the Palestinian
commandos prepared for a general strike in support of their demands for a purge of
Husseins regime which would leave the king with only nominal authority. This
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reckless Palestinian challenge was too much for Hussein and his army officers. On
September 17 the army attacked Palestinians. (TJB 155-56)
Corollary to this bloody confrontation between Palestinians and Jordanians: 1)Husseins Bedouins
massacred some thirty-six hundred people, 2) Some refugees on the East Bank now sought to
return to live under Israeli rule rather than remain exposed to the Jordanian army (TJB 156). Arab
rulers are depicted as dictators whereas the Jews as democratic. Kerr believes that the Jordanians
brutality against the Palestinians in 1970 supersedes that of Moshe Dayans in 1967 (TJB 156). In
fact, Moshe Dayan is well known for his heartlessness. He was the leader of many organized
massacres against Palestinians. In July 1948, he was the leader of Dueima Massacre where people
of Dueima were besieged from all boarders except the east to force them move out the village
(Elmessiri 7.112). In October 1948, he led Lod Massacre where soldiers were ordered to gun down
mercilessly any moving objects: men, women, children, etc Dead bodies were found scattered
the next day (Elmessiri 7.103).
Bellow posits a malignant question with regard to the Palestinian/Jordanian conflict: If this
was how Arabs dealt with each other, [Israelis] asked, what treatment was in store for the
population of Israel if the Arabs ever got upper hand? (TJB 156). The underlying implication of
this question makes it a statement more than question. The Arabs, Bellow suggests, should be
subjugated because they are incompetent to lead.
Bellow criticizes the leaderships of Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. He pictures Nasser as an
evil power because his political decision dragged Israel into war! He attributes Palestinians
suffering and the war to Nasser showing him as manipulative: Many Palestinians have suffered
greatly, but it was not because of their suffering that Nasser went to war in 1967. Nasser didnt
want them resettled; he kept them rotting in refugee camps and used them against Israel (TJB
121). Bellow accuses Nasser of manipulating the Palestinians for his own political purposes. Such
derogatory account, of course, creates, in my opinion, a rift among the Arabs and provokes enmity
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that destroys Arabs unity. Using Arabs against Arabs is an Israeli Jewish policy that aims at
distracting the Arabs attention from their real enemies.
Bellow believes that Nasser was not strong enough to bear the increasing burden of failure
which brought on his fatal heart attack (TJB 157). Bellows racialized discourse on Nasser
undermines the latters political policy. It shows him as incapable. It undermines his victory of
nationalizing the Suez Canal (1956) and his challenge of superpowers. Nasser worked towards
independence, development, solidarity, military strength of Arab countries and freedom from
colonialism. He had been alert to the colonialist purposes of superpowers. The Jews hated Nasser
because he expelled them from Aqaba. His nationalization of Aqaba is a tender wound to the Jews
as well as to superpowers: Nasser not only threatened the very existence of Israel but defied the
government of France, Great Britain, and the United States, which had pledged themselves to keep
Aqaba open (TJB 121). His act is an economic blow to superpowers. Arrogantly, an Israeli
general has earlier said to Janowitz as they stood together on the bank of the Suez Canal: We
expect to hold this for the next fifty years (TJB 169). Nasser negated their imperialist dream and
defied their ego.
Bellows negative representation of the Arabs is a typical colonialist attitude. This
representation conforms to Fanons ironic depiction of the native as viewed by the colonizer in the
colonial world:
The native is declared insensible to ethics; he represents not only the absence of
values, but also the negation of values. He is, let us dare to admit, the enemy of
values, and in this sense he is the absolute evil. He is the corrosive element,
destroying all that comes near him; he is the deforming element, disfiguring all that
has to do with beauty or morality; he is the depository of maleficent powers, the
unconscious and irretrievable instrument of blind forces. (41)
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Fanons words epitomize Bellows representation of the Arabs. Bellows colonialist discourse
negates, denies, debases and stereotypes the Arab natives. He depicts them as synonymous with
brutality, aggressiveness, barbarism, primitivism, immorality and meanness.
Bellow allows no Arab to represent or present himself in To Jerusalem and Back. Mahmud
Abu Zuluf is the only Arab character mentioned in this account. In a very Zionist practice, Bellow
determinately shuts out the native Arabs. His favoritism of Abu Zuluf, editor of El Kuds
newspaper, is due to Abu Zulufs presumed moderation, a moderation that accepts the hegemony of
the Jewish Israeli colonizer. Abu Zuluf believes that Israel should urge the peace process before
the Arabs become strong:
The Arabs are continually gaining strength while Israel becomes weaker. . . . More
war, more men lost, more dependency upon your country. While the Arab nations
become richer, more modern, more influential. No, Israel must come forward
quickly with peace plans and initiate negotiations, show a willingness to negotiate.
(TJB 36)
Abu Zulufs faith in Israel ability to initiate peace and his criticism of the Arabs exploitation of
Israel are reasons why Bellow gives him a voice in this account. This negation strategy allows
Bellows imagination to become irrational in debasement of the Arabs. It aims at clearing a space
for the expansion of the colonial imagination and for the pursuit of desire (Spurr 92). It is
symbolic of the nothingness of the Others. To Bellow, the Arabs are nothing politically, socially
and psychologically.
While excluding the Arabs voice from the account despite geographical and political
pertinence, Bellow gives a voice to America, a country located thousands of miles away from
Jerusalem the sight of action in this travel account, and the political upheaval it depicts. He
describes America as the prime revolutionary country (TJB 13), presenting it as a peace-maker
and a super democratic entity. He highlights it as an impressive superpower on several occasions:
In 1947, Miles Copeland, an American public-relation expert, had been sent to Damascus in order
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to liberalize their political system (TJB 11). There is also the American intervention to
revolutionize the inefficient Syrian election system which has failed. In 1952 during Nassers
reign Kermit Roosevelt, an American public relation expert, was in Egypt to mobilize democracy
and enhance creating a stable middle class in Palestine. Americas democracy is juxtaposed against
the Arabs presumed despotism. It is introduced to condemn the Arabs. It is intended to show
America aware of the Arabs lack of democracy and enhance Bellows presentation.
Bellow glorifies the USA because it is a great ally of Israel. Mr. Abba Eban, a member in
the Knesset, commends Americas support of the Jews and its superiority: He says that the
relations between Israel and the United States have never been better. Israel is receiving more aid
from America in this period than in all the years since it was founded. . . . America already had the
upper hand (TJB 40). Bellow says it is plain enough (TJB 103) that the United States is
indispensible to Israel because it plays approvingly the role of the peace-maker for the sake of the
Israeli Jews. Morris Janowitz, Bellows university colleague points out that it has from the first
been Americas policy to protect Israel. Without American approval and help Israel would never
have come into existence. And the Americans have claimed, for some time now, that only they can
bring peace to the Middle East (166). The existence of Israel as a state depends greatly on
American support. America backs Israel in all its actions. The Zionists in turn are controlling the
government of the United States. The Congress and Senate House are saturated with Zionist Jews
members. They are the decision-makers.
In an article in 1975, Joseph Alsop, a great friend to Israel, points out the significance of the
interrelated fate of Israel and America:
Any American must always put American interests first, so Ive thought a lot about
the way Israel affects American interests. Some of the effects have been adverse,
rather obviously, as in the area of American relations with the Arab world. Yet such
considerations are heavily outweighed, in my opinion, as soon as you apply the acid
test to Israel-American relationship. It is a macabre test. Because of Israels
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perilous national situation, we American always have to think about how America
would be affected by Israels actual destruction. (TJB 98-99)
Alsops speech implies that Americas good relation with the Arab countries should not upset Israel
because what America fears foremost in the long run is the annihilation of the Israeli Jews. The
Israeli Jews need not worry because: The only other choice for the Arabs is to leave their oil in the
ground (TJB 20). American-Arab relations are presumably based on economic dependence on
superpower. American-Israeli relations are supposedly more humanistic and, therefore, more
stable. Alsop confirms the necessity of Israel existence to the existence of America: Hence I have
long believed that we Americans must assure Israels survival, if only to assure the survival to
those American values that I cherish most (TJB 99). In fact, the relationship between America
and Israel is premised on common interests; political and economic domination of Middle East.
Each wants to be a superpower. So rather than fight each other, they create alliance to dominate the
Middle East.
Noam Chomsky believes that Americas support of Israel is based on Israels military
victory over the Arabs:
In 1967 Israel won a dramatic military victory, demonstrated its military power, in
fact, smashed up the entire Arab world, and that won great respect. A lot of
Americans, especially privileged Americans, love violence and want to be on the
side of the guy with the gun, and here was a powerful, violent state that smashed up
its enemies and demonstrated that it was the dominant military power in the Middle
East, put those Third World upstarts in their place. (5)
He believes that the Jews violence is what attracts Americans. Third world is a pejorative term
used, as a general metaphor for any underdeveloped society or social condition anywhere
(Ashcroft, Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts 232). In the post-colonial context, it expands
beyond the economic or social dimension to include racial, culture, military and epistemological
forms.
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Bellows Manichean colonialist ideology dehumanizes the Pro-Arabs. He criticizes those
who side with the Arabs such as Marshall Hodgson, Bellows colleague at the University of
Chicago, as well as the intellectual spokesman of France Jean-Paul Sartre.
Hodgson is sympathetic with the Arabs because the establishment of a Jewish state
necessitated violent practices against them. Bellow accuses Hodgson of ignorance and anti-
Zionism because he views the Jews as oppressors and invaders:
He was romantic about Islam. He told me, and probably was right, that I didnt
understand. Though he once wrote me a letter saying that he wanted to join the
Mississippi civil-rights marches, he had no sympathy whatever with Zionism. After
the war of 1967 he cried out, You have no business in Arab lands, you Jews! In
the heat of argument he then said many rash things. Of course few people do
understand the complexities of Arab history, and it made Marshall frantic when he
saw a pattern of Western political ideas being imposed ignorantly on the Middle
East. But he knew as little about Jews as I did about Arabs. Nation-states have
seldom if ever been created without violence and injustice. Hodgson believed that
the Jews had behaved as though the Arabs were an inferior, colonial sort of people
and not heirs of a great civilization. Of course the Arabs had themselves come as
conquerors, many centuries ago. But one didnt present such argument to Marshall.
The Arabs were his people. He failed to understand what Israel meant to the Jews.
It wasnt that the Jews didnt matterhe was a Quaker and a liberal, a man of
human sentimentsbut that he didnt know quite how they mattered. (TJB 109)
Bellows contention and criticism of Hodgsons sympathy with the Arabs discloses his most racist
attitude against them. He disregards the Arabs for the sake of the Jews. Bellow is totally
indifferent to the Arabs. He knows little about them. His knowledge of them is that they are
outsiders and intruders. This indifference, I believe, reveals that his humanistic values are
selective. Paradoxically, he naturalizes the Jews violence and injustice in their colonization of
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Palestine whereas he continuously criticizes the Arabs violence and dehumanizes them because
they are using violence to resist the colonizer Jews. His colonialist discourse naturalizes violence
when it is for Israeli Jews. They only have the sovereign right to use force to establish a state and
defend themselves and when Palestinians reply in violence, Bellow objects. He believes his double
standard is quite legitimate.
Saul Bellow is also anti- French because the French press supports the Arabs. He calls
France anti-Semitic because it does not support Israel in its colonization of Palestine: The
intellectual leaders of the Enlightenment were decidedly anti-Semitic because [s]ince 1973, Le
Monde has openly taken the side of the Arabs in their struggle with Israel. It supports terrorists. It
is friendlier to Amin than to Rabin (TJB 9). Bellows double standard is again in operation here.
If the Palestinians defend their existence, land and identity, it is terrorism to Bellow. Israeli
nationalism is permissible but not Palestinians. The French also are accused of promoting anti-
Semitic sentiments in some Arab countries: In the thirties, the Nazis won considerable support in
the Middle East, earlier French anti-Dreyfusards had spread anti-Semitism in Syria and Lebanon,
where French culture was esteemed (TJB 144).
Bellow accuses France of not being as democratic and civilized as it pretends to be because
it does not support Israel:
France is a country whose thinkers, sitting in Paris, feel they know all that they need
to know about the world outside. That outside world is what they declare it to be . . .
Paris for centuries the center of European civilization, grew rich in collective
representations, in the indispensible images or views by which the civilized world
conceived of itself. . . . If France cared anything about liberal democracy, about
freedom, it would behave differently toward Israel, which alone represents freedom
in the Middle East. But it prefers Arab feudalism, Arab socialism, Chinese
communism. It prefers doing business with the Third World. (TJB 51)
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It is clear from the above lines that Bellow strives to undermine French civilization and knowledge.
He accuses it of false democracy and lack of freedom because it does not support the Jewish cause.
He dislikes France favoritism of the Arabs. Sympathy with the opponents of the state of Israel is
not to be forgiven. He is becoming more at ease in his use of derogatory labels such as Third
world to refer to the Arabs. Bellows essentialist idea of the superiority of the Israeli and the
inferiority of Arabs creates a Manichean colonial world of domination and subordination.
He is so indignant on Le Monde because of its criticism and negative remarks on the Israeli
raid undertaken to free the hostages of Entebbe in 1976. The Entebbe hijacking incident was said
to have been carried out by Palestinians. Actually, it is revealed in British Information: Israeli
Intelligences is Behind Operation of Entebbe in 1976 that it was a Zionist attempt to frame
Palestinians:
The Israeli officials alleged that the Palestinians hijacked an Air France plane with
229 passengersincluding 83 Israelisfrom Tel Aviv to Entebbe in Uganda. The
Zionist propaganda promulgated that the Israeli Intelligence rescued heroically all
passengers and killed the hijackers. But a recent release of British confidential
documents reveals that Israel was behind the hijacking conspiracy in order to force
France to change it sympathetic policy towards the Middle East (Al-Hayat 16129.
14:(2 June 2007)
Bellows bias with regard to this incident exposes his racist ideology.
Bellow attacks in To Jerusalem and Back the French intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre because
Sartre is being reasonable and logical in his approach to the Palestinian-Jewish cause. Although
Sartre expresses great sympathy with Israel (TJB 120), Bellow is not happy with Sartres
balanced statement that attempt to do justice to the Arabs as well. He wants blind support for Israel
and expects Sartre to oblige.
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Sartre is characterized by Bellow as a left-wing intellectual who embraces the Marxist-
Leninist values. He criticizes Sartre because of his belief that the Israeli Jews initiated the war
against the Arabs:
Sartre goes on to chide those who claim that the Arabs started the war of 1967. And
here the suspicion bred by his carefree analysis of the Israeli economy and the
support of Israel by imperialist-minded Jews in the United States can no longer be
repressed, and I ask myself: Did this influential thinker and prominent revolutionist
know what he was saying? President Gamal Abdel Nasser was aware when he
closed the Gulf of Aqaba and drove out the [UN] peacekeeping forces that Israel had
no choice but to fight. (TJB 121)
Bellow dislikes Sartre because he condemns the Jews for initiating the 1967 war. Bellow blames
the Arabs for the war. He believes that the Arabs forced the Jews into war not the other way
around, and therefore he does not like Sartre defending the Arabs and his sympathy with them. He
quotes Sartre in To Jerusalem and Back:
Those who claim the Arabs started the war [of 1967], that they are criminals, forget
to consider the situation of the Palestinians, the absolutely insufferable situation of
the Palestinians. They also forget that the Arabs from the beginning have been led
by British maneuvers to take a negative attitude towards Israel, an attitude which
persisted since 1948, when an idiotic war was provoked. (121)
He believes that Sartre burdens Israel by referring to the injustice it has put upon the Arabs. He
prejudicially reacts: But Sartre and others apparently want the Jews to be exceptionally
exceptional. Perhaps the Jews have themselves created such expectations. Israel has made
extraordinary efforts to be democratic, equitable, reasonable, capable of change (TJB 127).
Bellow exaggerates the superiority of Israel. He wonders why such demands are not requested
from the Arabs, saying: Israel occupies about one-sixth of one percent of the lands you call Arab.
Isnt it possible to adjust the tradition of Islamto reinterpret, to change emphasis, so as to accept
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this trifling occupancy? A great civilization should be capable of human and generous flexibility
(128). Bellow mistakenly calls Islam a tradition and accuses it of intolerance. He wants human
intervention to change Islam. In fact, all demands and pressures are made upon the Arabs not the
Israelis. He hopes Sartre to convince the Arabs to give up their national struggle under the pretext
that the destruction of Israel will do [the Arabs] no good. Let the Jews live in their small state. . .
In any case, Sartre had not said such things (TJB 128). Bellow wants to impose his colonialist
thinking on Sartre.
He cannot forgive Sartre because he favors the presence of the Arabs over the Jews in an
international conference. He quotes Sartre: You cannot invite both Israelis and Arabs to an
international conference. You cant because the Arabs dont want it. Sartres logic is that to
invite Israelis means not inviting the Arabs. He finds that unacceptable because the Arabs are
politically big (TJB 123, 24). The Arabs hearts are hardened from the way they are treated by
their enemy that they cannot be in the same room with their oppressors. Bellows reaction to
Sartres logic is that Sartre cannot afford to disregard the Arabs (TJB 124). Sartres objectivity
does not please Bellows double standards.
The Jews positivity is highly evaluated when Bellow discusses Sartres ideology with
regard to the Jews. Bellow flares because of the demand Sartre and others put upon Israel, so he
lists the beneficiary acts by the Jews done to the Arabs:
In Hitlers Europe, they [Jews] were led to slaughter; in 1948, the survivors became
formidable fighters. Landless in exile, they turned into farmers. The Mamlukes had
decreed the Palestinian coastal plain should be a desert; they made a garden of it.
Obviously, the Jews accepted a historic responsibility to be exceptional. They have
held to this; they have held themselves to it. Now the question is whether more
cannot be demanded from other peoples. On the others, no such demands are made.
(TJB 127)
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According to Bellow, the Jews translated their suffering at the hands of Nazis into success. They
became farmers. They freed Palestine from Mamlukes occupation and control to colonize it
themselves for honorable reasons: the claim of historic responsibility to be exceptional. They are
committed to be exceptional where no other people are.
Bellow accuses Sartre of detachment because he does not support the Israeli Jews as he
believes he should do: When I read Sartre on the Jewish question, I am less surprised by the
remoteness of this grand jurors mind (TJB 127). I find, however, Sartres stance regarding the
Palestinian-Jewish cause fair and objective. Sartres objectivity, in my opinion, stimulates Bellow
to attack him.
It is in Bellows nature to dislikes objectivity. He not only admits earlier that he knows
little about the Arabs (109), he concludes his memoir by indicating unwillingness to know them:
We outsiders are the despair of the Arabists. We cannot free ourselves from our Western myths
about the Muslim world. Even to use the term Arab convicts us of ignorance (TJB 154). It is a
premeditated ignorance and discrimination. He refuses to know the Arabs. He and others are
saturated with demeaning essentialist ideas about the Arabs and wish not to change that. He prefers
to depict the Arabs on the basis of others accounts and his own fantasy. He also indicts the Pro-
Arabs of romanticism, enthusiasm and falsification: The true state of things in the Middle East is
difficult to explain to people who can never hope to rid themselves of their romancing habit of
mind and their partisan or ideological distortion (TJB 154). In light of this, he prejudicially
declines to acknowledge the Other or see that Other acknowledged by somebody else.
Because Bellow probes the Palestinian-Jewish cause solely through the eyes of Israeli Jews
thinkers, his representation of the Arabs is considered a reproduction of these thinkers essentialist
ideas and his fantasy about the Arabs. Moreover, his insistence not to know the Arabs puts his
credibility in question. Said, also, distrusts Bellows credibility for the same reason. He says that
Bellow and others who visited Israel had a talk with an expert who represented the Arab reality
to them, alleviated their concern for human values, and reassured them about Israeli democracy. . . .
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Bellows To Jerusalem and Back gets its force precisely from this accepted, legitimated sort of
representation (The Question of Palestine 41). The Israeli-Jewish and Zionist intellectuals
provided Bellow with an idealized image of Israel, an image that lessens his humanistic concern for
the Other. His deliberate selection of specific Jewish intellectuals to articulate the most hostile
things about the Palestinian question reinforces his prejudice against the Arabs and demonstrates
his bias.
Bellow infuses overtly in To Jerusalem and Back his personal points of view on several
social, ideological and political issues. The non-fictional journal form of this work not only
allows Bellow to move from one subject to the next without sustaining an argument (Bach et al,
223), but also to voice his vision and express himself freely with regards to these issues. His
location in the text is strategic. To Jerusalem and Back possesses a strong authorial voice. Bellow
is the protagonist in this personal account. He interviews, comments and judges. Bellow assumes
the nomadic traveler role travelling with a pre-notion about the place he is visiting: Sightseeing is
all very well, but our heads are full of news, omens, and speculations (TJB 105). His real purpose
of travelling into Jerusalem is colonialist: I was here to observe, to sense a condition or absorb
qualities (TJB 111). The purpose of his trip is to: scrutinize, grasp and feel. These acts fall under
the umbrella of the colonial gaze. His colonialist gaze is more ideological and political than
physical. Edward Said illustrates further the nature of this penetrating gaze when the Orient is the
subject of gazing: Orientals were rarely seen or looked at; they were seen through, analyzed not as
citizens, or even people, but as problems to be solved or confined oras the colonial power openly
coveted their territorytaken over (Orientalism 207). In the colonial world, the colonialist gaze
objectifies the colonized people and views them as troubles. It masters them and forms them
according to the colonizers desire. This is exactly how Bellow views the Palestinians.
The personal nature of this work affirms Bellows affinity with his fellow Jews. His
Journey to Jerusalem is a journey to himself; a reunion with his ethnic identity. It is very true that:
Every page evinces Bellows passionate concern for the survival of Israel . . . (Bach et al, 224).
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The word passionate, however, should be replaced with prejudiced. Bellow concurrently refers
to himself in To Jerusalem and Back as an insider (15) and outsider (7,154). Bellows
paradoxical sense of belonging and non-belonging emphasizes the difficulty of his ethnic
adjustment and disavowal of marginalization. In spite of his strong Jewish ethnic identity, he views
himself as an outsider, yet he presents the Jews in Israel from the point of view of an insider. This
ambivalent position of being simultaneously an outsider and insider is typical of the marginal man.
Everett V. Stonequist characterizes the marginal man as someone who, is poised in the
psychological uncertainty between two (or more) social worlds; reflecting in his soul the discords
and harmonies , repulsion and attraction of these worlds, one of which is often dominant over the
other; within which membership is implicitly if not explicitly based upon the birth or ancestry (race
or nationality); and where exclusion removes the individual from a system of group relation (8).
Bellows problem of ethnic adjustment is best described in this context. His fluctuation between
American and Jewish ethnicity shows his fear of marginalization and his subconscious need to
cling to his roots.
Bellows defends throughout the text the Jewish presence in Jerusalem. He is a racist Zionist
because of his support of a Jewish-Zionist state in Palestine. His topic is a disputable land, a land
that is inhabited concurrently by the Palestinians and Jews. This land represents identity to both.
To the Palestinians, it is a primordial identity. To the Jews, it is a recently acquired identity.
Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth links the land with self-esteem: For a colonized people
the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which
will bring them bread and, above all, dignity (44). The natives self-esteem is related to his
possession of his land. He is robbed of his dignity when he is robbed of his land.
Charles D. Cremeans describes in The Arabs and the World the nature of the Arab-Israeli
conflict as, a great historical tragedy, a clash of cultures, of aspirations, of irresponsible hopes, and
of the bitter hatred (180). The Palestinian-Jewish cause is deeply rooted in history. The relation
between these two nations is multifaceted. Bellows presentation seems to ignore the dialectical
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and complex historical relation between the Arabs and Jews by focusing on the Jews. There are
two different nations that exist on the same holy land, a problematic land. Their coexistence does
not mean necessarily that they are capable of peacefully integrating or harmonizing. There are
national, cultural, ideological, colonial and religious dimensions to their conflict. Such a conflict
creates resistance on both sides in a way that impedes any sort of comprise.
In To Jerusalem and Back, Bellow gives vent to his racism without feelings he has to mask
it. He takes an extremist opponent position in regard to the Arabs. Bellow prejudicially calls the
Arabs terrorist, extremist and fundamentalist because they are revolutionary nationalist. He equates
their national consciousness with cannibalism and terrorism. Discrimination is manifest in
stereotyping the Arabs by designating special demeaning attributes to them. On the one hand, he
refuses to admit the suffering of Palestinians as a nation who has been displaced, denied, occupied,
marginalized, silenced and oppressed by the Zionist Jews. On the other hand, he pictures the
Israelis as poor victims of the Palestinians aggression. Bellows belief that the Jews are different
from and better than others makes him a racist.
Bellow is an amalgam of contradictory forces because of his biased humanism and the
change in his racialized discourses from covert in Henderson the Rain King to overt in To
Jerusalem and Back. For some reasons Saul Bellows need to use a mask to hide his racism and
ethnic prejudice against certain nations is not existent in To Jerusalem and Back. He did not
attempt to be objective as he is openly hostile to the Arabs. Bellow misuses documentation to back
up his vilification of Arabs and Palestinians. I will attempt in the next chapter to account for the
change in Bellows colonialist writing from covert in Henderson the Rain King to overt in To
Jerusalem and Back.




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Conclusion
The stream of racism and prejudice against the Africans and Arabs which runs throughout
Henderson the Rain King (1959) and To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account (1976) contradicts
Saul Bellows humanistic claims. This stream marks Bellow as a racist. In many ways, a
postcolonial reading of Bellows two works helps expose his presumed humanistic presentation
which demeans the Africans and Arabs of Palestine, in favor of the Americans and the Jews. It
discloses his colonialist ideology.
This ideology is caused by a personal ethnic identity crisis. Saul Bellow, indeed, is caught
between two cultures and identities: Americanism and Jewishness. He oscillates between his
American and Jewish identity in these two works, separated by a span of seventeen years. He sets
out on a quest of identity. The quest reveals an inferiority complex that tries to hide behind
American identity in the first work yet embraces Jewishness in the second.
James Atlass contradictory views of Bellows ethnicity are quite illuminating in this
regard. Atlas says that Bellows status as an outsider is essential to him but simultaneously
stressful: Being a Jew, like being a novelist, confirmed Bellows status as an outsider, a member
of still another beleaguered minority . . . (Bellow 248). He reiterates the fundamentality of
Bellows Jewish ethnicity: He clung to his origins the way he clung to his neuroses; to leave them
behind would be to alter his fundamental nature (Bellow 294). Atlas indirectly refers to this fact
as a reason behind Bellows poor assimilation into the American culture. Israel, Atlas observes,
evokes in Bellow a profound feeling of identification: However vehemently he maintained that he
was an American writer who happened to be a Jew, Bellow identified strongly and publicly with
the fate of his people, the Jews (Bellow 369). Atlas prioritizes Bellows Jewish ethnicity, saying
that Bellow, although American, is more of a Jew than American.
In spite of that Atlas finds Bellows two identities equally balanced: For Bellow, the tragic
history of the Jews was inscribed in his soul, but so was an American habit of skepticism and
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independence (Bellow 401). In fact, Atlas also asserts at the end of the biography that Bellow is
as much of a Jew as an American. Atlass fluctuation can be explained as an attempt to avoid
controversy with regard to Bellows identity. But more significantly, one cannot avoid observing
Bellows inner ethnic struggle and maladjustment with Americanism.
The powerful eminence of Bellows Jewish ethnicity in To Jerusalem and Back supersedes
to a large extent the American in Henderson the Rain King. The same can be said about his racial
ideology and colonial discourse. They become manifest and daring in To Jerusalem and Back in
comparison to that in Henderson the Rain king. Bellow does not attempt to conceal his antipathy
towards the Arabs in To Jerusalem and Back. His presentation of the Palestinian-Jewish cause
shows an image of the Arabs as victimizers and the Israeli Jews as victims. Henderson the Rain
King shows Bellows assimilation into the American culture whereas To Jerusalem and Back, in
fact, proves it is a poor assimilation because Bellow cannot escape his essentialist self as a Jew.
A reading of Bellows character helps justify his contradictory modes of representations in
these works. Atlass Bellow provides a significant insight into Bellows character. First:
Bellows self-dramatizing impulse, so crucial to his development as a writer, grew out of a need to
make himself heard (43). This need arises from his feeling that he is rejected by his family in
general and his father in particular. He did not receive enough attention or affection from his father
who was busy all the time. Besides, his elder brothers disregarded him considering him a child.
Bellow, thus, needed attention. Therefore, Bellow writes for Bellow. It was as if he was writing
to just one person: himself (Bellow 282). He writes for self-gratification. He arrogantly shows
disrespect to his colleagues: Writers who posed a threat to Bellows hegemony got the cold
shoulder; writers who occupied a place safely below his own on the literary ladder were seen as
comrades in the travail business, as Bellow liked to refer to his profession (Bellow 277). Bellow
is disrespectful of others. He is contemptuous of critics. He undermines them: His growing fame
hadnt diminished his sensitivity to criticism; reviewers were jokers, rats(Bellow 276). His
egocentric character makes everything revolve around him. This self-centeredness is not different
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from that of the colonizer who wants to affirm narcissistically his superiority through control and
hegemony.
Though writing to himself, Bellow did not want to provoke readers at the beginning of his
writing career. Yet when he felt secure as a writer his reservation evaporated: As Bellows
reputation increased so did his self-assurance as a literary commentator (Bellow 312). A manifest
antipathy towards Africans at the beginning of his career might have diminished his popularity
when he desperately needed it. An overt antipathy towards the Arabs seventeen years later is no
threat. Besides, wining the Nobel Prize gave him eminence, confidence and power to be more
daring in his colonialist ideology. Moreover, provoking readers after winning their admiration is
likely to give him further fame.
To Jerusalem and Back might also be considered a warriors rest. It is a chance for Bellow
to take a rest from struggling between his two identities, the American and the Jewish. He
voluntarily drops his mask to reunite with his Jewish ethnicity regardless of consequences. He
became exhausted from struggling with being and becoming, and therefore decided to be himself.
His crisis of identity is reflected in his creation of the racial Other to reach certainty about
his identity. Bellow imagines the Africans and the Arabs as having certain characteristic. His
discourse on them works to obliterate the natives individuality by collective identification of their
characters and biological features.
Bellows vehicle for racial colonialist discourse is othering and stereotyping. His
ethnography (direct observation/the way people are represented) is essential to his colonialist
discourse on Africa and its people because it plays an important role in creating colonial
dichotomies; object/subject and savage/civilized. It locates observed subjects in a racialized way
that objectifies them. He presents Africa as a place of political immaturity, hygiene problems,
savage and idle people. According to Bellows ethnography, Africa is primitive and epidemic. It is
a place beyond history, geography and civilization. The wild African nature and hot weather are
emphasized. African people are portrayed as savage, barbarous, underdeveloped economically and
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politically. Pejorative words are attached to the black man in Bellows colonial language to
maximize racial difference and eliminate heterogeneity of the Africans. His excessive egocentrism
and paradoxical feelings with regards to the Africans affirms his crisis of identity. Bellow uses
Africa to assess and assimilate into the American culture by indirectly comparing American
civilization with that of Africa. The construction of cultural and racial boundaries is necessary to
his identity formation and his colonial representation in travel narratives.
Bellows racial scenario of stereotyping and othering recurs with the Palestinians. Palestine
is placed in a binary opposition to Israel. The image of the Arabs as backward and violent people
contradicts that of the Jews as civilized victims. The Jews are stereotyped in a positive sense. The
Israeli Jews are represented as a suffering nation who is persecuted by the colonized Palestinians.
Unflinchingly, he turns the Jews from victimizer to victimized. In spite of the diversity of Jewish
intellectuals views, they all agree on the right of Israel to exist. Israel, according to the Jews
rhetoric, has the right to exist on the land of Palestine because they were persecuted by Nazis. Yet,
according to Arabs rhetoric: Israel has no right to exist on their land. Thus, Bellow condemns the
Palestinians anger at and resistance of the Zionist Jews colonization. He presents Palestinians as a
lasting threat, accusing them of holding anti-Semitic sentiments against the Jews. The pro-Arabs
also are harshly criticized for their kind feeling towards the Arabs.
Travel functions as Saul Bellows vehicle to reach an understanding of himself and
certainty about his identity. Bellows method of selectiveness and ordering of events in his travel
operates on the basis of racist binary oppositions: civilized/primitive and human/savage. In the
Manichean colonial world there is no escape from dichotomy. The binary structure emphasizes the
relation of hegemony and racism. The image of the Arab Palestinians and the Africans as the
Other emerges within this binary system. The concept of otherness is a necessity to Bellows
racial representation. Therefore, postcolonialism is the best answer to his racialized discourse. It is
a fit context for reading To Jerusalem and Back and Henderson the Rain King to expose Bellows
racialized discourse and its place in Colonialist Literature.
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The scope of this study, unfortunately, does not allow time or space to deal with Bellows
other works. Indeed, Bellows colonialist attitude in these two works and its diverse manifestations
should draw attention to his other works to investigate their colonialist ethos. His works should be
re-evaluated in a postcolonial light to undermine his biased humanistic values and expose his
colonialist ideology.





















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