Chapter 1 Formation of Bellow's Jewish Consciousness

As a child born into a Jewish immigrant family from Russia, Bellow was put in a complicated cross-cultural system. He has rich life experiences—both Jewish and American. His Jewish experience makes him carry the traditional Jewish cultural heritage firmly; therefore, Jewish culture plays the most important role in forming his Jewish consciousness. In addition, his American experience impels him to imbibe American culture characterized by individuality and freedom, distinguishing him as a special kind of American—a cosmopolitan intellectual with a deep strain of liberal humanism. With his zealous wish of constructing a multicultural coexistence between Jewish culture and American culture, Bellow finds the most active elements of the two cultures—defense of man that can possibly implement each other in the American society and reverse the trend of humanistic decline in a “cultural system.” After his experiencing the evolution of the traditional Jewish culture in the American society, Bellow's Jewish consciousness undergoes the development from concern for Jews to that for humankind.