Seize The Day by Saul Bellow

This novel is called “Seize The Day” by Saul Bellow and this book is centered on a man in his mid forties named Thomas Wilhelm. Thomas has temporarily moved in to a hotel called Gloriana in the North West side of New York. As the novel progresses we learn about Thomas’ situation and how he is broke. Thomas had been fired from his previous job and only had a small amount of cash left in his name. Thomas would then head down to dinner to eat breakfast with his father and ask about financial aid from his father. His father would then thwart his attempt and say that he would no longer fund “a failure”. Because his father wouldn’t help him he sought help and met Dr. Tamkin who is a psychologist and claims to know a lot about the stock market. As their trust for one another strengthens Thomas entrusts the rest of his savings to Dr. Tamkin to play the stock market. Soon all of Thomas’ funds would be wasted with no profit and Dr. Tamkin was no where to be found. Thomas began to feel like he was “suffocating” and claims he “could not breathe” because of his stress and his financial issue. He goes into desperation after not being able to find Dr. Tamkin and asks his father one last time, his father replies by saying no in a more disappointed manner. When Thomas goes back up to his hotel he calls his wife and they begin to argue about their children and he tells him he can’t be with her anymore and storms out of the hotel on to Broadway. There he sees what he thinks is Dr. Tamkin and sprints towards him, then get sucked into a crowed going to a funeral. While he is at this funeral he begins to cry “with all his heart” and he is no longer “suffocating” because those tears he is shedding are the tears of his new start to a new life.
This novel has two outstanding themes in this work, one being human life and the other being isolation. Human life is a big theme because the novel is written in third person but also has points where Tommy’s thoughts and emotion are expressed in his voice. Because of Saul Bellow’s style of writing in this book it makes it so that Tommy’s life is portrayed and easily understood giving the reader a good sense of how Tommy is dealing with his ups and downs through out the novel. Isolation is an evident theme in this book because through out a lot of the book he is describing because he is a jewish American he isn’t the same as everyone else. He also says this for two other reasons, one being everyone that surrounds him seems to have a life that is in check while his isn’t, he also describes how he stays in a hotel where plenty there are plenty of retiree and he cant seem to relate to them.
What I thought most effective about this style of writing the author uses is third and first person writing styles and uses a vocabulary that was difficult sometimes to comprehend but still made it easy to describe the story.
An issue raised in this book that pertained to me personally was somewhat indirect. Tommy turns to his father for financial aid to support him because he is broke. I am constantly asking my father for money because I don’t have a job for me to have my own and Tommy doesn’t have a job either.
The author could have made the ending a bit more clearly to the readers to improve the book. I would also recommend this book to an audience who likes climax.
Symbolism is evident in multiple areas of this book but two symbols stand out water and clothing. Water is a symbol because water can be dangerous and multiple times in the book Tommy makes references to how he is suffocating and that he can’t breathe. He has this image in his head he is surrounded in this underwater world and he is drowning but at the end of the book when he is crying it is like his new life begins through the tears he cries. The other symbol, clothing is important because it describes how Tommy always tries to layer himself up with clothes to be someone else hiding from himself.