Thoughts de Final re: Henderson the Rain King
I had created a file of transcribed passages, to what end I’m not sure, but as I got to the end I was either too lazy or too itching to get onto Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad Love Story to separate a final blog entry from reflection on those quotes. So I’ve put the two together. Where I just liked the quote, or where it contained some important plot moment that turned out to be less important to the story as a whole, you’ll just see the quote. Maybe you can make something of the words out of context, Lebron.
I think the problem for me in terms of some sort of unified response is that the book on first reading seems to contain as much chaff as there is wheat. There were parts where I felt like I was in a maze, and I’d start to follow a certain path of allusion or symbolism or thought, and I’d hit a dead end. I’d be left wondering how the biblical references related to the “necessary question” of the novel. I’d wonder why Bellow gave Henderson twins if Henderson never used their names. These are not the questions an author would want a reader to be asking.
By the time I finished the book, I felt I had a clear idea of that obscure, perhaps indefinable thing Henderson was searching for, his journey to self-understanding, to Being rather than Becoming. I also feel like I get that his character type exists. I feel like I know one or two people, maybe more, older than myself, who might find themselves reflected in Henderson. This gives the novel a certain ring of truth.
After finishing, I read a little bit on the internet about the novel, and boy did
The New York Times reviewer back in the day take Saul Bellow out to the woodshed. I found it interesting that Bellow had written an essay in the Times the week before the book’s release about the way the search for symbols takes the fun out of reading. I wonder if that had anything to do with an absence of faith in the sturdiness of the novel’s symbolism.
Anyway, here are the quotes I transcribed, arranged chronologically, and where there’s reflection, there’s reflection. The good news, whether this interests you or not, Lebron, is that Amazon is sending me my Shteyngart tomorrow, as well as David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, which hasn’t been in the library for weeks.
“Here is a sample of such thinking, which happens to be precisely what I had on my mind as I stood in that parched courtyard under the mild shade of the thatch; Lily, my after-all dear wife, and she is the irreplaceable woman, wanted us to end each other’s solitude. Now she was no longer alone, but I still was, and how did that figure? Next step: help may com either from other human beings or – from a different quarter. And between human beings there are only two alternatives, either brotherhood or crime. And what makes the good such liars? Why, they lie like fish. Evidently they believe there have to be crimes, and lying is the most useful crime, as it least it is on behalf of good. Well, when push comes to shove, I am for the good, all right, but I am very suspicious of them. So, in short, what’s the best way to live? (80-81)
Context: Henderson has arrived among the Arnewi and is trying to find something to talk about with Willatale, the Queen of Bittahness. What intrigues me, I guess, is the way Henderson’s thought all of a sudden seems influenced by Ivan Karamazov and Septimus Warren Smith. I know there are critical essays about existentialism in the novel, and I’m not sure if this is it, but this was one of those paths I followed down to a dead end.
“’I have never been at home in life. All my decay has taken place upon a child.’ I clasped my hands, and staring at the ground I started to reflect with this inspiration. And when it comes to reflection I am like the third man in a relay race. I can hardly wait to get the baton, but when I do get it I rarely take off in the necessary direction. So what I thought was something like this: The world may be strange to a child, but he does not fear it the way a man fears. He marvels at it. But the grown man mainly dreads it. And why? Because of death. So he arranges to have
himself abducted like a child. So what happens will not be his fault. And who is this kidnaper – this gypsy? It is the strangeness of life – a thing that makes death more remote, as in childhood…” (84)
A few elements of this quote confused me. I don’t know how to make sense of the sentence, “All my decay has taken place upon a child,” but I absolutely understand the sentence, “I have never been at home in life,” which is tied directly to the Becoming/Being theme that goes throughout the book. I also don’t get the “third man in a relay race” reference. I understand that a character is allowed to say things that make sense only to him, but this line is nonsensical and gets in the way of the lucid point of the passage, which addresses the change, or if you want to say, corruption, in the way we perceive the same things as we get older. (By the way, how can Wikipedia say this book can be considered a Bildungsroman – which is, incidentally, a word I hate, despise, loathe for its look-what-a-pompous-literature-student-i-am quality – when its protagonist is in his mid-fifties?)
Once more, allusion and Henderson’s Bible knowledge merge:
“The colored umbrella wheeled over him and he went back to his box on the king’s left and sat down with the examiner who had kept me waiting last night, the character whom Dahfu had called the Bunam, and the wrinkled old black-leather fellow who had sent us into the ambush. The one who had arisen out of the white rocks like the man met by Joseph. Who sent Joseph over to Dothan. Then the brothers saw Joseph and said, “Behold, the dreamer cometh.” Everybody should study the Bible. Believe me, I felt like a dreamer, and that’s no lie.” (170)
Henderson had alluded to the story of Joseph earlier, which may have something to do with his role as befriender of kings who luxuriate in Egyptian fashion, like Dahfu. But who are the brothers who tricked and sold out Henderson? Who is the ruler who benefits from Henderson’s guidance? Who does Henderson forgive to stop the cycle of blows referred to in a later quoted passage?
Just before Henderson takes on the task of moving Mummah and becoming the Rain King, Bellow merges specific language from Hamlet with one of the play’s most significant themes:
“I’m a pretty good judge of men and you are a fine one. And from you I can take it. Besides, truth is truth. Confidentially, I have envied flies, too. All the more reason to crash out of prison. Right? If I had the mental constitution to live inside the nutshell and think myself the king of infinite space, that would be just fine. But that’s not how I am. King, I am a Becomer. Now you see your situation is different. You are a Be-er. I’ve just got to stop Becoming. Jesus Christ, when am I going to Be? I have waited a hell of a long time. I suppose I should be more patient, but for God’s sake, Your Highness, you’ve got to understand what it’s like with me. “ (191)
Okay, so I get the being/seeming theme, but what else does the story of Hamlet have to inform the story of Henderson? Is it just a language that found Bellow as he was writing, or is a reader supposed to be thinking about ways the two characters might be related? If you can enlighten me as to the connection between Hamlet’s character and Henderson’s, Lebron, I’d appreciate, because the connection is certainly eluding me.
Here is some truth revealed through Dahfu in the Chapter 15 conversation. It follows Henderson once again saying that in blows he finds truth (as if the sensation of suffering is the only means to meaning.
“But I feel there is a law of human nature in which force is concerned. Man is a creature who cannot stand still under blows. Now take the horse – he never needs a revenge. Nor the ox. But man is a creature of revenges. If he is punished he will contrive to get rid of the
punishment. When he cannot get rid of punishment, his heart is apt to rot from it. This may be – don’t you think so, Mr. Henderson-Sungo? Brother raises a hand against brother and son against father (how terrible!) and the father also against son. And moreover it is a continuity-matter, for if the father did not strike the son, they would not be alike. It is done to perpetuate similarity. Oh, Henderson, man cannot keep still under the blows. If he must, for the time, he will cast down his eyes and think in silence of the ways to clear himself of them. Those prime-eval blows everybody still feels. The first was supposed to be struck by Cain, but how could that be? In the beginning of time there was a hand raised which struck. So the people are flinching yet. All wish to rid themselves and free themselves and cast the blow upon the others. And this I conceive of as the earthly dominion. But as far as truth as the content of the force,
that is a separate matter…
…“Let me see if I have got you straight. You say the soul will die if it can’t make somebody else suffer what it suffers?”
“For a while, I am sorry to say, it then feels peace and joy.
Skip a few paragraphs of dialogue, and then Dahfu is speaking again:
…A brave man will try to make the evil stop with him. He shall keep the blow. No man throws himself in the sea of blows saying he do not believe it is infinite. In this way many courageous people have died. But an even larger number who had more of impatience than bravery. Who have said, ‘Enough of the burden of wrath. I I cannot bear my neck should be unfree. I cannot eat more of this mess of fear-pottage.” (211-212)
This is a passage I obviously spent a lot of time transcribing, because it certainly contains truth on its face. Therefore, I shall let it speak for itself.
Shortly thereafter, before Dahfu teaches Henderson to be a lion, this exchange, starting with a question from Henderson:
“So tell me, what do I illustrate most?”
“Why,” he said, “everything about you, Henderson-Sungo, cries out, ‘Salvation, salvation! What shall I do? What must I do? At once! What will become of me?’ And so on. That is bad.” (217)
Once Henderson is introduce to Atti, the lion, Bellow gives another biblical reference related to dreams and wisdom. For context, Dahfu’s instruction to Henderson precedes the allusion:
“Roar, roar, roar, Henderson-Sungo. Do not be afraid. Let go of yourself. Snarl greatly. Feel the lion. Lower on the forepaws. Up with hindquarters. Threaten me. Open those magnificent eyes. Oh, give more sound. Better, better, “ he said, “though still too much pathos. Give more sound. Now, with your hand – your paw – attack! Cuff! Fall back! Once more – strike, strike,
strike, strike! Feel it. Be the beast! You will recover humanity later, but for the moment, be it utterly.”
And so I was the beast. I gave myself to it, and all my sorrow came out in the roaring. My lungs supplied the air but the note came from my soul. The roaring scalded my throat and hurt the corners of my mouth and presently I filled the den like a bass organ pipe. This was where my heart had sent me, with its clamor. This is where I ended up. Oh, Nebuchadnezzar! How well I understand that prophecy of Daniel. For I had claws, and hair, and some teeth, and I was bursting with hot noise, but when all this had come forth, there was still a remainder. That last thing of all was my human longing. (267)
I’ve skipped over some other passages I had dog-eared as being not weighty enough, or as being plot-driven, or as possibly providing insight into Henderson’s character, but there isn’t enough pattern or payoff to show passages, which is either my fault or Bellow’s fault for making allusions higgledy-piggledy without enough meaningful follow-through. So while there is a pattern to the Joseph and Daniel allusions, the prophet in captivity advising a king using his God-given insight, the parallel doesn’t really fit. At no point is Henderson in that giving position in the story. The last allusion, however, at the end of the story, when Henderson is having a memory of himself riding the rollercoaster with that old bear in that circus in Canada, fits, especially given Henderson’s sense of himself as the inferior brother, the one who was, in his father’s eyes, expendable:
This poor broken ruined creature and I, alone, took the high rides twice a day. And while we climbed and dipped and swooped and swerved and rose again higher than the Ferris wheels and fell, we held on to each other. By a common bond of despair we embraced, cheek to cheek, as all support seemed to leave us and we started down the perpendicular drop. I was pressed into his long-suffering, age-worn, tragic, and discolored coat as he grunted and cried to me. At times the animal would wet himself. But he was apparently aware I was his friend and he did not claw me. I took a pistol with blanks in case of an assault; it never was needed. I said to Hanson, as I recall, “We’re two of a kind. Smolak (the bear’s name) was cast off and I am an Ishmael, too.” As I lay in the stable, I would think about Dick’s (Henderson’s older brother) death and about my father. (338)
I’ve frequently said to classes that metaphor is a way of knowing, not a way of explaining. No comparison in the book, whether it’s one of the many symbols (the patterns of which are difficult to discern sometimes) or allusions or pieces of character backstory, tells me more about Henderson than this one. He has been cast off and is searching, for what he doesn’t know. But it comes back in a lot of ways (the violin-playing, the intensity of any of his endeavors) to making a connection to the father who has, in his mind, cast him off. The only problem is that the rejection he feels from his father is not entirely convincing. Henderson pours himself into demolishing cars on the day of his brother’s funeral, then his father curses him at night, and all of a sudden Henderson has to strike out for Niagara Falls. That there was distance between father and son is pretty clear, but that there was a rejection? Not so much.
And that’s it, Lebron. The book is closed, and we move on. Until next time, adieu.
