Dangling Man (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Saul Bellow
- First Published: 1944
- Type of Plot: Psychological realism
- Time of Work: 1942-1943
- Setting: Chicago
- Principal Characters: Joseph, Iva, Kitty Daumler
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: 1940’s, World War II, Alienation, Chicago, Existentialism, Draft, military
- Locales: Chicago, IL
The Novel
Dangling Man takes the form of a journal kept by the protagonist, Joseph, between December 15, 1942, and April 9, 1943. All the action is retrospective, filtered through the troubled mind of Joseph, and committed to his journal. Introspective and tentative, the entries record Joseph’s increasingly desperate quest for self-knowledge.
As the novel opens, seven months have passed since Joseph resigned from his job at the Inter-American Travel Bureau to await army induction. Because of snarled bureaucratic red tape, he dangles between civilian and military...
[The entire page is 3089 words long]
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