Henderson the Rain King (Masterplots, Revised Second Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Saul Bellow
- First Published: 1959
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Mock-heroic
- Time of Work: Late 1950’s
- Setting: Central East Africa
- Principal Characters: Eugene Henderson, Romilayu, Willatale, Mtalba, Itelo, Dahfu, Horko, The Bunam, Gmilo, Atti, Dahfu
- Genres: Long fiction, Picaresque fiction
- Subjects: 1950’s, Self-discovery, Africa or Africans, Courage, Gods or goddesses, Identity, Millionaires, Priests, Animals, dangerous, Rain
- Locales: Africa, France, Connecticut
The Story:
The seeker in Bellow’s fiction is no Ulysses, Hamlet, Don Quixote, Gulliver, Huck Finn, or Ishmael. He is the philosophical clown, the innocent American, and adventurous discoverer of a spiritual quest that begins with the knowledge that “man’s character is his fate” and ends with the realization that “man’s fate is his character.” Eugene Henderson is a tremendously comic figure, oversized in physique, great in his appetites, obsessed by the demands of an “I want, I want” that clamors without appeasement within him. He is fifty-five years old and...
[The entire page is 2196 words long]
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