Henderson learns that a man can, with effort, have a spiritual rebirth when he realizes that spirit, body and the outside world are not enemies but can live in harmony.
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A week before the novel appeared in book stores, Saul Bellow published an article in the
New York Times titled “The Search for Symbols, a Writer Warns, Misses All the Fun and Fact of the Story.”
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Here, Bellow warns readers against looking too deeply for symbols in literature. This has led to much discussion among critics as to why Bellow warned his readers against searching for symbolism just before the symbol-packed Rain King hit the shelves.
The ongoing philosophical discussions and ramblings between Henderson and the natives, and inside Henderson's own head, prefigure elements of Bellow's next novel
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(1964), which includes many such inquiries into life and meaning.
As in all Bellow's novels,
death figures prominently in Henderson the Rain King. Also, the novel manifests a few common character types that run through Bellow's literary works. One type is the Bellovian Hero, often described as a
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. Eugene Henderson, in company with most of Bellow's main characters, can be given this description, in the opinion of some people.
Another is what Bellow calls the "Reality-Instructor"; in
Henderson the Rain King, King Dahfu fills this role. In
Seize the Day, the instructor is played by Dr. Tamkin, while in
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, Humboldt von Fleisher takes the part.
Scholars such as Bellow biographer
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and others have shown that quite a few passages and ideas were lifted from a book titled
The Cattle Complex in East Africa (1926) written by Bellow's anthropology professor
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who supervised his senior thesis at
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in 1937.
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