The ironic background of cultural and mythical patterns in the 20th-century novel Saul Bellow: characters of the 50s and the 60s

Although Bellow’s novels deal with huge suffering as a rule, very often a duplicitous ironic approach can be detected in the structure of his books and in the configuration of his main characters. The perspective of psychological torment and frailty in Herzog or Mr. Sammler’s Planet is combined with the awareness of an ailing and unusually large body in Henderson the Rain King. This article explores the subtle ironic narrative background in two of his novels and highlights the use of cultural references and mythical allusions as key devices in the construction of characters for which the exercise of suffering is almost a vocation.