Herzog the Man: An Analytic View of a Literary Figure

The central achievement of Saul Bellow's Herzog is its detailed portrait of a complex human being. From this point of view, the book is a masterpiece, for Moses Elkanah Herzog is one of the great characters in literature. The chief thing needed for a proper appreciation of Bellow's creation is a psychological understanding of Herzog the man. The author himself says little or nothing about his character; he depicts him. Herzog says much about himself, but most of what he says is revelation rather than reliable analysis. Given his problems, Herzog cannot be expected to have more than fragmentary and fleeting insights into his own psychology. The novel's technique is such that we are induced to experience Herzog in his own terms. If we are to understand him, we need an objective standpoint from which to view him. The theories of Karen Horney are extraordinarily useful in helping us to understand Herzog the man. They are highly congruent with his character, and they permit us to comprehend in analytical terms what Bellow has enabled us to experience from within.1

In Horneyan terms, Herzog is a basically compliant person who hopes to gain safety, love, worth, and glory by moving toward people, by being good, loving, sensitive, long-suffering, helpless, and full of high ideals. At the same time he has many expansive drives and longs to be masterful, a triumphant scholar, a man who knows the world for what it is and is able to vindicate himself and defeat his enemies. These two sides of Moses generate different values, different personality traits, different internal shoulds and external claims, and different conceptions of human nature and the human condition.

As he himself recognizes, Herzog belongs to “a class of people secretly convinced they [have] an arrangement with fate; in return for docility or ingenuous good will they [are] to be shielded from the worst brutalities of life.”2 Herzog's bargain, his “psychic offer” (p. 154), is succinctly expressed in his favorite M