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Bellow's “Indian Givers”: Humboldt's Gift

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Judie Newman
Judie Newman
Affiliation:
Judie Newman is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1 7RU
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Extract

Emerson's essay on “Gifts” perceptively highlights the ambivalence felt in gift-giving or receiving, an ambivalence which lies at the heart of Saul Bellow's most recent novel, Humboldt's Gift. The importance of literal gift-giving has been insufficiently recognised as a factor which governs the action of the novel, our understanding of which is enhanced by an examination and application of the sociological analysis of gift-exchange.

Gift-exchange has been most extensively studied in relation to the North-West Coast American Indians, notably the Kwakiutl, in whose culture the “potlatch” is a central activity. The term “potlatch” is applied to a variety of gift-giving ceremonies, involving both the giving away of quantities of possessions and their wilful destruction. The whole of a man's worldly goods may be dispersed or destroyed in this fashion, in an attempt to maintain status. To eclipse a rival chief, for example, a man may destroy all his own accumulated wealth. While in theory the “gift” is spontaneous and disinterested, in practice it is based on political or economic self-interest.The gift of property implies an obligation in the recipient which, if not fulfilled, results in his loss of face.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , August 1981 , pp. 231 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

1 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, “Gifts,” Essays (London: Dent, 1971), p. 292Google Scholar. Bellow referred to this essay in 1963, in the context of a discussion of the disparity between “high” and “low” culture in America. Bellow, Saul, “The Writer as Moralist,” The Atlantic Monthly, 211 (03 1963), 58Google Scholar.

2 Bellow graduated in 1937 from Northwestern University, Chicago, with honours in anthropology and sociology. His anthropological research, in particular in African ethnography, forms the source for many details of the Africa of Henderson the Rain King. See Rodrigues, Eusebio C., “Bellow's Africa,” American Literature, 43 (1971), 242–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Sagan, Eli, Cannibalism: Human Aggression and Cultural Form (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), p. 113Google Scholar.

4 Sagan, p. 123.

5 See Possler, K. E., “Cannibalism in Humboldt's Gift,” Gypsy Scholar: A Graduate Forum for Literary Criticism, 5 (1978), 18–21Google Scholar.

6 Bellow, Saul, Humboldt's Gift (London: Secker and Warburg, 1975), p. 14Google Scholar. Subsequent page references will be given in the text of the essay.

7 It is interesting to note that the most celebrated failure of a mission to South American Indians, in 1956, to the Auca of Ecuador, occurred because of a misinterpretation of gift-giving. The American missionaries dropped gifts from the air before landing among the Indians, to ensure a friendly reception. The Indians assumed that the missionaries were planning to eat them and therefore attacked. See Thompson, David, “We're not savages — we are people,” The Listener, 24 01 1980, pp. 108–09Google Scholar.

8 See Newman, Judie, “Saul Bellow: Humboldt's Gift – The Comedy of History,” Durham University Journal, 72 (12 1979), 82Google Scholar.

9 Mauss, Marcel, The Gift (London: Cohen and West, 1954), p. 101Google Scholar. Originally published in French as Essai sur le Don (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950)Google Scholar.

10 Sagan (p. 123) mentions Prospero as the perfect example of magical desires expressed and controlled in art.

11 Mauss, p. 80.

12 Emerson, p. 291.