The relationship between father and son in Seize the Day

Saul Bellow (1915 - 2005), the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1976, is one of the most prominent post war novelists who has successfully composed his masterpiece, ‘Seize the Day’, published in 1958, as a materialistic relationship between father and son in the context of the modern European countries. It is the story of Tommy Wilhelm, the protagonist of the novella whose life is blighted by his need to be loved by a father named Dr. Adler who is incapable of giving love.  

The novella ‘Seize the Day’ centres round Tommy Wilhelm who is a non-achiever and by conventional money standard, a complete failure and frustrated man of middle age. He is lonely, despairing, cut off not only from society but also from friends and wife. In his relationship with his father, Tommy is figuratively an orphan. In his case, his father aged, rich, successful Dr. Adler - is physically present but emotionally distant. Dr. Adler refuses to become involved in his son’s desperate loneliness. 

Family is the central ideal in Tommy’s life. However, it is here that he has experienced the taste of alienation from everyone around him except his mother. In fact, the father - son relationship gets highly complicated in Tommy - Dr. Adler relationship. Tommy seems the very antithesis of his father in respect of almost every measure. To Dr. Adler, love matters little; what counts is success, financial success. Tommy does not get the love and psychological as well as financial support he expects from his father.

Tommy’s relationship with his father is not a consoling one rather a source of torment. Tommy’s whole life is a series of failures. He has made mistakes that his father never ceases to recall. Dr. Adler, from whom Tommy hopes to get financial help or at least some sign of sympathy but receives nothing from him but selfish advice. ‘Carry nobody on your back.’ He begs his father for love but Dr. Adler sprawls himself up and rejects his son.

Being vulnerable emotionally and financially, Tommy clings to Dr. Tamkin as to a sinking lifeboat. Tamkin appears to have the sensitivity and insight Tommy cannot find in his father. However, here too Tommy faces a great shock from his fairy godfather.

To conclude, there is no denying the fact that ‘Seize the Day’ is a modern psychological study of fragile bonding of the family life of the 20^th century where relationship between father and son is vividly presented. However, the story ends not in fragments but with a vision of oneness of all towards the consummation of one’s merging with God, a figure that has traditionally been considered as father of humankind.