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2016
Nuova Secondaria - n. 4 2016 - Anno XXXIV - ISSN 1828-4582
The text
The extract (776 words) is the incipit of the novella Seize
the Day (1956) by Saul Bellow (1915 – 2005),
the Amer-
ican novelist of Russian-Jewish origin who was awarded
the Nobel Prize in 1976. The novella deals with the
theme of victimization as his novel The Victim (1947)
does, but also seems to anticipate his most widely admired
novels, Herzog (1964) and Humboldt’s Gift (1975), in
which he interprets “the struggles of city dwellers to de-
fine their roles and responsibilities in the modern world”.
(Head, 2006). Seize the Day covers one day in the life of
middle-aged Tommy Wilhelm, the modern man who has
to bear the burden of being jobless, separated from his
wife and a failure to his despotic father – in one word, an
anti-hero. This is his day of reckoning as he is expecting
the outcome of an investment venture, and its background
is New York in the Fifties, a period of technological and
financial rebirth after the depression brought about by
World War II. By the end of the day, Wilhelm experiences
total catastrophe as he discovers he has lost all his money,
but will find complete rebirth at the funeral of a stranger,
where he will cry redeeming tears. The omniscient third-
person narrator, exploiting past tenses, usually takes on
the perspective of the protagonist with regular shifts to the
present tenses to highlight Wilhelm’s thoughts. In her in-
troduction to the Penguin edition of the novella, Cynthia
Ozick (1996) sets Wilhelm among masterly characters ex-
pressing higher consciousness, such as Levin from Anna
Karenina (1877) or Ivan from The death of Ivan Ilyich
(1886) by Lev Tolstoj, and Melville’s Bartleby the
Scrivener (1853): “
inklings of the deepest part of our-
selves; flashes of the indelible, or call it lightnings from
an inner storm”. (1996: xiii, xiv)
The candidates are not likely to have read the novella, nor
to have studied anything about Bellow, as his texts are
rarely found in anthologies for Secondary School. How-
ever, this is not necessary to perform the task, provided
they are well equipped with reading and interpreting
strategies.
Suggested answers to the questions
1. Who is Tommy Wilhelm?
Tommy Wilhelm is a man in his forties, blond-haired and
with an attractive appearance, although he seems to be
getting old. He is unemployed and he smokes a cigar and
wears a hat in order to conceal his troubles to everyone,
which he thinks he is good at, as he was once an extra.
In its simplicity, the question is a challenge. In order to un-
derstand the protagonist’s identity, after skimming the text
for gist, the candidate will concentrate on the first two
paragraphs, from line 1 (“When it came to concealing his
troubles, Tommy Wilhelm was not less capable than the
next fellow.”) down to lines 2, 3 and 4, which explain that
once he was an extra and that he smokes a cigar and wears
a hat because in this way “it is harder to find out how he
feels”. The candidates might infer the meaning of “extra”
from the context (“He had once been an actor – no, not
quite, an extra”).
Reading down, lines 6-7 state that Wil-
helm hopes to look well because he can do nothing more
(“it was a matter of sheer hope”). Lines 20-22 reveal the
protagonist’s appearance: “in his middle-forties, large
and blonde, with big shoulders; his back was heavy and
strong, if already a little stooped or thickened”. The last
sentence may represent a problem for candidates who may
not know the structure if + adjective expressing contrast.
They might also overlook the importance of “already”,
which hints at the passing of time and Wilhelm’s getting
older. Finally, lines 25-28 make it explicit that Wilhelm
has no job (“he had no position”) and, so probably, no in-
come. Again, the noun “position” might be misleading
and, if the candidate cannot infer the meaning from the
context, the dictionary is certainly useful.
2. Where does he live?
He lives on the twenty-third floor of the Hotel Gloriana
in New York.
Again, not a straightforward answer. The candidates meet
Wilhelm on an elevator coming down from the twenty-
third floor down to the lobby, which must refer to a pub-
lic place, where he will collect his mail before breakfast
(l. 5). They may hypothesize that Wilhelm lives in a ho-
tel, but confirmation will come later on, at line 15 (“the
Hotel Gloriana”). The candidates have first to activate
schemata, or knowledge of the world, about hotel struc-
ture – hopefully they have some – and then understand the
lexical cohesion of meronymy between lobby and hotel.
That the Hotel Gloriana is located in New York can eas-
ily be found in lines 15 (“Along Broadway”) and 16
(“New York’s vast population”).
3. What seems to be making Tommy nervous when he
comes down from his room?
Tommy is nervous about his appearance and hopes to look
well, especially if he meets his father.
It is easy to find the answer at lines 8-9. Here the candi-
date has to understand the lexical cohesion of synonymity
between “nervous” in the question and the past tense of
the verb “worry” in the text (“If he worried about his ap-
pearance it was mainly for his old father’s sake”).
4. What does he see when he gets out of the lift?
When he gets out of the lift, Tommy sees the red carpet of
the lobby, which is dark because long heavy curtains keep
the sun out. There are only three small windows open and
Tommy sees a pigeon that is going to perch on a chain.
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