Dicembre 2016 e ditoriale

82

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SAMI DI

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TATO

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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