Saul Bellow’s hero Charlie Citrine is on a quest to find peace and spirituality with him self, and appears to be conducting a search for the meaning of life in the novel “Humboldt’s Gift.”

On Bellow 's Humboldt 's Gift

Charlie Citrine 's Emancipation

Treasuring the path more than the destination

People have always been meddling on things which may either take them towards greater heights or shove them down to an irreparable damage never to rise above or at the very least return to where they were once were . The daily routines they engage themselves into shape them to the very image they may have wanted all along , or to something else that they could have not thought of in the first place . There are

many ways to achieve what people want in their lives , notwithstanding the dreams that they seek with utmost earnestness , or perhaps with utter nostalgia that consumes their very persona . In the sense that the world is a reality that gives us knowledge , oftentimes through our very senses and at times through our very contemplation of our thoughts about our realm the very attainment of this knowledge is a separate task in itself in comparison to the means in which we grasp the essence of what we desire to understand . There are far more valuable lessons in life which we can learn on how we do things rather than merely bagging the rewards of our labor in the end

Emancipation from the void

Apparently , Charlie Citrine almost had the world before his feet at his disposal . One of the many things a writer could ever adorn himself is his reputation , notwithstanding the material wealth one can harness . In fact , the very presences of these worldly objects which we amass ourselves apart from the intangible treasures we get - luxuries which fill our capacity to bear more than what we basically need , things which are in themselves valuable at least for the deprived - seem to swallow our very sense of direction . The more these things strangle our consciousness the more we dizzy ourselves with the unbearable heights of being overwhelmingly bestowed with objects that our physical being . Before we know it , the course of the path of our lives has been blurred where vision is limited to a narrow understanding of what only appears immediate for our consciousness

The realization that there is something unmistakably erroneous about being able to slide past the torrential waters of life and eventually surpass and excel points to a far more illustrious terrain which has so deceived man in many ways . That the fact that we are able to grant ourselves of more than what we yearn and being able live by it through days and nights without utter nostalgia is compelling . The callous heart knows not of the appalling grimace of the picture of one drowning mercilessly in a vast ocean of worldly objects

There is something in the story of Citrine that reminds us of Plato in his philosophy . For the most part of the latter 's work , it is worth noting that he argued for the magnitude of being able to flex the mind into thinking and doubting if indeed what...