Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day: The Post-Holocaust Everyman and the Crisis of Relationality

Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day, published in 1956, is often read as a meditation on the relational and existential disintegration of its protagonist, Wilhelm Adler. Yet the novel also reflects the broader cultural and psychological aftermath of the Holocaust, a historical rupture that left human connection and moral coherence profoundly fractured. Wilhelm is more than a man struggling with modernity; he is a post-Holocaust Everyman, grappling with the absence of trust, meaning, and relational grounding in a world that has witnessed the collapse of civilization’s moral and relational foundations.

The Holocaust revealed humanity’s capacity for systematic brutality, exposing the dark truths of Freud’s assertion in Civilization and Its Discontents that “man is a wolf to man.” Wilhelm’s disintegration echoes this vision, as his relationships—marked by coldness, exploitation, and abandonment—mirror a world in which relational trust has been devastated. Far from offering an optimistic counterpoint to Primo Levi’s famous claim that poetry is “impossible” after Auschwitz, Bellow’s novel underscores humanity’s loss of agency and the regression to a pre-individuated state of longing and despair. Wilhelm’s masochistic unraveling, his yearning for connection, and his ultimate surrender to a kind of radical helplessness evoke a vision of humanity that is as bleak as it is unflinching.

Saul Bellow

Relational Disintegration and Wilhelm as Everyman

Wilhelm Adler’s story is one of failed relationships and existential drift. His father, Dr. Adler, offers no care or recognition, instead embodying a detached rationality that refuses to acknowledge Wilhelm’s vulnerabilities. His estranged wife exerts legal and financial control, reducing their relationship to a cold transaction. Most devastatingly, Dr. Tamkin, the pseudo-mentor and manipulative psychologist, exploits Wilhelm’s desperation, promising wisdom and relief while leading him deeper into disillusionment.

These fractured relationships are not just Wilhelm’s personal failures but reflect a broader relational collapse. Bellow captures the hollow aftermath of a world in which trust, care, and recognition have been stripped away, leaving individuals like Wilhelm adrift. Wilhelm’s disintegration parallels Karen Horney’s theory of moral masochism, in which individuals internalize their relational failures and seek validation through self-destructive patterns. His longing for connection becomes a form of self-sabotage, as he repeatedly places his trust in figures like Tamkin, who exploit his vulnerability.

Wilhelm’s descent can also be understood through Freud’s concept of the "oceanic feeling," the pre-egoic sense of unity with the mother that represents a longing for undifferentiated connection. In the absence of meaningful relationships, Wilhelm regresses to this primal state, seeking to dissolve his fragmented self into a larger unity. Yet this longing only deepens his disintegration, as the world offers no corresponding care or recognition. Bellow’s depiction of Wilhelm as a man caught in this cycle of longing and despair reflects a broader cultural crisis in the aftermath of the Holocaust, where relationality itself has been ruptured.

The Holocaust and the Collapse of Relational Trust

The Holocaust not only revealed humanity’s capacity for destruction but also shattered the relational frameworks that once underpinned moral and social life. Families, communities, and entire societies were torn apart, and the relational bonds that sustain human identity were irreparably damaged. Freud’s assertion that human relationships are as much about aggression as they are about care finds grim validation in this historical context, as the Holocaust exposed the darker instincts that civilization seeks to repress.

Wilhelm’s relational failures in Seize the Day echo this breakdown. His father’s refusal to provide care, his wife’s legal maneuvers, and Tamkin’s exploitation all reflect a world in which relational trust has become impossible. Wilhelm’s struggles are not merely personal but emblematic of a post-Holocaust humanity that has lost its capacity for mutual recognition and care. In this sense, Wilhelm is not a hero or a figure of resistance but a man whose disintegration mirrors the broader collapse of relational grounding in the wake of historical atrocity.

Regression, Masochism, and the Loss of Agency

Bellow’s depiction of Wilhelm’s regression to a state of helpless longing offers little solace or optimism. Wilhelm’s masochistic tendencies, as described by Horney, are not simply an individual neurosis but a reflection of his relational world. The absence of care and recognition drives him to seek validation through suffering and submission, mirroring the helplessness and dependency of the infantile oceanic state. Wilhelm’s yearning for connection, while deeply human, becomes a source of further disintegration as he places his trust in figures like Tamkin, whose promises of care are empty and self-serving.

This dynamic is mirrored in Jean Laplanche’s theory of seduction and transference, where the unconscious messages of caregivers shape the child’s relational world in profound and often destabilizing ways. Wilhelm’s unconscious reenactment of these dynamics in his relationships with his father and Tamkin underscores the complexity of his disintegration. His longing for care and recognition, rooted in these early relational dynamics, becomes a cycle of projection and disappointment that leaves him without agency or resolution.

Bellow’s Post-Holocaust Vision

Bellow’s Seize the Day offers a narrative of post-Holocaust humanity that is deeply aligned with Primo Levi’s bleak assessment of creative expression after Auschwitz. Far from insisting on the redemptive power of storytelling, Bellow tells a story in which humanity’s relational collapse leaves little room for agency or hope. In a world marked by disintegration and despair, seizing the day becomes an act of both futility and self-deception.

Wilhelm’s disintegration is not a heroic struggle but a tragic regression, a surrender to the helplessness and despair that define his fractured world. His longing for connection and his ultimate masochistic submission reflect a humanity that has been fundamentally altered by the atrocities of the Holocaust and the relational failures they exposed.

If Levi sees the Holocaust as a rupture that renders poetry impossible, Bellow’s novel reflects a similar pessimism in its portrayal of Wilhelm as a man adrift, caught in a cycle of relational failure and existential despair. Yet Seize the Day also insists on the necessity of confronting this disintegration, even if it offers no solutions or redemption. In this way, Bellow’s work stands as a testament to the enduring complexity of the human condition, a story that grapples with the aftermath of atrocity and the fragile possibilities of care in a fractured world.