The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

A Liza's Book Club Study Guide

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OVERVIEW
The Adventures of Augie March is about a young man who grows up in Depression-era Chicago. He’s born into a poor family with a single mother and a brother—George—who’s on the spectrum. He also has an older brother Simon whom he often looks up to throughout the novel, and together, the brothers go through many ups and downs. In the first half of the book, Augie attempts to hold onto various jobs, and he meets a series of Dickensian characters as he tries to figure out what his purpose is in life. The novel. told through somewhat unrelated episodic chapters and often goes into philosophical digressions on the human condition, is Bellow’s meditation on the nature of identity, specifically American identity from the start of the Great Depression to the end of the Second World War—roughly the years in which the novel takes place.

SAUL BELLOW: A SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Augie March is based to some extent on Bellow’s own life. In fact, Saul Bellow, the Nobel Prize–winning Canadian-American author, was raised in Chicago just like Augie (and me, by the way!). Bellow even spent a substantial part of his life on Chicago’s South Side, where Augie lives in the first half of the book. Bellow is perhaps one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, and is known for his deeply intellectual and philosophical novels that explore themes of identity, morality, and the complexity of modern life. Bellow’s Jewish heritage and his experience growing up in an immigrant family heavily influenced Augie March, his third novel and the work that marked a departure from the more formal style he had used earlier. The novel’s freewheeling, exuberant prose and its portrayal of an ordinary man's struggle for self-definition won Bellow widespread acclaim and solidified his status as one of the 20th century’s best authors.

CHARACTERS

Augie March: Augie is our at-times charming, at-times insufferable protagonist. His central struggles are his inability to find his place in the world and his susceptibility to the influence of the people around him. Nevertheless, Augie tries to establish a firm sense of identity throughout the novel, and realizes the American Dream by the end.

Grandma Lausch: Augie’s grandma is a somewhat strict and manipulative matriarch who oversees the March household after Augie’s father dies. She represents the old-world, traditional values that Augie seems to resist.

Simon March: Simon is Augie’s ambitious older brother who is determined to climb the social ladder through hard work and the accumulation of wealth. Simon’s diligence and early success contrast with Augie’s more carefree approach to life, though we later learn that Simon has flaws of his own.

Thea Fenchel: Thea is a wealthy, adventurous woman who becomes one of Augie’s lovers—perhaps the most important one. She takes Augie on a journey to Mexico in pursuit of her passion for training eagles, a move that represents the unpredictability and intensity of Augie’s romantic entanglements.

SUMMARY

The novel opens with Augie’s childhood in a poor immigrant neighborhood in Chicago. Augie and his brother Simon are raised by their grandmother and somewhat capricious mother, and early on, Augie struggles to find his way in a world that seems determined to make him into something he is not—though he isn’t sure what he is. The primary conflict in the first third of the novel is Augie’s struggle to retain jobs: he cycles through various positions—working for a wealthy tycoon, a dog trainer, and a corrupt union boss, to name three examples—but seems unable to stay with a single calling and lacks the sort of commitment and determination that he observes in his brother.

As his brother gets married to a wealthy woman named Charlotte Magnus, Augie steps into a relationship with her sister Lucy, but his relationship with his friend Mimi, whom he helps through an abortion, angers the Magnuses, who insist that Lucy break off her engagement.

Augie cycles through many tumultuous relationships and is unable to stay with a single woman for very long until he meets Thea Fenchel, a headstrong wealthy girl who convinces him to move with her to Mexico, where she hopes to take up eagle training. Augie is at first excited but ultimately becomes disillusioned with Thea’s passion for eagle training, which he feels is a somewhat silly activity. Acting on impulse, he cheats on Thea with an actress named Stella, then spends a quarter of the novel regretting his decision before resolving to marry Stella and settling with her in Paris.

Throughout the novel, Augie struggles to reconcile his desire for freedom with the pressures of society, family, and his own ambitions. He continually rejects the conventional paths laid out for him, yet he is also unable to find a clear direction for his life. By the end of the novel, Augie is left to grapple with the question of whether his wandering, restless nature is a curse or a kind of freedom.

THEMES

The Search for Identity: Augie’s journey is fundamentally about the search for identity. He constantly reinvents himself yet seems to have no stable identity throughout the book. Each adventure helps him determine what he wants from life, but the novel leaves us with a sense of ambiguity.

Freedom vs. Conformity: Throughout the novel, Augie resists the pressures of conformity, whether from his family, society, or the women in his life. However, his quest for freedom comes at a cost, as he struggles with loneliness and uncertainty.

The American Dream: Augie’s life embodies the possibility of the American Dream. While he is born into poverty, he enjoys a sumptuous life in France by the end of the novel. Bellow, however, complicates this idea by demonstrating that material success alone does not lead to fulfillment, leaving us to wonder what the purpose of the American Dream really is.

FURTHER STUDY QUESTIONS

• How does Augie’s resistance to being defined by others shape his character and the novel’s narrative structure?

• What role does the setting of Depression-era Chicago play in shaping Augie’s worldview and the novel’s themes?

• How does Bellow’s portrayal of women in The Adventures of Augie March reflect the novel’s broader exploration of gender and power?

• In what ways does Augie’s relationship with his brother Simon highlight the novel’s themes of ambition and the American Dream?

• How does the novel’s episodic structure contribute to its exploration of identity and the human experience?

• What does Bellow suggest about the nature of freedom and individuality in modern society through Augie’s adventures?

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