SOURCE: Gerson, Steven M. “The New American Adam in The Adventures of Augie March.” Modern Fiction Studies 25, no. 1 (spring 1979): 117-28.

In the following essay, Gerson traces the transformation of Augie March in The Adventures of Augie March from an early American Adamic figure as defined by R. W. B. Lewis to a modern American Adam whose personality and outlook has been influenced by twentieth-century events.

In the epilogue of The American Adam, R. W. B. Lewis contends that Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March is written in the tradition of the earlier American Adamic myth. According to Lewis, Augie March, the protagonist in Bellow's novel, is similar to the nineteenth-century Adams evident in Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman because Augie is as youthful, innocent, optimistic, and adventurous as are the earlier Adams.¹

Throughout much of Bellow's novel, Augie is similar to an early American Adam who seeks...