Seize the Day Analysis

Seize the Day isn't just a short novel with a relatively uneventful plot: it's also a novel that covers a pretty small geographical territory too. The Hotel Gloriana sits right on Broadway, and fro...

Although the novel's narrator gives us a lot of insight into Wilhelm's inner thoughts and feelings, it tells us less about what everyone else around Wilhelm is thinking at any given time. This mean...

Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher who's kind of a big deal, once suggested that theatrical productions should only represent events that could happen in the same span of time it would take to...

Saul Bellow may be playing around with a man's tragic downfall in Seize the Day, but he's having a lot of fun doing it. Whether or not you can sympathize with the novel's poor schmoe of a hero, it'...

Bellow's writing style is absolutely bursting with energy and life. Just check out these iconic passages from Seize the Day, where Bellow bends himself to the task of capturing Broadway's atmospher...

A long, long time ago, there lived a Roman poet called Horace. (Actually, he was called Quintus Horatius Flaccus, but who's keeping track?). This fellow Horace wrote some poems, and in one of them,...

Although Wilhelm's attempts to "seize the day" end in disaster, the novel's final scene suggests that he may have learned an important lesson after all. As Wilhelm gets swept into the funeral parlo...

Packed with lively language, an entertaining cast of characters, and a poor schmoe of a hero, Seize the Day is a pretty straightforward read. Unlike James Joyce's Ulysses—another famous novel tha...

The Most Important Meal of the DayThe opening pages of Seize the Day make it clear that Tommy Wilhelm is having a rough go of it lately, but it isn't until mid-way through breakfast with his father...

Seize the Day could be read as both a Tragedy and a clever subversion of the classic Rags to Riches plot—the joke being, of course, that rather than moving from rags to riches, Tommy Wilhelm mo...

Chapter 1 – Chapter 2Technically, the "first act" of Seize the Day happens offstage. Four days before the morning when the novel begins, Tommy Wilhelm gives Dr. Tamkin a power of attorney over th...

Like Tommy Wilhelm, Saul Bellow changed his name as a young man. In 1915, he was born Solomon Bellows in Lachine, Quebec. (Source)After Saul Bellow's death, one of his mourners wished that he could...

Wilhelm may have had multiple affairs over the course of his marriage, but Seize the Day is pretty restrained when it comes to romance. In fact, the closest the novel ever gets to a love scene is t...

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73 (1.40)John Milton, Lycidas (1.41) (4.3)Paul Robert Lieder, and Robert Morss Lovett, eds. British Poetry and Prose (1.41)Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind" (...