The Adventures of Augie March

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1953

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Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-20

Chapters 21-26

Character Analysis

Themes

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Important Quotes

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Themes

Self-Exploration and Search for Identity

The Adventures of Augie March is a novel about the search for identity. Augie’s name is in the title, and in his role as narrator of his bildungsroman, he charts his growth and development. At each turn, he tests the boundaries of what it means to exist in his society, which grows and changes alongside him. Over the course of the novel, he wears a lot of identities, many of which seem contradictory. He is a Jewish immigrant from Canada who considers himself American. At the same time as thinking of himself as a Chicagoan, he spends large and important parts of his life in New York, Mexico, and France. Augie is a petty criminal, yet he does not consider himself one because he sees a purpose behind each of his crimes. He is a man with a low income who moves in rich circles; he is constantly working, but he is never in the same job for long: a sportswear salesman, a boxing manager, a member of the Merchant Marines, a hunter, an eagle trainer, a book thief, and many others. Augie is an arch-individualist, but he also seeks romance and love and goes along with his lovers’ ambitions. Each of these identities has an internal contradiction and he tries to locate his identity by exploring every facet of existence, presenting these contradictions to the audience as signposts on his journey of self-exploration. Augie comes to define himself through these contrasts, and his narration tracks this growth through juxtaposition.

Romance becomes an important way in which Augie learns about his identity. Thea is the prime example of this process, as she seduces Augie with an idea of love and romance that convinces him to accompany her on an absurd adventure in Mexico. This journey is one of self-discovery, chiefly because Augie comes to see that his understanding of Thea is misguided. He does not truly love her; he loves a version of her that he has created in his mind, an amalgamation of assumptions and desires that he projects onto her. With this, Augie learns about his own identity, realizing that he is a man in love with the idea of love rather than with any specific person. Thea also knows Augie better than he knows himself, which annoys him; when he cheats on Thea with Stella, he resents Thea for guessing that he would. Later, he marries Stella. They live together in Europe but seemingly have separate lives. He loves Stella, he assures himself, but she is an actress, someone who can play the role of someone he can love. Once again, Augie’s quest for identity falters when he tries to comprehend the identities of others.

In the end, Augie accepts that he may never know his true self. He has a conversation with Mintouchian in which he agrees that he will no longer try to be what society wants him to be; instead, he will be himself. By this point, Augie is set apart from the things that once defined him. He is an American abroad, living in a post-war world. He is rich and married, seemingly having achieved all the success that he ever wanted. He does not know whether he is happy, though, especially when he sits beside his successful and miserable brother. Augie comes to realize that the unknowability of identity is something that will continue forever. He may never know his true self, but his search for self becomes an identity in its own right. He learns to accept that the journey is more important than the destination, as the journey of self-exploration is what defines him.

Fate as a Scapegoat

One of the defining themes of Augie’s life is the way he conceives of his fate. He never feels fully in control of his destiny and prefers to surrender himself to the whims of the universe. In doing so, he rejects any responsibility for the direction of his life. The various twists and turns are never Augie’s fault, he insists, as the universe is always conspiring against him. Whether he is botching an operation to smuggle people over the Canadian border or traveling south to Mexico to hunt lizards with an eagle, Augie always conceives of himself as a passenger. He goes along with others rather than taking control of his own fate. He is a passive presence in society but in a self-protective way. By not asserting agency over his life, he allows himself to believe that he is not responsible for his actions. He can blame others when he does not succeed, or he can blame fate itself. Other people tell him to find his place in the world, but he simply responds that fate has not led him to the right place yet. In this way, resigning himself to fate is a coping mechanism for the lack of power he feels.

Augie’s ideas of fate are also bound up in his sense of justice. Two prominent people in his life have disabilities that affect their lives. Georgie has an intellectual disability, while Einhorn has a physical disability that requires using a wheelchair. Augie loves Georgie more than anyone else in his family and respects Einhorn as one of the greatest people he will ever meet. At the same time, Augie’s society discriminates against people with disabilities, making it difficult for his family to accommodate Georgie’s needs. Likewise, the status quo looks down on people with disabilities like Georgie and Einhorn. Through Augie’s point of view, then, fate has conspired against them. Augie looks at their lives when thinking about his own. If someone as innocent as Georgie or as great as Einhorn can be encumbered by things beyond their control, then he sees himself as having little chance. His surrender to fate has a sense of learned helplessness, in which he convinces himself that he is vulnerable no matter what he achieves. He might find himself in a wheelchair like Einhorn or a psychiatric hospital like Georgie. His life becomes a process of learning how to make something meaningful of his life without fearing that fate will conspire against him at every opportunity. He does this by getting to know himself and learning how the consequences of his actions shape his material conditions and the world around him.

At the end of the novel, Augie throws himself at the mercy of fate, even though he does not achieve anything in particular or become anyone else. He reconciles his fear of agency, however, by making important decisions in his life that a younger Augie would not have made. He proposes to Stella, for example, and he signs up for the Merchant Marines. These actions are not always successful: He is involved in a shipwreck, for example, and his marriage to Stella is not everything he imagined it would be. Nevertheless, he actively marries a woman and joins the military. In a direct way, he accepts his role in making his own future. Later, he moves to Europe, and while his life seems as listless as it has always been, he has developed self-awareness and maturity about his place in the world, which gives him a better understanding of his relationship with fate. Augie may still feel powerless, but he has learned not to surrender. He is responsible for his actions, both good and bad, and he cannot blame the universe to divest himself of responsibility.

The American Dream

The American Dream is an ideal that proposes that everyone in the United States of America has equal opportunity for social mobility. With hard work, anyone can rise up to the elite, and fame and fortune are available to anyone who has the requisite desire and determination. Augie does not embody this belief. He never works particularly hard, even though he seems confident that he will make something of his life. Augie is from a low-income immigrant family, and he struggles for most of his childhood. Even though his material conditions have deprived him of many of the finer things in life, he treats his life as a narrative with himself as the protagonist. The wealth he stands to gain is not material but experiential. For Augie, the true American Dream is not upward mobility but the voyage of self-discovery. Not everyone agrees, however, and Augie is frequently told that he should work harder to make something of himself.

Simon tries to find a shortcut to the American Dream by marrying a wealthy woman and, through Charlotte’s family, founding a business empire. In spite of his success, he is never truly happy. He has a disastrous affair, and, in the final stages of the novel, he seems trapped in a bitter marriage that has locked them both inside their gilded cage. Augie rejects this shortcut for himself on several occasions. He is never overly invested in his relationship with Charlotte’s cousin, Lucy, and he declines the Renlings’s offer to adopt him and sculpt him into a member of the social elite. Notably, he always presumes that Einhorn will bequeath him nothing, and Thea’s wealth is not a consideration when he is dating her. In his pursuit of the American Dream, Simon gets everything he ever wanted except for happiness. Augie is similarly unhappy, but he recognizes the hollowness of trying to secure happiness through financial success and separates the two in his mind.

The novel touches more deeply on the idea of America itself, particularly as a vehicle for social mobility. In this sense, Augie’s background is important. Like Bellow himself, Augie is a Jewish immigrant who settles in Chicago and grows up considering himself American. He was not born in the country, nor does he share the religious or ethnic backgrounds of the majority of the population. This does not restrict him from feeling American, however, and this is particularly evident when he goes near the border or when he crosses into another country. When helping to smuggle Canadian immigrants across the border, Augie views himself as an American first and foremost. He is thinking about the criminal aspect of his actions rather than sympathizing with the people who are making the same journey that his family once made. When he travels to Mexico, he feels even more American. He must remove himself from American society to understand how his American identity is fundamental to his sense of self. When World War II breaks out, Augie feverishly tries to sign up for the military. He does have a background as a European Jewish man, but he is only desperate to sign up for the war when America is attacked, illustrating the extent to which Americanness has become fundamental to his identity. For Augie, the true American Dream is the process that furnishes him with an identity, one that he only comes to understand from his perspective as an outsider. Augie leaves America and, in doing so, learns how deeply he is American. This process of becoming and feeling a part of something is, to Augie, the true American Dream.