The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

Published 1954 · 536 pages · 250,619 words · about 19 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction

How hard is The Adventures of Augie March to read?

The Adventures of Augie March scores 58 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 60 out of 100
Bellow writes in exuberant, allusive prose that draws on literary tradition, street slang, and Yiddish rhythms. The vocabulary is demanding, reflecting Augie's hungry intelligence and Chicago's textures.
Sentence structure: 62 out of 100
Sentences are often long and elaborate, building through accumulation in the manner of American expansion itself. Bellow's syntax has momentum, carrying readers through Augie's picaresque adventures.
Abstraction: 62 out of 100
The novel explores freedom, identity, and the American dream of self-creation. Augie moves through these abstractions, testing himself against the world's demands.
Information density: 62 out of 100
Depression-era Chicago, Mexico, wartime Europe, and the parade of characters Augie encounters pack the novel. Bellow creates density through the encyclopedic range of Augie's experience.
Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
Augie narrates his own story, but his resistance to being claimed by others means he remains somewhat opaque. What he truly wants, and who he truly is, must be inferred from his movements.
Symbolic density: 58 out of 100
The eagle Caligula that Augie trains becomes symbolic of America's predatory grandeur. Augie himself becomes symbolic of the American seeking self-definition through refusal.
Ironic distance: 58 out of 100
Augie maintains ironic distance from everyone who tries to possess or define him—his family, his lovers, his mentors. The irony is in how his freedom becomes its own trap.
Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
Augie ends in Paris, still uncommitted, still seeking. Bellow refuses the conventional novel's closure, leaving Augie permanently in motion.
Structural complexity: 55 out of 100
The novel follows Augie chronologically through his adventures, with each chapter introducing new schemes and characters. The structure is accessible but vast, demanding stamina.

How The Adventures of Augie March is regarded

The Adventures of Augie March holds a literary regard score of 89 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Prizes

Where The Adventures of Augie March sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (449 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, The Adventures of Augie March scores 62 out of 100. A second mythos, irony, pulls at it with a weight of 0.25. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
I am an American, Chicago born--Chicago, that somber city--and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style
Symbol: Formal
Mama passed the dog's dish to Grandma, and Winnie received her food at the old lady's feet from the old lady's hands.
Mythos: Quixotic Comedy ii (comedy ii)
That's the animal ridens in me, the laughing creature, forever rising up.
Genre: Novel + Confession + Anatomy
will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock

Where the story of The Adventures of Augie March takes place

  • Chicago slums, poolrooms, suburbs and union halls, 1920s-1941 (1922 to 1941), the main setting
  • Acatla and Mexico City, Trotsky's exile years (1938 to 1940)
  • Liberty ship and lifeboat off the Canaries, wartime Atlantic (1943 to 1944)
  • Postwar Paris, Florence, Rome and Flanders (1946 to 1952)

5 things that are true of The Adventures of Augie March, with the passage for each

  1. The narrator opens by declaring himself Chicago born and describing his idiot brother's song.

    I am an American, Chicago born--Chicago, that somber city--and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style

  2. Grandma Lausch forces the family to commit Georgie to an institution.

    Georgie should go to an institution.

  3. The eagle that Thea and Augie train is named Caligula after Mexican children shout at it.

    "Si, Caligula," I said.

  4. The Sam Mac Manus is torpedoed on the fifteenth day out, off the Canaries.

    on the fifteenth day out, when we were off the Canaries, the Sam Mac Manus was sent down by a torpedo.

  5. The ship's carpenter Basteshaw beats and ties up Augie in the lifeboat to keep him from signaling rescue.

    He had clobbered me with the oar.

Scenes in The Adventures of Augie March that Frye would name

38 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Anagnorisis, untitled
This was the first time that anyone had told me anything like the truth about myself. Einhorn names Augie's 'opposition', a recognition that pivots his sense of self.
Anagnorisis, untitled
I thought that my aim of being simple was just a fraud, that I wasn't a bit goodhearted or affectionate After losing Thea he recognizes that his own simplicity is a guileful invention.
Agon, untitled
Two demented land creatures struggling on the vast water, head to head, putting out all the strength they had. The lifeboat fight with Basteshaw is the book's most naked contest.
Pathos, untitled
That was a shaft! It went straight and cold into my bowels, and I couldn't bring up my back or otherwise move, but sat bent over. Grandma Lausch's death is reported as a blow to the household.
Hamartia, untitled
But I was terribly hot for this woman. The night with Stella is Augie's fatal misstep with Thea.
Sparagmos, untitled
I went into the living room and wrecked the oxhide chairs, the glassware, tore off curtains and pictures. Augie's rage tears apart Thea's house and sets the snakes loose.

Books that share these scenes with The Adventures of Augie March

About the author

Saul Bellow