Seize the Day by Saul Bellow is a novella written about failure and bad judgment. The protagonist, Tommy Wilhelm, has made mistakes all his life by “invariably [taking] the course he had rejected innumerable times”. He constantly frustrates his successful father who resides in the same hotel as Wilhelm by living in disarray, depending on drugs, begging for help and sympathy, and throwing away his (not-very-hard-earned) money. Wilhelm is now middle-aged, but he has not yet done anything productive with his life: “He was aware that he hadn’t applied his mind strictly to anything”.
Laziness, refusal to take the blame for his own mistakes and bad judgment are some of his worst qualities. Tommy Wilhelm is an imprudent, unsuccessful, emotional disappointment. Wilhelm always trusts the wrong people. He admittedly makes “‘the same mistake, [he gets] burned again and again’” even after his father explicitly warns him not to get involved with certain untrustworthy people. He believes his whole existence has been a string of mistakes because he put too much faith in rotten people.
A talent scout failed at helping him become famous, his wife destroyed his marriage, the nepotistic company stole his job, a lying doctor called Tamkin screwed him over financially, et cetera, et cetera. It is foolish and unthinking of Wilhelm to invest everything he has in a person or thing over and over again until finally, he has nothing left to throw away. Wilhelm’s imprudent behavior is a major factor in his failure to be productive. Under no circumstances could Wilhelm be considered anything other than a failure.
His life is lonely and miserable, he is poor and unemployed, and people have no objection to stepping all over him and taking advantage of him. Wilhelm lives in a wealth-driven world, but he has no wealth. First, he tries his hand at acting, but he discovers he had no talent. He then marries but refuses to stay with his wife because he believes that “she just has fixed herself on [Wilhelm] to kill [him]”. His wife refuses to divorce him, but she exploits Wilhelm by making him pay her obscene amounts of money so she can raise their children properly.
Later, he dabbles in gambling, but to no surprise to the reader, “he had never won. Not once”. In comparison to his father Dr. Adler, Wilhelm looks even more worthless; “the handsome old doctor stood well above the other old people in the hotel. He was idolized by everyone”. Even more depressing is the fact that Wilhelm is on the brink of literally failing at life – he complains that he has difficulty breathing (which is a key factor to staying alive), and he thinks to himself, “I am trying to stay alive and work too hard at it”.
Tommy Wilhelm is indubitably a failure, but he copes with his problems by blaming them on others and never taking fault. He lays the blame on the fact that he “had been slow to mature, and he had lost ground, and so he hadn’t been able to get rid of his energy and he was convinced that this energy itself had done him the greatest harm”. Wilhelm’s life is pretty pathetic. What Wilhelm desires most is sympathy for his pathetic existence. Wilhelm is a very emotional man, which is evident when he openly sobs at a funeral for a man he never knew in the last chapter of the book.
He wants to ensure that there is at least one person in the entire world that cares for him. He tries and fails, to acquire that sympathy from his father. Wilhelm is convinced that his messy situation would improve if only his father would show some kindness and help him out in some way. But actually, Wilhelm’s efforts to win over his father just make him weaker in his father’s eyes. When Wilhelm begins to spend time with the strange character named Tamkin, he encounters what he was longing for – compassion and good advice; “That the doctor cared about him pleased him.
This was what he craved, that someone should care about him, wish him well. Kindness, mercy, he wanted”. Tamkin, who claims he is a psychological doctor, advises Wilhelm, “the past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real – the here-and-now. Seize the day” and this encourages Wilhelm to do whatever Tamkin says. The desire to be cared for is what ultimately bankrupts Wilhelm. He entrusted his last dollars to Tamkin who conned him and disappeared. The care and help that Wilhelm had finally attained actually sent him deeper into his downward spiral of emotion.
Wilhelm is a bankrupt loser in a wealth-driven environment. He never made any money because he kept making the same mistakes. Wilhelm was doomed to failure from the moment he stopped believing in himself. Had he extended enough effort to begin a career in acting, he would have succeeded. Trying too hard broadens many more horizons than not trying at all. With an attitude adjustment and a little more self-confidence, Wilhelm could have been the success he always dreamed of being. Seize the Day teaches the valuable lesson of working to achieve one’s goals through the cautionary tale of Tommy Wilhelm, the failure.
