The Human Comedy

William Saroyan’s 1943 novel The Human Comedy is loosely based on his own life in Fresno, California, where he grew up in a fatherless home with his mother and siblings. In the novel, Ithaca, California becomes the setting, rather than Fresno. Saroyan develops several references to the ancient Greek poet Homer, author of The Odyssey. Fourteen-year-old Homer Macauley is the  main character and narrator of The Human Comedy. Homer’s younger brother is named Ulysses, a name he shares with the protagonist of Homer’s Odyssey, as Ulysses is the Roman version of the Greek name Odysseus. Both texts also deal with the concept of “going home”. Ithaca, the name of Homer’s native town in The Human Comedy, is also Odysseus’ home in The Odyssey. Both stories take place in times of war, and in an allusion to The Odyssey’s Helen of Troy, the girl Homer loves is named Helen Eliot.

Saroyan’s novel is episodic in nature, emphasizing mood, human emotions, and introspection over plot. The traits of the characters support the themes the novel presents. During World War II, Homer Macauley is a telegraph messenger, a job through which he discovers much about the general human condition and about himself, as he often delivers news dealing with death and loss. In particular, the struggle to cope with loneliness takes on a significant thematic role. At the opening of the novel the pleasures of an innocent, simplistic childhood are exemplified through the presence of Homer’s younger brother, Ulysses. Ulysses’ ordinary life experiences include his backyard, animals, time with his mother, and seeing a friendly man on a train, all of which represent unscathed joys. The innocence of both Ulysses and Homer begins to change following one of Homer’s earliest telegram deliveries.

Homer is charged with delivering a telegram to a middle-aged woman containing the news that her son has died. Homer and Ulysses’ idyllic, small-town life is suddenly no longer the self-contained world it had been, but part of a bigger, more complex existence. In the coming days, as they move about their town, the brothers come in contact with various people from whom they learn about the world around them. Mr. Spangler, who works at the telegraph office, is calm and caring and Homer looks up to him. His calmness helps thwart a robbery at the office. Mr. Grogan, the owner of the office, is often drunk, thus representing a different side of life. At home the brothers are influenced by their widowed mother’s combination of sadness and wisdom, and by their older sister Bess, who early in the book feels sorry for some soldiers and goes to the movies with them along with her friend Mary.



Characters representing additional facets of the human condition include Mr. Covington, the owner of a sporting goods store, who helps Ulysses, and Mr. Ara, a generous grocer. There are also characters at school who add to Homer and Ulysses’ increasingly worldly awareness. Mr. Byfield is a gym coach who at one point tackles Homer; Miss Hicks is a history teacher from whom the boys learn an important lesson; and Mr. Ek, the principal, remains focused on doing what is right regardless of how it might affect his relationships with parents or his staff. Homer and Ulysses also have an older brother, Marcus, who is to leave soon for the war. The deceased patriarchic of the Macauley family even appears at one point to visit Mrs. Macauley in the form of a ghost, offering her comfort and foreshadowing Marcus’ future death.

Throughout the novel, instances of both narration and dialogue present loneliness as being at the heart of the human condition. Actions free of self-interest and that show compassion for others counteract the essential loneliness that permeates humanity. Christian faith is also pointed to as a remedy for loneliness. All of this helps Homer mature and develop an awareness of how to survive in the world. More than at any other time in The Human Comedy, Homer’s perception of his place in the world is put to the test when he is asked to deliver a telegram to his own home. Coming full circle, reflecting the telegram he delivered early in the book, this one also contains the news of a death: that of his own brother Marcus. In a final nod to the power of compassion, the Macauleys welcome into their family a young man named Tobey George, who has no family of his own and whom Marcus had befriended while in the army.