本研究聚焦著名犹太裔美国作家索尔·贝娄的小说《拉维尔斯坦》中的死亡主题。该小说是贝娄的最后一部作品，书中主人公艾比·拉维尔斯坦的原型是索尔·贝娄的生前密友，著名学者艾伦·布鲁姆。同时，作者本人也以拉维尔斯坦的好友兼其传记撰写者齐克的身份出现在书中。 本研究拟采用语法解释与心理解释相结合的解释学方法对小说进行阐释。在研究中，首先列举文本中与死亡主题相关的元素，包括小说的基本线索，小说中关于死亡印象的重要说法“画面终止”，以及其它有关情节，如自杀、人体冷冻术等。接下来，本文通过对比与寻找新关系对死亡主题作进一步阐释，主要分析死亡与个体，死亡与信念的关系。最后，本文着重探讨索尔·贝类的创作动机具体说来，贝类试以《拉维尔斯坦》这本书完成对艾伦·布鲁姆的承诺，将人死之后将终止的“画面”在文字中继续，同时也在文字中预演了自己的死亡，并试图克服对此的恐惧。

This thesis focuses on the theme of death in the novel Ravelstein, which was written by famous Jewish-American writer Saul Bellow. Ravelstein is the last novel of Bellow. The protagonist Abe Ravelstein in this book clearly refers to Saul Bellow’s close friend,famous Jewish-American scholar Allan Bloom. Also, the writer himself appears in the book as friend and biography writer of Ravelstein, who names Chick. In order to availably understand and and analyze Saul Bellow's Ravelstein, the combine of grammatical interpreting and psychological interpreting is used in this thesis. The important textual elements related to the theme of death in Ravelstein are firstly displayed, including the basic clue, the important saying about the view of death in the novel--“the pictures would stop”,and other important plots-Suicide and Cryonics. Then by conducting comparison and detecting new relations based on the textual interpretation, a further interpretation of the death theme is developed. Ravelstein presents different attitude towards death among the characters, and also different ways to think of death according to people's belief. At last, the motive with which Saul Bellow wrote Ravelstein is explored. Ravelstein is a book by which Bellow intended to let “the pictures”continue for his friend and also conduct a preview in word to his own death.