＜Pants Joke＞
　主にLevinの不運やドジ、小心者としての一面を象徴するエピソードであるので、この通称”pants joke”と呼ばれる箇所から2つ引用したい。

　 “Perfect,” Levin said. He was abruptly very hungry. They sat down at the round table, for which he felt a surprising immediate affection. Pauline had forgotten the salad bowl and went in to get it. When she returned she served the casserole, standing. A child called from the kitchen. Distracted, she missed Levin’s plate and dropped a hot gob of tuna fish and potato into his lap.
   He rose with a cry.
  “I’m dreadfully sorry.” She hastily wiped at his pants with a cloth but Levin grabbed it from her and did it himself. The operation left a large wet stain.
  “I’d better change,” he said, shaken. “My other suit is in my bag.”
  “I’ll get it,” Gilley said, his face flushed. “It’s still in the trunk.”
  “Everything will get stone cold,” Pauline said. “Gerald, why don’t you lend Mr. Levin a pair of your slacks? That’ll be quicker.”
  “I’d rather get my own,” Levin said.
  “Let him do what he wants,” Gilley told his wife.
  “There’s no need for him to be uncomfortable till we get his suitcase in. Your gray slacks will go nicely with his jacket. They’re hanging in your closet. ”
  “Please―” Levin was perspiring.
  “Maybe she’s right,” Gilley said. “It’d be quicker.”
  “I’ll change in a minute once I have my suitcase.”
  “Gerald’s pants will be less trouble.”
  “They won’t fit. He’s taller than I am.”
  “Roll up the cuffs. By the time you’re ready to leave I’ll have your trousers spot-cleaned and ironed. It was my fault and I’d feel much better if you both please let me work it out my own way.”
  Gilley shrugged and Levin gave up. He changed into Gerald’s slacks in the bathroom.
  While he was there Pauline tapped on the door.
  “I forgot about your shorts, they must be damp. I have a clean pair of Gerald’s here.”
  He groaned to himself, then said quietly, “I don’t want them.”
  “Are you sure?”
  “Positive.” (pp. 9-10)

”I’m grateful to you in more ways than one, Laverne,” he said haltingly. “Couldn’t we meet sometime―under better circumstances, and―”
 She kicked his pants off the porch. “No, you bastard, don’t ever let me see you again in your whole goddam life. Don’t think those whiskers on your face hide that you ain’t a man.”
 This broke Levin up. (p. 85)

＜Liberal Arts＞
  Levin が最もこだわりを見せたliberal arts（一般教養科目）に関しての場面などを参照しながら、彼の持つ信念や理想、そして大胆不敵な部分について考察したい。
　まずはGilleyから一般教養科目の扱いと現状を聞かされ、彼が強い言葉で不快感を露わにしている箇所を引用する。 　

“A dirty shame.” Levin was on his feet again. “ The liberal arts―as you know―since ancient times―have affirmed our rights and liberties. Socrates―”
“That’s how these things go. It’s best to be philosophical about it.”
“Democracy owes its existence to the liberal arts. Shouldn’t there be―er―some sort of protest?” (p. 27)

“Certainly I’m for English majors―I was one myself―but there are other college in the state that do a good job of training them better than we can presently, with our orientation and limited resources. My own point of view is that we ought to take pride in doing well a task that has to be done, though I’m frank to confess there are one or two in the department who don’t see it quite my way, but that’s their problem.” (pp. 40-41)

“The way the world is now,” Levin said, “I sometimes feel I’m engaged in a great irrelevancy, teaching people how to write who don’t know what to write. I can give them subjects but not subject matter. I worry I’m not teaching how to keep civilization from destroying itself.” The instructor laughed embarrassedly. “Imagine that, Bucket, I know it sounds ridiculous, pretentious. I’m not particularly gifted―ordinary if the truth be told―with a not very talented intellect, and how much good would I do, if any? Still, I have the strongest urge to say they must understand what humanism means or they won’t know when freedom no longer exists. And that they must either be the best-masters of ideas and of themselves―or choose the best to lead them; in either case democracy wins. I have the strongest compulsion to be involved with such thought in the classroom, if you know what I mean.” (p. 115)

Levin’s freshmen, when he met them, were eighteen and warm. Many were fine people, earnest, ambitious in uncomplicated ways, some obvious bright, but very few he knew were committed to ideas or respected intellectualism. They showed almost no interest in the humanities and arts (“electives”). They overvalued “useful” knowledge and confused vocational training with humanistic education. They consistently applied standards of technical efficiency to the values and purposes of life; so did too many of their professors. Even their fears were unimaginative: not that civilization was imperiled and might be destroyed, but that if their grades were not high enough they would miss out on the “good jobs” and have to settle for a “lower standard of living.” They were badly informed about themselves and the world. Their intelligence, their lives, were absorbed in triviality. They had lost much without knowing it. They had not earned their innocence. This wasn’t, of course, true for all, but it was true for too many. (p. 274)

＜Outsider＞
  “You are still an outsider looking in.” (p. 288) 、これはGilleyがLevinに言い放った言葉である。ここでは彼の暗い過去や孤独な部分に注目して、outsiderたるゆえんを探ってみたい。
　始めに彼の過去に関して取り上げたいのだが、まず2つの場面を見てほしい。

In the next room, through the open door he saw Erik sitting up in his bed. “Who’re you?”
  “Mr. Levin―the funny man.”
  “I want a drink.” He went to the bathroom and got the water. Erik drank and lay back. As Levin was covering him the child raised his head and kissed him under the eye.
  Mary was asleep. Levin put off the light and listened to the children sleeping. The poor orphans. He burst into tears. (p. 193)

He said, thick-voiced, half his face cropped, “The emotion of my youth was humiliation. That wasn’t only because we were poor. My father was continuously a thief. Always thieving, always caught, he finally died in prison. My mother went crazy and killed herself. One night I came home and found her sitting on the kitchen floor looking at a bloody knife.”
  Pauline leaned her face against him.
  “I mourned them but it was a lie. I was in love with an unhappy, embittered woman who had just got rid of me. I mourned the loss of her more than I did them. I was mourning myself. I became a drunk, it was the only fate that satisfied me.”
  She moaned; Levin trembled.
  “I drank, I stank. I was filthy, skin on bone, maybe a hundred ten pounds. My eyes looked as though they had been pissed on. I saw the world in yellow light.”
  “Please, that’s all.”
  “For two years I lived in self-hatred, willing to part with life. I won’t tell you what I had come to. But one morning in somebody’s filthy cellar, I awoke under burlap bags and saw my rotting shoes on a broken chair. They were lit in dim sunlight from a shaft or window. I stared at the chair, it looked like a painting, a thing with a value of its own. I squeezed what was left of my brain to understand why this should move me so deeply, why I was crying. Then I thought, Levin, if you were dead there would be no light on your shoes in this cellar. I came to believe what I had often wanted to, that life is holy. I then became a man of principle.”
  “Oh, Lev,” she said. (pp. 200-201)

He felt sadness for every living thing. Even a tree, when Levin looked, looked sad. He was his own pathetic fallacy.（中略）the town was small and she lived nearby. He had one day seen Erik scraping the sidewalk in her long shoes.
  To get away from what he could not escape he drove his car on dusty country roads leading nowhere. Sometimes he stopped and shouted in the stillness. Lonely crows flew up from the fields. White farmhouse and rain-stained barns were lonely, cows and horses, every living thing. Trees were lonely, fences, so was the horizon. That somehow was the worst. The dust blew up behind him as he sped home. He knew that the only way to fight his sadness of spirit was to be among people but he did nothing to be. Throughout these weeks he managed to teach students, then escaped his office. Though an occasional invitation to someone’s house came his way, he did not accept, not to see her. He was certain she didn’t want to see him; this made him deathly lonely. He often doubted she had truly loved him. He was at times desperately moved to write her but wrote nothing. If she wanted it ended, he would keep it ended. He would help her resist him if she were resisting. (p. 256)

＜結論＞
　Levinの性格を3つの項目に分け、それぞれの性質をあらわすと考えられる箇所の引用を用いながら、彼の多面性についてまとめたつもりである。Pants Jokeでは彼の不運と臆病さを、Liberal Artsでは信念や大胆さ、教育に対してのこだわりなどにも触れられたと思う。そして最後にOutsiderというキーワードで過去や孤独について取り上げた。賢い方法であったかは別として、一応形にはなったと思いたい。
　最後になるが、A New Lifeの中には“Our days are short, thought Levin, our bodies frail.” (p. 258) や“too much had happened in too short a time.” (p. 335) など、現代を生きる我々にも（我々にこそ）深く突き刺さる言葉が多くあったと思う。もちろんそれはこの小説に限ったことではないが、そこで思い出したのが下に引用したモームの『人間の絆』のひとつの場面である。

「何かい、きみは自分がとても頭がいいので、どんな深遠な思想家の著述でも、一回読めば頭に入ると言うのかい？」
「ぼくは読んで理解したいとは望んでいないのだ。批評家ではないしね。ぼくは、読む対象自体に関心があるわけではなく、自分にとって役立つかどうかに関心があるだけだ」
「じゃあ、どうして書物を読むのだ？」
「読書は楽しいし、ぼくの習慣になっているからね。本を読まないと、ちょうどたばこを吸わないのと同じように気分が悪くなるのだ。それに、読書は自分自身を知るためでもある。ぼくが本を読むときは、ただ字面を目で追っているだけのような気もするけれど、時どき、ぼく自身にとって意味のある一節あるいは句に出合うことがあるんだ。」 （モーム作、行方昭夫訳『人間の絆（中）』（岩波書店，2010）pp. 229-230）