The Transformation of Despair to Hope as Asserted on Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s Shiro (original) (raw)
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Theme of despair in Charles Mungoshi's Shona works : a critical study
2000
The study makes an analysis of Charles Mungoshi's Shona works from a Modernist perspective. In this study, Modernist literature is shown as full of change and adventure that has seen characters failing to catch up with the speed at which their social lives are going. The change is continuos and has resulted in many characters continuously failing to cope, which in turn has resulted in continuous frustrations, here described as despair. The study also shows how the despair is being nurtured in the circumstances of crumbling social institutions which, in the past, had acted as the haven for devastated individuals. The crumbling social institutions are shown to be triggering the despair and the characters are given no room to recuperate. The study makes an analysis of what brings this despair and how in the end, particular individual characters fight to ward off the despair.
Poetry, drama and the novel present readers and viewers with emotionally significant situations that they often experience as moving, and their being so moved is one of the principal motivations for engaging with fictions. If emotions are considered as action-prompting beliefs about the environment, the appetite for sad or frightening drama and literature is difficult to explain, insofar nothing tragic or frightening is actually happening to the reader, and people do not normally enjoy being sad or frightened. The paper argues that the somewhat limited and problematic epistemological framework for dealing with the question of fiction-induced emotions has been enhanced by a better empirical understanding of the role of the emotions in social animals and in our individual hedonic economies, as well as by a more generous philosophical assessment of what counts as 'real'. Literary works can be understood further as monuments to experiences of loss that memorialize the highly pleasurable attachments associated with them. The term 'poet' in the title of this article refers to the literary artist in general, following the usual translation of the term in Freud's essay, 'The Relation of the Poet to Daydreaming'. 1 Its subject matter is the 'Anna Karenina problem', the 'paradox of car-ing', which has a double aspect. 2 First, the mode of generation and ontological status of literature-generated emotions remains contentious; there is no general agreement on whether we can actually care about things that never happened and people who never existed. Second, the pleasurable nature of the aesthetic experiences of grief, fear, anxiety, and other negative emotions remains puzzling, in the absence of better elucidation of the psychological mechanisms allegedly at work in catharsis or aesthetic distancing. Grief has meanwhile been undertheorized by philosophers. This is understandable. To the philosopher, the salient phenomena are attachment, the building and maintenance of social bonds, and cooperative activities. Moral and political philosophy have much to say about care, community, responsibility to others, and related topics. Neglect, secession, and aban-donment attract less attention, for it is hard to talk about that which is not. Yet we recognize that emotional life consists of cycles of attachment and loss and that their evolutionary roots are deep and wide. 3 Friends drift away or move away, and we replace them with new friends; the children whose needs structured our lives grow up and move out so as to have children of their own; we tear up the hearts of others and get our own torn up too. Ordinary conversation testifies to the centrality of these attachments and losses in people's lives.
FOREGROUNDING OF HOPELESSNESS IN SOCIAL REUNION IN THE POETRY OF HAMID KHAN
The concept of hopelessness in social reunion is foregrounded in most of the poems of Khan. This paper focuses on this theme foregrounded in Khan's poetry. For this purpose, both the collections of Khan, "Velvet of Loss" and "Pale Leaf (Three Voices)" are used for the data understudy. Only those poems are selected that bear the foregrounded theme of hopelessness in social reunion. The poems that carry the said message are: The Sun Rises, Fears, Separation, Waiting, Velvet of Loss. Thus, Khan's concept of separation is both traditional and individual. He has indirectly dawned upon us that we should stick to our values and be helpful to others and stay selfless, but at the same time, we should also avoid being close to somebody for selfish gains. It is necessary for a good society to flourish.
EXPLORING HUMAN PSYCHE IN THE WORKS OF KAZUO ISHIGURO AND KENZABURO OE
IAEME PUBLICATION, 2020
The exploration and traversing of human mind have been fertile areas of psychological criticism.A deeper understanding of the nuances that are lurking beneath the conscious mind is sure to pose answers to many of the psychological quests.Man has been unraveling the mysteries shrouded in the darker,quite unfamiliar areas, of human mind.The tenets upon which the framework of psychological criticism is based are analysed in the paper by studying the works of Kazuo Ishiguro and Kenzaburo Oe.It is also assumed and satisfactorily concluded that the works are put into check to scrutinize the aftermath of a turbulent yet harmonious mind.The darker areas of human mind are not necessarily the negative sides,it can at times be life giving too the attempts to have a positive outlook are also areas of study especially with these writers
THE PROTAGONIST'S YEARNING.pdf
Alienation, identity, discrimination, indifference and so on have been the pivotal themes of many a story today. The search for identity and the identity crisis have been the globalized problems that persist among all sorts of human lives that exist on this planet. It is no wonder people strugle for identity which is quite a natural instinct. The present paper is a study on the story written by G.B.Prabhat which focuses on celebrating the identity achieved automatically. The anonymity involved with it is discovered by the protagonist and his idea of choosing the unacceptable ways to achieve what he wants is studied closely in this paper. None is bad and none is good totally. Every Man is a puppet in the hands of God. The protagonist proposes opposing the will of God, who automatically disposes his strong desire to retain his character gigantic in the minds of the readers amidst great sympathy for his inability to accommodate in this system. His yearning for the celebration of his recognition is justified to place the justice in the higher position through this study.
Relating to One`s Self in Despair
Søren Kierkegaard is the father of existentialist thinking, and this discipline of thought is the philosophy of film-noir, a collection of black and white films produced in postwar America. While Kierkegaard`s idea of existentialism centers around the importance of relating to one`s self in order to make meaning out of despair, the existentialist universe of film-noir is a world devoid of all hope and meaning, let alone possibilities of ever creating meaning for oneself. I argue that the Coen brothers` The Man Who Wasn`t There is a neo-noir that addresses both aspects of existentialism: the condition of despair in film-noir and the individual struggle to create meaning out of despair as per Kierkegaard. For this paper, I closely examine the Kierkegaardian idea of self in his book, Sickness unto Death, and compare and contrast The Man Who Wasn`t There with Double Indemnity, a classic film noir of the 1940`s to illustrate the difference between the two film`s approach to the philosophy of existentialism. Double Indemnity uses flashback, first-person voiceover, and mise-en-scène to convey a brooding atmosphere of despair but does not address how one should make meaning for oneself in such conditions because the world is ultimately meaningless. On the other hand, The Man Who Wasn`t There emphasizes the importance of continuously making meaning out of despair, revising the aforementioned film-noir elements and using symbols to give language to an individual`s struggle to balance finite and infinite aspects of one`s self which, according to Kierkegaard, is the ultimate way of overcoming despair.
Re-Creation of the Character and Subjectivation in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Re-Creation of the Character and Subjectivation in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, 2022
This paper examines the creation of subject (the protagonist Christopher) and identity in Simon Stephens' play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The Curious Incident features vulnerability, dishonesty, different personalities, trust, experiences that go beyond the character's bounds and relationships between subjects and identities. Christopher is incapable of understanding and knowing himself; as a result, Christopher must learn to rewrite his existence and life in order to reveal his individuality and uncover himself. In opposition to the idea of living inside the confines of universally accepted rules, the play offers a different and autonomous definition of subjectivity which deconstructs accepted rules. The subject tries to exist in a form of power that classifies the individual in society and stigmatises him/her with his/her own individuality. This study, focusing on Alain Badiou's theory of subjectivation and within this context, his four terms (event, truth, body and present) in general and adding a fifth section as the event of daily life, argues that The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time depicts a collective subject similar to Badiou's figure: a subject who rejects ordinary forms of communication for alternatives to authority and its structural inequalities.
Hopelessness in J. C. Dawn's Selected Poems
2021
This research examines the hopelessness described in the poems by J. C. Dawn entitled Living in A Pride World, Womb, and A Soundless Tear in her book The Ripple of Existence. This research is a descriptive qualitative study that aims to describe the words used to express hopelessness. The method used to analyze the poems is the analysis of intrinsic elements in poetry with a psychological approach to find out about hopelessness experienced by the characters in each poem. Hopelessness is a condition experienced by anyone where where there is no more hope. This would also be contextualized in real life concerning the stages of someone experiencing hopelessness based on Abramson's theory. The results of the research show that the "I" character in the first poem experiences a failure in himself; in the second poem, "I" faces struggles under challenging conditions and in the third, "she" finds herself unable to accept the reality of life.
POST-TRAUMATIC EXISTENTIELLS IN A LITERARY TEXT: THE EXAMPLE OF ONE SHORT STORY BY
In terms of the topical issues of poetics, the article under studies outlines the specifics of post-traumatic existentiells of war in a literary text. A convincing example is the collection of short stories by the classic American prose writer Jerome David Salinger (1919-2010) "Nine Stories" (1953). In the methodological context of existential and literary anthropology, the author's biographical traumatic experience is used to actualize the topic of post-traumatic existentiells of war. The article emphasizes the connection between literature and war through the prism of existentiells of the writer's experience, as well as highlights the impact of J. Salinger's war experience on his creative method. In addition, particular accent has been laid on the so-called symptoms of (post) traumatic writing typical for the authors of the "Lost Generation" (depiction of traumatized characters who constitute the core of the personosphere, mostly centered on children; the presence of a plot containing several narrative plans of the story (autology, metaphor, symbol, myth); retrospective narratives of recollection, memorization of past traumatic experiences, fragmentary memories; deviation (ignoring) from the canons of genre and style; dialogicity; internal and external conflict; intertextuality and intermediality; playing with the reader). What is more, the article draws attention to the phenomenon of trauma in the field of literary anthropology, as well as defines the concept of post-traumatic existentiells and analyzes the post-traumatic existentiells of war in the collection "Nine Stories" (fear, loneliness, alienation, compassion; disappointment, love, and squalor). The short story "For Esmé-with Love and Squalor" (1950) has been interpreted in this very respect. The leading existentiells of the short story (stated in its title) affect the main formal and substantive aspects of the work: theme, idea, genre, narrative, personosphere, conflict. Besides, the author's designed mental state of the protagonist reflects the history of post-traumatic stress disorder. In conclusion, the article states that a literary text is able to accumulate the author's post-traumatic war experience and activate its consonance with the current emotional state of the reader, who in such conditions is increasingly subject to empathy and catharsis.