TERROR AND TRAGIC OPTIMISM AS SUSTAINING CONSTRUCTS IN CAMUS'S THE PLAGUE AND SOYINKA'S SEASON OF ANOMY

📄 Project Abstract

Camus's The Plague has been read variously as an allegory of Nazi terror in France as well as a depiction of Camus's absurdist philosophy. Many critics of Soyinka's Season of Anomy strangely also have interpreted the text as an allegory of the Nigerian civil war in which terror is seen as a political weapon. Although these modes of reading explore the resistance to terror, critical reading of a work cannot be achieved through allegory which searches for meaning outside the text. The present reading, therefore, while distancing itself from the above perspectives, undertakes a comparative examination of the two novels in order to demonstrate that terror and tragic optimism are their sustaining constructs. The study examines tragic optimism following Nietzsche's notion of the universal instinct. In his theory of the Ubermensch, Nietzsche presents the figure of the Overman who is able to shatter the rules of rationality that are often built on mediocrity, and set up new ones out of his own...