ABSURDIST ECHOES AND THE EXISTENTIAL REINCARNATION OF THE SELF: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CORMAC MCCARTHY’S THE ROAD, SUTTREE, AND RICHARD WRIGHT’S NATIVE SON, THE OUTSIDER

Abstract

The present doctoral thesis aims to compare the works of two Southern American writers: Richard Wright and Cormac McCarthy. Precisely, Native Son, The Outsider, Suttree, and The Road share a lucid propensity towards Absurdism coupled with existential convictions that, in turn, result in the reincarnation of the self. The corpus demonstrates the writers‘ preoccupation with the dilemmas of the age, which are brought to art with the most distinct narrative style. The study claims that the texts of Wright and McCarthy reveal their adoption and adaptation of the Sartrean-Camusian discourse. Therefore, within the confines of Camus‘ The Absurd and Sartre‘s Existentialism, the examination of concepts such as alienation- be it self-alienation or communal- death or suicide in addition to the notions of freedom of choice and revolt in the four novels proves the Southern writers‘ influence by the doctrine of the French philosophers. It, therefore, divulges their success in appropriating the discourse to the American novel. The research also highlights the novelists‘ stance on the issue of God‘s death as it explores their own religious inclinations. The analyses of the narrative techniques relied on by McCarthy and Wright in the selected works confirm their atheism. In other words, the thesis attests that both writers advocate the death of God by asserting that the deconstruction of the Divine is a rebirth of the self that restores its equilibrium and shows its readiness to fight for authentic existence in a Godless, absurd world.