Cross Temporal Analysis of Existentialist Authors Dostoevsky, Kafka, Camus, and Ellison Relative to the Divergence Between Their Disenfranchised and Non-Marginalized Characters
Date
2021-03-03
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Southern New Hampshire University
Abstract
Through their works, existentialist authors such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Albert Camus, Franz Kafka, and Ralph Ellison endorsed groundbreaking beliefs which advanced the limits of intellectualism. Traits such as alienation, nihilism, absurdism, and authenticity seeped into the plotlines of their novels. Through the literary lens of New Historicism, a cross-temporal examination will be performed on several of their works. It will explore their intentional minimization of certain characters and how their storyline conclusions were deliberately written as ambiguous in order to bring their plights to the foreground. The authors purposely othered characters in order to make their story heard.
These four authors created characters whose shared existential transformations and profound life experiences paralleled or were painfully close to their own. Through their protagonists and supporting characters, Dostoevsky, Camus, Kafka, and Ellison utilized a type of rhetorical chronotope to convey a message about the negative effects of hegemonic exploitation due to race, gender, or economic circumstances. In addition, the writing of nineteenth century Dostoevsky and early twentieth century Kafka influenced the later writings of Camus and Ellison. Although these authors were trying to impart this message to their own respective audiences throughout a time-span of almost one hundred years, they were all essentially conveying a tragically similar message. It is a message that still needs to be heard today, as has become overwhelmingly apparent.
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