The tragedy of hope : literature and suffering

Abstract

The main concern of this thesis is to argue that hope, which in this thesis will be defined as and developed in the key of a positively charged expectation of things as they are, or as they might yet be, or as they should be, produces a distinct form of suffering that manifests itself in the form of tragedy or disappointment, or both. This thesis will turn to philosophical and theoretical texts to lay down and argue some essential points of departure; it will be to literary narratives, however, that it will turn to underscore the human experience at the heart of this all. As such, it will be argued that literary narrative is a necessary medium as it offers a contribution to philosophical reflection that would not be possible in its absence, providing a crystallising and vitalising space of reflection and exposition to an otherwise impersonal philosophical mode of presentation that ultimately concerns concrete human matters. Schopenhauer’s philosophy of the will to life will feature prominently in the discussion of hope and suffering in this thesis, and it will also underpin the development of what in this thesis will be called the will to hope. The deterministic, ceaselessly striving, and aimless Schopenhauerian will, the struggling, suffering energy of which animates everything in the world and tragically predetermines a simultaneously particular and general misfortune as the fate of humankind, will be reconfigured and repositioned through the will to hope, which contains within it the fundamental expectation of things possibly being otherwise, where the human condition is processed in a laboured and indecisive everlasting conversation which becomes the staple rejoinder to the vicissitudes of fate. The narrative stage is thus set for a carefully abstracted, attached, caring mode of realisation which nonetheless contains its own tragic horizon in the ultimately failed attempt to overcome the naked human condition. In seeking to develop this argument, this thesis will examine in depth four contemporary literary narratives, two by English-speaking authors and two by French-speaking ones, namely Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee, The Promise, by David Galgut, Animalia, by Jean Baptiste del Amo, and Serotonin, by Michel Houellebecq. These narratives will concretise the dynamic of the will to hope, highlighting not only its immediate relevance to lived human narratives, but also its inseparability from the struggles of characters to foist their narrative understanding onto the tragic contingencies that girdle the fabric of their existence.