The Unavoidable Suffering in Selected Literary Texts: Poems and Novels

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The unavoidable suffering is an outstanding theme which has its impact to almost all literary texts. Typically, unavoidable suffering is the supreme touchstone in life and literature. Poets used its presence incessantly. They are always conscious of its inevitability. Investigation of this theme gives the reader a panoramic view of vital issues that are unusually linked to some extent with suffering; such as religion, God, nature, love and immortality. In the poems discussed in this study, unavoidable suffering reflects the effect of modern psychology has had upon both literature and literary criticism. The main reflection of suffering which is implied in the characters presented reveal the very contradictions, absurdities and complexities of our life. The poets and novelists chosen in this paper portray suffering, as “an abstract force, in an attempt to come to terms with it as well as to fathom it.” (Gurra, 2019, p.5) In the inexorable quest to comprehend it, poets do not offer a final view of suffering because it remains for them the great unknown mystery. This paper, however, is an attempt to meticulously examine and critically analyze the images of suffering in minor characters presented in selected poems. The selected poems are of Robinson Jeffers, Allen Ginsberg, and Maya Angelou. The characters selected from different novels are minor ones. Characters like: Roger Chiilingworth from The Scarlet Letter (1850), Walter Morel from Sons and Lovers (1913), Zeena Frome from Ethan Frome (1911), and Rezia Warren Smith from Mrs. Dalloway (1925). Different kinds of suffering are disscussed in order to gain a better understanding of the writers’ perception of unavoidable suffering as well as to understand the western philosophy of it.