Literary Arts (Dec 2020)
Investigating the Components of Existence in Bill Mourners
Abstract
Abstract Existence is the philosophy of the originality of existence (one of the most important and influential schools of philosophy and literature in the world, the birthplace of which is "Europe"). Existence is directly confronted with the borderline situations of "death, suffering, fear, and guilt."Gholam Hossein Saedi (1936-1986), who is known as a modern writer, talks about pain, loneliness, and death. His works represent the literature of existence. Saedi's view of life is noteworthy. In his collection of stories entitled Bill's Mourners, he talks about the pains that have fallen on human spirits, and the atmosphere he depicts is full of fantasy, illusion, stress, economic and cultural poverty of rural and urban life in a way that the reader can not hope for a happy ending in the story. The power of Saedi's writing is rooted in his philosophical, literary, and existentialist thoughts, which modern man has repeatedly observed under the magnifying glass of his literary taste. One of the features of the story of Bill's mourners is sociality. Saedi tries to portray the ugliness, corruption, and inequalities of the society in front of the readers as well as expressing the consequences of this injustice. Most of the contemplations on the content of Bill's mourners' stories have been readable for critics, which is the link between social and personal issues and especially the impact of society on an individual's illness. The features that show the relationship between mental disorders and the social level are listed below: The philosophical despair of the characters are intertwined with social pessimism and social contradictions; The psychology of the masses are illustrated in fictional actions; The villagers take refuge in the city and suffer from immorality and homelessness; The suburbs of cities are suffering from poverty and prostitution; Poverty in the modernized environment is threatening, and a fate awaits people; People ruined by heroism and sanctification; Urban dwellers, like villagers, are plagued by their superstitions; and The result of living in the conflict between tradition and modernity is isolation and loneliness. All the above features can be examined in the context of the borderline situations of "death, suffering, fear and sin". The main discourse of Bill's Mourners is critical, and the predominant themes of the works are the roots of moral corruption and mental illness in the society. Saedi combines attention to the aesthetics and creation of a story with modern methods of storytelling with political and social ideals. For this reason, he is known as one of the writers who pay attention to morals whereas the moralists criticize him. His writing style stands in the opposition to those of contemporary fiction writers. Being influenced by the world literature, he could also be compared to writers such as Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Hemingway, Joyce, and Marquez, due to his political leanings and representing the storytelling in a modern way as well. This influence is shownin two styles: realism in the style of writers such as Chekhov and Dostoevsky; and subjectivism in the format of mental-narrative works of Hedayat, the metamorphosed world of Kafka, the eerie atmosphere of Marquez, and the existentialism of Jaspers and Sartre. As a result, Saedi's thoughts have a strong influence on the philosophers' viewpoints. He seems to know the society, its main pains, and problems. The main themes in his stories are death, suffering, fear, and sin on which the existentialists focus. According to the results of analyzing the story of Bill's Mourners, characters not only do not go beyond the phase of moral existence but also do not get the phase of faith existence. The philosophy of existence has based its analysis of human destiny on three fundamental inferences and considered three signs. The purpose of this article is to clarify the three principles of the entity (benevolence, morality, and faith) in Bill's Mourners.
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