| Murder is an act that challenges the social order and places in conflict the individual versus society. Traditional murder narratives consist of murders based on crimes of passion, acts of revenge, or calculated challenges to social moral codes. I examine the act of murder in the context of existentialist literature, in which the act of murder reflects a greater nihilistic worldview in the central character. Murder in existentialist literature does not consist of a set value or traditional motives but becomes an act of self-definition for the central character and a way to assign value to his actions in an absurd universe. I define existential murder in relation to the existential/aesthetic causal mode for assessing murder in Stephen Kern's A Cultural History of Causality and to Albert Camus's idea of the negative expression of metaphysical rebellion, the nihilist rebel. The existential murderer tests the limits of his own freedom, engaging in a four-stage process of self-discovery defined as: an estrangement from society and a feeling of a fragmented and alienated identity; a corresponding need to establish a palpable and authentic identity distinct from others; the act of murder to test the bounds between the self and Other; and an attempt to define the self anew as an individual creator of value with a personal moral code based solely on freedom. An absurd universe calls into question universal moral norms, forcing characters to create and define their own moral boundaries. The dissertation charts the use of a murder as a central narrative device in the works of eight writers: Andre Gide and Paul Bowles; Andre Malraux and Yukio Mishima; Albert Camus and Richard Wright; and Jerzy Kosinski and Alain Robbe-Grillet. These writers are paired according to thematic similarities and biographical similarities, as well as by how the murderer uses his worldview to justify his act of murder. |
