Document Type
Thesis
Date of Award
12-2022
School/College
College of Liberal Arts and Behavioral Sciences (COLABS)
Degree Name
MA in English
Committee Chairperson
Michael Zeitler
Committee Member 1
Charlene Evans
Committee Member 2
Michon Benson
Committee Member 3
Danita Bailey-Samples
Keywords
• Africana Critical Theory • Black Existentialism • Existentialism • Invisibility in Society • Underground Man Theme
Abstract
Existential philosophers Fyodor Dostoevsky and Jean Paul Sartre sought answers concerning man’s placement and subsequent importance in the universe. From a Eurocentric perspective, western man, his being, position, and influence emanate from the center of thought and existence in the western hemisphere. Dostoevsky’s existential crisis exhibited in the protagonist from his Notes from Underground, and Sartre’s concepts of facticity which gives man a direct philosophical link to his freedom, are two popular viewpoints of contemporary existentialism. However, French West Indian Frantz Fanon, counters the European tenets of existential philosophy as it pertains to black people. The conclusions reached in Black Skin, White Masks open literary and philosophical pathways to Black Existentialism and Africana Critical Theory. The gulf or great divide between European existentialism and Africana Critical Theory seems mainly unchartered and apparent, especially in the subgenre of existential literature. This paper will attempt to bring forward and narrow the gap by analyzing the works of Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright, and their usage of existential anti-hero characterization within their novels. This thesis will examine the narrator of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and how his meaning of life experiences differ existentially from Fred Daniels, the protagonist in Wright’s The Man Who Lived Underground, the former being an heir to the Dostoevskian model, and the latter as the precursor to Fanon’s ideologies in the afro-centric views on existentialism. A defining of Africana Critical Theory and Black Existentialism will be given, including similarities and differences. The evolvement of existentialism through Ellis and Wright through their works from the philosophical viewpoints of Dostoevsky and Fanon will be explored.
Copyright
Copyright © for this work is retained by the author. Any documents and information presented are protected by copyright under US Copyright laws and are the property of the author. All Rights Reserved. For permission to use this content please contact the author or the Graduate School at Texas Southern University (graduate.school@tsu.edu).
Recommended Citation
Burton, Joseph, "Underground Man: The Ever -Evolving Existentialist in the Fiction of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison." (2022). Theses (2016-Present). 37.
https://digitalscholarship.tsu.edu/theses/37