‘EVIL’ IN THE SLEEP OF REASON

Yıl 2016, Cilt: 5 Sayı: 2, 105 - 122, 31.12.2016

Sevcan Işık

Öz

This paper aims to analyze English physical chemist and
novelist C. P. Snow’s novel entitled The
Sleep of Reason (1968)  according to
Terry Eagleton’s perspective of evil with reference to his book entitled On Evil (2010), and also aims to discuss
to what extent his views on evil shed light upon the novel. Eagleton’s
unconventional attitude towards evil can be easily recognized when he focuses
on a rare category of evil, that is, ‘without an apparent’ reason, in his
mentioned book. This type of evil is observed with the murder of an eight
year-old boy after being tortured by two women named Cora and Kitty during a
weekend, which happens without an apparent reason. In order to explain this
type of evil, Eagleton relates the concept of motiveless evil with the death
drive, freedom, free will, responsibility, destructiveness, and the influence
of external factors on human beings, which are of great importance in the sense
that the two women are sane and have free will; thereupon, they should assume
the responsibility for what they have done. In short, Eagleton’s views on evil
will be used as the critical tools in the analysis of The Sleep of Reason in this paper. 

Anahtar Kelimeler

Evil, the death drive, freedom, free will, motiveslessness and the murder.

Kaynakça

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