Existentialist style and ethics in Armah’s fragments and Why Are We So Blest?

Abstract

This paper attempts to explore the existentialist dimension of Armah’s two novels. It particularly aims at demonstrating Armah’s indebtedness to Sartre and Camus. It draws a comparative study between Fragments and Sartre’s Nausea, and between Armah’s Why Are We So Blest? and Camus’s The Outsider. It argues that though Armah has used these works as models, he has himself brought a significant contribution to the Existentialist novel by Africanising it and blending two styles and philosophies of life, Western and African.