The representation of Disease, pain and Mortality in Margaret Ogola’s place of destiny

Abstract

This study examines the representation of disease, pain and mortality as motifs in Margaret Ogola’s Place of Destiny. Specific focus is on how characters reflect not only on their existence but also on their anxieties in relation to elements to do with mortality. Basically, Place of Destiny deals with the experiences of disease, pain and death and how different characters adapt and react to these realities. The objectives of the study include the examination of the use of disease and pain as motifs of mortality in Place of Destiny, the evaluation of characters particularly how they are constructed to frame our understanding of mortality in the novel and the analysis of the writer’s perception of mortality through her writing. This study is qualitative and it undertakes a close-reading of the primary text with a focus on how character and characterization frame experiences, options, and the ways of living with mortality as well as how individual characters in the novel react differently to pain, illness and the impending death of their loved ones. The study adopts psychoanalysis as its theoretical framework and brings together two theories; Cathy Caruth’s postulations on Trauma as well as Julia Kristeva’s and Freud’s ideas on The Uncanny. The particular experiences of disease, pain and mortality that the characters deal with cannot be discussed with ease openly yet these experiences however still get into their minds, traumatizing them. The theories further assist in conceptualizing Place of Destiny as belonging to the genre of self-writing particularly in the examination of the role of lived experience in the presentation of mortality. This study is important in the sense that it provides some insights to guidance and counseling experts, both medical students and medical practitioners and it can also influence literary critics to develop that can handle literary works that narrate illness