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
