Revelation of Agony in Coetzee's The Master of Petersburg

Abstract

The present thesis entitled “Revelation of Agony in Coetzee’s The Master of Petersburg” emphasizes on the anxiety and frustrated situation of the protagonist, Dostoevsky, after the death of his young stepson, Pavel. It depicts the father’s pathetic condition of his life in the novel. The present thesis finds out that the father’s authentic identity is a mournful character in St. Petersburg in Russia throughout the novel which situation is created by him. This research studies Dostoevsky’s agony through atheist existentialism perspective. The father, Dostoevsky wants to be free from the unexpected death as Jean Paul Sartre’s existential doctrine, freedom of choice. He always resists with the natural phenomenon, death according to Albert Camus’s resistance against meaninglessness. Similarly, he searches his authentic identity by reveling nothingness as Martin Heidegger’s being.