Mortality and probability: philosophical considerations in selected contemporary British and Irish literature

• Main Author: Lai, Zaneta Zhi Yan
• Other Authors: Neil Murphy
• Format: Thesis-Master by Research
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2022
• Subjects: Humanities::Literature
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/159536
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

There has been a noticeable increase in the preoccupation with death in contemporary British and Irish literature. As the 21st century human struggles to find meaning in a world that is increasingly saturated with technological advancements, the human necessarily struggles with the fact that death is the one inevitable and irrefutable truth of life. This contemporary preoccupation with death is identified to be most potently conveyed in two main themes – mortality and probability. In analysing four texts by four authors - David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten, Ali Smith’s Artful, Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones, and Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library, this thesis seeks to portray that death can be reworked as a compassionate and comforting thought instead of the conventionally bleak end of existence. While the mortal human is limited by numbers and probabilities such as time and age, this thesis also seeks to assert that mortality and probability can be cooperative rather than antithetical, with the latter providing a remedy of infinitude to the former.