Absurd and Anxiety in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968)

Abstract

The Ghanaian born writer Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), is probably one of the best known; most widely read and discussed works in African literature. This dissertation analyzes The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born as a historical documentation of the social, economic and political circumstances of independent Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah’s regime. The research’s most important objective is to identify and describe the status of absurd and anxiety that characterized Armah’s protagonists in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born from an existentialist perspective. This novel was chosen for the powerful impression it evokes in readers’ mind, and for its controversial tone as a postcolonial African work that received a remarkable amount of both criticism and praise. The work comes to the conclusion that the absurd and ambiguity which the nation pondered after independence eventually led to an unaffordable feeling of anguish. The dissertation also proves Armah’s both pessimistic and optimistic vision that is marked by a clear ray of hope.