Abstract:
ABSTRACT
This study seeks to unearth and elucidate the concept of happiness in the
literacy work of two French writers namely: Albert Camus and André Gide.
The study was born out of our reading of Blondin (1983: 9) who stated in Le
Bonheur Possible that « most of human undertakings have a common
denominator: the quest for a better life, a better living, a better love in sum;
the desire to be happy». This presupposes that the quest for happiness is
always at the centre of most human endeavours and since André Gide and
Albert Camus are contemporaries, we investigated what constitutes the quest
for happiness in two (2) novels of each author namely: Andre Gide’s la
Symphonie Pastorale and les Nourritures Terrestres and Albert Camus’
Noces and la Peste. Based on our working definition of happiness (bonheur)
as the satisfaction of human needs and that of quest (quête) as a search for
something, we laid bare, what constitutes the search for satisfaction of human
needs in the four (4) literary works. The study employed the thematic
approach of analyzing a literary text. The thematic approach was
complemented by Maslow's theory of human need and the theories of
hedonism and eudemonism. The study was mainly based on the qualitative /
descriptive research methodology for the collection and analysis of data. It
was revealed that though the four literary works are of different genres, the
quest for happiness abounds in them in different forms. This is amply
demonstrated through the behavior of the characters: it is either they are
fighting for their own happiness or that of another individual. This points to
the fact that each step taken by human beings is undertaken for a reason (the
individual’s happiness or that of humanity as a whole). We further concluded that whatever form the quest for happiness takes, they can either be classified
as hedonic (based on sensual pleasure) or eudemonic (based on personal
development).
