Two approaches to absurdity : Gombrowicz and Kenzaburo Oe

The plots of these two novels are built around the ostentatious murders of pets. Gombrowicz presents these acts, partly unexplained and partly inexplicable, as recounted by a bored and disturbed teenager, Kenzaburo Oe's narrator is a participant in these sadistic pastimes, who clearly brings out the perversity of his fellow inmates in a reformatory. In both cases, the narrative ends with a death; Gombrowicz leaves it unclear if it is a unexplained murder or unexplained suicide, in the Japanese novel, it is the suicide of the principal hero he kills himself in order to expiate his crime and to protest against the society and its failure to give him justice. It is unlikely that either writer influenced the other. Any attempt to interpret the plot by applying sociological or archetypal theory is bound to fail. The two novels differ in many respects. At the same time, they both deal with certain problems characteristic of our epoch and utilize a similar rare theme. So they can be compared as expression of the disarray of meaning and sensibility bound up with the moment in the philosophical sense.