Hedonism And The Fallacy Of Joie De Vivre: A Study Of Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies

Abstract

One of the social scourges that have and is plaguing society is war and its protracted aftermath is trauma. Post-traumatic stress disorder does not haunt only actors in a war but, equally, other members of society. Amongst the multi-faceted manifestations of trauma is the quest for self-gratification which people seek in a bid to assuage the pangs of trauma and triumph over depression and anxieties. However, through Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, this paper seeks to demonstrate that despite the voracious desire for pleasure that cuts across demographics as a panacea to war anxieties, people do not obtain fulfillment given that hedonism provides only shortterm happiness. Lack of fulfilment in the quest for pleasure challenges the notion of joie de vivre especially as self-indulgence, also, renders people reckless, reduces awareness of danger and mars concern for their wellbeing thereby exposing them to death. Hence, help out of trauma could be sought from mental health professionals. Freud's ideas on how the first part of the tripartite psyche—the Id operates on the pleasure principle, Carl Jung's discourse on the collective unconscious, and the new historicist—Greenblatt's argument that a text reflects the atmosphere within which it was produced guide the analysis in this paper.