<i>The Revenant</i> and <i>Such a Long Letter</i>: Novels of a Society of Excess and Opportunism Through Some Family Ceremonies

Abstract

If literature feeds on social realities, it is accepted that literary works scroll the image of their emerging environment. Based on this premise, we will agree that the novel is a credible lever for the representation and analysis of community practices and values. In this respect, if birth, death, among other realities, are consubstantial with human life, these events are differently appreciated by human societies. When the organization of these ceremonies is polluted by excesses and / or diversion of objectives, the writer makes food for thought. From then on, the texts took on a pamphleteering orientation and their authors covered themselves with the cloth of militancy to mock the many vices. As attentive observers of people's daily lives, the novelists of this corpus walk their gaze through the dark corridors of repugnant social practices of which they render the smallest details. The materialist logic of actors of all stripes, outrageous opportunism and excesses that no morality or law justifies are the main sources that feed the imagination of Aminata Sow Fall and Mariama Ba. With the sensibilities of women highly aware of societal issues and concerned with the idea of progress, they make no secret of their indignation at the unproductive finality of the morality of waste, exhibitionism and hypocrisy. As a result, the novels in our corpus of study are sufficiently revealing the Senegalese society, whose characteristics they deal with.