Rebellion, Loneliness, and Night-Sea Journey: John Bath's Postmodern Mythos

Abstract

When Nietzsche announced the death of God at the end of the nineteenth century, he implied two contradictory feelings. One was the sense of denial and the other the sense of loss. In other words, Nietzsche proclaimed the denial of God, in the sense that man should now denounce the hierarchy of the dominant culture which had hitherto deceived, oppressed, and abused human beings in the name of the Absolute, Truth, or God. At the same time, Nietzsche suggested the loss of God, in the sense that man had now lost his origin, center, or foundation by denouncing God. The sense of loss as well as the sense of denial eventually generated man's quest for new order and new value to replace the old. Ever since Nietzsche pronounced the death of God, therefore, the sense of loss or the sense of denial-of value, meaning or language in human life-has become one of the dominant themes in modern literature.