The Narrativization of Existential Consciousness in the (Post) Modern Era in John Barth’s Night-Sea Journey

Entering the twentieth century with all its transformations augured an era of inevitabilities and (im)possibilities both in human consciousness and his space/time. The man’s relation with himself and the surrounding universe which seemed no more reliable like the pervious eras proved to him that he was in a new epoch which its own special paradigms and systems. How to reckon with this time has been probably the most fundamental and vital challenges of the man. This study takes a very wonderful and extraordinary example, Night-Sea Journey, out of the collection of short stories called Lost in the Funhouse (1968) by the American writer John Barth. Nigh-Sea Journey is narrated by an anonymous narrator whom the reader might take as any living being, any consciousness, and most possibly a spermatozoon, who/which is on an apparent journey to reach a seeming end, a final ‘Shore,’ perhaps an ovum. The language of probability applied by the narrator in all its discourse evidences the ambiguous and uncertain nature of its contemplation. This study is an attempt to apply phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur and its underlying existentialism of the modern absurd to excavate and investigate how the literary narrative of the post-War era evinces the ontological shift of consciousness of the (post)modern man.