Human Survival Instinct and Societal Norms: A Comparative Psychoanalysis of Nwaubani’s I Do Not Come To You By Chance and Unigwe’s The Middle Daughter

Abstract

Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani and Chika Unigwe, the two authors involved in this critique are relatively contemporaries, painting a second phase of disorderliness of a society after that of Achebe‟s first phase of “Things Fall Apart”. This time around, disorderliness impliedly caused by Military rulership of a society. It creates issues of examining values and cultures of the society they are painting. Here, the psychoanalysis and socio-critique canons serve for understanding the characters they create and how such characters mirror effectively, or not, the disorderliness; new values, strange cultures, way of life, enforcing on a collectivity jungle life or hopelessness. Using Freudian principles of Ego, Id and Super-ego, hypothetically new values or new way of life are based on the outcome of expectations tied to motivation development pattern of an individual or a people. Hence, I do Not Come to you by Chance (Chance) and The Middle Daughter (Middle) depict very well the twists of competing Id and Super-ego. The two authors seemingly mirror to an extent the current world‟s disorderliness from their own mini décor. The novels are analysed from the view point of the mini décor and extrapolated to a larger world in which countries in the group of BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa – are trying to force a shift of values and are creating disruptions as a counter to established rules of the global North – USA, Great Britain, European Union countries, Canada aka the West. Both groups are evolving disturbing ego values and norms which are seen the way nouveau riche in the works being compared operate; Cash Daddy and the mother of middle daughter portray these egoistic tendencies..