The Dynamics of Crime and the Contemporary World: Moral and Existentialist Dilemmas in Adaobi Nwaubani’s I Do Not Come to you by Chance
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Abstract
Literature reflects the milieu and the moment, and echoes society’s zeitgeist and the enabling contexts. It recreates society vividly with a view to projecting its positives sides and values and attacking its imperfections. Literature offers qualitative evaluation of contemporary trends in the society in a bid to retain the cherished and discard the obnoxious. These assertions constitute the thrust of this study which examines the depiction of crime and related trends in the contemporary Nigerian society as inscribed in Adaobi Nwaubani’s I Do Not Come to You by Chance. Specifically, the work interrogates the moral, economic, social, and existential circumstances that make criminal behaviours appear attractive or even necessary to an individual. The study, which adopts Existentialism as its theoretical framework, argues that contemporary crime has moved beyond judging the criminal to interrogating the conditions that produce, normalise, justify, or complicate criminal behaviour. The research finds unmitigated criminalities typified by advanced fee fraud, cybercrime, unbridled corruption, and decay/erosion of society’s fundamental values as some of the amoral, cynical, and gloomy issues raised in Nwaubani’s realistic artistry. The study submits that beyond being a mere willful act, behaviour or habit, crime, as depicted in Ubani’s craft, is a consequence of social and economic pressure which is iven impetus by the amazingly weak, vacillating, complacent, and inept political leadership as well as insidiously weakening societal values. Nwaubani’s work aptly recreates existentialist and modernist dystopia in ontemporary times characterised by pessimism, hedonism, anxiety, agony, nihilism, criminalities, despair, and death.
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