Abstract:

This paper aims to analyze English physical chemist and novelist C. P. Snow’s novel entitled The Sleep of Reason (1968)  according to Terry Eagleton’s perspective of evil with reference to his book entitled On Evil (2010), and also aims to discuss to what extent his views on evil shed light upon the novel. Eagleton’s unconventional attitude towards evil can be easily recognized when he focuses on a rare category of evil, that is, ‘without an apparent’ reason, in his mentioned book. This type of evil is observed with the murder of an eight year-old boy after being tortured by two women named Cora and Kitty during a weekend, which happens without an apparent reason. In order to explain this type of evil, Eagleton relates the concept of motiveless evil with the death drive, freedom, free will, responsibility, destructiveness, and the influence of external factors on human beings, which are of great importance in the sense that the two women are sane and have free will; thereupon, they should assume the responsibility for what they have done. In short, Eagleton’s views on evil will be used as the critical tools in the analysis of The Sleep of Reason in this paper. 

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