BINWELL SINYANGWE’S A COWRIE OF HOPE: A TRIBUTE TO WOMANLY COURAGE AND FRIENDSHIP
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46827/ejlll.v4i3.228Keywords:
courage, friendship, agency, narrative imagination, evil, goodAbstract
Using A Cowrie of Hope by the late Zambian novelist, Binwell Sinyangue, as a stepping-stone, I set out in research paper to explore the redemptive powers of courage and ties of friendship. Informed by a philosophy and psychology-based perspective, the tack of the argument is that pain and suffering (although they attend existence) can be rolled back if we tap into humanity’s best, to wit, such virtues as courage, friendship, and compassion. The paper posits that the possibility of enacting agency gives humanity a scope to curtail big time the ravages of Evil which, by the way, raises its ugly head where courage and solidarity take a backseat to despair, fatalism, and the absence of solidarity. But dogged refusal to be cowered into submission by the forces driving pain and suffering coupled with a willing espousal of what American philosopher Martha Nussbaum calls “narrative imagination”, the paper argues, can conduce to a better world. The paper concludes that an existential crisis in a world hallmarked by crass destitution and lack of sympathy can bring the worst as well as the best in mankind.
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