خودآفرینی یا همبستگی اجتماعی؟ مطالعۀ تطبیقی بین رمان طاعون و داستان نگران نباش

This article adopts an interdisciplinary approach, focusing on a comparative analysis of Albert Camus’s The Plague and Mahsa Mohebali’s Don’t Worry. The study posits that one of the points of convergence between these two narratives lies in their existentialist motifs of crisis. Richard Rorty divides philosophical schools into two broad categories: philosophies based on solidarity and philosophies based on personal autonomy. The existentialism examined in these novels lies within the tension between solidarity and personal self-creation. Both texts are shaped by a state of crisis: the events of Camus’s novel unfold in a “plague-stricken city”, while those of Mohebali’s story take place in an “earthquake-stricken city”. The plague and the earthquake have symbolic dimensions, representing an existential crisis at the core of the city/world. As one of Camus’s characters remarks, everyone carries the plague within themselves, just as in Don’t Worry, the earthquake is not in the ground but in people's minds. the plague and the earthquake are manifestations of the relationship between humanity and the world. According to Camus, the external world/city remains indifferent and silent toward the meanings we create, rendering human efforts futile. The title Don’t Worry from the outset suggests an existential anxiety in the face of the world's indifference and resistance. Consequently, any action in confronting this urban environment remains suspended. In Don’t Worry, reactions such as suicide, addiction, fleeing the city, and escapism point to this alienation between humans and the world, stemming from a kind of passive nihilism: the impossibility of making decisions. Unlike The Plague, the characters in Don’t Worry have been unable to move beyond passive nihilism. Therefore, while in Camus’s novel the plague, as a “shared fate,” evokes a sense of solidarity, the characters in Mohebali’s story suffer from a kind of atomized individuality.