Deconstructing Sins from the Moral Compass of Don Carlos Cobello in F. Sionil Jose’s Sins
Abstract views: 279
,
PDF downloads: 222
Abstract
The novel “Sins” by F. Sionil Jose depicts the adventurous life of an affluent man whose confessions rationalize the sins he committed as judged only against social standards but ironically narrates the dire consequences as moral concepts. The study aims to deconstruct the prevailing theme of sins as social notions to prove that sins are moral constructs and to teach that morality is an inherent feature of man's mortality. To establish these contradicting ideologies, the study utilized the deconstruction approach in literary criticism by Jacques Derrida. Deconstructionism exposes embedded ideologies by revealing inconsistencies in the text. Specifically, content analysis was integrated to examine words and phrases in-depth to analyze rooted messages. This paper found out that the novel claims incest, premarital sex, and sexual exploitation as sins established only by society and should be judged by it and not beyond it. However, through investigating its instabilities, it was revealed that the novel actually justifies sins against the character's morality because of his belief in mortality as the recipient of suffering, forgiveness, retributive punishments, and even conscience. Thus, the novel inculcates that sins are not just mere social concepts, they are the foremost moral constructs.
Downloads
References
Adegboyega, Lateef Omotosho, and Olumayowa Ayorinde Jacob. “Causes of Premarital Sex as Expressed by Adolescents in Yagba West, Kogi State, Nigeria.” Anatolian Journal of Education 2, no. 2 (2017): 8–20.
Andrews, Tom. “What is Social Constructionism?” Grounded Theory Review 11, no. 1 (2012): 39–46.
Bastan, Ajda. “A Brief Discussion of Jacques Derrida’s Deconstruction and Hermeneutics.” E-Journal of New World Sciences Academy 3, no. 2 (2008): 219–25.
Bauerlein, Mark. Literary Criticism: An Autopsy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fh8pb.
Brown, Stephen Paul. “The Moral Justification of Retributive Punishment by Reference to the Notion of Balance.” Doctoral Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1998.
Carter, Ronald, and Michael N. Long. Teaching Literature. New York: Longman, 1991.
Choudhary, Sanju. “A Literary Approach to Teaching English Language in a Multicultural Classroom.” Higher Learning Research Communications 6, no. 4 (2016): 1–16.
Couenhoven, Jesse. “What Sin is: A Differential Analysis.” Modern Theology 25, no. 4 (2009): 563–87. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0025.2009.01555.x.
Deane, Paul. “Building and Justifying Interpretations of Texts: A Key Practice in the English Language Arts.” ETS Research Report Series 2020, no. 1 (2020): 1–53. https://doi.org/10.1002/ets2.12304.
Dimaano, Matilda H. “Oppression amidst Socio-Political Tapestry of Azucena Grajo Uranza’s ‘Bamboo in the Wind.’” International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences 3, no. 2 (2018): 165–73. https://doi.org/10.22161/ijels.3.2.7.
Elo, Satu, Maria Kääriäinen, Outi Kanste, Tarja Pölkki, Kati Utriainen, and Helvi Kyngäs. “Qualitative Content Analysis: A Focus on Trustworthiness.” SAGE Open 4, no. 1 (2014): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244014522633.
Fog, Agner. “Sexual Behavior.” In Cultural Selection, edited by Agner Fog, 169–88. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 1999. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9251-2_10.
Galbin, Alexandra. “An Introduction to Social Constructionism.” Social Research Report 26 (2014): 82–92.
Gatcho, Al Ryanne, and Philip Paolo Delorino. “Reading Short Stories of F. Sionil Jose Using Marxism as a Literary Vista.” International Journal of English Language and Translation Studies 7, no. 1 (2019): 76–86.
Giubilini, Alberto. “Conscience.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2022. Stanford: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2022. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2022/entries/conscience/.
Gnanasekaran, R. “An Introduction to Derrida, Deconstruction and Post-Structuralism.” International Journal of English Literature and Culture 3, no. 7 (2015): 211–14.
Greer, Whitney. “The Madonna, The Whore, The Myth: Deconstructing the Madonna/Whore Dichotomy in the Scarlet Letter, the Awakening, and the Virgin Suicides.” Honors Thesis, University of Mississippi. Salli McDonnell Barksdale, 2016. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/943.
Jose, F. Sionil. Sins. New York: Random House, 1973.
Landy, Justin F., and Eric Luis Uhlmann. “Morality Is Personal.” In Atlas of Moral Psychology, 121–32. New York, NY, US: The Guilford Press, 2018.
Maryanski, Alexandra, and Jonathan Turner. “Incest, Theoretical Perspectives On.” The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, September 5, 2018, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea2041.
Nodelman, Perry. “The Hidden Meaning and the Inner Tale: Deconstruction and the Interpretation of Fairy Tales.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 15, no. 3 (1990): 143–48. https://doi.org/10.1353/chq.0.0858.
Read, Dwight W. “Incest Taboos and Kinship: A Biological or a Cultural Story?” Reviews in Anthropology 43, no. 2 (2014): 150–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/00938157.2014.903151.
Sagebin Bordini, Gabriela, and Tania Mara Sperb. “Sexual Double Standard: A Review of the Literature Between 2001 and 2010.” Sexuality & Culture 17, no. 4 (2013): 686–704.%20https:/doi.org/10.1007/s12119-012-9163-0.
Sahu, Sanjaya, Harihar Sarangi, and Partha Sarathi Mallik. “A Deconstructive Analysis of Derrida’s Philosophy.” Shanlax International Journal of Arts, Science and Humanities 9, no. 1 (2021): 98–107. https://doi.org/10.34293/sijash.v9i1.4097.
Satne, Paula. “Forgiveness and Moral Development.” Philosophia 44, no. 4 (2016): 1029–55. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9727-6.
Setayesh, Sara. “‘The Road Not Taken under Deconstructive View.’” In The Proceedings of the Second National Congress on Change and Innovation in the Humanities. Kharazmi International Institute for Research and Education, Shiraz, 2017.
Sikirivwa, Mawazo Kavula. “Deconstruction Theory and Its Background.” American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research 4, no. 4 (2020): 44–72.
Toren, Benno van den. “Human Evolution and a Cultural Understanding of Original Sin.” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith: Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 68, no. 1 (2016): 1–10.
United Nations Higher Commissioner for Refugee. “Action for the Rights of Critical Issues - Abuse and Exploitation.” United Nations Higher Commissioner for Refugee, 2022. https://www.unhcr.org/protection/children/3bb81aea4/action-rights-children-arc-critical-issues-abuse-exploitation.html.
The journal operates an Open Access policy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
_(1).png)
.png)
.png)
1.png)
.png)
.png){kind=logo}
.png)
_-_Copy_-_Copy.png)
