Incredible Narratives of the Power of Money in Adekunle Mamudu’s The Beauty of Madness and Other Stories

Abstract

A crazy world out there is sometimes the impression a reader gets when stories about corruption and other social vices are narrated in literature.  Adekunle Mamudu’s collection of short stories – The Beauty of Madness and Other Stories (2016) amplifies that notion.  The stories are incredulous, sometimes improbable, just like the occurrences in the societies referenced are unbelievable.  This study examines the seemingly unrelated stories in the collection to draw out the absurd behaviours of many people in their quest for money. The qualitative research methodology adopted enables the stories to be dissected, in-text, and analysed to focus attention on the loss of moral values. This objective is achieved by engaging the Economic Power theory (1845) – a strand of Marxist criticism (enunciated by Karl Marx), which postulates that “people’s lives are determined by their economic circumstances” (Dobie, 87).  Set in recognisable cities in Nigeria, poverty and lack of ethics are juxtaposed in the eight-chapter book to depict how the actions of the characters are defined by their inordinate and high regard for money, believing that “money answers all things.” The study demonstrates Mamudu’s portrait of moral decadence across all spheres of the Nigerian socio-political space. It concludes that greed, propelled by inordinate ambition, often erodes moral values and entrenches self-debasement.