Representations of Intellectuals in Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975): An Existentialist View

This study analyzes the characters of David Lodge’s novel, Changing Places: ATale of Two Campuses in the light of the philosophy of Existentialism. As Sartrehas argued, the existence of a person comes before his essence. A personinterprets this existence through external factors. Stripped of these factors,his/her existence constitutes his essence. Yet, the way of dealing with theexternal factors like social roles constitute his/her real essence. Hence, whenstuck between these two essences, a person is likely to experience existentialcrisis. The characters who reflect these crises mostly appear in the novelswritten after 1950. With this study, the existential crises of the protagonists,their quests for identity and purpose as intellectuals are analyzed, and thenovel, which was generally analyzed in terms of its parodical elementsformerly, is reread with a different view. This analysis also sheds light on thesituation of today’s academic world.