The Pursuit Of Happiness In Rasselas The Happy Valley

While originally published in 1759, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, has continuously inspired contemporary criticisms and has been considered by many to be the most preeminent work of author and moralist Samuel Johnson. Upon their escape from the Happy Valley, Rasselas and his companions are relentlessly afflicted by the fundamental absurdity of the human condition, and in seeking the right ‘choice of life,’ they set out on a quest in search of happiness. Although the pursuit of happiness motivates essentially every conversation and scene in the novel, obtaining it is eventually understood to be something much different than what the characters first expect. Thus, the aimless and ultimately unavailing quest narrative highlights the central irony of Rasselas that is, “in seeking a choice of life you neglect to live.” Though nothing is accomplished from Rasselas’ extensive travels, readers finish the novel with the realization of the inherent
Like the causes of good and evil, Imlac explains to the prince that the circumstances of life are “so various and uncertain, so often entangled with each other, so diversified by various relations, and so much subject to accidents which cannot be foreseen, that he who would fix his condition upon incontestable reasons of preference, must live and die inquiring and deliberating” (Johnson 42). In this regard, there is no tangible substance to the word ‘happiness’ since the infinite variables of life inhibit such a term from having any definitive meaning. Therefore, Rasselas’ greatest folly may be that he believes the circumstances of a man’s life are chosen by the man himself, but fails to consider that a man’s way of life may, in reality, be determined by how he reacts to such