Kamal and Isa: Confusion, Hope, and the Assertion of Life Force in Naguib Mahfouz’s The Trilogy and Autumn Quail.

نوع المستند : المقالة الأصلية

المؤلف

جامعة بدر في القاهرة

المستخلص

This paper examines the journey of confusion, hope and the assertion of life force for both Kamal in Naguib Mahfouz’s The Trilogy and Isa in Naguib Mahfouz’s Autumn Quail. This investigation is done through the analytical lenses of postcolonialism. Both Mahfouz’s heroes have been through an arduous battle with the power of the colonizer. This battle confuses, weakens and sometimes immobilizes both protagonists, but eventually brings out the best inside both. It is the journey that redefines their identity and integrates their self-division. Interestingly enough, Mahfouz succeeds to parallel the two protagonists’ division with the division that dominates their Motherland, Egypt. While Kamal’s experience stretches to include parent/child relationship, faith, science, heredity, love, class conflict, ignorance, superstitious thinking, education, and the nation’s course of politics, Isa’s, on the other hand, is a more condensed experience, unilaterally focused on the country’s policy, his loss of office, and his subsequent immobilization. The similarity between the two protagonists’ experiences is exemplified in their deep sense of alienation, immobilization, resort to hedonism, and finally their regaining of a long needed self-composure.

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