The mythical element in Wagdi Zeid's Winter Dreams: The Dying and Reviving God

In writing this imaginative work of art, the playwright Wagdi Zeid, seems to be possessed by the Greek Muses. He is utilizing language in a divinely inspired way to deliver the word of God and expose the deficiencies that herald the imminent destruction of the Western Civilization. The Western people may regard him as touched by the Muses' madness in his soul, while the Easterners appreciate the play and place the writer in the disposition of a divine.

The archetypal approach this study undertakes is mainly devoted to disclose the mystery inherent in this drama. The hidden meaning will gradually yield new findings to this mythical analysis. The problems that call for prompt solution are so intricate in the complicated network of the play that they unfold into a tragic climax. The entangled lines of sexual affairs, rape, incest, conceiving bastards, drunkenness and murder develop into stupendous Daedalean labyrinth.

In linking up the characters and incidents of the Winter Dreams with their counterparts in the world of mythology, we are exerting an attempt to cure the social iniquities therein, in the 1ight of Claude Lévi Strauss's theory of reconciling the opposing polarities through myth. He suggests that the introduction of a mediator in a similar myth containing two opposing terms may provide a plausible solution to any insoluble problem. This is made possible as far as the work of art is intended to please and teach, as Aristotle assumes.