Shaker Ameri, Ali Shahriari,
Volume 5, Issue 2 (12-2023)
Abstract
The character is a main element in a dramatic text as a playwright often relies on specific dimensions of the fictional character to convey ideas, hence the character plays a significant role in developing the events. This study, based on a descriptive-analytical approach, examines characterization in Youssef Al-Ani’s I am your mother, Shaker!. This play is one of the pioneers of socialist literature in Iraqi theater due to the intertextual relationship between Umm Shaker and the character in Maxim Gorky’s The Mother. The most important findings of the study are the following: Al-Ani is the first Iraqi writer to present a woman (Umm Shaker) as the hero of the play, the mother with an iron will, extraordinary political awareness, and unwavering faith in the victory of the national revolution. Al-Ani draws the characters from ordinary people, so the audience identifies with them quickly. The message that Al-Ani intended to convey prompted him to use the colloquial dialect delivering his theatrical and intellectual speech to the illiterate members of society. It seems that Al-Ani paid more attention to conversation (monologue) than characterization as do not find any transformation in the characters throughout the play. The characters are hostage to the popular revolution and the theatrical event.
