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.
Shaker Amery, Ali Shahriari,
Volume 6, Issue 1 (1-2025)
Abstract
In presenting events, a writer heavily relies on conflict which is considered the main driving force of the fictional work. Conflict is a key element in dramatic texts and plays an important role in developing events in them. It reveals the differences arising from conflicting opinions and viewpoints among the characters regarding a particular issue or idea between the characters of the play. This research, based on a descriptive-analytical method, aims to study the conflict in Tawfiq al-Hakim’s Ya Tali’ al-Shajara. This play is one of the first plays written in an absurd style in Arabic literature, depicting events in an absurd manner. The play presented a new concept of the internal conflict and specific worldview of its characters. It appears that Al-Hakim paid great attention to the psychological dimensions of the characters in this play, a hallmark of the theater of the absurd. Al-Hakim skillfully used all kinds of conflict in the play, although the internal conflict was more evident in it. The conflict in this play is not between human desires but between abstract mental positions and ideas, represented by contrasting pairs such as dream and reality, fantasy and reality, immortality and annihilation.
