Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Arabic, University of Isfahan, Iran
2
Associate Professor, Department of Arabic, University of Isfahan, Iran
Abstract
Identity is among the new expressions that gained importance which has a key role in the national integrity. This issue refers to a set of social, spiritual and material achievements with which the individuals and communities live. Considering the fact that the world is facing the growth that raises a variety of issues in front of human society, redefining identity that has been compatible with improvements is the basic need of the contemporary culture. Hence, the novel has not been away from this growing trend and played a key role in studies and observing daily events and its parameters. Magic realism is considered a new narration technique which carries social, political and cultural plan whose basis is identity and returning to itself. Since identity is the central focus of the novel, The Tiller of Waters, by Huda Barakat, one of the most prominent writers of magic realism of contemporary Lebanon. This research, through descriptive-analytical approach, tries to deal with the word identity and its structural role in the narrative structure, identifying the features of identity, crisis and its recall and the relationship between them, and the crucial proportions around the hero of story. The research concludes that the Identity crisis in The Tiller of Waters is the result of different factors, including surrender and disappears of the hero of the story against the passage of time, lack of feeling against place, perish and his hysterical fear during the war. The main character of the story that, due to internal pressures caused by the civil war in Lebanon, Seek a new meaning for its identity, has collapsed, using the collective unconscious of humanity, knits past with present and searched his lost originality in the history of Lebanon.
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