Document Type : Scientific- Research Article
Abstract
Sigmund Freud provided the basis for analyzing literary works using psychoanalytic methods. The novel Honaa Al-warda, by the Jordanian writer Amjad Nasser, is one of the political novels in which the author paid special attention to psychological issues and the hidden struggle of the inner forces of the novel’s hero, Younis Al-Khattat, in dealing with its subject. Therefore, the current research attempts to study the internal conflict of Yunus Al-Khattat, the hero of this novel, based on Freud’s theory, and to analyze the outcome of the battle between the id, the ego, and the superego over his individual and social life. The results of the research indicate that heredity, family environment, relationships with peers, the tense political and social atmosphere, and the propaganda of intellectual and political organizations play a major role in shaping Yunus’s acute internal conflict. His comprehensive internal anxiety is caused by the establishment’s pressures on himself and his logical ability and its insistence on quickly meeting its irrational, material and emotional demands, as well as the destructive and false ideals of the superego that lead him to many adventures and ambitions, and work that leads to the assassination of the president and exposes his life, his fate, and the fate of his family to danger.
Extended Summary
Introduction
Psychoanalysis is a literary criticism method that studies psychological novels and, through exploring the characters in the novel, explains how their personality is constructed. Systematic and scientific criticism of psychology began concurrently with the beginning of psychology and the publication of Sigmund Freud's works at the end of the nineteenth century. Since Freud was the first to subject literature to psychological interpretation, he had a great interest in reading literary works, as literature had a profound impact on his personal and scientific life, and he used it to expand the horizons of his work in psychoanalysis as well as to expand the scope of his psychological discourse. His views on the personal characteristics of writers and artists are not merely psychoanalytic, but rather a combination of psychological theories and his literary taste. Amjad Nasser is a well-known Jordanian creative writer who has paid special attention to psychological issues in writing his novels. Honaa Al-Warda is Nasser's second novel nominated for the International Booker Prize in 2018. It narrates the life events of a leftist activist named "Younis Al-Khattat" and expresses all the traits of his personality in the form of behaviors, actions, and political adventures. Honaa Al-Warda is a political novel that shows the developments in the Arab world in the seventies. Therefore, the psychological analysis of the main character in this novel can express the influence of individuals in society in Arab countries from political, social, cultural, and intellectual circumstances and represents many historical unknowns. Therefore, the current study, based on Freud's theory on the three levels of personality, attempts to study the role of the internal conflict of Younis, the hero of the novel, in shaping his personality type. First, Freud's theory and the tripartite structure of personality are analyzed from his point of view, then Younis's internal developments are analyzed according to Freud's theories and the impact of his internal conflict on his personal and social life is expressed. This research aims to answer these questions:
1- What are Nasser's goals in creating the character of Younis?
2- How does the battle between the id and the ego occur in the character of Younis and what is the result of the subconscious's dominance over his consciousness?
3- How does the Oedipus complex affect the creation of the superego of Younis and what is the result of the conflict of the ego with the superego?
4- How does the conflict of the three forces in the character of Younis affect his personal and social life?
Methodology
Freud is considered the first psychologist to assign a specific structure to the human personality in which the internal actions of the human being are formed under the influence of instincts and conflicting forces. From the beginning of his life until its end, the human being constantly fights and quarrels with various forces and people, but this battle is not limited to the outside world. "Freud searches for this conflict in the depths of human existence, which causes the formation of the human personality and intellectual development"; the human world is an arena of confrontation between different forces that interact automatically with each other, which leads to the health of the human soul and spirit, and the absence of this interaction causes anxiety and insecurity in the human personality. Freud sees that the structure of the human personality includes three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. "These three parts of the personality interact at three levels of psychological life with each other, and the ego passes through different spatial levels and has conscious, semi-conscious, and unconscious elements. While the superego is semi-conscious and unconscious, the id is completely unconscious"; these levels are completely intertwined and cannot be separated, and the ego exists at all these levels under different conditions.
Discussion
By describing the whispers of Younis Al-Khattat and his tense inner life from childhood to youth, Amjad Nasser depicts the role of the authoritarian atmosphere, suffocation, lack of freedom and social justice, and the violation of the principle of democracy that govern some Arab countries in shaping the internal conflict of individuals in Arab societies and the desire for violent actions. He also criticizes the exploitation of authoritarian individuals like Younis by political organizations that push them, by stimulating their internal forces, to violence and terrorism in order to achieve their goals. In reality, the dreams of such a generation of young people turn into a pile of ashes. The id's insistence on satisfying his material, immoral and irrational needs leads to the formation of his aggressive, hasty and reckless personality that exhausts his rationality and ego with repeated demands. The id of Yunus, by its rebellion against the ego, passes from the unconscious and semi-conscious area and enters the conscious level, and the ego weakens and is unable to provide Yunus with the appropriate ideas and solutions to overcome problems, and great anxiety and confusion dominate his existence.
Conclusion
The superego of Younis, due to the failure to resolve the Oedipus complex in his childhood and his failure to undergo the process of understanding his parents’ behavior and not following their orders and what should and should not be done, takes on an abnormal, unnatural, and neurotic state. Younis thinks that his father is his competitor in winning his mother’s love, and he constantly tries to rescue himself from his father’s control. The desire for superiority and authority becomes entrenched in him, and the false ideal ego is formed in him, far from external reality, leading to walking in a world of fantasy and dreams, and causing the superego and its unreasonable ideals to turn against the ego and blame it for following the principle of reality. It is stubborn like the id and insists on achieving its demands in an irrational way, which makes Younis justify terrorism and violence and consider it a value and a custom, regardless of his responsibilities towards his wife and family.
Main Subjects
The Sources and References:
A: Books
11.Freud, Sigmund, Ego and Id, translated by Amin Pasha Samadian, Tehran: Pandar Taban, 2014. ]In Persian[
B: University Theses
C: Magazines
20.Yohnai, Massoud Reza, review of conscious and unconscious from Sartre and Freud's point of view, Afaq Humanities Monthly, year 4, number 38, 2019, pp. 81-/96. ]In Persian[