Alienation Representation in Randa Jarrar’s A Map of Home

نوع المستند : بحوث علمية محکمة

المؤلف

كلية الآداب جامعة الوادي الجديد

المستخلص

The present study tries to show how the theme of alienation is depicted in Randa Jarrar's A Map of Home (2008); the novel received an Arab-American Book Award and the Hopwood Award of literature and was named one of the best novels of 2008 by the Barnes & Noble Review. In his article “On the Meaning of Alienation” (1959), Melvin Seeman classified six meanings or aspects of alienation: powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, cultural estrangement, social isolation and self-estrangement. The purpose of this paper is to apply Seeman's theory of alienation to the novel under discussion. Jarrar’s novel shows that five (out of the six) variants of alienation manifest in the two central characters; the Arab-American daughter, Nidali and her Palestinian father, Waheed. The former suffers from powerlessness, meaninglessness, social isolation, cultural-estrangement and self-estrangement and the latter experiences powerlessness and meaninglessness.

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