The Male Private Symbols in the Novels of Sahar Khalifah
Hani Naser Allah, Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Abstract
The first five novels of Sahar Khalifah introduce a group of male characters. In each novel, the main female characters pursue one or more of these male characters to the point of being passionately attached to it, but they suddenly leave them for mysterious reasons.
To solve this mystery, this paper reads these novels according to the assumption of the “Symbolic Constellations”, after arranging them artistically. The paper studies its’ male symbols as a group of homogeneous private symbols in one novelist structure, and compose together one Symbolic Constellation. Hear we discover that what appeared to us “a group” of symbols are not so in fact. It is only one character (keeps form\transmigrate in male shapes, symbols). In this Constellation the male character begins acceptable to the main female character (which had been formed\transmigrated likewise in female shapes, symbols) compliant to her desires, to some distance, then grows and ripens through the events of the novels, becomes wiser and rational; and rejects yielding to her inclinations. So the female character abandon it and vanishes to reappear again, seeking for a new sufficient male character, can achieve her goals (according to her perspective). What all this means?
The paper reveals through analyzing the deep structure of the female symbolic constellation, that an unsatisfied overwhelming desire, central vision, embodied in a female character, sequentially pursues male characters, looking for the ideal, topmost, perfect character- man until it finds him, then it vanishes completely; because it is fulfilled.