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2016-2017 the Ironical Discourse of War in Yasmina Khadra's The وزارة التعليم العالي و البحث العلمي Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research جامعة مولود معمري - تيزي وزو Mouloud MAMMERI University of Tizi Ouzou كلية اﻻداب و اللغات Faculty of Arts and Languages Department of English Domain: Letters and Foreign Languages Subject: English Specialty: Comparative Literature A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Master Degree in English Title The Ironical Discourse of War in Yasmina Khadra’s The Swallows of Kabul (2002) and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007) Submitted by: Supervised by: Sabiha AIT RAHMANE Dr Fadhila BOUTOUCHENT Salima YESLI Panel of Examiners: Mrs HADJ BACHIR, Mouloud MAMMERI University, Chair . Dr BOUTOUCHENT Fadhila, Mouloud MAMMERI University, Supervisor. Mr AFETOUCHE, Mouloud MAMMERI University, Examiner. Academic Year: 2016-2017 Content Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................... i Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... ii Contents ................................................................................................................. .iii I.Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 II.Methods and Materials ......................................................................................................... 9 II. 1. Theoretical Framework ................................................................................................... 9 II.2. Materials ......................................................................................................................... 15 II.2.1. Summary of A Thousand Splendid Suns ...................................................................... 15 II.2.2. Summary of The Swallows of Kabul ........................................................................... 16 III. Results ................................................................................................................................ 18 VI. Discussion ......................................................................................................................... 20 Chapter I: Setting: Space and War ........................................................................................ 20 I.1 . Setting in Yasmina Khadra’s The Swallows of Kabul ........................................... 20 I.1.1. Kabul Before the War: Lamentation on the “Pastroal”......................................... 20 I.1.2. Kabul During the War: “Theatre” of War ............................................................. 22 I.2. Setting in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns ........................................ 25 I.2.1. Afghanistan Before the War: Lamentation on the “Pastoral” ............................... 26 I.2.2. Afghanistan During the War: “Theatre” of War .................................................. 29 Chapter II: Characterisation: The Protagonists Response to War ..................................... 33 II.1. Characterisation in Yasmina Kadra’s The Swallows of Kabul ............................ 33 II.1.1. “Binary vision”: Mohsen and Zuneira Vs Atiq and Mussarat ......................... 33 II.1.2. Mussarat as an Ironical Tragic Hero: “The scapegoat” ................................... 37 II.2. Characterisation in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns ................... 40 II.2.1.Binary Vision: Mariam Vs Laila ..................................................................... 40 II. 2.2. Mariam as an Ironical Tagic Hero: “The scapegeot” ..................................... 43 Chapter III: Thematic Study ............................................................................................... 47 III. 1. Loss of Innocence: The Expected and Unexpected Reality of War ................ 47 III.1.1.Loss of Innocence in Khadra’s The Swallows of Kabul ................................. 48 III.1.2. Loss of Innocence in Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns ........................ .52 III.2 .Religious extremism: Political and Social Role of the Taliban........................ 57 III.2.1. The Extremist Taliban Rule in Khadra’s The Swallows of Kabul ................. 58 III2.2. The Extremist Taliban Rule in Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns .......... 63 V. General Conclusion ............................................................................................ 70 VI Appendix ............................................................................................................. 73 VII. Bibliography .................................................................................................. ..74 Acknowledgements We would like to express our gratitude and thanks to our supervisor Dr. BOUTOUCHENT Fadhila for her precious help and assistance during the whole year to achieve this modest dissertation. We would like also to express our special thanks to Mr Hami and professor AREZKI Dalila for their guidance. i ii Abstract This dissertation is a comparative study of two outstanding works: Swallows of Kabul(2002) by Yasmina Khadra and A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007) by Khaled Hosseini. The main purpose of this study is to show that both authors have used irony to speak about war and its consequences in Afghanistan, despite their geographical distance and language differences. Taking the theoretical concepts from Paul Fussell’s work The Great War and Modern Memory (1975), the study has revealed this ironical discourse at the level of the setting, characterization and themes. The setting in the two narratives has revealed that, the two authors share the same view about the devastating effects of war on space and socio- cultural environment, through an ironical paradigm of thought: “pastoral/ anti-pastorl” and “theatricality” and the analysis of characterization has revealed that both writers have inscribed the portrayal of the characters through the contrast of “the binary vision”. This is seen in their physical appearances, different backgrounds and different perceptions of life. Thus, this part has revealed how the “Demonic environment” shaped the behaviours of the characters to result in being either a “tyrant pole” or a “scapegoat”. The thematic study has highlighted the awful consequences of war, like the religious extremism of the Taliban and the disenchantment of people in Afghanistan. Keys words: Yasmina Khadra, The Swallows of Kabul, Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns , irony, war ii Introduction One of the most popular euphemisms of the WWI was “the war to end all wars”. When the war broke out in summer 1914, the majority of the population hoped and believed that it would be over by Christmas of the same year. Unfortunately, this did not happen, the front-life experience surpassed everything known up to that time. Men and women, mainly writers, were so horrified that they could not find the appropriate language or words to describe the unbearable scenes around them, i.e., they were not able to express their experiences in the traditional literary forms and style. It was the decline of the realistic and pastoral mode of writing and the birth of the modernist era, as Oxford Professor Hew Strachan (2004) rightly puts it: “Critics have credited the war with the birth of Modernism”(Puissant 1-4 ). This war was not only a turning point in human history, but it also had a great impact on writing tradition, since it gave rise to what has come to be known as ‘Modern literature’. The Great War marked the beginning of a new, modern era, in which a deep sense of irony developed. This sense has played a great role in shaping the modern psyche and has become a dominant characteristic of modern life. The different studies devoted to WWI literature show the advent of radical changes which inform us about how literature shapes our understanding of the world before and after a conflict, how experience of the war changes our ideas about wartime, honour and heroism. Modris Eksteins states that what emerged from the war was “modern consciousness”. He adds in his Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (1989)that “irony, which is one expression of sensibility at odds with its surroundings, became for many the rhetorical mode and mood”( 219). As for Stuart Sillars in his Art and Survival in the First World War Britain (1965), Bernard Bergonzi in Heroes’ Twilight: A studying the literature of the Great War(1965) and Paul Fussell in The Great War 1 and Modern Memory(1975), they assume that irony became a way of thinking or rather a ‘psychologically dealing with the absurdities of war’(Puissant 5-6 ). The fundamental break after the cataclysmic “Great War” did not only concern history but also the course of literary development. Important affinities with WWI literature are identified in post-modern literature, in terms of issues and the way of thinking about war, for instance, post- WWII, Vietnam, Iraq literature, etc. Today, the war has become one of the most important issues facing the world and has been the topic centre of prominent novels, newspapers and academic debates and talk shows giving the evidence that “war is an endless and an evitable condition of modern life” as claimed by Paul Fussell in his The Great War and Modern Memory (1975). Among the countries which have been affected by war, where blood and human flesh have become a natural sight,
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