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Statelessness, Politics of Self and Other, Gender Battle, Issue of Species Superiority, International Politics, Marginalized International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS) Vol-4, Issue-1, Jan - Feb, 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.4.1.36 ISSN: 2456-7620 Statelessness, Politics of Self and Other, Gender Battle, Issue of Species Superiority, International Politics, Marginalized Voices and A Comparative Analysis of Al-Hakim’s Egypt and Today’s Egypt in Fate of a Cockroach Partha Sarathi Mandal Research Scholar, Raiganj University, West Bengal, India Email: [email protected] Abstract— Fate of a Cockroach (1973) brilliantly value. This play is an inspired, thoughtful and portrays statelessness, policy paralysis, lethargy in taking vigorous denunciation of Egyptian (and Arab) effective decision, overpowering clutches of a self- politics and policies as he saw them in the years declared cockroach King who is unable to take any immediately prior to the June War and his last direct decision in order to eliminate the threats coming from the dramatic word on Abd an Nasir. ants vis-à-vis this play also showcases a struggle for survival. The cockroach’s tireless fight for freedom is —Richard Long inspiring for us because life is not a bed of roses; it is full Turning and turning in the widening gyre of challenges and pricks. If a ruler fails to lead his nation The falcon cannot hear the falconer; he is not eligible for the post. Individualistic cockroaches Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; stand in complete opposite to the ants who believe in the Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, mantra of collective efforts. Today’s Egypt also under the presidency of Sisi desperately needs peace and stability —William Butler Yeats because Sisi is accused of his authoritarian and QUEEN Don’t apologize! My position is like yours. dictatorial leadership and failed economic policy. The I know that. The difference, however, is that he’s cockroach Queen and Samia - both appear to me as male — and that he’s got longer whiskers than me! powerful female characters who are not ready to be dominated by their husbands. On the other hand, they —Tawfik Al-Hakim have thrown a challenge to the phallocentric monopoly of I do not know how a person suffering from our patriarchal society where women are pushed at the Katsaridaphobia would respond to Tawfik Al-Hakim’s periphery and phallus is in the centre. Al-Hakim deserves Fate of a Cockroach (1973), a three-act satirical comedy our kudos because he has vividly sketched the various designed for and written in contour with the ethics of the agathokakological entities of our life through the theatre of the absurd but it is a matter of fact that this play portrayal of lawlessness, failed state machinery, also highlights struggle for life, political, psycho-cultural, parasitic leeches who like to eat fig in galore after religious and even governmental problems. Al-Hakim carrying coals to Newcastle, Self/Other, Centre/Periphery deserves our kudos because with a true impartial politics etc. journalist’s eye he has portrayed class struggle, gender Keywords— Agathokakological, Dictatorial, struggle, Self/Other, Centre/Periphery, Master/Slave Individualistic, Periphery, Statelessness. dichotomy in his Fate of a Cockroach (1973). In Al- Hakim’s universe cockroaches talk, share their opinions I. INTRODUCTION and discuss about various inconveniences of their It is remarkable that in Fate of a Cockroach, the kingdom but what is most striking is that the self-declared product of a broken heart, the author should have so cockroach King is not able to hatch any decisive solution controlled his attempt and bitterness as to give not to the age-old threat coming from the ants. Ants are tiny only a drama, but also a political document, of creatures in comparison to the cockroaches while www.ijels.com Page | 181 International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS) Vol-4, Issue-1, Jan - Feb, 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.4.1.36 ISSN: 2456-7620 cockroaches are also tiny in comparison to human beings. political criticism which is examined elsewhere, Proletariat ants feed themselves from the crumb of their it is difficult to label. (500-501) masters’ table and they live in community. On the other The cockroach King has not the really great hand the cockroaches are greedy and proud of their organising power and judiciousness of Dr. Ashoke Gupta species superiority and even claim themselves as of Satyajit Ray’s Ganashatru (1990), an adaptation of “thinking creatures”. (Al-Hakim 21) Cockroaches appear Ibsen’s play An Enemy of the People (1882) in the sense to me as petty bourgeoisie arrogant having exhibitionist that Dr. Gupta did his level best in raising the mass and self-fashioning gestures while the ants belong to protest against drinking the holy water of Tripureshwar “[n]on hegemonic groups or classes.” (Gramsci xiv) temple which was the epitome of jaundice and an Richard Long in his “Philosophical and Psychological epidemy was about to plunge into the small township. Dr. Themes in Fate of a Cockroach” has observed: Gupta had the power and ability to create a mass agitation If Fate of a Cockroach is an exercise in against the corrupt politicians and spineless journalists but disillusion and bitterness, its chief protagonist in Fate of a Cockroach (1973) the King is not capable of nevertheless stems directly from Hakim’s assembling even ten cockroaches to mobilize a battalion established psychological and philosophical against the ants: attitudes. In From Beyond, the concluding item SAVANT Naturally. If the King can’t order ten of The Devil’s Pact, he refers to the wars of the cockroaches to assemble together, then what ants and the cockroaches. In From the Ivory authority has the King got? (Al-Hakim 11) Tower he describes his ‘frequent’ contemplation, The despotic cockroach King and his court can be when a youth, of columns of ants bearing compared to the court of Hirak Raj because both the cockroach corpses, he uses to scatter their ranks cockroach King and Hirak Raj of Satyajit Ray’s Hirak with cups of water, which he supposed they Rajar Deshe (1980) always like to listen “Your Majesty” probably regarded as well-aimed acts of God and (Al-Hakim 20) from their subjects and both are which prompted in him the by no means megalomaniac and are surrounded by power hungry, unprecedented thought that perhaps humans were hypocritical leeches who always like to eat the fig in ‘ants’, whose natural catastrophes were the deeds galore after carrying coals to Newcastle: of ‘ants’ yet longer than them: ‘Allah is greater MINISTER Before you, Your Majesty, we lived than we can conceive, and our senses are more in an age of primitive barbarism. We had neither ignored about this life as we imagine.’ He returns a king nor a minister, then you came along, with to this train of thought in Literature is Life. In the your sense of organization and sound thinking, preface to the play he declares again his interest and ascended the throne. (Al-Hakim 8) in the insect world — one demonstrated in The darbari cockroach King’s lobby consists of a prime Solomon the Wise — which, he surmises, is the minister who cannot see plans through, a scientist who is ancient Egyptian in him, coming out: they ‘used unscientific, unreasonable, arrogant and uncooperative to link insects and man in one framework’. He and a priest who is conceited, irreligious and duplicitous. says that he once saw a cockroach struggling to (Long 505) As Richard Long in the previously mentioned climb out of his bath and heralds one purpose of essay has again observed: Act One of the play by continuing, ‘How Putting them all to shame is the Queen. Hakim’s glorious is the sight of a determination to striking and vicious account of the kingdom is so struggle without hope! ... (It) is, as I understand presented that the ordinary Arab spectator or it, the crux of tragedy... For me, sadness, reader ought to be able to assimilate the satire catastrophes and the death of the hero are not effortlessly. It is, nevertheless, doubtful whether properties of tragedy, but obligatory is (it) ... that the politically unaware Arab would grasp that it the hero’s end comes as a result of his striving is not about cockroaches at all and, if coaxed into with a force over which he has no power’ — as, the theatre, would not be on the retreat within a he avers, is the case with Othello but not with short apace of time. If he missed the satire he Hamlet. ‘Every human struggle lacks efficacy would, however, also be denied the humour and before that power against which man is vivacity which make the act a continual joy. It is powerless. Nevertheless he struggles, and that is an anti-Egyptian (perhaps anti-Arab) parable : the tragedy and greatness of man.’ Having the kingdom is Egypt, which has not studied its expounded his theory, he correctly dismisses the problems with the necessary seriousness and idea that Fate of a Cockroach is a tragedy — ‘it depth and substitutes slander and lies for the is merely a play and no more.’ Containing much considered demarche; the King and his sensible www.ijels.com Page | 182 International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences (IJELS) Vol-4, Issue-1, Jan - Feb, 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.4.1.36 ISSN: 2456-7620 Queen are respectively the Egyptian President castrated and effeminized after denying to go for a war and people, whom Hakim is not complimenting which is believed to be manly: by dressing up as cockroaches; and the non- QUEEN Then I shall go — I, the Queen — yet I existent cockroach army is Egypt’s.
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