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Modernity and Post Modernistic Issues in Martin Amis's and Sherzad Hassan's Novels

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Modernity and Post Modernistic Issues in Martin Amis's and Sherzad Hassan's Novels QALAAI ZANIST SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL A Scientific Quarterly Refereed Journal Issued by Lebanese French University – Erbil, Kurdistan, Iraq Vol. ( 3 ), Issue ( 4 ), Fall 2018 ISSN 2518-6566 (Online) - ISSN 2518-6558 (Print) Modernity and Post modernistic issues in Martin Amis’s and Sherzad Hassan’s Novels Asst. Prof .Dr. Juan Abdullah Ibrahim Al-Banna English Department / College of Languages / Salahaddin University /Hawler [email protected] Asst.Prof. Dr. Pakhshan Sabir Hamad Kurdish Department / Faculty of Arts / Soran University/Soran [email protected] ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Martin Louis Amis (1949) , is an Article History: English novelist who has written Money Received:29/4/2018 (1984) and London Fields(1989). These novels Accepted: 17/7/2018 show the tormented selves that are divided Published: Fall 2018 into imaginary and real selves. This research Doi: paper presents the human miseries in the late 10.25212/lfu.qzj.3.4.28 Twentieth Century with the sense of pessimism due to uncertainty and doubt . The writer in a realistic way clarifies the modern Keywords: characters challenge the obstacles that hinder Modernity, Martin Amis, their success and search for an outlet. Sherzad 873 QALAAI ZANIST SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL A Scientific Quarterly Refereed Journal Issued by Lebanese French University – Erbil, Kurdistan, Iraq Vol. ( 3 ), Issue ( 4 ), Fall 2018 ISSN 2518-6566 (Online) - ISSN 2518-6558 (Print) Sherzad Hassan ,Postmodernism, Hassan (1951) is a prominent and self awareness, imaginary & real distinguished Kurdish literary figure. He is best selves. known as storyteller, but he has also written novels and poems. He has published four collections of short stories. In this research paper , , Hassarand My father’s Dogs and , The Fog above the Abyss are discussed and compared due to the similarities and differences concerning each novelist and lights are shed on the Kurd’s sufferings.The characters in their novels are trapped in a web of reflections and shadows trying to get rid of that state and search for self-awareness. They suffer a lot while resisting such difficult situations and they are shocked by reality. Both novelists’ characters are pessimist with no hope because of the consequences of Wars , materialism and depression that are features of modernity. The research paper is concerned with an introduction and two sections. In the first, lights are shed on these aspects through features of form, style and the narrative voice in both novelists works. The second section presents samples from both novelists texts with the critics views and psychological issues related to the characters state. Then followed by a conclusion and list of references. INTRODUCTION 874 QALAAI ZANIST SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL A Scientific Quarterly Refereed Journal Issued by Lebanese French University – Erbil, Kurdistan, Iraq Vol. ( 3 ), Issue ( 4 ), Fall 2018 ISSN 2518-6566 (Online) - ISSN 2518-6558 (Print) Martin Louis Amis (1949) is an English novelist. His best-known novels are Money(1984) and London Fields (1989). He has received the James Tait Black MemorialPrize for his memoir Experienceand has been listed for the Booker Prize twice to date (shortlisted in 1991 for Time's Arrowand longlisted in 2003 for Yellow Dog). Amis served as the Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester until 2011. The Timesnamed him in 2008 as one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945 (Page ,2011). Amis's work centers on the apparent excesses of late-capitalist Western society, whose perceived absurdity he often satirizes through grotesque caricature; Mira Stout claims that he has been portrayed as a master of what theNew York Times called "the new unpleasantness". Joanna Stolarek believes that ‘the issues concerning political and social dictatorships are mingled with those presenting capitalist oppression, which is best exemplified in Money (2013:72) . Inspired by Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Joyce, as well as by his father Kingsley Amis, Amis himself went on to heavily influence many successful British novelists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including Will Self and Zadie Smith. Sherzad Hassan is born in (1951) in Erbil . He has been affected by his mother who takes him to the Mosque in a district called kooran to learn and while he was twelfth years old , he started to read novels by Emile Zola (1840- 1902) , a French novelist and really affected by his writing. He had written several novels The Hassar and the Dogs of my father (1996) . Zhiwar Jawhar in his article entitled as Sherzad Hassan, claims that The Hassar and the Dogs of My Fatheris a well-known kurdish novel, its overarching themes are dictatorship and patriarchy, particularly focusing on Kurdish society – themes that are , however, relevant everywhere, freedom is curtailed and women are subordinated to men . Rebin Ahmed Hardi in his research paper entitled asKurdish father between killing and living claims that when Sherzad Hassan selects murdering a father as a main issue in his novel, he gives the Kurdish literate all attributes he sees during the guiltof killing father. If Freud finds a lively time during such guilty case, the same guilt of killing a father becomes a tragic and problematic in the cottage. But this case for Freud becomes a source of victory for establishing life (qtd in Sarjami Barham 9). 875 QALAAI ZANIST SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL A Scientific Quarterly Refereed Journal Issued by Lebanese French University – Erbil, Kurdistan, Iraq Vol. ( 3 ), Issue ( 4 ), Fall 2018 ISSN 2518-6566 (Online) - ISSN 2518-6558 (Print) When a father is murdered anywhere some justifications are provided for but in case of Cottages where the existence of father is obligatory for ensuring life and settlement, such murder cases becomes catastrophe. The existence of father is very necessary for keeping life go on and controlling every domestic aspect. Hardy adds that the cottagers cannot redeem without fathers. whatever difficulty and oppression they face,such difficulty is more preferable than the absence of father. For those who live in the cottage, they accept their father's anger, spitting and criticism than death. Hardy says that " in From's view, certainty is in the passive state of the individuals rather than getting rid of their fathers. The eldest son in Sherzad Hassan's novel Hassarand my father's dogsnarrates his story after killing his father saying that the universe is futile after the death of a father and it is no more than a dystopia. In essence , this story is no more than a dream of the eldest son.Barzan Farajin his research entitled as The Immortal cottage and Sacred fatherbelieves that Sherzad Hassan's novel refers to a universe that is built on dystopian world in which it is devoid of all aspects of manner and morality where an abused generation controls the universe destroying everything and raping women and abolishing all ethical aspects in the society.The image of father is a symbol of the previous generation in which a utopian system is established (qtd in Sarjami Barham 10). Duality in Martin AmissandSherzad Hasan's novels Duality is one of the issues that has been tackled clearly in Amis's novel, it indicates hesitation, irritation, unbalanced state of the character. It is one of the features of modernity where the person feels unsafe, the very reason that leads him not to be settled but on the contrary to move and change his position continuously. America has been represented in this novel as a form of duality, as a representation of otherness, plays its part in the psychological development of the protagonist.It reveals the role of America as an embodiment of the 876 QALAAI ZANIST SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL A Scientific Quarterly Refereed Journal Issued by Lebanese French University – Erbil, Kurdistan, Iraq Vol. ( 3 ), Issue ( 4 ), Fall 2018 ISSN 2518-6566 (Online) - ISSN 2518-6558 (Print) postmodern present and a tool for social and political comment (Campanon2004: 2). Money (1984) has been widely acknowledged as a major achievement in Martin Amis’s narrative and a turning point in his development as a writer. The novel is a sophisticated literary artifact . It combines a complex web of postmodern tricks and narrative devices with an accurate depiction of the 1980s and its materialist philosophy of self-development through material success. However, the novel’s main accomplishment is “its vibrant narrative voice” personified by its first-person narrator and protagonist John Self (Tredell 2000:55). He is the dominant figure who is energetic in his monologues. Self’s very name, as all the names in the book, is heavily loaded with meaning, and proclaims what the character represents. John Self embodies both the particular and the general, both the individual self in search of a resolution, trying to escape from a web of manipulation and abuse, and the prototypical twentieth-century self, isolated and blinded by a wall of material concerns, a victim of self -delusion in a complex present he is unable to read (3). John Self, the narrator and protagonist of Money, is the epitome of this era - a maker of outrageous televisioncommercials, brought up on junk culture, top of the pops, booze and pornography. His only god is money. Itproves a destructive god, which is why Self (and Amis in the subtitle) calls Money a suicide note. Amis has pointed out that "money is always connected with excrement in myth" (Smith 1985:79). Self mirrors theuntramelled self, the naked ego (and id), a bundle of appetites. All his actions and relations with others aregoverned by money. His astonishing consumption of alcohol is, Amis has explained, "more a painkiller than a quest for a good time"(Haffenden 1985:13). James Diedrick in his book Understanding Martin Amis (2004:7 ) believes that the plot of the novel is, “deceptively simple”.Over a period of six months, John Self, the director of “controversial TV ads for smoking , drinking, junk food and nude magazines" (Amis,Money,78) travels back and forth between London and New York.
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