Document Type : علمی- پژوهشی
Author
Associate Professor, Department of Persian Language and Literature, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, University of Tabriz. Tabriz. Iran
Abstract
Living has overtly a clear concept, and man has always been attempting to understand this concept and its objective. However, revealing its reality has been roughly impossible so far. Novel literature shows that this type of genre pays special attention to the concept and objective of living. According to this perspective, I have analyzed the novel “The Association of the Squalors” (first published in 1398 H.S) in measure and method of noticing the concept and objective of living. For the methodology, I have inferred the character's goals, aims, and ways of living from their statuses, beings, and behaviors and from the expressions and irony in the novel and illustrated how the author represents social life of the characters and their conception and goal of living. The results show that the novel represents with particular care some aspects of the social community through representing realities of their life. In this community, the preliminary needs of life like health, subsistence, housing, and employment has been damaging to the household. It has also overwhelmed the community in a way that they have rarely had the chance to think about the goals and upper grades of spirituality. Consequently, the concept and objective of living have been restricted to supplying the preliminary needs of life and this has been inferred as a pestilence for a community that ought to go ahead in developing great expectations and goals.
Highlights
The Meaning and Purpose of Life in the Novel “Association of the Wretched”[1]
Introduction
The novel “Association of the Wretched,” published in 2019 by a young Iranian author named Salmân Amin, addresses the issues and circumstances of contemporary Iran and describes parts of the life of sections of the Iranian society in terms of social, cultural, and economic conditions in the form of a story. The novel is written in two chapters, with every chapter having thirty paragraphs. Out of the twenty-three characters, five characters play important roles: Kobrâ, Ibiš (Ebrâhim Rahmâni), Qâsem Ziyâdi, Maget (Majid), and Colonel Qafur. The first four have fallen into the bottomless pit of drug addiction and drug dealing due to poverty and ignorance and are searching for a meaning in life that is fit with their thoughts and environment. What is meant by life here is birth and maturation and growing old until death, and all the hopes and pains and sayings and hearings and learnings, and illuminating and conscientious connections with the worlds beyond the senses and the behaviors of the worlds of solitude, and social ties and the practice of public rituals and religious and cultural ceremonies, and any ideas and words and actions that somehow fill a part of the moments of human life.
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to show the direction contemporary literature has taken. This novel, as a leaf from the tree of contemporary literature, has highlighted several instances of social, cultural, economic, and safety harms, such as the gap between the people and the forces protecting their psychological and social security, youth addiction to drugs, unemployment, oppression of women, mugging, etc. and shown behind the scenes of the pitiful life of social outcasts. Paying attention to such works and analyzing them is as important as establishing the position of Realist literature and people’s need for a healthy life and culture.
Method
In reviewing this novel, John Peck’s method, introduced in the book “How to Study a Novel”, is taken as a model, but not to a full extent. In “How to Study a Novel”, Peck has mainly modeled his work on the interpretation of the text and using the statements and allusions of the novel to arrive at the unwritten.
Result
The meanings of conscientiousness in this novel can be found in the concepts of “beliefs beyond the senses”, “free will”, and “determinism”.
Beliefs beyond the senses: In this novel, there are signs of beliefs beyond the senses only in the lives of three characters: Maget, Qâsem, and Maʾsume, who benefit from those beliefs like a blind man who confesses to the existence of the sun.
Free will: In the life of the characters of this novel, whenever the physical needs exceed the limit of tolerance, an unknown action causes danger to common values; so, searching for the meaning of free will in life is futile. In the worlds of the characters of this novel, the manifestations of the will are so limited that there is no field for the will except to act against common values. There is no sign of free will, which is the result of the voluntary action of reason, but its opposite point, which is determinism, “social determinism” in particular, is prevalent throughout the novel. If there is any free will, there are also some obstacles, some of which we will mention here: 1) the characters naturally like purity and goodness. They avoid evil as much as possible, but when the vital needs dominate their will, they know no other way than to sink into the abyss of evil, 2) occupational duties have taken away the free will from the characters and turned life into a formulated mechanism, 3) the lack of will and the courage to face reality has mingled life with lies, pretense, laziness, and fear.
Determinism: Determinism is manifested in two meanings: philosophical and social. We see the manifestation of philosophical determinism in the narration of the narrator and the manifestation of social determinism in the lives of the characters.
However, the novel is not entirely devoid of meaning. The title of the novel, ie “Association of the Wretched” shows that the author definitely has a model of life from the moral, cultural, and economic perspectives in his inner self and is suffering from the lack of it in the real world. The worlds of the characters of the novel have been overshadowed by the influence of the mother of the conventional common values of the present era, that is, “money”. The characters search for the meanings that come from “money”, namely power, respect, social status, prosperity, good life, and a healthy family, for these are considered values in society and bring about respect. The life of a character who does not have enough money for a healthy life is faced with these plagues:
Chaos in the families: In this novel, there is no healthy family and genuine love and affection.
Social corruption: The characters of this novel, out of poverty, tread on a path that, in their opinion, is the same as life; but in terms of social norms, it is considered corruption.
Death of the emotions: Among the characters of this novel and the social institutions whose doors have somehow been opened to the world of the novel, only one character, Qâsem, shows a little humanitarian emotion.
Greed, ignorance, and fear: In the world of this novel, more or less, everyone is affected by at least one of these ugly traits.
The mind and language of the characters are one-layered, and their words are bitter in accordance with their world. However, the tone of the story (as the fourth pillar of the story) is a collection of seriousness and humor, and the novel does not have the necessary seriousness to build a new world. Humor, which naturally implies a secondary meaning, is one of the goals of the story in this novel, but it has no secondary meaning. It is rare to find meaning behind such a tone. Conversations mixed with bitter humor make up the majority of the novel. The dialogues introduce the inner side of the characters more than helping to advance the events of the story.
Keywords
Association of the Wretched, Life, Meaning, Purpose.
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[1] Ebrâhim Ranjbar: Associate Professor, Department of Persian Language and Literature, University of Tabriz.
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