Fate of a Cockroach is one of Al-Hakim ‘s dramas that conform to the theater of the absurd in Egypt. The drama which was published in 1966 consists of two shorter, connected dramas. The first was published in Al-Ahram newspaper in 1964 and consists of the 2nd and the 3rd Acts of the Apostless spoken by worlds under the same rubric, Fate of Cockroach. The 2nd drama, which is spoken by the cockroaches, appeared in the same newspaper in 1965 under the rubric The King cockroach sakhsookh, A ( 2002 P. 143 ) .
In Fate of a Cockroach Al-Hakim satirically creates the cockroach characters to typify the political disenchantment with the socialist radical government under Nasser ‘s. He subsequently criticized this period in his history entitled ‘Awdat Alwa’ey ‘ ( the return of consciousness ) Badawi, M, M ( 1987: p.82 ) . The correspondence in the drama runs at the degree of the cockroaches and worlds. The King and the Queen Cockroaches have a similar issue as the human twosome Samia and Adil who woke up and began to hold an statement. In both cases in the drama, though the subject of statement is different, the female has the upper manus. The discourse in both instances alludes to conflictive functions between the sexes which could be taken as a contemplation on the instance of the functions of adult females and work forces in Egyptian society at that clip.
To exemplify further, the King blames the Queen for seeking to undervalue his power and worth. He besides blames her for inquiring him to happen a solution to the job of the emmets which is every bit old as clip. Similarly, Adil blames Samia for seting her involvements and herself before her hubby. He is angry with the fact that she ever asks him to make excess jobs at place.
Samia, who is a circular character in the drama, is represented as a tyrannizing married woman to her hubby Adil. Her personality is stronger than his ; yet he refuses to accept the fact, feigning that he tolerates her and puts up with her orders as she is of the ‘weaker sex ‘ . Her attitude towards Adil alterations to that of a caring married woman after the Doctor tells her that Adil has psychological jobs because of the force per unit areas of place, work and survey, which led him to place himself with the cockroach in the bath bath. However, at the terminal of the drama, she is back to the function of the tyrannizing married woman after she finds out that the Doctor ‘s diagnosing is non accurate and that her hubby ‘s desire to protect the cockroach is merely because he admires the cockroach ‘s eternal continuity to salvage his life ; an attitude which is shared by the Doctor.
Traveling back to the other cockroach characters such as the Minister, Savant, and Priest ; we learn that these characters play secondary functions to the development of the events in the drama. Their function is played because each of them has an uneven endowment to measure up them for the places they hold. The Minister ‘s endowment of conveying bad intelligence to the King is what qualified him for his place. It is besides the wholly inexplicable things that the priest says that made him suited for his place. As for the Savant, it is the unusual information about things that he presents to the male monarch that made him good for his station.
The Doctor and the Cook, who both have a formal relationship with the household, are minor characters in the human portion of the drama. The Cook ( Umm Attiya ) appears to be from the hapless working category in Egypt and does as she is told by her kept woman Samia. She plays a function in reasoning the drama where she determines the destiny of both the cockroach and Adil who asks her at the terminal of the drama to pass over him out of being, which can be understood as a direct admittance of the resemblance between himself and the cockroach. As for the Cook, she symbolizes the external natural power that causes alteration in life. The Doctor on the other manus Acts of the Apostless as his societal function implies, i.e. of doctor- patient relationship.
In this chapter an analysis of Fate of a Cockroach will be presented on the footing of the followers: lingual impoliteness, power, societal distance, gender, footings of reference, and alteration of synergistic functions of characters through lingual behavior.
3.2. Analysis
3.2 a. Impoliteness
Linguistic impoliteness in literary duologues can uncover interesting penetrations about characters themselves to the reader or the audience. It can besides account for the conflictive state of affairss between characters in the play. In The Fate of a Cockroach we can see the sort of tense discourse presented in the first act between the King and Queen cockroaches and between Samia and Adil in the 2nd and 3rd Acts of the Apostless as grounds of how impoliteness may explicate the development of characters in the drama, and the development of messages about characters and the subject to be conveyed to the audience on the reader ‘s degree. In the first act, the Queen, holding the same power as the King, and being his married woman, therefore holding close societal distance, is presented as an argumentative character where she makes FTAs without redressive action, and is even in some cases impolite to the King where she adopts impoliteness schemes to roast the King and his worth. In state of affairss 1-8 we can see how tenseness is being manifested between the King and the Queen because of the use of the certain contextual factors ( societal distance, power and rank of infliction ) that determine the sort of ( im ) niceness used in each state of affairs:
Situation 1
ACT. I, P2
( Turn 1 ) male monarch: Come along – aftermath up! It ‘s clip for work. [ telling / instructing ]
( Turn 2 ) queen ( from interior ) : The darkness of eventide has non yet appeared.
( Turn 3 ) male monarch: Any minute now it will.
( Turn 4 ) queen: Has the blinding visible radiation of twenty-four hours wholly disappeared? [ inquiring ]
( Turn 5 ) male monarch: Any minute now it will.
( Turn 6 ) queen: Until it disappears wholly and dark has
wholly come, allow me be and do n’t trouble oneself me. [ warning / instructing ]
( Turn 7 ) male monarch: What indolence! What indolence! [ warning ]
( Turn 8 ) queen ( doing her visual aspect ) : I was n’t kiping. You must
retrieve that I have my lavatory and makeup to make. [ warning ]
( Turn 9 ) male monarch: Make-up and lavatory! If all married womans were like you, so God
aid all hubbies! [ warning ]
( Turn 10 ) queen ( aroused to choler ) : I ‘m a queen! Do n’t bury I ‘m the
Queen! [ warning ]
( Turn 11 ) male monarch: And I ‘m the King!
We can set up that the relationship between the King and the Queen is tense. The Queen speaks in a defying mode to the King as she believes that she has equal power. In bend ( 1 ) the Queen asks a direct yes/no inquiry about the disappearing of the visible radiation which is perceptibly null of any politeness markers. However, this is typical of an informal relationship between hubby and married woman speaking in an informal context. In a continued attempt of her averment of power, in bend ( 3 ) the Queen admonishes the King, signalling her irritation because he tried to wake her and did non appreciate her positive face wants. In bends ( 7 and 9 ) the King responds admonishingly to the Queen ‘s expostulations impeaching her of being lazy and vain. Both talkers do non acknowledge and appreciate each other ‘s positive face wants which leads to tenseness in the state of affairs.
