Abstract

The Lebanese novelist Faten Al-Murr tried to move lightly from Detroit to the town of Khenchara in Lebanon through narration, and from one story to another. Through this transition, the writer achieved the desired harmony between the two stories and the two occupations that took place in Lebanon. Although the movement from one place to another does not occur within the borders of Lebanon, the link of time connects them, especially since the characters are in a relationship with each other in the axis around which the novel revolves, and as is clear from the title “The Dust of 1918,” this number turns into a fateful year. In the history of Lebanon, it is the year in which the occupation transferred from the hands of the Ottoman government to the French, and therefore the novelist linked the year 1918, whose events took place in Khenchara, and the year 1972 in the city of Detroit, since the character of John, through whom the reader sees the world of Khenchara and the Ottoman occupation, is A family connection to the character of the young man who narrated the story from his perspective in the city of Detroit, fifty years after the French occupation. Therefore, the writer Faten Al-Murr was able to sequence from one time to another and from one place to another and achieve this coherence and completeness through the formula of time similar to Gerard Gent, which separates the time of the story from the time of the story. That is, the real time in which the story occurred and the paper time in which the story was written. Therefore, this article seeks to study the technique of the temporal system in the novel “Dust of 1918” similar to Gerard Gent’s approach to the tense formula, and in accordance with the descriptive-analytical approach. It can be concluded from this article that the intersection of the two stories in the novel is achieved through the technique of time, especially since the novelist adopted the polyphonic narrative, which causes her to constantly move from the character of John to his brother in Detroit, and this requires leaving from one time to another, and this shift also favors the content. Through which the writer delved into the history of Syria to present resistance in terms of awareness of history and the scourges of explicit and implicit occupation.

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The article was added to IASJ on 2024-02-13

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