The Image of the Child Between Arabic Literature, Turkish Literature and German Literature, Acomparative Study

Abstract

In this article, the researchers present a comparison between literary works belonging to three cultures: Arabic, Turkish, and German, in the short story field, by presenting the child portrait in three works: Nazra by the Egyptian writer Youssef Edris, Nachts schlafen die Ratten doch (The Rats Sleep at Night) by the German writer Wolfgang Borchert, and Eskici (The Junk Dealer) by the Turkish writer Refik Halit Karay.

The article follows the American school of comparative studies and adopts a descriptive approach. It observes the child portrait in the three works through four aspects: the story's opening, the narrative time, the dialogue, and the end of the narrative. The article includes an introduction and two sections: a theoretical section and an applied section. The theoretical section discusses the the child portrait as a sender and as a receiver, while the applied section examines the child portrait as a fictional structure in the narrative work. The comparison concludes that there is a significant similarity in the fictional image presented by the narrative texts, despite the clear dissimilitudes in narrative techniques among the three writers.