THE INTEGRATIVE PERSONALITY IN THE NOVEL 'BAYT ABU BAYYUT' BY HUSSAM KHWAM AL YAHYA

Abstract

This paper aims to study the integrative personality or fictional character within the crisis of self and reality in the novel "Bayt Abu Bayyut" by the Iraqi author Hussam Khwam Al Yahya. The novel delves into the existential crisis faced by Iraq and its people amidst Western colonization during the fall of the Ba'athist regime. This study seeks to elucidate the concept of the fictional character in general and the integrative personality specifically within the context of the complex dialectical relationship between self and reality, or reality and the imagined, while considering the influence and impact between the character and other elements or components of the narrative, such as time, place, and levels of linguistic performance employed in the narrative text.

The novel sheds light on the Iraqi reality within an open temporal context that encompasses history, the present, and the future simultaneously. The author skillfully combines two narrative trajectories regarding character construction: the relationship between the self and objective reality, and the relationship between the realistic and the dreamlike or the objective and the imagined. Through this, we analyze practically the contours of the integrative personality, its nature, semantic dimensions, temporal and spatial realms ”both inherited and contemporary ”within the context of the author's objective and artistic vision.