Flying Outside the Flock: A Kafkaesque Reading of the Novel (The Taste of the Wolf) By the Kuwaiti Writer Abdullah Al-Busais

Abstract

The experience of Kuwaiti writer and auther Abdullah Al-Busais is remarkable for its originality and creative ability to question the intellectual and cultural systems in Gulf societies. Moreover, the novel (Taste of the Wolf) comes to put the issue of the role of social customs and traditions in making human identity in an eloquent, descriptive and anatomical language capable of analyzing social cultural structures. This research discusses the vision of the novel in discussing the impact of traditional societies on their children and on the formation of their identities in the light of Kafka's literature which experienced the same spirit: the spirit of monetary and cultural accountability of conservative societies, and the impact of this accountability in suppressing the individual identity of members of the group. This research will compare Kafka's novel (The Metamorphosis) and the novel (The Taste of the Wolf), after analyzing Kafka's biography, from a Freudian perspective, through the issue of the Oedipal relationship which was represented in Kafka's relationship with his father and society; which is the same relationship represented in Dhiban's struggle with his community. Then, the following section presents the most important details of the novel (The Metamorphosis) as a Kafkaesque reaction to his suffering in his Czech-Jewish society. The subsequent section of the study analyzes the novel (The Taste of the Wolf) in the light of Kafkaesque concepts, as an example of the link of society with the formation of cultural identity, the oppression of children, and the inability to move except through this complex social system. This is followed by the theme of transformation into an animal as the last part of this study analyzes Dhiban's identification with the wolf animal, and the link between this transformation and the transformation of the hero of the second novel, (The Metamorphosis), Georgios Samsa to a large insect, and the social and cultural significance of this transformation. Keywords: Kafka, Abdullah Al-Busais, Kafkaesque, Animal humanism, Human.