فضاء حنا مينة الروائي

Abstract

This study deals with Hanna Mena's novels' spaces and their dialectic relationships with the characters. The study found out that Hanna Mena's world is broad and branched, starting from his first novel al-Masabih al-Zurq (1954), in which he deals with the space of the Syrian city in the shadow of the Second World War, and expanding to include the space of the sea, the jungle and the space of exile and alienation. In view of this, the novelistic characters are varied and include people from the city from different classes and sailors from different positions. In addition, the jungle occupies a special space and plays a significant role of purification of the human soul.  Regarding the space of exile and alienation, it exists in two forms:  exile within Lebanon, where the friends and the advisers live in poverty, tiredness and oppression; and exile and alienation in Eastern Europe and China, where the hero puts on gloves of silk. However, yearning to homeland missing it remains overwhelming in both cases because it is a coercive exile of the citizen from his homeland.  

The study investigates the characteristics of space through its description, which is the focus of the study. Mena describes his spaces in an accurate way so that they turn into evidential symbolical elements. The uproar and upheavals of the sea, for example, indicate and symbolize the physical power of the sailor and the spirit of challenge. However, the description of the city and its streets and houses and the people's food and clothes corresponds with historical conditions. Thus, we see the difference between the houses of the poor and the houses of the rich. Consequently, and in order to understand the causes of the conflict between the two classes, the novels introduce the city as a large village from the perspective of social customs and traditions and as a city from the perspective of the number of its population. However, the cities in Europe and China have their own different pictures but the common elements are that the people's customs and traditions and lifestyles are contradictory to those in the life of the Syrian Arab citizens. 

Actually, the space of Hanna Mena's novel moves by internal ideological motivations that seek to point out the class differences that call for revolutionizing the compatriots against the occupier and agitating the poor against the rich and revolutionizing the oppressed against the oppressor. 

Finally, the picture of 'space' will not be complete except through description of its 'language'. However, the study does not deal with the language of the novel sufficiently but it only hints to it in a brief way because the study is limited in size and space for publication