MEN IN THE SUN: EXISTENTIALISM TO EXTINCTION

Abstract

Ghassan Kanafani’s men in the sun embark on existential journeys surrounded with danger. Towards the end of their journey, they died silently of suffocation inside an empty water tank on the smuggler’s lorry on the border of the land of their dreams. The immigrants’ bodies were thrown in the darkness of the night on the garbage dumps of the illustrious Kuwait City. The garbage dumps where the smuggler left the three corpses symbolize the cosmic evil, the capriciousness of the world and the absurdity of existence. In death, the three men become memorable because of their actions, continual struggle, and more because of their final moments of inaction that mocks the capriciousness of fate. The narrative acquires a universal quality because the author did not analyze the causes and the details of immigration of a particular person or persons, rather he focuses on the characters as products of events partly beyond their reach, and more as products of their own anxiety and free choices. Kanafani’s main characters are like Sisyphus, struggling against all odds to assert their existence.