Abstract
Yousef Al-Mohaimeed’s Wolves of the Crescent Moon is a rich contemporary novel that deploys several effective narrative strategies and themes. Binary oppositions provide the novel’s most unifying thread. This paper examines how binary opposition is used as a structural device in the novel to explore the interplay between modernity and culture in Saudi Arabia by challenging previously unquestioned aspects of life in the contemporary society. The paper focuses on the manner in which binary oppositions inform the novel’s rhetoric of displacement, which becomes a driving force determining variation in values and notions within the privileged elite. Corresponding cultural changes emerge from this elite set, whose members pursue modernity in an exclusionary manner in their rapid assimilation into modernization. They appear incapable of understanding indigenous members of Saudi society who adjust less rapidly and who perceive changes in norms and traditions as evidence that the elite regard them as inferior ‘Others’.
Highlights
Ever since it was published in English, Yousef Al-Mohaimeed’s Wolves of the Crescent Moon has been considered by many literary reviewers as a milestone in modern Saudi fiction
This paper examines how binary opposition is used as a structural device in the novel to explore the interplay between modernity and culture in Saudi Arabia by challenging previously unquestioned aspects of life in the contemporary society
This paper has explored Wolves of the Crescent Moon as a pivotal contemporary literary text that uses structural discourse to re-evaluate the criteria for inclusion in Saudi Arabian society and to negotiate the terms through which aspects of modernity are identified
Summary
Ever since it was published in English, Yousef Al-Mohaimeed’s Wolves of the Crescent Moon has been considered by many literary reviewers as a milestone in modern Saudi fiction. This paper intends to demonstrate an understanding of how Al-Mohaimeed’s employment of the principle of binary oppositions allows for an understanding of his underlying thematic concern, namely his bafflement over his society’s vision and experience of modernity, which, it has fostered a promise of enlightenment, openness, and inclusion, has been unduly grounded in materialistic values of exploitation and exclusion Aiming to show his peers what is amiss in their culture, Al-Mohaimeed provides a socially subversive critique of Saudi society by highlighting the inadequacies, agonies, and terrors faced by marginalized individuals in modern life. The dualism of Al-Mohaimeed’s binary thought challenges the seamless unity of monistic thinking threatening to dominate the world of his marginalized characters, but is an effort to open a space for multiplicity and diversity to create moments of dialogic discourse with his country’s dominant culture
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