School Bullying: Power Abuse and Resistance in Jodi Picoult’s Western American Nineteen Minutes (2007) and Tareq Helal’s Eastern Egyptian Scarab (2019)

Abstract

This paper explored school bullying as reflected in two narrative texts of two different cultures: the western American novel, Nineteen Minutes (2007), by Jodi Picoult, and the eastern Egyptian novel, Scarab (2019), by Tareq Basem Helal. Attention was paid to how school bullying is conceptualized, particularly according to the role that is attributed to power. Regard will be taken to the power of the bully and the resistance of the victim or bullied. This paper claimed that anti-bullying in schools is a new genre in the Egyptian narrative fiction. It examined how school bullying began to invade eastern literature as a new phenomenon in the Egyptian novel. The analysis highlighted various relationships; parent-child, boyfriend-girlfriend, peers, and sibling rivalry. It also attempted to prove that ableism and physical shape affect student’s self-esteem. The study investigated whether the causes and results of school bullying in the western societies differ from those in the eastern societies. It elaborated how power/resistance affects school bullying as well as exposes this negative function that school context performs. The conclusion considered what this comparative analysis suggests about power abuse in schools and the similarities of school bullying between the discussed eastern and western narratives.