Une Quête de Soi au Carrefour des Identités : Fiction et Réalité dans Surtout ne te Retourne pas de Maissa Bey = A Quest for the Self at the Crossroads of Identities : Fiction and Reality in Surtout ne te Retourne pas by Maissa Bey

Abstract

Surtout ne te retourne pas is the story of a young girl victim of an earthquake and an identity crisis. It is also the story of Amina, the amnesiac who tries to unravel the threads of her past existence through some tragic stories, including that of Dada Aicha, Mourad, Nadia, and Sarah. In this article, we seek to examine Amina at the crossroads of several identities. Would she be Amina, the daughter of a so busy entrepreneur with his status as a future legislator, a submissive mother, or a fundamentalist brother? Would it be Amina who ran a runaway at 15 days to escape her arranged marriage? Would she be Amina the maid's niece? Would she be El Wahida that Dadda Aicha finds annihilated, lying on the road, curled up, frozen, and rigid?. Or is she Amina the daughter of Dounya? In the light of these textual details, we will try to highlight the plurality of identity, which emerge from a fragmentation of the identities of the character in search of the self. The writer traces sketches of the individual and her society. The 2003 earthquake and Amina's amnesia are only a pretext for dealing with the past memory, of the present of an Algeria plagued by big cats, which have submitted the mother of the character, who succeeds finally free herself and to allow her daughter to outwit the patriarchal projects. Thus, to grasp the meaning of the text, the mythanalytic data will make it possible to turn down the meaning. The myth of the end of the world, the myth of creation and the myth of rebirth have given birth to another text in which Amina experiences a symbolic death, which evolves into two rebirths; one with Dadda Aicha, the other with Dounya.