International Journal of Comparative Literature & Translation Studies ISSN 2202-9451 Vol. 5 No. 3; July 2017 Australian International Academic Centre, Australia The Symbolism of the Sun in Ghassan Kanafani's Fiction: A Political Critique Shadi S. Neimneh Hashemite University, Jordan Received: 04-05-2017 Accepted: 30-06-2017 Published: 31-07-2017 doi:10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.5n.3p.67 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.5n.3p.67 Abstract This article explores the symbolism of the sun in Ghassan Kanafani's fiction, in particular his novella Men in the Sun (originally written and published in Arabic under the title Rijal fi al-Shams). The article argues that the sun is a naturalistic emblem standing for the harsh realities encountered by Palestinian refugees. Hence, it is employed as a political metaphor representing the "hellish" life of exiled Palestinians. In this light, the metaphorical employment of the motif of the sun serves the protest message of Kanafani's postcolonial literature of resistance. It is part of a larger project of employing gritty, harsh realism to depict a wretched world of agony, loneliness, despair, and helplessness. In Kanafani’s fiction, the sun directly figures pain, alienation and suffering, rather than hope, light, and renewal as commonly viewed in literary and mythical depictions. Instead of embodying light and birth, the sun figures loss and death in Kanafani’s fictional world. Therefore, it gives Kanafani’s fiction a mythical dimension when this fiction is viewed in its entirety. At the individual level of singular pieces, the sun underscores the realistic weight of such pieces, adding to their ideological, political and historical value. In Men in the Sun, the sun as a dominant symbol functions contra abstract metaphorical language by making the brutal realities of exile and suffering more concrete, more immediate, and more perceptible for the reader. Thus, it is a pessimistic symbol for Kanafani used to create realistic portraits of Palestinian life rather than an optimistic one as traditionally viewed. Keywords: Symbolism, Resistance Literature, Palestinian Literature, Ecocriticism 1. Introduction Simply defined, a literary symbol is a word, a character, an object, or an event with a range of references beyond its literal meaning. It can be a word, a group of words, or an expression carrying a meaning or a set of related meanings. According to Chris Baldick, literary language employs symbol as “a specifically evocative kind of image, a word or a phrase referring to a concrete object, scene, or action which also has some further significance associated with it” (1990, pp. 218-219). A symbol stands for and represents something else beyond this symbol. In Kanafani’s fiction, the unstated suggestions of the strong presence of the sun acquire particular meanings through the concrete realities of misery and humiliation encountered by the Men in the Sun (1962). Thus, Kanafani’s language figures perceptible states rather than abstract ones or general ideas or concepts. It uses symbols to augment the effect of the real world of suffering due to being dislocated from one’s homeland. And instead of simply standing for pain and suffering at the metaphorical level, the sun in Kanafani’s fiction makes misery and wretchedness more immediate for the reader, thus bridging the gap between the symbol and what it stands for. It is the contention of this article that Kanafani’s sun symbolism and its range of references are so close to each other, which heightens the political orientation of this carefully selected symbolism. Literary and mythical depictions of the sun are ambivalent and multiple (Ferber, 1999, pp. 209-210). They range between light and life/birth (Ferber, pp. 209-10), hope and despair, glory and fame, divinity and malevolence, and power and growth. The sun is often seen as a masculine symbol countering the moon as a feminine symbol of change and flux. In popular Greek mythology, Apollo the Sun god has a Moon goddess, Artemis, as a twin sister. In Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises (1926), the sun signifies the renewing cycle of life and regeneration against postwar decay and infertility. The epigraph from Ecclesiastes about the abiding earth and cycle of generations “The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose…”(The Sun Also Rises, Epigraph). By contrast, sunset signifies death, which makes the sun an eternal symbol for death and rebirth. In Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130,” the sun is traditionally warm and bright, but the eyes of the speaker’s mistress are apparently the opposite of this good image, being cold and dull: “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; /Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;” begins the sonnet (“Sonnet 130”, 1609). Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “Summer Sun” makes the sun shed his “warm and glittering look/ Among the ivy’s inmost nook” (“Summer Sun”, 1885). For ecocritics, the personified sun in this poem is “The gardener of the World” penetrating openings and surfaces and causing happiness for human beings and plants. It is the source of unity between man and nature. Against this general optimism and positivity in the depiction of the sun, there is an established tradition on negative symbolism. In some of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the sun is part of a mutable nature. In “Sonnet 18,” for example, the sun is the source of excessive heat and is alternatively at the mercy of clouds: “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, / Flourishing Creativity & Literacy