Nindy Naditha

1209617030

World Literature (ESSAY)

The Struggle of Lower Class Portrayed in ‘Men in The Sun’ by Ghassan Kanafani

I. INTRODUCTION

Men in The Sun, one of literature proudest product written by Ghassan Kanafani. This story
is the key of modern literature in the Middle Eastern. Men in The Sun talked about migrants
and smugglers on the post-war era located in Palestine. The writer of this literary work,
Kanafani, was born in the 1936, northern Palestine, and moved away with his family to
Damascus around the 1948s. He moved for several times after that and worked as a
newspaper journalist and slowly opened his view towards the Marxism and believed that
Palestine could solve their problem by doing a social revolution throughout the Arab World.
Kanafani died along with his niece in the explosion of his own booby trapped car in July
1972, leaving his wife and two children..

Men in The Sun is a story about three Palestinian refugees that dream of reaching Kuwait in
order to achieve a better life quality by finding for employment there. They were hoping that
the money they would get from working in Kuwait will help them to improve their family
life quality too. The road they took to reach Kuwait is a really hard one, and they need
assistance of people smugglers in order to arrive safely without getting charged by the
authorities, but of course along the way there are a lot people who got fooled and being
ripped off from their money and stuffs, or guides who take you to the wrong place and run
away from their responsibility. The story also give us a glimpse of difference in between
higher class life and lower class life. Men in the Sun is a story about human suffering and
also tragedy. Each characters inside representing an aspect of Palestinian dispossession.

In this essay, I would like to focus on how Kanafani framed the life struggle in Palestine
during the post-war era. I will point out some life struggle coming from the main characters
in this story, and how was the social life in Palestine around that time, that caused this class
struggles in between Low Class and High Class.

II. DISCUSSION

Kanafi’s wife wrote that his inspiration to write and working was the Palestinian-Arab
struggle, and he fought sincerely for the development of the resistance movement from a
nationalist Palestinian liberation movement into a pan-Arab revolutionary socialist
movement. If we look at his life biography, Kanafani’s life is closely related to the main
topic and the struggles that the characters have to deal with during the post-war era in
Palestine. In Men in The Sun, was written ‘when the political situation was particularly
unstable, and he had to remain hidden at home for more than a month because of his lack of
official papers. People around this era were scattered and many of them living in a camps or
struggling to make a proper living. Many of them only lay their hope down in the future and
their children that the education was pushed through with a hope that it might help them to
change the future, even though the sacrifices they have to make is enormous.

The setting of this novel was placed around 1958s in Iraq. In the story we could find the
author describing how was the situation in this place as a landscape of dessert. The three
main characters in this story met in Basra, Iraq, with a same intention to go to Kuwait. The
first character introduced in the story is Abu Qais. He has a son and a wife, and he ever lost a
daughter who died after from a malnutrition when they were living inside a refugee camp. He
had lost everything to the Zionist hand, and his wife slowly lost her patience because Abu
Qais had done nothing but waiting for something that most likely will never go back to them.

In the story we could see it from this parapgraph, showing us how bad it was for the refugees
who are forced to live a hard life after the High Class, or in this case Zionist, took everything
they have on their land.

In the last ten years you have done nothing but wait. You have needed ten big hungry years
to be convinced that you have lost your trees, your house, your youth, and your whole
village. People have been making their own way during these long years, while you have
been squatting like an old dog in a miserable hut. What do you think you were waiting for?
(Men in The sun pg. 8 pdf)

From this his wife’s word, we can see that it’s hard for him to finally accept the fact that he
had lost any sort of possessions he ever had. He hoped for the situation to changed back to
how it was before. But at the end he has to accept the reality that dwelling on it won’t change
anything and he eventually listen to his wife advice to start chasing his dream for real to
Kuwait instead of living inside a daydream.

“Do you like this life here? Ten years have passed and you live like a beggar. It’s
disgraceful. Your son, Qais, when will he go back to school? Soon the other one will grow
up, How will you be able to look at him when you haven’t..?” (Men in The sun pg. 8 pdf)

His wife had to say some hurtful things to make Abu Qais actually move from his own head
space and in the middle of doing this, he dreams about the possible outcome if he go for
better life in Kuwait, to buy some olive shoots, building a shack, and also sending his son to
school. It was not an easy choice to make, and in page 9 we can see where he and his wife
are trying to hold back their tears, knowing that the journey will be far from easy. But living
as a low class who almost have nothing on them, it’s a choice they have to make in order to
keep on surviving.

He had to sacrifice around 15 dinars to reach Kuwait, and considering people smugglers are
filled with many untrustworthy being, he should also gamble his change. It was either
success or not, but either way he has no choice but to put his little fortune on the line. He met
the other characters. He met Assad in Basra, who has been smuggled from Jordan to Iraq but
he was one of those people who got abandoned in the middle of the desert.

Assad is also one of those people who have to sacrifice a lot of things in order to reach
Kuwait, reaching his dream of living a better life. He lost about 20 dinars after a smuggler
took and advantage of his innocence and make him walk under the burning hot sun above his
head. He must walk around H4 in order to avoid getting caught by the frontier guards.

The sun was pouring flame down on his head, and as he climbed the yellow slopes, he felt he
was alone in the whole world. He dragged his feet over the sand as though he were walking
on the seashore after pulling up a heavy boat that had drained the firmness from his legs. He
crossed hard patches of brown rocks like splinters, climbed low hills with flattened tops of
soft yellow earth like flour. If they had taken me to the desert prison, Al-Jafra, at H4, I
wonder if life would have been kinder than it is now. Pointless, pointless. The desert was
everywhere. (Men in The Sun pg. 10)

If we look at this passage, we can see how hard it is to reach one place from another. The
place they live in is also not a good one in a term of weather. This show us a little from many
struggles Assad had to endure in order to go chasing his dream. His uncle gave him around
50 dinars, and told him if he can go back with money from Kuwait, he will let Assad marry
his daughter, Nada. Assad actually have no intention to marry her, but he took the offer in
order to get money. This shows how hard it is to get left with no choice, and to get such
offering, it would be a loss at his side.

The last refuge in this story is Marwan. His part started with him getting out from a fat
smuggler place and left in the crowded street of Basra. He was only 16 years old when he
decided to go for Kuwait. At first, he has no idea how to reach the place only with 15 dinars
because the people smuggler doesn’t want to accept such a ‘small’ amount of money. He has
a family that is falling apart in an exile, and his brother, Zakaria, got married and left for
Kuwait from a long time ago. His brother stopped sending their family money, and someone
told him that it’s normal for him not sending money anymore because he now has a wife and
family to feed.

Marwan has to leave everything behind as he is the only hope that their family has in order to
keep on living. His father on the other hand, left his family and divorced his wife in order to
marry Shafiqa, a woman that no one want to marry because she got her leg amputated and
she basically can’t do anything. His father decided to marry her because she owns a lot of
property and his father took this opportunity only to live a good life, not because he actually
marry her because of love.

‘My father thought about the matter; if he let two rooms and lived with his lame wife in the
third, he would live out the rest of his life in security, untroubled by anything. And more
important than that, under a concrete roof.’ (Men in The Sun pg. 15)
This shows that his father doesn’t care about his family as long as he got a good life for
himself. Marwan has no choice left but to go to Kuwait, dreaming he will get a job there and
earn some dinars to live and send some to his family. He thinks about sending his mother
money and surprise his siblings with gifts, and his father would drown in regret from leaving
them all behind.

Three of them met together and decided to go to Kuwait with a help from someone named
Abdul Khaizuran. He guarantee them by saying he will definitely bring them safely with a
tank he has from working with a high class lord. This is where the story take turn. Three of
them died from dehydration inside the tank and there is where the irony of this story took
place. None of them manage to chase for their dream to Kuwait, when the place is already in
front of their eyes.

Those three characters has a different life struggle they should face, but it’s all based with a
same will ; to be able to live a good life, no matter if it’s for their own self or for the sake of
their family well beings. They know it won’t be an easy journey for them, and at the end of
the story, Kanifani killed them all in an unfortunate event that all of them could avoid, but
having no choice to.

III. CONCLUSION
From reading ‘Me in The Sun’ and relate the story with the author, Ghassan Kanafani
background we know that this novel is not a mere fiction but a good literature work
that could portray a life and struggle that people in Palestine have to endure in post-
war era against the Zionist. He made three characters inside the story, Abu Qais,
Assad, and Marwan that are the representation of Palestinian people around that era.
It’s a hard journey to actually achieve a good life where they can have a proper
education in general. They have to sacrifice everything they have because of the so
little choices they have as a low class, and a lot of people actually suffer the same
thing around that era. Kanafani want to change this by working hard in order to make
a revolution for Palestine-Arab people, and this work of literature is one of the tool he
used to put the image into other people’s mind who probably have no idea that this
thing could happen on someone.
 REFERENCE

Kanafani, G (1963) Men in The Sun.