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WE ALL ARE COCKROACHES: ABSURDIST DECONSTRUCTION OF TWEFIK AL-
HAKIM’S FATE OF A COCKROACH

___________________________________
By

Ikechukwu Emmanuel Asika, (PhD)

Department of English, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Igbariam.
Email: asikaikechukwu@yahoo.com
Phone no: +23480386793214

ABSTRACT
Absurdism which echoes the idea of meaninglessness and nothingness of life is rooted in the
philosophical ideologies of the theatre of the Absurd, that developed in the wake of the 20th
century against the ashes and degeneration brought about by the First World War. Absurdism in
modern literature is often linked to existentialism, the philosophical movement associated with
Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus among others. Although both existentialists and absurdists
are concerned with the senselessness of human condition, the way this concern is expressed
differs. Tewfiq al-Hakim is a prominent Egyptian writer and one of the pioneers of the Arabic
novel and drama. The play, Fate of a Cockroach is one of the compelling dramatic performances
of the theatre of the Absurd. Twefik, in the play, through the use of allegory and highly symbolic
elements juxtaposed human beings side by side with cockroaches in their different worlds. With
Absurdism as theoretical anchor, this paper investigates the absurdist leanings in the play
allegorically manifested in the intertwined connection between cockroaches and human beings.
The study revealed how the lives and travails of the cockroaches, on a larger scale, are symbolic
truism and representative of the realistic aspects of human existence. The paper concludes on the
literary interconnectedness between humans and cockroaches in the absurdist sphere of life as
represented in the fate of Adil and the King of cockroach in the play and how the knowledge of
an absurdist view of life is on immense significance in our present day society.

Keywords: Absurdism, Existentialism, Symbolism, Allegory, Realism, Human existence.


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INTRODUCTION
Absurdism is the philosophical and
literary doctrine that human beings live in
existential isolation in a meaningless and
irrational world. It is an ideology believed to
have developed in the theatre of England at
the wake of the 20th century following the
war and post-war disillusionment that left
people with so many unanswered questions
about the place of individuals in the world.
The world wars both fought in the 20th
century upturned people’s optimistic views
of life, and ushered in a high degree of
pessimism about human life and the
uncertainty of the future in an irrational
world. The absurdist views the world as
empty of meaning, order and sense of
decorum. The ideology is a memento of the
horror of the war years, when humans as a
result of power, revenge, vanity and other
sheer political and economic reasons
massacred one another, soldiers turned into
beasts as developed sophisticated nuclear
weapons that claimed million of lives.
Martin Esslin was the first who used
this term “Absurd” in his book. This term is
basically used to describe the irrational,
nonsensical, foolish and silly aspects of
human life. It is a philosophy which based
on the belief that this world is meaningless,
purposeless and irrational and also that the
existence of human beings is useless,
meaningless and irrational. Absurdism is a
school of thought stating that the efforts of
humanity to find inherent meaning will
ultimately fail because no such meaning
exists at least in relation to the individual. In
the opinion of Meyer Abrams and Geoffrey:
the term is applied to a number of works, in
drama and prose fiction which have in
common the view that the human condition
is essentially absurd and that this condition
can be adequately represented only in works
of literature that are themselves Absurdism
… (1). Esslin while looking at the
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intellectual complexities and intricacies
surrounding the theatre of the absurd opines
that:
The human condition being what
it is, with man’s small, helpless,
insecure and unreliable to fathom
the world in all its hopelessness,
death and absurdity, the theatre
has to confront him with the bitter
truth that most human endeavor is
irrational and senseless, that
communication between human
beings is well-nigh impossible
and that the world with forever
remain impenetrably mystery…
(345).
Absurdism in modern literature is
often linked to existentialism, the
philosophical movement associated with
Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus among
others. Although both existentialists and
absurdist’s are concerned with the
senselessness of human condition, and each
seems to draw from the realization that life
is meaningless, nevertheless, the way this
concern is expressed differs. Many
absurdist’s productions appear to be making
cases for the idea that all human efforts are
futile and that actions are pointless, others
seem to suggest that an absurd existence
leaves the individual with no chance but to
treat it as farce, a joke and a journey from
nothing to nothingness. The existentialists,
however, claim that the realization that life
has no transcendental meaning either
derived from faith or from the essence of
humanity itself, can and shall serve as a
springboard to action. An individual’s life,
according to the existentialists, can be made
meaningful only through that individual’s
actions. This sums up the areas of
similarities and divergences in the
ideological inclinations of Absurdism and
Existentialism.

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In all, Absurdism focuses on
situation and on characters. In an absurd
drama, characters have no meaning and
purpose in their lives. They live a
meaningless and purposeless life in the
whole drama. Even their dialogues and
conversations to one another are
unmotivated and always revolve around
specific and meaningless things.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEWFIK AL-
HAKIM AS A PLAYWRIGHT: A
BRIEF REVIEW OF ALLIED
LITERATURE
Tewfik al-Hakim, born on October
9, 1898 was a prominent Egyptian writer
and one of the pioneers of the Arabic novel
and drama. He remains one of the notable
voices in Arab literature till date and his
plays in many ways marks a new future for
dramatic performances in Egypt. Denys
Johnson Davies remarks of him in these
complimentary words:
Tewfik Al-Hakim is the undisputed
pioneer of dramatic writing in
Arabic. While Egypt has a
theatrical foundation going back to
more than a hundred years, the
plays produced were until recently
either heavy melodrama adapted in
cliché-ridden classical, Arabic
from French or domestic farce,
often with political undertone
written in colloquial language.
With his natural talent, his wide
read in French, his close study of
the techniques of European theatre
(the dramatic form was unknown
in classical Arabic literature), his
interest in the problems of
language – most pertinent in a
culture where the written language
differs so much from the spoken-
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with these attributes Twefik Al-
Hakim gave to the Egyptian theatre
the foundations of respectability it
needed … (viii).
The play, Fate of a Cockroach, first
published in 1966 is one of the compelling
dramatic performances of the theatre of the
absurd. In the opinion of Juicy Nerdy,
Hakim intended to portray humans as
arrogant and self-centered. The play, as she
further maintains, is a form of absurdist
drama because it does not demonstrate some
ideals of perfection, instead it demonstrates
that people by nature are self-centered and
power plays a vital role in this play (365).
In the same vein, Stephen Solanke while
examining the serious political undertones
of the play avers that:
In Fate of a Cockroach, Al-Hakim
satirically creates the cockroach
characters to symbolize the
political disillusionment with the
socialist revolutionary regime
under Nasser's. He later criticized
this period in his account entitled
'Awdat Alwa'ey' (the return of
consciousness) Badawi, M, M. The
parallelism in the play runs at the
level of the cockroaches and
humans. The King and the Queen
Cockroaches have a similar issue
as the human couple Samia and
Adil who woke up and began to
have an argument. In both
instances in the play, though the
topic of argument is different, the
female has the upper hand. The
discourse in both cases alludes to
conflictive roles between the sexes
which could be taken as a
reflection on the case of the roles
of women and men in Egyptian
society at that time (78).
Fate of a Cockroach, as an absurdist
play, centers on events on two different

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realms of existence. The first realm is the
insect realm or insect kingdom while the
second realm is the human world. In the first
part of the play, which takes place in the
insect realm, the playwright captures events
in the cockroach kingdom which is ruled by
King Cockroach and his cohorts. As Ifejirika
Echezona and Obumse Amechi project:
King Cockroach’s kingdom is
plagued by a lot of problems
especially the threat posed to the
nation by the more militant and
organized ants. The cockroach king
and members of his cabinet do not
have a solution to this problem and
are unable to mobilize other
cockroaches to fight the ants. The
king lacks the ability to effectively
control his subjects who do not
regard him as their king. This
apparent weakness undermines his
position as a king. Queen
Cockroach, therefore, questions her
husband’s legitimacy as a true king
since he is inept and does not even
feed her. King Cockroach in a bid
to escape the harsh realities facing
him abandons the pressing issues at
hand and decides to go on
sightseeing instead. He falls into an
empty mysterious lake which he
had gone to see and becomes
trapped there (112).
The second part, of the play which is
set in the human world, centers on Adil and
his wife. Both characters are embroiled in
gender war. They are at loggerheads over
the person that will use the bathroom first.
King Cockroach is eventually discovered by
Adil in the bathing tub in the couple’s
bathroom. The bathing tub turns out to be
the supposedly empty mysterious lake.
Moving forward, Robert Farley reveals that:
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Egyptian playwright Tawfīq al-
Ḥakīm’s 1966 play, Fate of a
Cockroach has been widely
understood by most critics to be a
juxtaposition of two separate plays,
one centered around a miniature
cockroach kingdom, and the other
a human married couple’s
apartment… This structural
phenomenon provides an
innovative way to allegorize the
nation through its presentation of
two private narratives with the
singular referent of the Egyptian
national narrative. Because the two
distinct narratives remain
irreconcilable but coexistent, the
notion of parallax - as a merely
apparent shift in the object caused
by a change in the observer’s
perspective - provides a useful
frame to understand a more
complex and tenuous relationship
of the private and the national in
the national allegory (342).
The play’s significance in Egyptian
society is well emphasized in the critical
opinion of various scholars on the play. Seen
as a national allegory wherein the smaller
private narrative of the work represents the
larger national story, Farley maintains that it
is a wakeup call on all Egyptians to go to
work, to emerge from their slumber during
the Nasserist regime of 1952-1970 and go to
work to galvanize and turn around the
nation’s production-based materialist
economy. He ends that the play is apt in
understanding how two private stories might
work both individually and together to
convey the national story of Egypt … (343).

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ABSURDIST LEANINGS IN TWEFIK
AL-HAKIM’S FATE OF A bath. The time is night, though
COCKROACH: THE COCKROACH
STEREOTYPE CUM THERAPY
The play, Fate of a Cockroach is a
good example of a play that evinces
absurdism. The uniqueness of the play
regarding to absurdism is in the seeming
comparison with the lives of human beings
and that of the cockroaches. Through the use
of allegory and highly symbolic elements,
the playwright juxtaposed human beings
with the cockroaches and as the play
progresses, the reader easily identifies that
the lives and fate of the cockroaches are in
many ways symbolic of our lives and fate as
humans in our lonely world.
As the play begins, we are
introduced to a spacious courtyard few
distances from the tiny hole and a crack in
the wall where the cockroaches’ actions
were unveiled. In truth, it was not a spacious
courtyard but a mere bath floor inside the
human’s bathroom but from the tiny,
myopic and ignorant views of the world of
the cockroaches, the bath floor is a very
spacious courtyard which they neither know
what it is nor who built it. Nightfall holds
significant meaning to these creatures being
the suited time they operate and perform
their duties, which is to search for survival, a
rather monotonous existence akin to that of
humans. The first hint of absurdist
inclination occurs at the very opening of the
play, as we learn how the cockroaches view
the bath floor as very spacious courtyard
which in the real sense of it, is just an
ordinary floor. The playwright begins thus:
The scene is a spacious courtyard-
as viewed of course by the
cockroaches. In actual fact the
courtyard is nothing more than the
bathroom floor in an ordinary flat.
In the front part of this courtyard
stands an immense wall, which is
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nothing but the outer wall of the
from the viewpoint of the
cockroaches it is day time. Our
bright day light being so blinding
to them that it causes them either to
disappear or go to sleep (2).
We notice how the cockroaches
ignorantly perceive things in their world, as
much as the limit of their knowledge could
allow them. This is not far from the various
and many ways we misconceive several
realities, elements, occurrences and
phenomenon all around us in our human
world. But just like the cockroaches, we too
have accepted them to be what we felt and
believed they are as we grope in our dark
lives and daily struggles to survive and exist.
Feminism, one of the burning issues
in our society today and which is taking
different turns and twists and assuming all
manner of radical shapes and interpretations
from the different sides of the divide echo
deeply in the play. This gender ‘war’
coincidentally or consciously pursued in the
play, either way, sits atop of the dramatic
tussle in the cockroach world vividly
manifested in the life of the king and his
queen as the playwright depicts:
Queen: (Aroused to anger): I’m a
queen! Don’t forget I’m the
queen
King: And I’m the king!
Queen: I’m exactly the same as
you- there’s no difference
between us at all.
King: there is a difference.
Queen: And what, prithee, might
this difference be?
King: My whiskers.
Queen: Just as you have whiskers,
so have I.
King: Yes but my whiskers are
longer than yours.
Queen: That is a trifling difference.

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King: So it seems to you.
Queen: To you rather. It is your
sickly imagination that
always makes it appear to
you that there is a difference
between us.
King: The difference exists- I can
be clearly seen by anyone
with eyes to see. If you don’t
believe me, ask the Minister,
the Priest, the Savant and all
those worthy gentlemen
connected with the court (3).
The argument goes on and on among
the two cockroaches in the manner similar to
our ever ensuing war of sexes. The
implication of this struggle and war of
words in defense of ones sex between the
king and queen is later to be made manifest
when we encountered Adil and Samia, the
two major human characters in the play. It
is seen that the couple were on their own
gender war but in sharp contrast to what we
witnessed in the cockroaches’ world where
the king, the male seem to have upper hand,
the reverse is clearly the case in the human
world. Adil, the husband of Samia is under
threat from several impositions of the wife
who constructed the tenet of feminism in an
entirely different order. In her view, men are
meant to be loyal, submissive and caring to
their wives, a situation Samia fully exploits
to the disadvantage of her husband. It is
worthy to note that it is part of the
psychological effects of this situation that
makes it easier for Adil to identify his fate
with the fate of the cockroach struggling to
escape from his bathtub as the play
progresses.
At another level of comparison, the
cockroaches, just like humans, are bothered
with myriads problems just like humans too
are bothered with doses of them. The
cockroaches are bothered with the problems
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of food, security, kingship, politics, health,
religion, and quest for survival manifested in
their continual struggle with the ants. In all
these problems, the one that poses the
greatest threat as exemplified in the play is
their insecurity with the ants. Though they
are far bigger in sizes than the ants,
nevertheless, the cockroaches are helpless
before them and this is not far from the fate
of human beings in our absurd existence.
The symbolic implication of this in
connection with the fate of the cockroaches
and our human world is in the seemingly
observation and realization that humans all
helpless in the face of little things that they
cannot conquer or change, little things we
have come to embrace as our fate and
inevitable part of our existence in an absurd
world. The playwright recreates this thus:
Queen: Don’t remind me of ants!
A king like you claiming you
have worth and authority and you
don’t know how to solve the ant
problem!
King: The ant problem! Ah… um…
Queen: Their being a continual threat to
us. A queen like me in my
position and with my beauty,
elegance, and pomp, can’t take a
step without trembling for fear
that I might slip and fall on my
back- and woe to me should I fall
on my back, for I would quickly
become a prey to the armies of
ants.
King: Be careful therefore, that you do
not fall on your back.
Queen: Is that the only solution you
have?
King: Do you want from one day to the
next, a solution to a problem that
is as old as time?
Queen: Then shut up and don’t boast
about the length of your
whiskers! (4)

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The ‘ant’ problem, as old as time, is
symbolic and in many ways represents the
fate of human beings. Irrespective of our
beauties, pomp, elegance, riches, power,
fame, glory and glamour, diseases, natural
disasters, accidents, and many other
occurrences constitute death to us at any
given time and place and as we pity the fate
of the cockroaches in the hands of ants, our
sympathies are risen to our own fate and
helplessness in our human world. As the
play progresses, we have a case in our hand
which is a typical manifestation of the fate
of the cockroaches in the hands of the ants
as the Minister’s son became a victim. It is
only a matter of time before the Minister
reports in the death of his son. He is carried
away by the ants. His foot slipped and he
fell to the ground of course he fell on his
back and is unable to turn on his front and
get to his feet. And then the ants spot him,
surround him, smother him, and carry him
off to their towns and villages. It is
pronounced ‘a great catastrophe, a national
catastrophe …’ (7). All the king could do in
his helplessness is to declare a public
mourning for the late son of the Minister.
Again here, we can infer and argue
favourably that the Minister’s son is
symbolic of us, our parents, children,
friends, relatives and anybody we know in
the face of various challenges and threats of
life. Despite our exalted positions as
“Kings” and “Ministers” we are helpless to
save one of our own in the face an ordained
and inevitable tragedy. As expected, the
cockroaches rallied together to debate a
solution. The playwright captures them in
their helplessness:
King: And why do these natural
phenomena only occur when
several cockroaches are
assembled?
Savant: Science has not yet arrived at
an explanation.
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King: And what is the true nature of
these moving mountains and
this annihilating, choking
rain?
Queen: These moving mountains and
this choking rain, are they
intended to destroy us?
Savant: These are all questions
which cannot be answered
scientifically.
Queen: Then why do these
catastrophes only occur when
we are assembled together?
Savant: I don’t known, your majesty.
All that science can do is to
record these phenomena, to
link upon the connection
between them and deduce a
scientific law… (13).
The symbolic implication of the
above in human existence is enshrined in the
many problems that replete our world. The
solution to one problem seems to aggravate
several others as arguably designed by fate.
The above scene is also akin to sheer
mockery of the fate of man in our attempt to
solve the many problems of our world. Even
science does not hold the answer to our
numerous problems and often time, it ushers
in more problems than solutions it tends to
proffer.
In sheer defeat and helplessness the
cockroaches turned to the priest for solution
and the priest could only suggest prayers
and sacrifices to the gods as the only
panacea and solution to the problems of the
ants. The priest claims that once he is lying
in a corner critically ill and armies of ants
are approaching. Certain that he is done for;
he calls upon the gods with a prayer form
the depth of his heart. Suddenly, like a
miracle, something like a large dark cloud
full of water descended from the skies and
swooped down upon the armies of ants and
swept them away, clearing them off the face

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of the earth and he was saved (16). The
argument here is that since there is no
scientific connection between the priest
prayer and the descending of the rain, it is
only good to say that it was indeed a
miracle. While the savant argues from the
scientific viewpoint that the rain was purely
a coincidence, others are tempted to see it as
a miracle and tilts towards the priest who
seems to have a better solution.
The above scenario is not far from
what is obtainable in our human world today
where many of us seem to have turned to
religion for the answers to all our problems.
Even when we fail to march our desires with
adequate actions, we look on to religion to
the miracle of a ‘paradise’ on earth. As Karl
Marx projects, religion is truly the opium of
the masses as this is not just peculiar in the
cockroaches’ world, but also real in our
human world all in our attempt of survive
and give meaning to our meaningless
existence.
Towards the end of the scene, the
king is lured by the Savant to go and watch
the spectacle of a lake which is dry at night
and flooded in the morning. The lake is
formed from the water from the bath tub in
the bathroom which is flooded when
humans, Adil and Samia take their bath. The
king and the Savant have gone to watch this
lake and make observations when
unfortunately, but as it is the will of fate, the
king slips and fell into the bath and that is
when his journey and fate become more
pronounced and the title of the play more
significant- fate of a cockroach. The
cockroach is now abandoned to his fate. All
the priest can do is to recommend prayers.
The second Act opens in the human
world and as earlier hinted, Samia and Adil,
her husband in their gender war disagrees on
virtually everything even who will first take
his/her bath. Samia always triumph and that
was why she is in the bathroom first before
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Adil and encounters the cockroach trapped
inside their bath tub. She calls the attention
of the husband and unknown to them that
was the king of all cockroaches, powerful in
his kingdom but now helpless and doomed
in the mortal world. This again, reveals the
fate of human in his alien world. However
highly placed, at the appointed time, one
faces ones fate and like the helpless king of
the cockroach we become helpless in the
face of death or greater threat to life. Adil
sees the cockroach and the first instinct is to
kill it but he hesitates, and it did not take
long before he notices the doggedness and
untiring struggle being put up by the
cockroach in its bid to survive and get out of
the tub. The cockroach is busy struggling
with little knowledge that its fate is almost
decided and the choice to live has been
removed from it. It is now at the mercy of
the petulant Adil. Yet it struggles to be free,
to escape and live again:
Adil: (Looking closely) it is trying.
Samia: It’s slipping.
Adil: The walls of the bath are
slippery.
Samia:Yes no sooner does it start
climbing than it slips and
falls.
Adil: But it goes on trying.
Samaia: And goes on again and
again.
Adil: With the same procedure.
Samia: (Continuing to look) yes, yes.
Adil: Look, Samia, with all it
strength it’s climbing up the
slippery wall
Samia: And there it is slipping back
again. There it is fallen all the
way back.
Adil: And it’s starting off to repeat
the attempt.
Samia: Up it goes, up it goes. It’s
slipped! It’s slipped! It is
fallen! (32)

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The cockroach’s struggle practically
demonstrates our daily struggles, toils, fears
and aspirations. Many times we climb; many
times we slip, because ‘the walls of the bath
are slippery.’ But we never give up, we
continue. It is not just the physical walls of
the bath tub that are slippery but
symbolically the walls of life which are
slippery. Adil and Samia become gods to the
cockroach and can save or mar its life. This
is the summary of our journey in our alien
environment, the sum total of our struggle,
strength and weaknesses at the mercy of
fate, moira, and incomprehensible elements
and occurrences far beyond our control. This
is the reason Adil identifies himself with the
cockroach’s struggle to survive and live
again. The climatic part of the play and quite
ironic and symbolic too is Adil’s hesitation
to kill the cockroach or help it to find its
escape route out of the bath tub. It explains
one thing: the elements, forces, gods and
supernatural are indifferent to our plights.
They are neither interested in saving us nor
maiming us from an absurdist viewpoint.
We all are bound together in this level of
existential loneliness. This Adil dramatizes
out in the scene below:
Samia: We’ve got to put an end to
it.
Adil: And how do we put an end to
it? This is something which is
not in our hands.
Samia: In whose hands, then?
Adil: (Pointing to the cockroach). In
his hands, it’s still climbing.
Samia: And also still falling.
Adil: Yes it climbs, then slips, then
rolls over, then fall to the
bottom of the bath-tub.
Samia: It climbs, then slips, then
rolls over, then falls to the
bottom of the bath-tub.
Adil: Exactly. Then it starts off
again, without resting,
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without respite, it climbs…
(37).
Things reach to a height that Adil
locks the bathroom to protect the cockroach
from his wife yet with no intentions to help
it but only to thrill himself with its unending
struggle to live. His explanation is simple:
‘because I’ve been watching it since early
morning, following its every moment. It
amazes me the amount of strength that’s
stored up in it- quite remarkable strength
(59). He vows to protect the cockroach as if
protecting it recreates his protecting his lives
from forces that neither care nor intervene.
In short, he recreates human beings’ true but
unseen scenario and struggle in life. The
playwright depicts further:
Adil: (Pointing at the cockroach) up
you go… up…up…another
step go on go on.
Samia: (Rapping at the door): Adil
open it!
Adil: (To the cockroach) stick to it!
Stick to it! Struggle for your
life! … They want to kill you
with insecticide. Do not be
afraid- I will not open the
door. Stick to it! Stick to it…
what a shame! You slipped,
you rolled over and fell down
as you do each time… you
want to have another go.
Once again you’ve starting to
climb. Why don’t you rest a
while? Rest for a moment,
brother! Give yourself a
breathe? But what’s the point
(shouting). There is no point!
(40)
In the above scenario, the absurdity
of life is enshrined and dramatized. Adil
identifies himself as the cockroach. He sees
himself as the cockroach in his own daily
struggle to survive under the whims and
caprices of a careless fate. He even calls it

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‘brother’, urging it to take rest and continue.
In the end, he accepts that there is not point,
there is no point in its taking a rest, or
continuing, or struggling to live, there is no
point because however way, it is doomed to
its fate. Just like the cockroach, we all are
doomed too in our alien world as portrayed
by the playwright. Samil, feeling her
husband has gone insane, invites a doctor.
The doctor is able to identify a
psychological issue that has propelled Adil
to identify himself as the cockroach which
necessitated that quantum of sympathy and
connection. Part of it is the subjugation and
domination from his wife and his sheer daily
struggle to survive. The wife is compelled
by the doctor to play along with him and
make him to exorcise the idea of identifying
and comparing himself as the cockroach.
But Adil is not relenting but rather urges the
doctor to see himself in the cockroach:
Adil: Listen doctor, the essence of
the matter can be put into a
few words. Put yourself in
the same position.
Doctor: Your position?
Adil: The position of the cockroach
… (53).
Antithetically, but not surprising, it
did not take long before the doctor, just like
Adil develops a liking for the cockroach too.
He too sees himself, his daily and unending
struggle in the cockroach. With this
identification comes his sympathy for the
cockroach. But like Adil, no one is going to
help it, no one will save it, it will only save
itself. The doctor explains to Adil’s wife
thus:
Doctor: You want to do away with
the cockroach and he wants
to save it from your hand?
Samia: You mean, doctor…
Doctor: Yes, in his inner
consciousness he has
identified himself with the
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cockroach, and this is the
secret of his concern and
affection for it (55).
This is the point that gets the play
more complicated as Adil joins forces with
the doctor to protect the cockroach, not to
save it from the bath tub but to allow it to
continue with its struggle well protected
from the bitterness and menaces of Samia.
Even when Samia concurs and plays along
with him just to break the bond between him
and the cockroach, Adil still cannot be
persuaded or convinced otherwise as he sees
the cockroach as an idol, a model deserving
all respect and admiration for its zealousness
and doggedness. Though doomed and fated
to die, its heroism and gallantry stir a
passion that is so strong in the heart of Adil
and later spreads to the doctor. The duo are
full of praise for the poor creature. The
playwright captures thus:
Adil: Indeed a hero. Imagine
yourself in a deep well with
walls of smooth marble and
then you found it impossible
to get our despite having
made exhausting efforts to
so, what would you do?
Doctor: By no means- I see repeating
its attempt dozens of times.
Adil: Even hundreds. Since early
morning I’ve been occupied
in counting up the numbers
of times.
Doctor: Is that what you were
engaged in since morning?
Adil: Yes, I wanted to know when its
struggle would come to an
end
Doctor: (Looking into the bath with
real interest): As of now it
looks as if he won’t give up
yet.

ANSU Journal of Language and Literary
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Adil: Indeed. We’re tired from
watching but it’s not tired
from trying.
Doctor: (Continuing to watch it)
what hope has it of escaping?
Adil: No hope of course.
Doctor: Unless you were to intervene
and save it.
Adil: And I shall not intervene.
Doctor: Why not, seeing that you
admire it?
Adil: I must leave it to its fate…
(68).
To this end, and armed with the
realization of shared fate with the
cockroach, Adil instinctively decides to
leave the cockroach to its fate, same way
humans are abandoned to their own fate in
their unending struggle for survival and
meaningful existence. The doctor devastates
Samia further when he is set to leave with
this revelation: ‘…However, madam, your
husband is in the right about everything and
I completely endorse his behaviour. There
being nothing at all untoward about it… I
myself hope that I could become like the
cockroach …’ (90)
One can put forward that in reality,
the doctor is not wishing to become a real
cockroach but to possess the tenacity,
strength and agility of the cockroach, to find
the constant drive to cope, struggle and be
full of hope for survival, never to give up
even in the face of all impossibilities as that
seem to be the only reasonable way out in
his trapped world. The cockroach leaves
much to be admired in its sheer struggle in
the face of the greatest obstacle. It refuses to
give up, to accept that it is doomed rather to
bear it out heroically and nobly till the very
end. Sadly, its fate is at last decided by the
cook, just the moment Adil steps out to ease
off for some moments. The cook, unaware
of the events and symbolic implication of
the cockroach’s presence, its unending
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struggle in the bath tub, pours water and
washes it away, dead, never to be seen or
saved again. The moment the doctor and
Adil realize what the cook has done, it is too
late to help the cockroach. The cockroach is
already dead and gone but leaves behind
lessons that will last the characters for a
lifetime. The duo lament sadly thus:
Doctor: And where’s the cockroach
now? No sign is left of it, not
even one of its whiskers.
Adil: The important thing was its
struggle for life.
Doctor: Yes, and that is what will
remain fixed in my memory.
Goodbye, everyone (75).
As expected, the ants came and
carried the cockroach away. Later, the cook,
Umm Attiya is to wipe both the ants and
cockroach away from the surface of
existence which opens another different
channel of thought on the level of absurdism
involving the fate of the ant too.
The play ends with the enduring
lessons that Adil learnt, all rooted in his
sheer fate as a mortal tied to the fate of an
innocent cockroach caught up in a bath tub
on a fateful morning. In the end, when his
wife’s constant demands on him continue to
pile up, he wishes that the cook, Umm
Attiya would wash him away from the
surface of the earth, like she did the
cockroach and just like the cockroach, he
could take lasting rest and find peace away
from the world of endless toils, struggles
and sheer quest for survival.
CONCLUSION
Tewfik Al-Hakim’s Fate of a
Cockroach adopts the tenets of absurdism
and the characters exhibit its philosophical
doctrines. The cockroach is trapped and
unable to get out of the bath tub but never
ceased or rested in its effort to make it out
of the bath tub alive. Tirelessly it toils and

ANSU Journal of Language and Literary
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ceaselessly it struggles and wins the
admiration of Adil, Samia’s husband. The
cockroach’s struggle, he understands,
summarizes the inner and outward struggles
of all human beings in their alien world. The
cockroach is abandoned to his fate exactly
the way humans are abandoned to their
various fates and just like the cockroach
they await whatever fate has in stock for
them.
In the play, the playwright uses the
symbolic ideas gleaned from the world of
the cockroaches to attempt a definition of
our human world and fate from the absurdist
perspective. The cockroaches in their world
are preys and ironically, humans too are
preys in their human world. They are preys
to fate, diseases and many natural disasters.
Their world seems tiny, small and dark and
so is their human world when placed on a
greater scale to things beyond the limits of
their human knowledge. Humans, just like
the cockroaches, are in constant fear and
struggle against the several hidden dangers
and uncertainties of this world.
Again, the cockroaches in their
kingdom are faced with myriads of problems
which they can only search for lasting
solutions. This is familiar to humans in their
world. Absurdist thinkers believe that these
problems will never end the same way our
struggles and quest for survival and
meaningful existence will never end. Adil
learns his lessons which are lessons to us all.
As he is coming to terms with these realities
of his life, Samia resumes her barrages of
endless demands on him that he has no
choice but to utter unconsciously shouting
that Umm Attiya should wipe him out of
existence just like the cockroach, a situation
that reveals his inner thoughts: he envies the
cockroach which now rests perfectly and
safe from the toils and struggles of the
world. Through the characters and events
recreated in the play, we see the nothingness
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and meaninglessness of human life. Al-
Hakim’s play creates a world (society)
where man wants and hopes for something
to give a meaning to his life but ends up in
emptiness, pity and sheer struggle towards
an already determined condition or fate.
To this end, the play, Fate of a
Cockroach dramatizes the fate of a
cockroach on the surface level but on the
deeper level dramatizes our fate in our
absurd world as the title simply implies the
fate of man in his absurd and alien world’.
This is an enduring lesson that is apt in our
modern day society as we continue to
plunge ourselves deeper in the sheer struggle
to acquire fame, wealth, and vanities, a
struggle and rat race that have come to
redefine our world. The implication and the
realities of these absurdist tenets in human
existence ought to live in our minds- we all
are cockroaches and this idea can lead to
fuller understanding of our limitations and
destinies as mortals and the need to live life
with dignity, integrity, love, togetherness
and enjoy it with openness while the
struggle lasts.
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