The Impact of the West and Islam Dualism on the Identity Construction in Fadia Faqir’s Willow Trees Don’t Weep (2014)

Abstract

The relationships between the Western and the Islamic civilisations are undermined by a dualistic view held by neo-Orientalists and Occidentalists which consists in separating and rejecting any idea of compatibility between them. However, there are people who attempt in various ways to combat these dualistic attitudes. Literature is among the means available to undertake such a mission for its power to critically portray serious issues. In this respect, the present dissertation investigates how the Jordanian-British writer Fadia Faqir critically portrays the impacts of the West and Islam dualism on the protagonists’ identity construction in her novel entitled Willow Trees Don’t Weep (2014), as they move between an Islamic country and a Western one. The methodology used is mainly a descriptive and analytical approach relying entirely on the novel as primary source and formulating interpretations based on critical thinking. The work is composed of three chapters whereby the first offers an overview of the dualistic representations of the West and the Islamic world; the second focuses on analysing the male protagonist; and the third chapter is dedicated to the female protagonist. At the end of this dissertation, the analyses have revealed that the West and Islam dualism has greatly impacted their identity construction but they succeeded to solve the crisis that they initially experienced. Based on these considerations, the dissertation concludes that Faqir’s Willow Trees Don’t Weep attempts to denounce the West and Islam dualism and to reconcile between the West and the Islamic world.