Utopian Dream and Dystopian Reality: An Analysis of Gibran Khalil’s The Prophet
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Date
2021-06
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UNIVERSITY OF MOHAMED BOUDIAF
Abstract
Abstract
The present dissertation investigates the aspects of utopia and dystopia of Gibran Khalil’s The
Prophet. Gibran has produced fictional world to condemn his society, and to define what
could be the characteristics of an idealistic society. He carefully has chosen his main character
Almustafa, a mixture of all religions and beliefs, to address humanity as a whole. He has
created imaginary place for his utopian dream, which is the city of Orphalese. Although he
came from different culture, he has tackled common social issues that are still debatable in
our modern society, such as materialism and the restriction of individual freedom. He was
concerned with what constitutes a utopian society and the necessary characteristics of an ideal
nation. Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis theory of literary criticism has been
implemented in this study in order to extract all the textual and the meta-textual meanings and
themes in the studied work. The Prophet is a utopian work that is written in dystopian time.
Gibran’s dream of utopia, while related to his specific and different background, poses many
questions. The analysis had demonstrated that The Prophet is the intersection of utopian
dreams and dystopian realities.
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Keywords
Keywords: Gibran Khalil, utopia, dystopia, Critical Discourse Analyses.