Themes

The Last Summer of Reason

In Tahar Djaout’s Novel The Last Summer of Reason Conveys that when a society forces people to conform to the standardized person it strips away people’s dreams, ruining people’s lives through Boualem Yekker’s struggles in a religious extremist country.

This Novel takes place in a country that is ruled by Muslim extremists. Over time they start to have more and more power and control over the country, slowly limiting people’s freedom, forcing people to be more and more like alike. They ban art in almost all forms.

Boualem Yekker is a man that follows his personally convictions. One of those convictions is that he doesn’t believe strongly in the Muslim religion.

So when stricter restrictions come he doesn’t follow them. And this causes stress in his relationship with his family. His wife and kids want to follow the societal pressure and become religious extremists. He ends up losing his family.

This greatly decreases his quality of life. His dreams of living a happy life are ruined. He ends up alone, with no one to love him and no one to love.

And so without a family he dives deeper into his passion for books. Books become his life.

And then the Government takes away his bookstore because they don’t like the free thinking that reading books can cause.

So now he has nothing. His life has no meaning, no purpose and nothing is driving it. This is all because society forced people to conform to their lifestyle.

But this religious extremist country doesn’t only affect those that oppose it. It also affect everybody that is brainwashed by it.

People that use to be friends, neighbors, and even family now hate the ones that they loved most if they don’t conform to their religion. Boualem’s Family went from loving him, to hating him because of the lack of freedom.

A life full of hate can never be as great as one filled with love and joy.

The children in the country are brainwashed into attacking people. They throw rocks at those who have different beliefs then themselves.

Children should not be attacking and trying to kill people because they are different. They should be kids, living a fairly care free life having fun hanging out with friends.

Religion
Although religion in a society can have positive effects on life, if it is taken too far it can drastically reduce the quality of life, which is shown through Boualem’s struggle in The Last Summer of Reason.

Art
In a society without art, including all forms of it, as is the case with the country in The Last Summer of Reason, life is not as good because without art there is no imagination, creativity or self expression.

Philosophy
A person must look at their personal principles and the consequences of following the crowd before they make a decision like Boualem did when he chose not to follow the Islam religion.

Metamorphosis

When examining Franz Kafka’s short story Metamorphosis through the literary lens of Marxist criticism the tragedies caused by financial struggles is conveyed through Gregor’s, a traveling salesman stuck in a terrible job paying off family debt, metaphorical transformation into a bug.

The transformation into a bug represents low quality of life that some people trapped in the work force have to deal with.

When he first wakes up a bug he is in a lot of pain. This pain represents the emotional pain that he endures when he first starts a job.

As a bug he is trapped in his room, a small cramped space. He can only dream about the outside world by looking out his window. If he tries to leave, he is forced back into his room. This represents the low quality of life because he is trapped in his job. He can dream of better jobs that would led to a happier life, but if he would try he would be unable to leave because his family needs the money to survive.

As a bug Gregor is powerless. He has no rights, and gets no respect. His family even stops treating him like a part of the family. In his Job he is treated with no respect. He isn’t a person to them, only a resource that makes them money.

His life as a bug has no excitement. He is trapped in a room and does the same thing over and over again. His job in the real world is the same old thing day after day. And like the bug trapped in the room his job isn’t exciting.

But eventually he gets used to being a bug. Much like he got used to being in a terrible job.

But eventually the pain that being a bug caused to both his family and himself became too much and he died. Much like the stress and the emotional pain from being in a bad job can eventually break people’s spirits.