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Analysis Of The Poem ' The Stone Of Laughter '

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The somber and serious tone of Hoda Barakat’s novel “The Stone of Laughter” epitomizes in an effective way the depiction of the civil war of Lebanon through the use of a gay male protagonist and a female narrator. Barakat utilizes the image of a despondent war torn country and a man with internal conflicts to create a metaphorical comparison between war and gender identification in order to create a sense of simplicity to a complex issue. The civil war of Lebanon has a monumental influence on the way masculinity is interpreted. The civil war segregates people according to their gender, giving them specific roles to play. Society’s idea is that a man is the embodiment of power and authority and one who actively participates in the war, while the women are passively involved, and restricted to the domestic sphere. Based on the novel, “The Stone of Laughter”, by Hoda Barakat, masculinity in wartime is associated with men being patriotic and bravely fighting and shedding blood for the sake of their people. On the other hand, it seems as though the women 's jobs in wartime is to clean up the disorder caused by the war and mourn the losses of the men. Khalil, a confused character that does not have a mark of gender, lives in his own phantasmagoric world, and possess a sense of femininity personally, and with respect to the war, until he is forced to conform to society 's idea of masculinity through a violent and traumatic transformation.
It is evident in the beginning of the

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