The King having no hint for the presence of mind boosts with his talents and “the length of his wickers”.Īnother point that the writer focuses on is the incapability of a cockroach to confront the difficulties and avoiding them all the time. In other words, this act reveals failed attempt of the cockroaches to behave like people being sure that they are the perfect creatures in the world.

Especially, it is brightly depicted in the first act when the king is sure of his complete power over his people and the Queen accuses the King in his disrespect towards her. Everyone strives for his own daily bread” illustrates the human vices embodied in the cockroaches who try to live as men.Īl-Hakim also involves a note of satire in the cultural and social structures of personified cockroaches who claim that they “are not like those small creatures who gather at the slightest of pretext”. The phrase “In the whole of Cockroach, there is no cockroach that feeds another. In addition, in the play the cockroaches are trying to be like men rather men subdued to the life of cockroaches. I think the author intended to render the political situation of that period and his discontent with existed authority, namely, president Nasser.

Hence, that induces me to reckon on how a cockroach can have the ability to think and to govern the country and to be the judge of human lives. Still, they strongly believe that they are human creatures trying to find the truth and still hesitating over the essence of life and death. The cockroaches proclaimed their superiority over the ants governing the state. The characters of the play are cockroaches and ants representing the population of Egypt that struggled with each other. My strong belief is that his comparison the human with animals is natural due to our belonging to the nature, and, as a result, our inborn qualities originate partly from animals. He was the first person who created the Arabic theatre in the twentieth century and all his works are differentiated by the extreme wittiness and satire. First, it should be stated that al-Hakim captured the most of the attention in the American literature of that time by the unusual depiction of the human world.

أهل الكهف by Tawfiq Al-Hakim