Identity Crisis in Ahmed

Saadawi’s Frankenstein
in Baghdad and The
Bare Face in the Dream
Ahmed Sadaawi is the first Iraqi
novelist to win the International Prize
for Arabic Fiction (IPAF).
Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013) is his
third novel after The Beautiful
Country (2004) and Indeed He
Dreams or Plays or Dies (2008). He
also wrote a volume of poetry,
Anniversary of Bad Songs, published
in 2000.
The study attempts at
diagnosing identity crisis as
related to the Iraqi individual
represented by the characters
in Sadaawi’s novels
Frankenstein in Baghdad and
The Bare Face in the Dream
E. Erikson, unlike Freud, stated
that human personality continues
to develop according to the
influence of the society, culture
and history. He shifts from a
sexual nature of humans into a
theory of psychosocial
development.
The basic argument in Erikson’s theory is the
ego-identity and the issues related to
identity formation which is the remarkable
feature of adolescence. The life experiences
of the individual that starts with childhood
and shapes their entire life help or rather
contribute in forming their ego identity.
Merriam Webster Dictionary,
Identity is defined as the term
that tells us who someone is. The
free dictionary defines it as “the
condition of being a certain
person or thing”.
identity crisis is the failure to achieve ego
identity during adolescence. The term was
coined by German psychologist Erik
Erikson. The stage of psychosocial
development in which identity crisis may
occur is called the identity cohesion vs. role
confusion. During this stage, adolescents
are faced with physical growth, sexual
maturity, and integrating ideas of
themselves and about what others think of
them
7. The Bare Face in the dream
The narrator keeps seeing dreams in which he dies every
time in a different way. Once he is a journalist killed in the
hands of terrorists. Then he is kidnapped and gets shot in the
head. He later learns how to control the events in the dreams
and starts to fight and defend himself even if he dies at the
end. The only comfort for him is the fact that he is able to
fight. The story ends with same dream with one difference,
first he is the victim, at the end he becomes the killer.
(Absurdity and the idea of keeping death away)
Since the creature is made up of parts
taken from Iraqis of different races,
sects and ethnicities, the what’s-its-
name represents the complete Iraqi
individual. An identity that is
unidentifiable. Mixing all the races
has eventually brought a beast into
being.