The Hero In The Palestinian Folk Tale

This Thesis addresses the hero subject which represents a basic element in the Palestinian folk tale. The research is divided into five chapters as follows: In Chapter One, the researcher discussed the definition of the hero in language and dictionary, and then moved to talk about heroism in human intellect through referring to two examples: Gilgamesh, the hero, and That Al-Himma, the heroine. Gilgamesh's name was associated with immortality, while That Al-Himma was the Islamic heroine. In Chapter Two, the researcher studied the hero’s temporal and spatial environment and tracked the hero’s life in all of its stages starting from the first stage after his birth, then predicting his heroism through wish, dreams or vision, then his birth and the extraordinary signs that follow which distinguish him from others, in addition to his origin and upbringing. The researcher also explained the different conditions that the hero encounters in his home and mentioned how heroes differ in the conditions they face; some of them grow up in a good family while others start their life in a poor and challenging environment. Others may grow up away from their family leading them to be abandoned by their society. The researcher noticed that there is little focus on the hero’s linage because he is not considered a single individual on his own, but rather a summary of the hope and anticipations of his people. This is evident through the fact that a hero is never mentioned by his true name but rather with general nickname or title, for example: The son of the king, the daughter of the Sultan or any other great folk names such as Muhammad. Chapter Three was also divided into two parts. The first one discussed the hero’s physical characteristics such as strength which is considered one of the most prominent and striking features of the hero, while beauty is a characteristic rooted inside the folk mentality and is linked only to heroines. The hero, however, receives little focus on his physical beauty. In the second part, the researcher discussed the spiritual characteristics of the hero, most importantly love in its different forms. There are also other characteristics that the hero often has such as bravery while the heroine is often described as cunning, mysterious, deceptive and stupid more often than the hero. However, the researcher noticed that most of these characteristics are shared both by heroes and heroines in contrast to what people often carry in their minds because there are brave women as much as there are brave men, and by definition stupidity can be applied to men as much as it is often applied to women. In Chapter Four the researcher tracked the positive and negative forces that influence the hero’s journey such as occult and metaphysical forces that are often represented in ogles and demons, in addition to the human powers that are related to the hero such as kinship which include his direct relationships with his mother, father, sons, brother and sister and the distant relationships such as neighbors. The researcher also described animal powers such as fish, birds, cats, and natural forces that have magical effect such as hair, the stick, the carpet, the magical phrases and the counting of numbers in a defined way. In Chapter Five the researcher addressed the different dimensions of the hero’s image starting by the religious one which she connected to Islam and explained it in relation to words and events from the Prophet’s Sunnah. The other dimension is the mythical one which the researcher linked to the myths of ancient nations and people. The researcher also talked about the social dimension in which she linked the hero to his society and behaviors. The final dimension was the psychological one in which the researcher highlighted the hero’s psychological structure and its influence on the course of his journey. Among the results that the researcher was able to extract from this chapter was that Islam is the one that forms the tale in particular, this is may be attributed to the fact that most of narrators are in fact Muslims. The researcher also noticed that there is a new vision of some of the images that occurred in these tales and observed a close relationship between how people behave these days and the behavior of people in ancient myths that date back to hundreds of thousands of years. This proves that such things have been deeply rooted inside people’s mentality and subconscious. This also proves that the Palestinian people has its roots deep in the past and that it is not a new nation that has been around for just a short time as some people claim; many aspects of the Palestinian people reveal their close connections with their ancient past. The researcher used in her study the integrated presentation approach and analysis and referred to numerous and various resources that included dictionaries, heritage books, literary and mythology texts, as well as psychology and sociology publications.