Imagining Dystopia in The “Raf al-yawm”: The Ordeal and the Gift as a Dialectical Framework

Abstract

This study examines the duality of boon and ordeal in the novel Raf al-Yawm through an analytical reading that situates the text within the framework of contemporary dystopian literature. It explores how technological advancement and automated organization are initially represented as an apparent boon that promises stability and comfort, only to reveal themselves as an existential ordeal leading to human alienation and the erosion of individual identity. The study foregrounds the problem of identity under the dominance of the technological system, which imposes standardized modes of living and thinking, resulting in the dissolution of the individual within a closed, mechanized structure. It also addresses the existential conflict experienced by the protagonist between conformity to an orderly world devoid of human meaning and a longing for human values threatened with extinction. The study concludes that the novel offers a critical discourse on contemporary reality through the projection of an imagined future, reopening fundamental questions of freedom, identity, and existence in a world governed by the machine