The Representations of Time in the Contemporary Arab Story: (The Story of The Bet by Khalil Qandil as a Model) Analytical Technical Study

Abstract

The research investigates the time component in the story of "The Bet" by Khalil Qandil, as the most important component in the narrative construction of the story, and aims to show its impact and psychological and aesthetic dimensions, as well as the extent of its effectiveness in reconstructing the story, plotting it, and linking its events and progress. It revealed to us that time in the story of The Bet came in two patterns: The first pattern is natural time, representing the external counterpart, which is subject to fixed objective standards, characterized by its advanced movement forward without going back. The other pattern is the psychological time, which is not subject to objective measures, but proceeds from the human self, and relates to the consciousness of the individual and his own experiences.

The research showed the variation of the chronological pattern within the narrative text of the story up and down. It revealed the ascending chronological pattern, and what it represents from the parallel to the real time of the story as it occurred, with the time of its sequential  narration, and by which time escalates with the growth of logical events, while the intermittent format, in which the times are interrupted in their downward direction from the present to the past, or ascending from the present to the future, achieving the characteristic of artistic temporal proportionality, through the parallelism, which gives the narrative brilliance, vitality and beauty.

The research relied on the descriptive and analytical approach, which in turn contributed to deepening the narrative text, absorbing and analyzing it, and revealing its semantic dimension.