Analyzing Characterizations in the Novel Returning to Haifa by Ghassan Kanafani

The element of character along its actions, reactions, dialogues, and monologues has an important role in the advancement and development of events in stories. In addition, a character is representative of emotions and beliefs of writers. Therefore, characterization has a particular importance in fictional literature.
Through creating symbolic characters, Ghassan Kanafani, in the novel Returning to Haifa, has expressed his own ethical and social messages on the part of the characters. The significance of this realistic novel is that the writer, in the conflicts among characters of the story who are representative of “Arab” and “Zionist” ethnicities, has stated the events unbiasedly. In addition, the characters in this novel have been characterized from different aspects such as physical, psychological, social, intellectual as well as the evolution and type.
Using a descriptive-analytic method, the present study investigates the mode of characterization in the novel Returning to Haifa. To realize this aim, the characters are investigated in terms of quality, centrality, evolution, and type. In addition, the effect of a number of fictional elements particularly dialogues and conflicts on characterization of the novel is explored.
The results indicate that Ghassan Kanafani has mostly used the indirect method for characterization. Furthermore, the indirect characterization has mostly been created via dialogues among characters.