The Superiority of the Main Character in Yusuf Idris’s Short Story Thabliyyah Minas-Samā’
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Abstract
This study examines the causal relationship between inferiority and superiority in the character of Sheikh Ali in Yusuf Idris’s short story Thabliyyah Minas-Samā’ through Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology. Employing a qualitative descriptive method with close reading techniques, we investigate how feelings of inferiority trigger superior behavior as compensation. The findings reveal three primary sources of Sheikh Ali’s inferiority: poverty and unemployment, the loss of religious authority as an imam, and failure to complete education at al-Azhar. These conditions drive compensatory mechanisms manifested in the strategic use of religious rhetoric to counter economic powerlessness, the preservation of spiritual authority after losing his formal post, and the deployment of religious identity to mask academic failure. The study concludes that his superiority does not resolve his underlying inferiority but functions as a psychological defense to maintain self-worth during the collapse of social recognition. Theoretically, this study offers a novel perspective in modern Arabic literary studies by shifting the paradigm from superficial clinical labeling of character abnormality toward an emancipatory understanding of how marginalized figures employ psychological defense mechanisms against systemic social alienation.
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