Psychology of Persecution: The Main Characters Gabriel, Iskuhi, Juliette and Stephan in Franz Werfel’s Novel "Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh"

Abstract

Though Franz Werfel’s novel Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh (The Forty Days of Musa Dagh) came into existence just before the national socialists’ takeover and the author’s banishment and though it describes a concrete, historical defined episode about the Young Turkish Armenian Genocide in the summer of 1915, the text succeeds in bringing out a surplus individual victim psychology, also reminding of the sufferers from Holocaust. In presenting the main characters Gabriel, Iskuhi, Juliette and Stephan, a diverse phenomenology of suffering from pursuit, force and exile arises. Moreover, the novel broaches the issue of chances and potential problems regarding bicultural concepts of identity with the help of its protagonists, especially in times of national chauvinism, as well as allegorical concentration of an existential experience of foreignness including its ethical dimension.