From False Consciousness to Class Consciousness: A Marxist Reading of Rawi Hage’s Cockroach (2010)

Abstract

This paper aims at examining Rawi Hage’s Cockroach (2010) from a pragmatic perspective, and specifically from a Marxist point of view, to see the ideological purpose that the novelist tries to unearth regarding the issue of life in a modern capitalist society. The novel imitates the external world only as a means to the ultimate end of intellectuality to guarantee a moral objective. Therefore, for the accomplishment of this task, the essence of this essay is to analyse Cockroach with reference to Marxist concepts such as; hegemony, capitalism, alienation, and revolution. As a matter of fact, it tends to trace the unnamed narrator’s plunge from a false consciousness into a class consciousness realm.