Competition for the Male Versus the Female in August Strindberg's The Stronger and Ali Abdulnibi Al-Zadi’s Summer Rain

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze and discuss two distinct plays by two different playwrights hailing from divergent eras, countries, cultures, and nationalities: the Swedish playwright August Strindberg's The Stronger and the Iraqi playwright Ali Abdulnibi Al-Zadi's Summer Rain. Despite these geographical and temporal distances, the study identifies a unifying human struggle. The study relies on Frommian Humanistic Psychoanalysis to interpret the dramatic action and internal conflicts of the protagonists. The two main female characters—Mrs. X in The Stronger and Flana in Summer Rain—suffer from the same existential dilemma, manifested through the presence or absence of a male figure. The paper explains the situations and actions of both women through the lens of Erich Fromm's theory, examining how these characters compete to fulfill their fundamental human needs in the face of isolation. The characters in The Stronger and Summer Rain are nameless archetypes who struggle to maintain love, self-awareness, and identity. The research discusses the "basic anxiety" the protagonists experience throughout the two plays. Otherwise, the study implies a deep sense of conflict, collision, gender role negotiation, and the ultimate quest for women's self-realization in societies that often define them by their relationships to men.