Introduction

Enthralled by the supremacy of nature over man’s relative power, Ibrahim Al-Koni (1984–) from Libya effectively portrays the desert as a deity-like force, endowing it with magical powers that transcend human capabilities. Vast and splendid, the desert symbolizes a supreme entity and serves as a spiritual nexus for world religions. The existence of the Tuareg people and their cave paintings dates back to the pre-Christian era; Tuareg civilization, in particular, is among the oldest known to humanity. Both Christians and Muslims visit the desert mountains with awe and reverence. Likewise, William Faulkner (1897–1962), from Mississippi, United States, sets many of his stories in the remote American wilderness, vividly capturing its atmospheric and aesthetic richness.

Although coming from contrasting cultural and geographical contexts, both writers portray nature as a powerful and autonomous force—on one hand, awe-inspiring and mystical, and on the other, endangered by the relentless advance of modern industrialization. Faulkner’s major works, written during the first half of the twentieth century at the peak of modernism, contrast with Al-Koni’s contemporary writings of the latter half, which focus on themes such as the desert, Bedouin life, and Tuareg heritage. Despite Al-Koni’s Western academic background (he studied in Russia and was exposed to Western philosophy), his narratives remain firmly rooted in the Libyan desert. Similarly, Faulkner is a regional writer whose fiction is centered in the American South, reflecting the traditions, social tensions, and landscape of his homeland. Thus, both authors embrace literary regionalism, capturing the essence of their cultural environments through fiction.

This study explores the threat of modern industrialization to the natural world—specifically the desert and the wilderness—as represented in Al-Koni’s The Bleeding of the Stone (1995) and Faulkner’s The Bear (1942). It aims to examine how the protagonists’ symbolic journeys reflect broader ecological, spiritual, and cultural crises. The article investigates the mythological dimensions of these journeys and the tests and challenges each protagonist faces, emphasizing how traditional life in nature is imperiled by technological expansion and colonial ambition.

To uncover meaningful parallels between these two culturally and historically distinct works, the study adopts a close comparative textual analysis. Both novels illustrate the fundamental conflict between pristine nature and the destructive forces of modern industry. This opposition is analyzed through the motif of the journey, interpreted within a mythological framework drawn from the works of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung. Such an approach is especially suitable for comparative literature, as it underscores universal patterns in human experience and transcends cultural specificities.

Bridging a literary work from the United States and one from Libya is inherently complex, given the divergence of their cultural, historical, and ideological landscapes. Nonetheless, this article adopts a comparative anthropology methodology, which seeks out analogies and symbolic intersections across texts and traditions. As cultural boundaries continue to erode under globalization, the value of comparative studies becomes not only valid but essential. Comparative anthropology, in particular, offers an inclusive model of literary comparison, moving beyond simplistic dichotomies of “superiority” and “inferiority” in evaluating cultural expressions (Pinxten, 2013, p. 113).

Accordingly, this article draws on Jung’s concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious, which affirm the potential of mythological structures as a basis for comparative literary study. The idea of a shared unconscious implies that human beings, regardless of origin, are bound by recurring symbols, narratives, and archetypes. As David Lodge (1972) puts it:

“[The] collective unconscious is manifested in the recurrence of certain images, stories, figures…” (p. 174)

In the same spirit, Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (2004) offers a universal lens through which to explore the protagonists’ mythical journeys, illustrating the enduring need to preserve nature—not only physically, but symbolically—as a source of spiritual and cultural identity.

1. Al-Koni’s The Bleeding of the Stone: Tuareg Culture of the Desert in Danger

1.1 External Threats to Tuareg Life and Landscape

To begin with, The Bleeding of the Stone explores the conflict between modernity and the traditional Tuareg way of life, framed through the mythical journey of the protagonist, Asouf, who embodies the spiritual and cultural essence of the desert. The novel portrays the decline of Bedouin culture as a complex issue shaped by both external and internal threats.

The first threat emerges from colonial intervention, namely the Italian presence, which disrupts and undermines the Libyan cultural fabric. This colonial encounter reflects what Edward Said (1991) describes in Orientalism as a biased binary opposition:

“The Oriental is irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, ‘different’; thus the European is rational, virtuous, mature, ‘normal’” (p. 40).

Al-Koni’s narrative illustrates this imbalance through themes of superiority versus inferiority.

Another external threat is posed by tourism, which commodifies and desecrates the desert. Tourists, driven by fascination with its mystery, come to study the ancient rock paintings—sacred cultural heritage—and are described as greedy:

“If they can, they’ll steal our rocks to sell them in their own country, for thousands, or millions” (Al-Koni, 2003, p. 8).

Although framed as curiosity, these encounters often perpetuate Orientalist distortions. As Said (1991) notes:

“The Orient and everything in it was, if not patently inferior to, then in need of corrective study by the West”(p. 41).

1.2 Internal Collapse and Symbolism of the Waddan

Beyond foreign threats, internal deterioration also contributes to the erosion of desert culture. Cain Adam, a local figure, becomes a symbol of human greed and cultural betrayal. Obsessed with hunting the waddan—a rare and sacred animal representing Libyan heritage—he exemplifies the destructive forces within society itself. The narrative condemns his actions as violations not only of ecological balance but of moral order.

Asouf, in contrast, refrains from consuming meat and regards Cain’s appetite as a symbol of spiritual decay:

“There is no difference between eating the meat of animals and the meat of another human being.”

Cain thus disrupts both human and natural orders. His final hunt, aided by Captain John Parker using trucks and helicopters, represents the apocalyptic climax of environmental destruction and greed.

1.3 Mythic Setting and the Hero’s Journey

Survival in the desert, the novel suggests, requires not only physical resilience but spiritual intuition. As Jung et al. (1964) affirm:

“The ancient hunter had to rely on his inner voices and unconscious revelations” (p. 161).

Al-Koni mirrors this in Asouf’s desert trials, where insight replaces reason. The desert, echoing Campbell’s (2004) “land of unimaginable torments and impossible delight” (p. 53), becomes both the stage and the agent of transformation.

The desert also emerges as a mythical, multireligious space. The novel integrates Islamic, Christian, Sufi, and African spiritual elements, creating a dialogic landscape of coexistence. This spiritual plurality is mirrored in its linguistic diversity—Tamasheq and Arabic—making the novel a cultural archive fighting against extinction.

The magical-realist tone of the novel emphasizes cycles of reversal and repetition: Asouf’s father dies after breaking a vow and hunting the waddan, and Asouf later nearly replicates his fate. The waddan, portrayed as sentient and mystical, blurs human-animal boundaries. At times, Asouf even transforms into the waddan, prompting the question:

“Which of them was human, which animal?” (Al-Koni, 2003, p. 60).

As El-Zein (2015) observes, Asouf’s metamorphosis into the animal culminates in his sacrificial slaughter (p. 208).

1.4 Parental Archetypes: The Mother and the Mentor-Father

A major turning point occurs when Asouf leaves his isolated Wadi for the populated oasis, where he is drawn into the colonial army. His captivity represents a trial within the hero’s journey, and his supernatural escape—enabled by the waddan—echoes Campbell’s (2004) stage of “supernatural aid” (p. 53).

This transition is triggered by the death of Asouf’s mother, a moment described with crucifixion imagery. Her dismemberment and burial in five places signify the wrath of nature. Her loss leaves Asouf vulnerable and initiates his descent into modern corruption. As Campbell (2004) notes:

“The hero who has come under the protection of a Cosmic Mother cannot be harmed” (p. 65).

The mentor-father archetype is embodied in Asouf’s father, who teaches him sacred knowledge: verses from the Qur'an, desert wisdom, and the ethics of hunting. His death thrusts Asouf into spiritual solitude. As Campbell affirms:

“All moments of separation and new birth produce anxiety” (2004, p. 48),

and Asouf now bears the burden of both tradition and survival.

1.5 The Final Ordeal: Sacrifice and Ecological Renewal

From a mythological perspective, Asouf’s journey enacts rites of passage, including what Campbell (2004) calls the “crossing of the first threshold”, which involves confronting deceit and danger (p. 71). Isolated in the mountains, Asouf faces his shadow (Jung et al., 1964, p. 75) and fails to uphold his vow. Yet, like many mythic heroes, he is rescued by a supernatural agent—the waddan—who assumes a second mentor role.

Ultimately, Asouf’s sacrificial death at the hands of Cain represents the ritual purging of corruption. Campbell suggests:

“Saints are reported to have passed away while in the supernal ecstasy” (2004, p. 179).

The novel confirms this when:

“Redemption will be at hand when the sacred waddan bleeds and the blood issues from the stone” (Al-Koni, 2003, p. 135).

Asouf’s death merges with the waddan’s, symbolizing the regeneration of the land.

The final rain, which follows the slaughter, performs a symbolic cleansing. It echoes ancient myths where the death of a sacred king restores fertility. As Frazer (1993) explains:

“The king’s health reflects the land’s vitality; his sacrifice ensures rebirth” (pp. 266–276).

Thus, Asouf’s crucifixion becomes a cosmic necessity, renewing the desert’s spiritual and ecological balance.

2. Faulkner’s The Bear: The Wilderness in Danger

2.1 A Mythic Conflict Between Two Worlds

In terms of mythological and narrative structure, the fiction of Al-Koni resembles that of American author William Faulkner in the way both writers contrast a vanishing traditional world with the expanding forces of modern industrial civilization. This conflict is crystallized in the heroic journeys undertaken by the protagonists of each narrative.

Faulkner’s The Bear is a ritualistic and symbolic tale that explores the relationship between man and nature, focusing on the moral and spiritual maturation of its protagonist, Ike McCaslin. The narrative centers on Ike’s coming-of-age and the difficult moral decision he must make: to choose between the wilderness, a place of ancestral purity, and the modern industrial world, a domain of greed, corruption, and racial injustice.

2.2 Initiation, Mentorship, and the Sacred Bear

Ike’s rejection of modern inheritance and property in favor of a life close to nature represents the culmination of his rite of passage. This transformation is facilitated by symbolic trials throughout the novel. Early in his youth, he is:

“marked with the blood of rabbits and deer,”
—a moment that initiates him into the sacred role of the hunter (Faulkner, 1942, p. 185).

His mentor in this journey is Sam Fathers, a man of mixed Native American and African heritage, who transmits ancestral knowledge and reverence for nature, much like Asouf’s father in The Bleeding of the Stone. Sam teaches Ike not just how to hunt, but how to respect nature and recognize its spiritual power. The knowledge he passes on revolves around Old Ben, the legendary bear, symbol of the wild and the untamed.

Sam Fathers symbolizes a pre-colonial America, a fusion of indigenous wisdom and African legacy, marginalized by white settler expansion. The narrative critiques the white ancestors of Ike for destroying natural and human resources, buying land unfairly, and engaging in racial exploitation. Ike discovers this history through his family ledgers, learning that his grandfather purchased land from Sam’s Indian grandfather at a shamefully low price.

2.3 Trials of Maturation: Restraint, Crisis, and Loss

Just as Asouf confronts temptation and failure, Ike’s journey involves internal psychological trials. His first challenge is to restrain his youthful impulses, particularly his desire to act impulsively with a gun—symbolizing uncontrolled power. In one moment, he nearly uses it against the wild dog, Lion, revealing his lack of maturity and discipline.

According to Jung et al. (1964), such psychological growth—individuation—requires the integration of the self through experience and reflection (p. 161). Faulkner stages this in a critical scene: the violent battle between Boon, the dog, and Old Ben, which Ike witnesses. This confrontation awakens Ike to the brutal reality of human domination over nature.

Following the death of the bear and Sam’s declining health, Ike faces true solitude in the wilderness. The burial of Sam and the lion becomes a sacred, ritualistic event, echoing tribal funerary traditions. Campbell (2004) stresses that:

“The rites of passage often revolve around ceremonies of death and rebirth” (p. 8).

The decision that follows—Ike’s symbolic renunciation of the gun—marks his moral awakening. This parallels the fate of Asouf’s father, whose use of the rifle against the waddan brings about his downfall.

2.4 Racial Realization and Moral Renunciation

A major turning point in Ike’s initiation is his discovery of his black heritage and the moral corruption of his white lineage. By reading the family records, he learns he is the descendant of an enslaved woman, and that his father and grandfather attempted to compensate for this fact monetarily, rather than morally.

This revelation causes a profound moment of epiphany. Ike’s refusal of his inheritance is not just symbolic, but a rejection of the system of ownership and racial injustice. This act mirrors Asouf’s rejection of monetary compensation, emphasizing the shared values between both protagonists: integrity, humility, and detachment from materialism.

2.5 Endings: Environmental Ruin and the Loss of the Sacred

The final scenes of The Bear are filled with melancholy and mourning. In his last return to the wilderness, Ike is devastated by what he sees: Boon, now an agent of destruction, firing randomly at the beauty of the forest. The once-sacred space is now desecrated by human recklessness.

The cutting of a great tree, symbolically presented as a witness to the history of the wilderness, represents the final rupture between man and nature. As Eduardo Cirlot (1962) notes:

“Trees are symbols of the inexhaustible life-process (growth and development)” (p. 347).

The destruction of such symbols signifies not only ecological loss but spiritual death.

Similarly, James Frazer (1993) reminds us that in many ancient traditions, trees were believed to possess spirits, and harming them was a sacrilegious act punished by fate. Native American belief in the spiritual essence of the cottonwood tree exemplifies this worldview:

“Many of the misfortunes of their people were caused by this modern disregard for the rights of the living cottonwood” (p. 112).

In conclusion, Faulkner’s The Bear presents a poignant reflection on the moral and ecological costs of modernity, echoing the mythical and symbolic journey found in Al-Koni’s narrative. Ike’s decision to walk away from power and property in favor of principle and nature parallels Asouf’s own path, making both stories part of a shared myth about human resistance to destruction—and the sacredness of the land.

3. Narratives at Crosspaths: Sacred Bonds and Endangered Traditions

Both The Bleeding of the Stone and The Bear explore liminal spaces—both geographical and symbolic—where boundaries blur: between the human and the animal, the spiritual and the material, and tradition and modernity. Like Al-Koni’s novel, which is deeply concerned with oppositions and cultural borders, Faulkner’s narrative also moves along the threshold of transformation, particularly in how it envisions the relationship between human beings and nature.

In The Bear, the connection between Sam Fathers and the animals—especially Old Ben—is emblematic of the sacred bond between indigenous peoples and the land. Sam’s legacy, as a man of both African and Native American descent, embodies a worldview untouched by the materialism of European colonization. This bond is crystallized when Ike reflects that the wilderness is:

“mother and father both to the old man born of a Negro slave and a Chickasaw chief who had been his spirit’s father if any had” (Faulkner, 1942, p. 311).

Ike’s realization affirms the land not merely as physical space, but as a source of moral and ancestral guidance.

Just as Ike faithfully follows the teachings of Sam Fathers, so too does Asouf follow the spiritual codes inherited from his father, which are rooted in desert traditions and myth. Both characters complete rites of passage by submitting to the laws of nature—laws that emphasize respect, restraint, and intuition.

3.1 The Animal as Sacred Guide

In both novels, the central animals—the bear and the waddan—are imbued with legendary status. They are not merely beasts, but personified figures endowed with intelligence, emotion, and moral significance. Both Al-Koni and Faulkner use these animals as symbolic mediators between humans and nature, reinforcing the sacredness of the natural world.

The protagonists, Asouf and Ike, must learn from the animal, not dominate it. In The Bear, Ike experiences:

“a sense of his own fragility and impotence against the timeless woods” (Faulkner, 1942, p. 192),

—a moment of awe that parallels Asouf’s mystical encounters in the desert. These experiences are essential to each character’s transformation.

3.2 Landscape as Teacher and Test

The two novels also depict nature as a site of trial and instruction. Both protagonists are tested away from civilization—Asouf in the desolate Wadi, Ike in the untamed Mississippi wilderness. Their refusal of conventional education (such as Ike’s resistance to formal schooling) mirrors their alternative learning through nature, pain, and introspection.

Jung et al. (1964) explain:

“When a child reaches school age, the phase of building up the ego and of adapting to the outer world begins. This phase generally brings a number of painful shocks” (p. 165).

In this context, Ike’s rejection of school symbolizes a deliberate rejection of modern ego-building in favor of deeper, pre-modern knowledge gained from immersion in nature.

3.3 Shared Worldviews, Divergent Geographies

Both the desert and the wilderness are presented as ancient spaces that precede civilization—settings where human beings lived in harmony with the environment before the onset of industrial modernity. These landscapes are not passive backdrops; they are active participants in the protagonists’ moral and mythic journeys.

Despite their cultural distance, Al-Koni and Faulkner are deeply rooted in their respective regions: the Tuareg desert of Libya and the American South. Their works express a visionary resistance to the alienation brought by modern life. In The Bleeding of the Stone, Al-Koni’s narrator affirms:

“In the city there was malice and humiliation; here, in the desert, was freedom and death” (Al-Koni, 2003, p. 56).

This contrast becomes painfully real as Asouf suffers when he leaves the Wadi for the oasis, just as Ike suffers witnessing the destruction of his beloved woods.

Ultimately, both novels affirm that nature is not merely scenery—it is memory, identity, and moral compass. Through the sacred roles of the waddan and the bear, and through the transformative trials of Ike and Asouf, Faulkner and Al-Koni call for a renewed reverence for the natural world, and a reckoning with the forces—colonial, industrial, and ideological—that threaten its survival.

Conclusion

This comparative study has examined how The Bleeding of the Stone by Ibrahim Al-Koni and The Bear by William Faulkner both dramatize the existential conflict between traditional ecological cultures and the destructive advance of modern industrialization. Through the symbolic journeys of Asouf and Ike, each author presents a powerful literary myththat elevates nature to a sacred, sentient force, inseparable from human identity and moral responsibility.

Anchored in mythological frameworks—notably those of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung—both narratives frame the protagonists’ development as heroic rites of passage, wherein the desert and the wilderness act not merely as settings but as active agents of trial, revelation, and transformation. The bear and the waddan, endowed with human-like intelligence and sacred aura, serve as mediators between humanity and the natural world, symbolizing what is lost when modernity overrides ancestral knowledge.

By employing a comparative anthropological approach, the study demonstrates that despite significant cultural, historical, and geographic differences between Libya and the American South, both Al-Koni and Faulkner articulate a shared literary vision: one that warns against the ecological and spiritual consequences of severing the bond between humanity and the land. Their works reject the materialistic logic of domination, proposing instead a worldview grounded in respect, restraint, and mythic continuity.

Ultimately, The Bear and The Bleeding of the Stone function as modern myths—deeply regional yet universally resonant—reminding readers of the urgency of ecological preservation and the enduring need for cultural humility in the face of nature’s sacred order.