In my undergraduate course Criticism: Theory and Practice, at Birzeit University—a course that introduces students to the building blocks of literary form—we read A. E. Housman’s poem “The Grizzly Bear.” The Housman poem reads:
The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild;
He has devoured the infant child.
The infant child is not aware
He has been eaten by the bear.
The discussion focused on identifying narrative elements within the poem, specifically the presence of three narrative “personages,” who are: “a protagonist, an antagonist, and a witness who learns,” as identified by J. H. Miller. The students explained that the protagonist, who is also the victim, is the infant, the antagonist is the grizzly bear who devours the infant, and the witness is the reader or the narrator who bears witness to the event and learn from the story.
“Did you find the poem distressing?” I asked my students, who confirmed that the story was indeed unsettling, especially that the narrative had the power to make them visualize the brutal image of the bear devouring the infant. The students also pointed out that what makes the narrative appalling is the fact that the infant is unaware of the danger presented by the bear. I then asked: “Why did you perceive this narrative as disturbing despite its fictional nature?” The students answered that, as readers, they have become witnesses to the narrative; therefore, observing the horrendous act of the killing of the infant gets them morally and emotionally involved in the situation, particularly in light of the dramatic irony that they possess a deeper awareness of the event’s bitterness than the infant itself.
In fact, consciousness renders the scene more agonizing, for it is the infant’s unknowingness about the encounter with its ghastly fate that makes the scene extremely disturbing to the witnesses whose awareness is sharpened regarding this suffering. The absence of knowledge in tragedy elicits complex emotions of pity and fear, as Aristotle puts it, generating significant dramatic tension for the audience, who only witnesses the events without the ability to change the hero’s fate. Therefore, the catharsis experienced by the end of a tragedy functions as a necessary release of this tension to resolve the emotional intensity of the preceding events and to purge the audience from the negative emotions accumulated throughout the narrative.
In Housman’s poem, however, the narrative’s profound impact does not merely stem from the pity evoked by the innocent infant’s plight, but also from the very idea of the fear of a catastrophic, unforeseen event that could inflict humans as they go about their ordinary lives, unaware and unprepared. Aristotle’s assertion that literature depicts what may happen rather than what actually happened is particularly poignant here, as uncertainty doesn’t offer readers the relief that such events have passed and found closure. The acute distress the poem triggers is a testament to the narrative’s power to tap into fundamental human anxieties and fears, mirroring our own vulnerability to the unpredictability of life and the unexpected violence people could face. This threat that is presented as a plausible scenario creates a powerful emotional response that transcends the purely fictional realm to allow infinite possibilities and associations that are not restricted to the context of the poem and its writer’s intention but can also extend to include belated meanings. Therefore, a tragic scene becomes a snowball that gathers more tragedies, or, as the Arab poet Motamim Bin Nowayra expresses it: “agony begets yet more agonies.”
As I recited Housman’s poem in class, the seemingly simple story invited tragic meanings as it triggered in the students’ minds horrendous images from Gaza, and particularly the murder of Muhammed Bhar, the twenty-four-year-old Gazan man with Down Syndrome and autism who was mauled to death by an Israeli army dog. For different reasons, each victim (the infant and Muhammed Bhar) is unaware of the threat in their situation. Instead of running away or trying to resist, Bhar innocently treated the military working dog as a pet when he kept on murmuring as the dog’s teeth clenched into his flesh: “Let go, habibi. That’s enough.” The soldiers left Bhar to bleed to death, barring his family from reaching him, including his mother, who cried out in desperation, pleading “he is disabled, have mercy, and remove the dog.” His mother, Nabila Bahar, told the BBC that Muhammed “didn’t know how to eat, drink, or change his clothes. I used to change his diapers and feed him. He didn’t know how to do anything on his own.”
Contrary to the tension created in literature, feelings of pity and fear about Bhar’s unbearably excruciating story do not lead to a cathartic outlet. Moreover, once Housman’s narrative is juxtaposed to Bhar’s story, the poem itself becomes too bleak in a way that exceeds the amount of distress the author probably intended. The intention of the author, in this case, becomes insignificant compared to the associations that the narrative produces. This liberal space that literature offers allows the text to outlive its author and to transcend the authorial intention. This openness of the literary text offers Palestinian educators sites to contextualize texts within the lived realities of Palestinians. The pedagogical approach of presenting inextricable links between text and Palestinian narratives has become particularly crucial in the context of the genocide, for any separation of literature from its socio-political context is not merely impractical, but ethically untenable in emergency times in which people’s lives are directly threatened.
Amidst the ongoing genocide of Palestinians, it becomes essential to approach the text through the lens of the genocide and not to view the genocide as a separate text. That is to say that Palestinians’ suffering must be sought for beyond Palestinian texts that directly address the Israeli occupation and its consequences. Even works that appear to be detached from political realities may carry embedded narratives of loss, trauma, exile, and resilience that are inseparable from the collective condition. Reading texts in this way acknowledges that the lived experience of genocide is woven into global cultural production, linking Palestinian narratives to other texts instead of isolating them. In fact, the struggle for justice in Palestine resonates far beyond its geographical borders, embodying a universal fight for human dignity, or as Nelson Mandela expressed it: “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” Thus, to ignore the genocide as a matter of utmost urgency in literature reveals not only a failure of our humanity but also a failure to grasp literature’s role in humanizing the world and countering its monstrous realities.
