Dialogical Intervention of Material Agency in Atiq Rahimi’s Earth and Ashes

Abstract

This paper examines how material agency embodied by the land, ruins, silence, and objects involves in a dialogical relationship with human trauma and memory in Atiq Rahimi’s Earth and Ashes. The novella portrays Dastageer, an elderly survivor of a bombed Afghan village, journeying with his grandson Yassin through a devastated landscape. The narrative employs evocative imagery and second-person address to interweave the responses of the terrain into the emotional and psychological trajectories of the protagonists. This study relies on trauma theory and eco-critical concepts for the analysis of selected literary text. The research highlights how the environment actively speaks through Dastageer’s reveries and Yassin’s innocent misinterpretation of deafness believing that others have lost their voices rather than his hearing that poignantly illustrates a material voice in rupture. The land bears witness to atrocity and become a counterpart to human testimony in the novel. The novel’s sparse yet charged prose transforms landscape into a co-author of memory, grief, and unspoken history.