Leaving and Staying in the Village: A Comparative Study of Planned and Cultural Behaviors in Anton Chekhov's Peasants "1897" and Yusuf Idris's the Sinners "1959"

The Russian writer Anton Chekhov (1860 - 1904) wrote Peasants in 1899. In this story he introduces Nikolay Tchikildyeev, who, as a boy, leaves his village among other villagers to work in the town. After long years he spends working as a waiter in the Moscow hotel, Slavyansky Bazzaar, he is forced by a disease to return back to his village Zhukovo. After his death his wife and his daughter leave the village back. The Egyptian novelist Yusuf Idris (1927- 1991) published his novel (Al- Haram), the Sinners in 1959. The novel was translated into English by Kristin Peterson Ishaq and was published in 1984. In this novel Idris tackles the phenomenon of (Attarhela), the migrant workers, who were taken from their villages in great numbers to work in vast land far away in certain seasons. When their jobs were accomplished, they were carried back to their villages to wait for the following season. The tragedy of Aziza, who is one of these villagers, forms the main stream of actions in the novel. The main aim of the paper is to show through the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the cultural theory that both of leaving and staying in the village are planned and cultural behaviors. The leaving character"s suffering of poverty, alienation, and cultural problems also prove that leaving the village is not the favorable choice. Another aim is to compare leaving the village in Chekhov"s Peasants and in Idris"s the Sinners. So, the paper comes in an introduction, four parts and a conclusion. In the first part, the paper discusses the features of poverty in the two works. The character"s suffering of alienation is highlighted in part two. Part three tackles cultural change and cultural differences as causes of the suffering. Part four compares the behaviors of leaving.