Abstract

The novel The Corpse Washer by Iraqi-American writer Sinan Antoon exposes the systematic destruction of human nature by war through the tragic fate of Jawad, a young Iraqi man forced to abandon his artistic aspirations and reluctantly inherit his family’s ancestral profession of washing corpses amidst the unrelenting chaos of sectarian conflicts and foreign invasions. Guided by Aristotle’s theory of tragedy, particularly the concepts of reversal and recognition, this study examines how the novel strategically constructs a dynamic interplay of compassion and fear. Through Jawad’s psychological journey—from initial resistance to his grim vocation, through gradual desensitization, to eventual existential reckoning—the narrative establishes cyclical patterns of emotional tension. These dramatic oscillations between hope and despair, agency and fatalism, mirror the fragmented realities of wartime Iraq. By embedding ritualistic descriptions of corpse purification within lyrical prose, Antoon transforms individual suffering into an allegory of national disintegration. The cathartic function is thus achieved not merely through thematic denunciation of violence, but through formal synthesis of visceral imagery and metaphysical contemplation. This artistic mechanism not only intensifies the work’s anti-war essence by humanizing statistical casualties but also reconstructs the collective memory of war trauma through poetic narration that balances documentary precision with symbolic resonance.