The Aesthetic and Ideological Dimensions in the Novel For Bread Alone

Abstract

This study investigates the aesthetic and ideological dimensions of For Bread Alone, approaching the novel as a literary construct that transcends linguistic surface structures to reveal its capacity for meaning-making through the interplay of language, imagination, and contextual experience. The novel stands as a striking example of autobiographical fiction that converts personal suffering into a narrative act of social exposure, relying on an unsparing realism that foregrounds the silenced and the marginalized. Aesthetically, the text reshapes lived pain into a charged poetic language capable of transforming the ordinary into an expressive artistic space saturated with emotional and existential depth. Ideologically, the narrative dismantles entrenched systems of deprivation and exclusion, where hunger, violence, and social fragmentation function as symbolic markers of deeper political and structural imbalance. Through its raw and unfiltered voice, the novel becomes a counter-discourse that interrogates social injustice and challenges normative power structures. The study concludes that For Bread Alone operates as a form of cultural resistance to censorship and taboo, articulating an ideology of rebellion against poverty, ignorance, and imposed silence, thereby positioning the novel as both an aesthetic achievement and an ideological intervention within the modern Moroccan literary tradition.