Black humor in the season of migration to the north by Tayyeb Saleh and Animal Farm by George Orwell

This study examines the functions of black humor in the novels "Season of Migration to the North" by Tayeb Saleh and "Animal Farm" by George Orwell. The aim of this article is to analyze how black humor is used to criticize power structures, colonialism, and tyranny. The present study, adopting a descriptive-analytical method and relying on the theoretical framework of black humor, examines both works with the aim of analyzing components such as poverty and hardship, class divide, incompetent rulers, patriotism, resistance and anti-oppression, and sleeplessness. Despite the different historical and geographical contexts of the two novels (colonizer-colonized in Saleh's novel and the misguided revolution in Orwell's work), both authors use black humor to expose a truth: the gap between genuine ideals and corrupted realities. In "The Season of Migration to the North", black humor is manifested in the confrontation of Mustafa Said's character with the Western world and in his self-destruction, and depicts the bitterness of the colonial relationship and the post-colonial identity crisis. In "Animal Farm", Orwell, by creating black humor, ridicules the process of the revolution's gradual deviation from the initial ideals (equality) to a new authoritarian system. The findings of the research show that black humor is used as the main narrative strategy in both works to express despair, protest and warning.