The Construction of the Child’s Moral Identity in Be Quiet for a Minute: A Ricoeurian Narrative-Based Analysis

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Department of Persian Language and Literature, Bon.C., Islamic Azad University, Bonab, Iran.

Abstract

This study examines the development of the child’s moral identity in the short story collection Yeh Daqiqeh Harf Nazan (Don’t Speak for a Minute) by Sara Jamalabadi, drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s ideas on narrative, narrative identity, and ethics. The central concern of the study is how the narration of the child’s everyday experiences, the continuity and discontinuity among the collection’s individual stories, and the formation of the child’s moral self are interconnected. The study employs a qualitative approach and directed content analysis. The data were analyzed based on three central concepts in Ricoeur’s thought—prefiguration, configuration, and narrative identity—with particular attention to their relationship to the moral self. The findings show that the child’s moral experiences in the collection are not shaped through a completely linear trajectory; rather, they are constituted through continuity and discontinuity among distinct narrative situations and in relation to family, society, the other, and everyday experiences. Narrative organizes the child’s fragmented experiences into meaningful situations, thereby creating opportunities for reflection on action, choice, and the self’s relationship with the other. Accordingly, the child’s moral identity in the collection is shaped less through the direct transmission of a set of moral values than through the processes of narrativization and reflection on lived experiences and moral situations.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Research in Narrative Literature

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 22 September 2026

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