"An Unnecessary Woman" is an allegory about how notions of beauty and civilization can endure in a world that periodically descends into barbarism and how women can persevere in a society that never ceases to devalue them in both war and peace. Aaliya is devoted to Beirut, its gossip and turmoil. She makes the reader want to love her city, too, even while relating what it was like to live through years of fear and violence. “Beirut,” she says, “is the Elizabeth Taylor of cities: insane, beautiful, tacky, falling apart, aging, and forever drama laden. She'll also marry any infatuated suitor who promises to make her life more comfortable, no matter how inappropriate he is.” Aaliya, who knows only English, French, and Arabic, produces her translations …show more content…
For Aaliya, translating her favorite authors is a spiritual discipline. The pointless process is more important than the product. “An Unnecessary Woman” takes its title from its narrator's sense that she is de trop, a nonessential speck in the cosmos. She is keenly aware of “how alone I am, how utterly inconsequential my life has become, how sad.” Aaliya embodies the discomfort of the …show more content…
At an early age, Aaliya is married off to an older man. But he's useless, stupid, and impotent, and their marriage is never consummated. After he mercifully divorces her. Aaliya is left with their spacious apartment, much to the chagrin of her own family, who thinks she should hand it over to one of her child-rearing siblings. She refuses, and her family hates her for it. On the one hand, she confides, “It has bothered me all my life that I am not like everyone else”; on the other, “May I admit that being different from normal people was what I desperately sought?” This position on the edge is the natural place for literature, too. Aaliyah is a proud outsider, monastically absorbed in her books, reflections and memories. Her thoughts – about war, marriage, sex, suicide and fiction – collide and provide the dramatic landscape against which walking down the street constitutes a significant
In the short story “Araby,” James Joyce uses religious and biblical allusions to portray a young narrator’s feelings about a girl. Through these allusions, readers gather an image of the narrator’s adoration of his friend’s, Mangan’s, sister. James Joyce’s allusions to the Bible and religion relate to the idolized image the narrator has of a girl.
Naomi Nye was born to a German-American mother and a Palestinian-American father. However, she normally writes from her Palestinian-Arab perspective. In several of her poems within The Heath Anthology—“Ducks,” “My Father and the Figtree,” and “Where the Soft Air Lives”—Naomi Nye reminisces about her Muslim heritage and childhood as it correlates to her present identity. In addition, she incorporates the effect of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on herself and on Arab culture in her work. Ultimately, Naomi Nye’s poetic work should remain in The Heath Anthology as her style demonstrates how historical events and a deep-rooted heritage can enrich a sense of identity and culture.
The protagonist of Araby is a young boy who is infatuated with his friend Mangan 's sister. The setting, and the introduction of the this woman is nearly identical to that in A&P. Joyce 's narrator spends his time “lay[ing] on the floor in the front parlour watching [Magnan 's sister 's] door” (Joyce 182). Immediately from the outset of the story, Joyce has rendered the narrator as someone who frivolously awaits his female interest with no other motivation. The main character then finally encounters Magnan 's sister personally, where she tells him about a bazaar near town called Araby. Joyce 's protagonist is shocked when Magnan 's sister “addresse[s] the first words to [him]” (Joyce 183) as he has spent a plethora of time yearning for an interaction with her. Joyce has implemented the idea into Araby that males are inherently reliant on females. Interestingly, Joyce has incorporated another male character in his story that is presented as inferior to his female counterpart. The purpose of the narrator 's uncle in the story is to slow the main character from going to Araby. The Uncle comes home much later than expected, and is chastised my his wife: “Can 't you give him the money and let him go? You 'v kept him late enough as it
In the short story “Araby” by James Joyce, the protagonist reflects over his adolescent years of when he was infatuated with his best friend’s sister. Through the narrator’s journey of showing his admiration towards her, he goes through an epiphany. Joyce establishes a shift from a dreamy tone to a depressing one as well as establishing the narrator’s discovery of the realities of adulthood.
Everybody wants to escape from reality, but people are bound by the laws of society, social status and financial problems. The main characters of “Araby” and “Eveline” experience
Within early literature there will always be those whose female characters are static. However, in some cases, there are authors that offer a female character with a refreshing take on a woman’s plight; that instead of simply being a man’s property with no thoughts or wants of their own, women are capable of so much
In his brief but complex story "Araby," James Joyce concentrates on character rather than on plot to reveal the ironies within self-deception. On one level "Araby" is a story of initiation, of a boy's quest for the ideal. The quest ends in failure but results in an inner awareness and a first step into manhood. On another level the story consists of a grown man's remembered experience, for a man who looks back to a particular moment of intense meaning and insight tells the story in retrospect. As such, the boy's experience is not restricted to youth's encounter with first love. Rather, it is a portrayal of a continuing problem all through life: the incompatibility of the ideal, of the dream as one wishes it to be, with the bleakness of reality. This double focus-the boy who first experiences, and the man who has not forgotten provides for the rendering of a story of first love told by a narrator who, with his wider, adult vision, can employ the sophisticated use of irony and symbolic imagery necessary to reveal the story's meaning. The story opens with a description of North Richmond Street, a "blind," "cold ... .. silent" (275)street where the houses "gazed at one an-other with brown imperturbable faces.".(275) The former tenant, a priest, died in the back room of the house, and his legacy-several old yellowed books, which the boy enjoys leafing through because they are old, and a bicycle pump rusting in the back yard-become symbols of the intellectual and religious vitality of the past. Every morning before school the boy lies on the floor in the front parlor peeking out through a crack in the blind of the door, watching and waiting for the girl next door to emerge from her house and walk to school. He is shy and still boyish.
A boy’s unrequited desire for the girl-next-door, or even better his friend’s sister, sounds like the beginning to many romanticized tales. Do not be mislead by this mundane quixotic plotline in James Joyce’s “Araby,” because there is a twist to the ending of this coquettish Irish tale. Besides the disheartening existential conclusion, “Araby” becomes more disillusioned through a psychoanalytic lens. This young boy’s journey to fulfill his desire to enchant his assumed love soon becomes a repressed oedipal desire from an older girl, who most likely envisions him as a child friend of her little brother.
James Joyce’s “Araby”, is about an exotic place where a young boy on a quest that transforms his magical childhood to the to the cold dark reality of adulthood. The journey that begins with light ends in the dark assay. The journey begins with Mangan's sister, the sister of the narrator's friend. Every morning he lays on the floor in front of the parlor, “waiting for her to leave so he can walk behind her on the way to school.
The film Water 2005 is a period film set in pre-independent India of 1938. During this time child marriage had not yet been completely abolished in India. It was very common for child brides to be married off to much older men as a settlement of debt, as riddance to the female child in the family, and as an effort to be done with the parental responsibility of marrying off a female child. The child bride now married continued to stay in the house of her parents, until puberty, after which she would be sent to the house of the older man she was married to. The older men used to end up dying of age, ailments and diseases. The child widow lost her youth and her entire life. She cannot remarry because widow remarriage was uncommon in society and looked down upon. Widows themselves were looked upon as bad luck, a curse and a bad omen. So what happened to these widows? They were sent to widow homes, where they supposedly led lives of chastity and austerity devoting their lives to God. Water explores the life of one such child widow, named Chuya, who is about 8 years old. Her older husband dies. Her parents give her away to the widow house. Here Chuya encounters another younger widow in her early twenties named Kalyani, and sees the life of widowhood through the life of Kalyani. The widow house is headed by an elderly matriarch is an equivalent to a master pimp who sends away the relatively younger and more attractive widows to the Zamindars. In effect these younger widows are the Zamindars prostitutes. They are exploited but have nowhere better to go and stick within the confines of this widow dorm. Kalyani, the younger widow in her early twenties has been forced into this prostitution and is the bread winner of the widow house. Despite...
Stuart Hall writes that “Identity is not as transparent or unproblematic as we think” (Hall 392). Hanif Kareishi, a visual minority growing up in racially charged England, experiences uncertainty and frustration relating to his sense of identity. Salman Rushdie, author of short stories “The Courter” and “Good Advice Is Rarer Than Rubies,” develops characters who experience similar identity crises. In his piece, “The Rainbow Sign,” Kareishi explores three responses to encounters with a foreign and hostile culture: outright rejection of the foreign culture, complete assimilation into foreign culture, or adoption of a synthesis of the two cultures. Kareishi himself embraces each of these different approaches at different times in his life, while characters in Rushdie’s short stories embody specific approaches. Kareishi’s discussion of the interaction between race, class, nationhood, and citizenship points to the need for a loosening of racial and class distinctions in favor of a multicultural, liberal approach for achieving a successful synthesis of cultures.
Salman Rushdie introduces his readers to numerous thought-provoking ideas through the novel. The attention to detail regarding Indian history, geography and culture are evidence that Rushdie is a native of India. “Salman Rushdie is the quintessential migrant: born in India, schooled in England, forced by his parents to move to Pakistan and finally exiled back in Britain”( Schröttner). The novel includes many major themes that are not only specific to India, but can be universalized as well. Rushdie includes the juxtaposition of destruction and creation, and fate and freewill, as well as themes surrounding identity crisis and fragmentation.
Mr Shah’s wife says that Abdul and Tariq should come over to her house because the house is very small for her daughters. Here is a culture conflict. Normally bride’s parents have some expectations from groom’s parents. Bride’s parents expect bride to have a house and handsome salary. Bride price is also an expectation, but it is not shown in this movie. Traditionally, bride has to leave her home and settle down in groom’s home. Due to small house, Mr Shah requests Ella Khan to let her sons settle down in her house, but Ella does not want
Much of the world's literature has been dominated by a canon that nearly dismissed women's writing more than two centuries ago. The counter-canons that have emerged as the result of this exclusion have helped to establish women's writing in mainstream culture, but still in some ways fail to acknowledge women's literature coming from non-white countries. This essay is an attempt to highlight some of the works produced by women in India over the ages.