Hanan al-Shaykh’s novel The Story of Zahra and Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter both show how love is a matter of the mind. Life serves up hardships but the battle of persevering separates the assimilation in the two novels. These novels, being viewed side by side, points out how it takes more than ‘forgive and forget’ to press forward in the pursuit of love, peace and happiness. Ba and al-Shaykh portray different perspectives of how society, relationships and state of mind affect mental stability. Al-Shaykh displays the downfall of a hard life when you punish yourself for shortcomings however Ba travels the short and narrow road by throwing circumstances aside to get to the brighter side.
In The Story of Zahra as a young child Zahra was traumatized by her parent’s relationship, her uncle’s affection, and her affairs with men, and her damage to herself. Zahra’s father placed work first and his family followed; her mother spoiled the promise of loyalty to her husband, and carried Zahra along for her affair; her uncle wanted to show inappropriate affection; and the men she interacted with were poor in the act of showing her true love. Al-Shaykh described Zahra’s emotional and mental state when he wrote “If only I could bleed without having to suffer wounds.” (al-Shaykh 23). Prior to this quote Zahra was sleepless because she felt a hand, who she thought was her cousin, on her thigh and was scared to sleep again; that touch reminded her of being at the movies with her uncle when he placed his arm around her shoulder and made her feel uncomfortable. Family is sacred and they are to be completely trusted but she built up a wall in defense of her entire being. Al-Shaykh uses defamiliarization to connect the reader’s imagination a...
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...ne in peace” (al-Shaykh 208) and take the life she didn’t get a chance to love just yet.
Zahra, in The Story of Zahra, and Ramatoulaye, in So Long a Letter, took two different roads in their one time journey of life, love and happiness. Hanan al-Shaykh and Mariama Ba painted two similar pictures but obtained two separate meaning and motivation. Al-Shaykh used metaphors to intertwine Zahra’s pain in her mind to fit with something that wouldn’t be so pleasant. Ba used descriptive words and diction to emphasis the meaning of the statement. Both authors gave a view of the many affects that Africa – the people, culture, religion, and traditions – affected relationships and individuals.
Works Cited
Al-Shaykh, Hanan. The Story of Zahra. Trans. Peter Ford. First Anchor Books Ed., 1986.
Ba, Mariama. So Long a Letter. Trans. Modup Bod-Thomas. Pearson Edu. Limited 2008.
Kemedijo, Cilas. The Curse of Writing: Genealogical Strata of a Disillusion: Orality, Islam-writing, and Identities in the State of Becoming in Maryse Conde's Segou. Research in African Literatures 27. (1996, December 1): 124.
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Underneath the tale of Segu is the hushed and disloyal question few people tend to voice: how did they lose the rights to use the land and resources of an entire continent? This novel explains that it was not just Europe’s greed and Christianity pretense that led to the fall of Africa. It shows that Islam was a major force that endangered Segu as well. However, aside from the tragedy’s that were outlined, there lies a captivating story about culture, spirituality, and diversity.
Searing the mind with stunning images while seducing with radiant prose, this brilliant first novel is a story of damaged lives and the indestructibility of the human spirit. It speaks about loss, about the urgency, pain and ultimate healing power of memory, andabout the redemptive power of love. Its characters come to understand the
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After a journey into the dark history of Europe and Africa with Sven Lindqvist, I found myself shocked. It’s earth shattering. Ideas and historical events are presented through a journal/proposal of his unique view on racism. Lindqvist raises questions as to where racism was spurred and why what happened in late 1800’s and early 1900’s lead to the holocaust. Including religion, personal human values, advanced warfare and even societies’ impact as a whole. His travels through the Sahara and Africa in the early chapters show a more current day view of society over seas. The description of the desolate continent and harsh conditions paints a picture of what previous civilization lived through. He explains that part of the reason he has traveled to the desert is to feel the space all around him, a definite emptiness if you will. As his travels progress he introduces his own family life that pertains to the human emotion, which is also a big focus point in this book. Childhood beatings over taking the lord’s name in vain, dropped calls from his daughter that leave him torn and sad. He does an excellent job on taking the reader on a personal journey with him through his current day traveling and even his early life. Linking these personal experiences and tying in histories misconceptions of “right and wrong” is what makes this book so valuable. Lindqvist gives a relevant and educated answer to the question of how racism became such a terrible tribulation in all parts of the world.
Love is portrayed in numerous mediums: song, history, rhythmic dance, or poetry. These four instruments of love typically identify the notion as subjective, lifeless, and static. Song writer of this age often convey love as a goal in life not as an element of living. While people from different periods in history used love to gain power giving love a bare and emotionless personnel. And lastly dance and poetry perceives love as inaudible and plain, because the vary performers and authors have not experienced love on an intimate or divine level. However William Shakespeare is one of few to frequently incorporate simple, yet complex terminology in sonnets to convey different concepts of love. The comprehensive
Love – a simple four letter word shrouded in mystery and many different meanings. Philosophers, poets, and writers have all tried to discern the significance or concept of love for many centuries. Plato, for example, was one such philosopher who in his work the Symposium (which means “Drinking Party”) wrote about “Eros” – the term for sexual love in Greek. The Symposium was written approximately around 384 and 379 B.C.E., and follows five elite Athenian men as they pronounce their admiration of Eros while lounging on couches listening to flute girls play in the distance. Each of the men has different backgrounds ranging from tragic poet, comedian, doctor, playboy, and even Socrates himself (Norton). All these characters bring diverse views on the subject of love, and each speaker seems to build on the last enhancing the story. Times have changed so much since Plato wrote The Symposium is it possible to compare Plato’s ornate description of love to love in the modern world? Love today is much like love in Plato’s time, and I believe people today are still searching for their “other half” – the missing piece, for it is a complete love which makes us better people.
This seems to illustrate Sembene’s personal storytelling about the patriotism and its effects on the post- colonial African. As the story of Black Girl seems to be nothing more than a tragedy of...
One’s sense of self is a reflection of those with whom the most time is spent. Both positive and negative relationships determine aspects of identity. Family relationships can often be the most complicated, Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner tells a story about a difficult father-son relationship between Amir, the protagonist, and his father Baba. “I let myself dream: I imagined conversation and laughter over dinner instead of silence broken only by the clinking of silverware and the occasional grunt. I envisioned us taking a Friday drive in Baba’s car to Paghman... We’d go to the zoo to see Marjan the lion, and maybe Baba wouldn’t yawn and steal looks at his wristwatch all the time. Maybe Baba would even read one of my stories. I’d write him a hundred if I thought he’s read one.” (Hosseini, 56). Amir creates a vivid anecdote in this chapter of what his ideal relationship with Baba could be but his mind quickly returns to the realities of his life. Hosseini uses strong imagery to describe Amir’s ideal relationship with Baba and parallels it to his daily confrontations with him. Amir yearns for his father's love and attention. His lack of unity with Baba hurst his identity because he feels neglected which results in Amir’s inability to communicate his feelings and contributes to his resentment towards Hassan. Neglect is a form of abuse, although Amir was never physically hurt by his father he faced the challenges of being in a impugnment relationship. Often times people become trapped in verbal and physically abusive relationships, living in constant fear of staying or losing the ability to escape. Similarly, The Help contains a subplot between a maid, Minny, and her abusive husband Leroy.” ‘If I didn’t hit you, Minny, who knows what you’d become.’...’Who knows what I’d become if Leroy would stop goddamn hitting me’ “ (Stockett). The author inputs anaphora, the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of
Khapoya, Vincent B. The African Experience: An Introduction. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998. Print.
Love has been the cause of some of the greatest feats, discoveries, and battles in the history of man. It has driven men to insanity and despair, while it has lead others to happiness and bliss. This idea that love has a strong influence on man’s decisions can be seen in the poem, “Love is not all” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The most prominent theme presented in “Love is not all” is that although love is not a necessity of life, it somehow manages to provoke such great desire and happiness that it becomes important.
Tradition and customs very often hold an important position in ones life and culture. The novel So Long A Letter, by Mariama Ba, is based on the Senegalese culture and shows how important tradition is in Africa. The novel is a series of letters written by a recently widowed woman, Ramatoulaye, to her best friend Aissatou. The transition through the many grieving stages and traditional mourning events are explained, as well as a woman?s place in a Senegalese society and family.
Some people believe that there is no such thing as “true love” they believe that love is nothing but an illusion designed by social expectations. These people believe that love ultimately turns into pain and despair. This idea in some ways is true. Love is not eternal it will come to an end one way or another, but the aspect that separates true love from illusion, is the way love ends. “True Love” is much too powerful to be destroyed by Human imperfection; it may only be destroyed by a force equal to the power of love. Diotima believed that “Love is wanting to posses the good forever” In other words love is the desire to be immortal and the only way that we are able to obtain immortality is through reproduction, and since the act of reproduction is a form of sexual love, then sexual love is in fact a vital part of “True love”. Sexual love is not eternal. This lust for pleasure will soon fade, but the part of love that is immortal, is a plutonic love. You can relate this theory to the birth of love that Diotima talks about. She says that love was born by a mortal mother and immortal father. The mother represents the sexual love, the lust for pleasure. The father represents the plutonic love that is immortal. Plutonic love is defined as a true friendship, the purest of all relationships. A true plutonic love will never die; it transcends time, space, and even death.
In Mariama Bâ’s book, “So Long a Letter”, the readers experience these injustices first hand through the main characters. Years after their marriages fall apart through polygamy and feelings of betrayal, when Modou experiences an unexpected heart attack and is unable to be saved, Ramatoulaye decides to write letters to Aissatou who is now in the United States with her four sons. In these letters, she talks about their memories together before they were separated from one another as well as providing Aissatou with news about her current life. She first writes about Modou’s death and the forty-day funeral of her late husband, but soon moves on to their lives as married women. Keeping the main idea of the story in mind, Bâ has her talk about their marriage, starting with Aissatou.