I'm at the end. Now what?

The ending of the book made Mr. Yang Sun look even more scandalous than he had before. They are not getting for love Mr. Yang Sun wants to be able to get the money that he can get from being with her rather than marrying her because he loves her so much. She’s naïve at one point thinking that he loves her so much and is marrying her because of that. Everyone seems to know what he’s marrying her for. His own mother is telling him that he shouldn’t marry her if she won’t sell the tobacco shop for him. From one source I read, it talked about satire using irony as an instrument for getting the point of the satire across (Blackwell Reference Online). If this is the case, then I think irony of the way the play ends could be a type of satire if I understand correctly. The fact that the play ends kinda in the middle of things and the problem isn’t really resolved could be situational irony because the play ended the opposite of the way I expected. I expected there to be a conclusion to the ending of the situation.

From talking about satire and irony in class, I think I have a little bit of a clearer idea of what it really is. I know that I still have trouble detecting both because I struggle with tone and have always done so since middle school. Maybe the fact that I can’t pick up tone contributes to the fact that I have trouble with reading comprehension, which is linked to why I have trouble finding the satire in the play that we are reading. Also, I was having trouble understanding whether or not the whole play was a satire of something or if individual parts of the play made the play considered a satire or containing satire. Tracy brought this up in class as well. I was confused about whether or not we really need to try to see the whole play as a satire or read the play as a normal play and see if we detect satire in the individual parts of the play. As a whole, this play has definitely been a challenge for me. Even now that we’ve finished the play I still don’t think I understand the satire. Does anyone else get it???

Pavlovskis-Petit, Zoja. "26. Irony and Satire : A Companion to Satire: Ancient and

Modern : Blackwell Reference Online." Blackwell Reference Online: Home. Web. 19 Apr. 2010. .

Brecht, Bertolt, and Eric Bentley. The Good Woman of Setzuan. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota, 1999. Print.

I don't think I get it

As I read the play and tried to understand the plot, finding the satire in the things the characters were saying got more and more difficult. I did not understand what the satire was. So to begin, I looked up what the word satire meant and how it’s used in most cases to understand more closely. Satire is defined as “a literary tone used to ridicule or make fun of human vice or weakness, often with the intent of correcting, or changing, the subject of the satiric attack.” The definition made me understand what the meaning of satire was a little more but it didn’t make me detect any of the most obvious satire in the book. The only few things that I could find that appeared to be remotely satirical was the way the gods treated the people as they went through the people to find out who was the best person. One particular part was when Wong says, “You’ll be staying with a single girl—the finest human being in Setzuan!” and the third god says, “That’s nice.” I thought with this line Wong was ridiculing the fact that the gods are trying to find the finest human being. The rest of the book seemed normal conversation to me. I didn’t detect any satire in the rest of the things people said. Overall the book seemed like a normal story to me. I never detected any satire and I think I probably just don’t fully understand what satire is.

"Satire." The Nellen Family Jewels. Web. 14 Apr. 2010. .

Brecht, Bertolt, and Eric Bentley. The Good Woman of Setzuan. United States: S.n.], 1957. Print.

Khadija's Envy

From the introduction of Khadija in Naguib Mahfouz’s Palace Walk, she has proven an interesting character. From the start of the plot we could see how negative her attitude is towards her family. Initially, I thought the reason that she came off as so upset was because she was jealous of her sister and the life she is given because she’s more attractive than Khadija. As I continued reading, I began to see that what Khadija felt was a little more than jealousy towards her sister despite the fact that Mahfouz continuously refers to it as such. Khadija is not jealous of her sister. Khadija is envious of Aisha’s looks, happiness, and ability to evade responsibilities. Khadija’s envy of her sister comes in many different forms and targets many different goods (The thing that the envier wants. It can be anything from a state of being to an object.) that Aisha has that Khadija wants.

Khadija is openly envious, not jealous. Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy says the distinguishing factor between jealousy and envy is the number of people involved; jealousy involves three people, in the example of a relationship, the jealous person (wife), the victim of the jealous person (husband), and the person that’s in the middle taking what the jealous person wants (the mistress), and envy involves two, the envier and the person being envied. Sometimes the way she feels towards her sister is described as jealousy, but I feel that her true feelings are a deeper than that. Khadija is experiencing what the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls, “a symptom or instance of the human tendency to evaluate one's well-being comparatively, by assessing how well one is doing in comparison with others.” Khadija makes this a clear habit when she compares herself to other people’s standard of beauty, particularly her family’s, “Khadija laughed to hide her uneasiness. She went to the mirror and looked carefully at herself. She covered her nose with her hand and said ironically, ‘There’s nothing wrong with my face now.’ Removing her hand from her face, she commented, ‘Now, like this, only God can save me’” (144). We see this again when the matchmakers come to visit her house for her sister and she thought it was for her, “Khadija on the other hand, was disposed to suspect the woman, since it was her nature to be suspicious of everyone” (28). Khadija’s fluctuating emotions toward her sister are another example of how she compares herself to other people allowing her to become envious. The times that she feels defeated and that someone is better than her because of the good¹ they have she makes it really obvious that she’s envious. The quote that Lauren F. uses in her blog All Daughters are Made Equal, "Khadijah did not enjoy affectionate words of comfort when defeated. She received Aisha's statement with unconcealed annoyance" (237), shows Khadija’s deeply rooted envy of her sister and her happiness.

Khadija does not only limit her envy to her sister’s beauty, she also shows envy of her sister’s happiness. Any time her sister seems to find a piece of happiness in something, Khadija comes along to say something negative to her to try and ruin it. We can see this when Aisha is singing at the window to the guy she likes and Khadija comes in and reprimands her for doing it. Anytime Khadija sees Aisha feeling happy and enjoying something she comes over and ruins it for her. Aisha recognizes that her sister is envious of her voice at that time and calls her out on it saying, “If your voice were beautiful like mine you wouldn’t say that” (26).

Lastly, Khadija is jealous of Aisha’s ability to evade responsibility. On the same page, Khadija says, “You loll about, off by yourself, while I prepare everything. We’ve had enough singing.” This shows her intense despising of the Aisha’s ability to drift off and look out the window at her boyfriend while Khadijas has to do all the housework and take care of things when Amina needs help or can’t do the job. Another example is when Amina was run over by the car and couldn’t work for their father. Even though neither one of them wanted to do it Amina says to Khadija, “You’re better able to serve him. Don’t waste time young lady. He may be needing you this very moment” (186). Although Khadija kinda wanted the job, she felt that Aisha should’ve have at least been brought up in the decision of who would take on Amina’s responsibility so she did it herself. Khadija thinks of her self as “second-in-command” to her mother and, although she wishes her sister had more responsibilities, liked the title. In Dominique Hackett’s comment on Lauren F.’s blog, All Sister are Created Equal, I agree with him when he says Khadija wants to be the example for Aisha even though Khadija doesn’t change the way she treats her to get her to follow.

Though Khadija’s feelings of envy are detrimental to their relationship and their later marriages, Khaduja never allows her envy to reach the point of resentment which is where I disagree with Dominique Hackett’s statement in his comment that Khadija becomes resentful of Aisha’s getting married. Even the narrator says, “Regardless of how long her jealousy lasted, it did not warp her disposition to become hatred or loathing” (27). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says also,

“Although much of the psychological literature on envy supposes that envy is concerned with matters of perceived injustice, most philosophers reject this suggestion.^[9] The received view is that envy is to be distinguished from resentment. The latter is held to be a moral emotion, whereas the former is not. What makes a given emotion a moral emotion has been glossed in various ways. Roughly, the idea is that moral emotions are ones that somehow embody moral principles or appraisals. Resentment is a moral emotion because a given emotional episode does not qualify as a state of resentment unless the subject holds some moral complaint against the object of the state. The claim that envy is not a moral emotion may be understood strongly, as the claim that it never involves a moral complaint per se, or weakly, as the claim that it need not embody such a complaint.”

Khadija was envious of her sister in many aspects but, she never allowed her feelings to reach the point of utter resentment of her sister even though the way she treats her can be mistaken as such.

D'Arms, Justin, "Envy", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

Hackett, Dominique. "Re: All Daughters Are Made Equal." Web log comment. Blogger.com. 24 Feb. 2010. 29 March 2010. .

Lauren F., “All Daughters are Made Equal.” Digging Even Deeper. Feb. 24, 2010. (http://diggingevendeeper.blogspot.com/2010/02/all-daughters-are-made-equal.html#comments)Mar. 29, 2010.

Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk. New York: Anchor /Doubleday, 1991.

Similes and Metaphors

“He had perhaps intended from the start to agree but had refused to yield until he had expressed his anger, like a politician who attacks an opponent, even though supporting the same goal, in order to defend his principles” (306).

Lately, while reading the book, I’ve been interested in the thing Kersia brought up in her blog about noticing the language Mahfouz uses to get the story from different perspectives. I began to notice all of the descriptive language he adds to his descriptions of things going on in the book. Another example is when he was describing marriage and Yasin’s feelings toward his new marriage to Zaynab, “It was like a trick chocolate presented on April Fool’s Day with garlic stuffed inside the sweet coating” (307). This simile made me feel what Yasin was feeling in entirety. His similes are designed to put you in the situation and make you understand what the character feels as much as possible. I can definitely make the connection between garlic in chocolate and how Yasin felt about his marriage becoming boring and how the excitement of being married changed completely once he was married just as the excitement of eating a chocolate changes after you taste the garlicky inside.

He also uses many metaphors to accomplish the same thing. On page 308, he describes the same situation with a metaphor, “…, but it was no longer the desire of a fasting person for a tasty delicacy.” The depth he goes in to explain the significance of the issue makes for a better, more relatable read. But, what also struck me was the usage of little motivational words of wisdom that he incorporated into the situations in the book from the narrator’s perspective. As I read, I began to wonder why it was that he was offering the narrator’s opinion or interpretation of what was going on. I wanted to see if the situation was at all related to Mahfouz’s background. I wondered if he was a doctor, counselor, or any sort of motivational speaker of any sort. So I looked this up and found that he wasn’t any of these things and began to question if this was simply his style as a writer, or if these notes played an important part in the plot of the book. So I took my research a little further and found that he was simply a civil servant and an author and didn’t really the answer to the question I was looking for. But, my curiosity is still here and I wonder why he refers to diseases and other things when he writes these similes and metaphors to describe situations in the novel.

Work Cited

1. "Naguib Mahfouz - Biography." Nobelprize.org. Web. 6 Mar. 2010. .
2. Maḥfūẓ, Najīb. Palace Walk. New York: Anchor /Doubleday, 1991. Print.

Understanding Khadija

Since the beginning of the book, I’ve wondered and pondered about Khadija’s character in the book. She seemed to be one of the more peculiar characters in the sense that she was a very inexplicably angry and negative character. From the beginning her character struck me, reminding me of myself because of the anger that dwelled inside of her.

In this section, I began to explore her anger. There are times in the book where she admits her feelings of jealousy and hatred. Until this section in the book, I didn’t see the details of the things she hated so passionately. I see that she really does have issues that revolve around her insecurities about her nose, but I don’t feel this is the determining factor for her anger towards her sister and other siblings. I think it’s something deeper, but what that is, I haven’t figured out yet.

She could possibly be under the stress that her dad puts on her life. You can see that all of Ahmad’s children and his wife are afraid of him. Possibly this weight that is placed on her is due to having to constantly walk on her toes because she’s afraid of upsetting her father. She’s one of the most difficult people to understand because of her anger. In the situation where the children were deciding who should be the one to talk to their father to persuade him to bring his mother back to their homes. Khadija says, “I thought this was job more suitable for women” (214). This was her in efforts to evade the responsibility of being the one chosen to talk to her father because, later on, she confesses to being afraid ,of speaking to her father. She was even afraid to take on the responsibility of looking after Ahmad while the mother was healing.

Also, she is like the second mother in the house and bears some of the weight her mother does. She talks about how emotionally she was there for everyone and was like a mother for her family. I was thinking about how we put the emphasis on the parents role but I was thinking about what it’s like to be the oldest daughter in the family and what that job entails. I read a webpage that talked about the roles of different people in the family. The article talked about how people are responsible for there roles in the family and the children are to respect the mother and perform their duties (1). I thought this was interesting and kinda differed from the role that Khadija plays as sister and “second in command to her mother” (186). I think her role in the book is important but the way she feels about certain things still puzzles me now.

1. "What Does Islam Teach About the Family and the Roles of Men, Women and Children?"Sisters Area. Web. 01 Mar. 2010. .

Yasin has gone crazy!

Photo by Ed Yourdon on Flickr. Woman with high-heeled shoes on.

“He backed away from her, as though fleeing from the tenderness of her words. Nothing could have excited his anger more than that. Filled with anger and despair, he sensed there was no longer anything to be gained from staying on in this hateful atmosphere. Turning around to make his way out, he said, “I wish I could kill you.” She lowered her eyes and said with unconcealed sorrow, “If you do, you’ll relieve me of the sufferings of my life” (120).

This passage interested me because all throughout this scene in the book, I didn’t really understand what made him so angry about his mother marrying different men after some of her marriages had failed. I feel that this is a normal thing. Most women don’t want to be alone all their lives and I don’t understand how she’s wrong for wanting companionship from a man. I feel that Yasin is probably experiencing some jealousy which is normal when boys see the women of their family, especially their mom, with men other than their father. She simply wants to be loved and I don’t feel she should be persecuted for that thinking as an American. But, looking at the source I found this is wrong in there culture. He, as well as, his father, are doing the same thing at this point in the book. They both lust after women, but are persecuting her when other men lust after her and she gives in to them. I think this whole situation shows the double standard in their culture. I don’t like how the father and the other men treat their women like dirt, and when they are ready to find something different and be with someone who wants to be with them, at least temporarily, the men have a problem with it. It’s not fair. It’s okay when the men want to go out and seek “entertainment” and wine knowing that this is against their morals and religion. I feel that this is simply wrong and inconsistent.

This passage also stood out to me because it showed the issues that Yasin deals with deep down. He wants to love women, but he is incapable of trusting them and believing they are more than a body that he can lust after. We can see how he’s like this when he talks about the girl in the window that didn’t come out when he wanted her to. He explodes with anger and calls her a “selfish smart-ass bitch” because he thinks she didn’t want to “let him see her” (73). He has some of the same issues his dad has when it comes to his feelings toward women and what their role in the world should be and is. Yasin sees women as nothing more than sex symbols (73) because he can’t make himself love them, I feel because of the grudge he holds against his mom. He talks about how he’s able to fall in love with wine for it’s own sake when women aren’t there to satisfy him. I don’t mean to sound childish, but I think that that is not fair. The fact that he gets that angry with his mom to say he wishes he could kill her is not cool. He needs to chill and realize that his mom has to have a life too and she is not wrong for trying to find someone to spend the rest of her life with.

He could also be so upset because he simply wants to acquire his mom’s fortune. He might just want to be able to be rich and get the things that his mom has. He mentions it at the end of the same scene when he’s leaving and says he didn’t achieve what he went there after which was to be able to find out if he could acquire her fortune. He wants to be able to control the things his mom plans to do in her future so that she doesn’t lose her fortune and end up broke leaving him with nothing. He once accused the man she’s planning to marry of greed which shows that he simply wants to be able to inherit the fortune that his mom was left. Yasin is a peculiar character and suffers from what I conclude to be abandonment issues that arose from his mom allowing him to leave and constantly remarrying to new men.

Does she really love him?

“The carriage proceeded along Palace Walk, and her husband headed for their door. She left the balcony for the bedroom. Picking up the lamp, she went to the sitting room and then to the hall to stand at the top of the stairs. She could hear the outside door being slammed shut and the bolt sliding into place. She imagined his tall figure crossing the courtyard as he donned awesome dignity and shed the mirthfulness which, had she not overheard it, she would have never thought possible. Hearing the tip of his walking stick strike the steps of the stairway, she held the lamp over the banister to light his way” (7).

This passage struck me because it related to my family the most. I noticed how she would wait for her husband to get home from his “night of entertainment.” At first in the book, I thought she waited for him so much because she wanted to hear the stories he could bring home and tell her about so that she could educate her family, but as I continued reading I noticed that there was more to it. She actually loves him, and I think this passage shows that.

Of course as Americans, who don’t practice arranged marriages we think that you must love someone in order to marry them, well, in most cases. But, in arranged marriages, they don’t always initially love the person that they marry. With this presumption that Amina and Ahmad’s marriage was one of these, I was surprised when I saw signs that she actually loved him. It’s very evident from the first couple pages of the book that she cares deeply about her family, but her compassionate love for him wasn’t really shown. Later in the book, she talked about how she liked him better when he was in a better mood and would talk to her and this could potentially be the reason we don’t see this. The fact that at one point in the book she admits that she lived to see him return home from his night of entertainment, made me see just how much she really did love him and worked to please him and make him happy. Amina works all day with her daughters to make sure he has a nice home to return to.

I think this passage is evidence to how much she really cares about her husband and wants to see him happy. Amina does a lot of work to prove her love and devotion to her husband and makes it clear through this passage and other things she’s said in the book, that she really does care about her husband.

Here's a link to more info about women in Egypt:

http://www.islamfortoday.com/ramadan07.htm