ENCW 306: Fall 2018
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 27th, 2018
There are several prominent differences between Mrs. Shin’s character from “A Temporary Marriage” and Firdaus in A Woman At Point Zero, though these differences seem to come together in the two women to make up a common goal of their own sense of freedom. Mrs. Shin claims that she prefers “a world without men,” a […]
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 26th, 2018
Nothing is what it seems in “A Temporary Marriage.” Mrs. Shin is searching for her “kidnapped” daughter in America. She involves herself in a fake marriage and claims she is not interested in any type of relationship. Except Mrs. Shin is not a reliable narrator. Her actions are quite different than her words. Mrs. Shin’s attraction to […]
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 26th, 2018
The characters Mrs. Shin in “A Temporary Marriage” and Firdaus in Woman at Point Zero have many similarities. A primary example is that both women live their lives in the remembrance of former sexual pleasures that, for various reasons, cannot be attained again. Mrs. Shin, in particular, is obsessed with her memories of physical abuse during sex and […]
Posted in Woman at Point Zero on Sep 25th, 2018
In the first half of Woman at Point Zero, readers are met with multiple instances of Firdaus running into the street to escape unfair treatment she was experiencing at the time. This theme is also echoed in the second half of the book after Firdaus escaped into the streets once more: “Nothing in the streets was […]
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 25th, 2018
“And truth is like death in that it kills. When I killed I did it with truth not with a knife. That is why they are afraid and in a hurry to execute me. They do not fear my knife. It is my truth which frightens them. This fearful truth gives me great strength. It […]
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 24th, 2018
Let me cry, I said. But I’ve never seen you cry before. What’s happened? Nothing … Nothing at all. There are two specific moments in Woman at Point Zero that are very similar: one in the first half of the book, with Miss Iqbal, and one in the second half of the book, with Ibrahim. […]
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Uncategorized, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 23rd, 2018
Have you ever fallen in love, Firdaus? No, Wafeya. I have never been in love. Then you are either living a lie or not living at all. –Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero Woman at Point Zero is a narrative about a girl who has experienced awful abuse with the ending (I hope) being […]
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 20th, 2018
Do you prefer oranges or tangerines? I really like this question because it marks a turning point in Firdaus’s life. Up until now, her actions have been more reactionary than anything else. If her father wanted dinner, then her whole family had dinner. If her mother wanted her to undergo female circumcision, then she did. If her […]
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 20th, 2018
One of the main themes of Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero is power. Throughout the book, Firdaus fights first to gain, then maintain her autonomy. Her father is the first character that has power over her. Firdaus recalls being forced to wash his legs at the end of each day, and how he […]
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 20th, 2018
I sometimes wonder whether a person can be born twice. (p25) This sentence deserves to be underlined because it is a symbol of what Nawal El Saadawi is doing with this book. The narrator visits a woman named Firdaus who is in prison for a murder and who is going to die for her crime. She […]
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 20th, 2018
How many were the years of my life that went before my body and my self became really mine, to do with them as I wished? How many were the years of my life that were lost before I took my body and my self away from the people who held me in their grasp […]
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 20th, 2018
Woman At Point Zero is a haunting account of the life of Firdaus, a woman imprisoned for murder. The author, Nawal El Saadawi, serves almost as Firdaus’ translator. Although Firdaus is perfectly capable of communicating, she is an incarcerated woman with a tale of woe that men do not want to hear and in some ways […]
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 20th, 2018
I discovered that all these rulers were men. What they had in common was an avaricious and distorted personality, a never-ending appetite for money, sex, and unlimited power. –Firdaus, Woman at Point Zero This novel is about a woman who is sentenced to be hanged after she is […]
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 20th, 2018
My self-confidence began to be badly shaken, and I went through difficult moments. It looked to me as though this woman who had killed a human being, and was shortly to be killed herself, was a much better person than I. Compared to her, I was nothing but a small insect crawling upon the land […]
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 20th, 2018
In Women at Point Zero, Firdaus tells her story, a story of loneliness, rape, inequality, and longing. Nawal El Saadawi is the mouthpiece for Firdaus. Unable to tell her own story, as she is imprisoned and awaiting execution, Saadawi is the mouthpiece for Firdaus. Saadawi gives a voice to a point of view that would normally […]
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 20th, 2018
One of the major things I noticed while reading Woman at Point Zero is the repetition of eye imagery. The first time I noted that this was something to pay attention to was when Firdaus describes what her mother looked like the first time she saw her. She says, “I can remember two eyes. I […]
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 19th, 2018
After reading Amber’s blog post, I strongly agree with the connection she made between Woman at Point Zero and A Thousand Splendid Suns. While I was in the process of reading Woman at Point Zero, I continuously found connections between Saadawi’s book and The Kite Runner (which is the novel which prefaces A Thousand Splendid Suns). I found […]
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 19th, 2018
Reading Woman at Point Zero brings to mind a book with a similar premise that I read in high school, A Thousand Splendid Suns. In both novels, the protagonist is executed for killing a man. Firdaus’ impending execution is the frame story for Woman at Point Zero, while Mariam’s execution in A Thousand Splendid Suns […]
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 19th, 2018
“I held her eyes in mine, took her hand in mine. The feeling of our hands touching was strange, sudden. It was a feeling that made my body tremble with a deep distant pleasure, more distant than the age of my remembered life, deeper than the consciousness I had carried with me throughout. I could […]
Posted in Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero on Sep 12th, 2018