A Distant Episode by Paul Bowles

The single effect is the main idea that the writer wants to convey to his readers. The writer musters all his powers and tools to achieve this successfully such as in a Distant Episode. A Distant Episode, in fact, is regarded as a landmark in the history of the English short story genre. It is so important in a field called Orientalism, which shows the orient in the eyes of the West. This short story, in other words, shows the difference between the Western culture and the Eastern culture from a western point of view. The writer used some tools to emphasize this single effect.

In this short story, the author showed how the West sees the East. Western people always looked at the Arab world as an inferior and a primitive place where a lot of ignorant people live. Rudyard Kipling says in his poem, the ballad of east and west, "East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." This means that the east will never be like the west. The east will be always an ugly place, while the west will be always a place for civilization.

A distant Episode emphasizes the difference between the Arab culture and the western culture. In this short story, the Professor is an example of the western haughty civilized man who visited Morocco to look for dirt, to enjoy seeing primitive disgusting people and to smell the odors. Through his journey to find camel boxes, he meets a lot of savage, ignorant people who treat him bluntly and brutally, while he uses etiquette and thinks all the time. Hence, during reading the story there is an apparent paradox between the Western Professor who is educated, civilized, and polite, whereas the people whom he met were so blunt, debased, primitive, savage, and revolting and they only look for money.

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...as giving money to the qauagi by saying "thank you.." Moreover, he during the whole story is related to the word "Think" even in the worst situations. Furthermore, When the people were hitting him to take his money, he said" you can have my money; stop kicking me." Here, he looks as if he does not care about money, while the Arab were about to kill him for money. So, the professor always looked superior, clean, well-versed and haut.

In a nutshell, the author managed to highlight the single effect of the difference between the orient and the western cultures in the western eyes. Western people always looked at the Arab world as an inferior and a primitive place where a lot of ignorant and brutal people live. The author used some elements successfully such as language, characterization, and through preparing the general atmosphere to emphasize the single effect.