Character Analysis: The Red Tent By Anita Diamant

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Childhood Dreams, Adult Nightmares In the book The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, the character Dinah is given a new life, and becomes more than the side note that she is in the Bible. The book starts with Dinah the memories of her mother and aunts, which are stories that have been passed down to her. Throughout the book it becomes clear that the stories and memories of the women in her family have a strong impact on Dinah, and it seems as though she expects her life to follow in a similar path to the lives of her “mothers.” When Dinah falls in love with a man, she expects that she will be able to marry him and live the rest of her life with him. Things are not so simple, as her brothers do not approve of the man she falls in love with and murder …show more content…

Her family has moved away from Laban, the father of mothers, and Dinah is experiencing many things for the very first time. One of the things that she gets to experience is a meeting with her grandmother, Rebecca. Rebecca is described as “the oldest person I had ever seen … her black eyes were clear and sharp … her robes were purple” (149). Dinah thought that “she was magnificent” (150). Rebecca was an “Oracle” who people came to “seeking advice and prophecy” (150). After Dinah’s family had stayed with Rebecca for a while, they left, but Rebecca had requested that Dinah stay behind to be her assistant. Dinah, however, does not seem to have the same talents or gifts that Rebecca has. Rebecca said that “Dinah is not the heir” and Dinah herself says that “I had merited little of Rebecca’s attention. I had failed to please her” (166). This event in Dinah’s life is the first one that shows her that not everything will come as easily to her as she thought it had to her mothers. Much later in life Dinah realizes that she will carry the torch from Rachel, and become a midwife. Finding a husband will not be as easy for her as it was for her mothers

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