Modernization vs. Tradition: The Doum Tree of Wad Hamid

While the people in Tayeb Salih’s story “The Doum Tree of Wad Hamid” are able to ward off modernization, and the people in Leslie Marmon Silko’s story “Lullaby” have “modernization” enforced upon them, it is apparent by juxtaposing these two stories that traditions serve an important purpose, even in a modernized world. (Last sentence)
The villagers of “The Doum Tree of Wad Hamid” do not want, or seem to need modernization for two clear reasons. First, they are satisfied with their traditional ways. The narrator says, “We are thick-skinned people and in this we differ from others. We've become used to this hard life, in fact we like it, but we ask no one to subject himself to the difficulties of our life” (Salih 817). When a civil servant first told the villagers that the government was intending to set up a stopping place for the steamer at the village, the villagers did not care. They had grown accustomed to riding their donkeys to a neighboring village to board the steamer. The villagers have made it a tradition to breed donkeys because of this reason.
Second, modernization as it has been presented to them would mean sacrificing the doum tree, a symbol of their tradition, and is therefore not an option. The doum tree represents tradition and how it is in danger of getting lost among current trends of change and progress. The tree has always existed where it is as far as the villagers are concerned. The narrator reflects on how “every new generation finds the doum tree as though it had been born at the time of their birth and would grow up with them” (Salih 819). The tree is a part of their history. The doum tree is a force of its own. It exudes pride as if it were an ancient idol. The doum tree serves as a...

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...d not get wet if the snow was frozen or dry. The buckskin leggings you would wrap over your moccasins would protect you. She has nostalgia of watching the legging dry at night, on the beams of her ceiling.
In “Lullaby,” tradition and nature are linked in Ayah’s past, all the way to the present. Ayah

Works Cited

The Norton Anthology World Literature Volume F. Ed. Martin Puchner. New York: W. W. Norton Company, Inc., 2012. 816-824. Print.

Silko, Leslie. Storyteller. Penguin Books, 2012. Print.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/modern

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