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The portrayal of women in literature
The portrayal of women in literature
The portrayal of women in literature
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Many of the characters in Midaq Alley desire and seek a better a life that is hard or even impossible to get. Their ambitions are a reflection of a drive that seems very human. The ambitions are also motivated by the opportunities provided by the Second World War. The failure to reach these ambitions is better understood in terms of both limitations placed on the lower classes the characters belong to and limitations of human nature too. Hamida desires wealth and status. Abbas is driven by a blind ambition, when he believes that only money will make him a suitable match for his beautiful and ambitious beloved, Hamida. The narration is telling that the characters that seem happiest are those who suppress their ambition in exchange for simple …show more content…
Abbas returns to Midaq Alley on a short leave from the British Army. He finds out about Hamida and Faraj and theartens to kill him. Back in Midaq Alley, Abbas tells Hussain Kirsha what he has found out and what he is planning to do. Both have reached a plan of revenge. Hussain accompanies Abbas to the bar where they will try to find Faraj. There, Abbas finds Hamida seductively flirting and drinking with a group of British soldiers. He engages the soldiers but gets beaten to death. Each time he was struck, he yelled, "Hussain ... Hussain." His friend, however, who had never before in his life drawn back from a fight, remained glued to the ground, not knowing how he could cut his way to Abbas through all the angry soldiers” (Mahfouz 281). The theme of blind ambitions is recurring throughout the novel. Abbas' blind ambition has blown up in his face. His good intentions matter little when he realizes the lengths to which people will pursue what they deem is happiness. He eventually realizes the truth, that Hamida has pursued her own ambition selfishly with no thought of him, and the consequences are immediate and harsh. His good will and kindness are transformed into rage and a desire for revenge. In the same way that Ibrahim Faraj has corrupted Hamida, Hamida has corrupted Abbas. Overall, Mahfouz implies that these characters' golden dreams accomplish little against a dark
Amir is, to be put bluntly, a coward. He is led by his unstable emotions towards what he thinks will plug his emotional holes and steps over his friends and family in the process. When he sought after Baba’s invisible love, Amir allowed Hassan to be raped in an alleyway just so that the blue kite, his trophy that would win his father’s heart, could be left untouched. In the end, he felt empty and unfulfilled with the weight of his conscience on his shoulders comparable to Atlas’ burden. Unable to get over his fruitless betrayal, he lashes out and throws pomegranates at Hassan before stuffing money and a watch under his loyal friend’s pathetic excuse for a bed, framing Hassan for theft and directly causing the departure of both servants from his household. Even after moving to America, finding a loving wife, and creating a career for himself in writing, he still feels hollow when thinking of his childhood in Afghanistan. Many years later, he is alerted of Hassan’s death and sets out on a frenzied chase to find his friend’s orphaned son. He feels that he can somehow ease his regrets from all of those years ago if he takes in Hassan’s son, Sohrab. He finds Sohrab as a child sex slave for Assef, who coincidentally was the one to rape Hassan all of those years ago. After nearly dying in his attempt to take back Sohrab, he learns that he can take the damaged child back to the states with him. Sadly, Hassan’s son is so
Although Hassan is his best friend, there are many instances where Amir reveals his jealousy, most notable when Baba sees Hassan as the stronger boy, "self-defense has nothing to do with meanness. You know what always happens when the neighbourhood boys tease him? Hassan steps in and fends them off. I 've seen it with my own eyes…” (Hosseini 24). Clearly, Amir hears how his father compares the two, and unlike Hassan who manages to meet Baba’s expectations, Amir grows bitter towards Hassan. He is unable to fight off his envy which later causes him to sacrifice his best friend’s innocence: “Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba” (82), and this is all because he realizes “his shame is complicated by his own realization that in part he doesn’t help his friend precisely because he is jealous of him” (Corbett, 2006). From here, Amir develops strong feelings of guilt that induces him to perform even more destructive acts, such as having Hassan and his father evicted from the house. Amir not only loses a close friend, but now he has to continue to live with remorse as he dwells on these memories. The only way for Amir to redeem himself of his repercussions is through a challenging process of sacrifice and self-discovery. Although one is unsure at this point whether Amir succeeds at his endeavors, it is clear that this story
...izens of Kabul. As a result, Hassan’s childhood is much more difficult than Amir’s, allowing him to become stronger, more resilient, and less ignorant. Nonetheless, the two boys grow up together in Afghanistan during a time when it is considered to be a relatively peaceful country. In the late seventies however, this peace is destroyed as a result of the Russian invasion in Afghanistan. Ultimately, the environments from which Amir and Hassan each came from largely influences the people they become in the transitional phase of their lives from boyhood to young adulthood.
Joyce, James. “Araby.” The Norton Introduction to Literature, Shorter Eighth Edition. Eds. Jerome Beaty, Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays. New York: W.W.Norton.
While Amir is a Sunni, his childhood friend Hassan is Shi’a, an inferior division of Islam. Simultaneously, Amir and Hassan belong to different ethnic groups-Amir is Pashtun while Hassan is Hazara. During his childhood, Amir would constantly mock Hassan’s illiteracy and poke fun at him. But, the pivotal demonstration of pressure from his surroundings that makes Amir commit his own act of cruelty is when he watches Assef rape Hassan for refusing to give him the kite that Hassan caught for Amir. To this, Amir describes the look of Hassan’s face to “a look I had seen before. It was the look of the lamb” (76). Throughout his upbringing, Amir constantly believed that his father blamed him for killing his mother in childbirth. To Amir, Hassan’s rape is a sacrifice that Hassan has to pay the price, the lamb to kill, in order to win his father over. To justify his refusal to intervene, Amir reminds himself that “[Hassan] was just a Hazara, wasn’t he?” (77). Amir’s surroundings cause him to have a negative outlook on people that his society deem lower. Amir knows he is morally wrong for not helping Hassan, but his need for his father’s love overpowers his friendship. Adding to his pressures, Amir believes that Baba prefers Hassan over him, a belief that further drives him to be cruel to Hassan. As a result, Amir’s motivation for validation and love from his father
While the narrator of “Cathedral” had assumed that the blind man would be uncoordinated and reliant on support to get by, the narrator states that during dinner “the blind man had right away located his foods, he knew just where everything was on his plate. I watched with admiration as he used his knife and fork on the meat" (6). The competency of the blind man forcibly changes the narrators view on blindness and he eventually warms up to the man. Later, when the blind man asks the narrator to describe a cathedral, the narrator finds that he is unable to adequately do this for the man as cathedrals mean very little to him. When this happens, the man asks the narrator to fetch heavy paper and a pen so that they may draw one together. They do this together and the story closes on an optimistic note we see the flicker of change happen in the mind of the narrator, who has previously been a curt and at times unpleasant individual. In “Araby”, the boy has a less pleasant experience. After reaching the bazaar, near the end of the day, he finds himself less thrilled with Araby. Finding the bazaar much more mundane points out their British accents and listens to their conversations, comparing poorly to the exotic eastern bazaar he was expecting. He finds himself unable to keep the attention of a young women running a stand, who only flippantly waits on him before going back to her conversation with another man. Frustrated at the poor outcome of this trip and seeing the future of his sexuality in the bazaar, he states that “gazing up into the darkness [he] saw [himself] as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and [his] eyes burned with anguish and anger" (5). This less optimistic epiphany completes the boys transition from naïve child to jaded young man as the story ends implying that all people become frustrated in their desire for
Despite living majority of his life with the guilt of not helping Hassan, Amir’s nemesis is yet to come. Destiny plays a huge game with Amir and reveals to him that Hassan is his illegitimate brother during his visit with Rahim Khan. Reacting with various emotions, Amir first decides to head back about to America, but in the end makes the first brave decision in his life by going back to Kabul “…to atone not just for [his] sins, but…Baba’s too” (198). Amir tries to compensate for his sin by rescuing Hassan’s son, Sohrab, from the brutality occurring in Kabul. Amir puts his entire life in jeopardy by facing the oppression in Kabul so he could make a genuine effort in eliminating his sins. In an ideal world, when one truly makes an effort to redeem themselves for their wrongdoings, they are usually gifted with forgiveness. However, in reality, Amir’s heroic act of saving Sohrab, did not free him of sorrow because he still has to live with his nemesis for the rest of his life. By taking Sohrab to America with him, Amir constantly is reminded of his hamartia by envisioning Hassan through Sohrab. This shows how the guilt from a cowardly act leads one into a lifelong feeling of
Any goal in life is achieved through ambition, fueled by determination, desire and hard work. Ambition maybe a driving force to success or to a pit of failure, the path chosen by an individual determines the end. Remember that any goal to be fulfilled needs desire, desire that strives to do good or greedy desire that is selfish. Also the actions that contribute to our ‘hard work’ need to be morally and ethically right to enjoy the sweet success. However, when the desire and determination is stronger than conscience, many tend to fail often reach or don’t reach what they strived for, leaving them emotionally or even physically dead. The inner lying consequence of ambition is clearly stated by Napoleon, he quotes “Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principals which direct them”. The undesirable consequence of ambition can be observed in the lives of the protagonists of ‘The Great Gatsby and Macbeth. This describes the direction in which ambition is driven could change the end result, it is simply based on the individual itself rather than the dream they seek to achieve. Therefore, the strong drive of ambition helps the seeker attain their goal but greedy desires and wrong paths taken eventually lead to downfall.
In the book The Outsiders, written by S.E. Hinton, the lower-class, known as the Greasers, and the upper-class, known as Socs, deal with the animosity and daily struggles they have with each other. The novel focuses on the struggles and experiences with being an outsider to society and coping with the rich side of town through Ponyboy’s eyes. His life changes when tensions rise and many tragic things happen to the Greasers and Socs that will create agony in many but heroes in a few. The three topics addressed in this compelling novel are the fight between the rich and the poor, the power of friendship, and what it means to be a hero.
However there are some characters that become better people and change becoming a better, stronger, more loyal individual in the end. The individual that demonstrates this development within this novel is Amir himself. All of the guilt Amir holds with him as a child allow him to realize his duty to be loyal to his brother Hassan ion the end. An example of this is when Amir goes back to Kabul, Afghanistan to retrieve his nephew Sohrab. Amir says, “I remembered Wahid’s boys and… I realized something. I would not leave Afghanistan without finding Sohrab.’ tell me where he is,’ I said” (Hosseini 255). Here, Amir is at the orphanage waiting to find out where Taliban has taken his nephew. Amir remembers the three young starving sons of Wahid, a man whose home he had been in earlier, and realized that Afghanistan is not a safe place for Sohrab. Amir is finally aware of one thing, Hassan has always been there to protect Amir like a loyal friend and brother would and now Amir knows that it is his turn to return that loyalty to Hassan by protecting Hassan’s flesh and blood. A second example of Amir’s loyalty to Hassan near the ending of the book is during Amir’s confrontation with General Sahib and the dinner table after Sohrab is safe in America with him. Amir proclaims to General Sahib, “…That boy sleeping on the couch
However, Amir’s happy day turns dark, when an hour later, he witnesses Hassan, his best friend, raped in an alley. He had “one final opportunity to decide who [he] was going to be”. 77. Instead of standing up for his friend and loyal servant, he runs like “a coward.” 77.
...ind a way to redeem themselves. The relationship between Amir, Hassan and Baba has shown so much neglect and disregard to the fatherly love that Amir and Hassan needed from Baba as it stands in comparison to Amir and Sohrab’s growing relationship. The appreciation of the unselfish actions are demonstrated as they give up their career, life, and pride for the betterment of their sons. The book itself demonstrates the development of the characters as they got more mature to which this bad past they had causes them to reinforce a more effective functioning father and son relationship. A neglect of a father may lead to bad decisions as a father should be there to ensure and reinforce a lesson to his son, acquiring the happiness of the son which is necessary for a fatherly figure.
Even when Amir was nasty and cruel to him, he had always been a faithful, kind soul. He never doubted that Amir was his friend and that he held a special place in his heart. When Hassan got raped, Amir did not help Hassan. There were ultimately two options: step up to the bullies and rescue Hassan, or run away. Even after hearing Assef say how Amir would never do the same for him, about how he would never stand up for him, he still chose to run away and pretend like he did not just witnessed what had happend. There is also scene where Amir is feeling guilty and both the boys are around a pomegranate tree. Amir just starts pelting Hassan with pomegranates and threatens to him to throw one back. He exclaims, “You’re a coward,” (...). And what does Hassan do? He picks up a pomegranate, but instead of hurling it in Amir’s direction, he smashes it on himself and says, “are you satisfied?” (....). There is this constant pressure on Hassan and Amir’s relationship. The Afghan society would not approve of such “friendship.” Both of the boys were good, but Amir was so young when he made the mistakes that it made the reader question whether there was a way for Amir to be morally good again.
...ry religious, it would seem, because he owns a huge copy of the Qur'an which he keeps safe in a fancy box covered in velvet. Atiq doesn't like his job, he doesn't feel that it is respectable, and the more he thinks about it the angrier he gets. He also feels that the war will never end. Atiq is losing health, sleep, and weight in this desolate environment. Kabul is even more depressing while he watches a young poor practice for his future by killing animals in the street. Atiq doesn't want to go home to face his sick wife and messy home. Atiq prays for his wife's death while looking for a remedy for her disease of the blood. He meets with Mirza Shah who tells him to divorce her. Atiq refuses, he speaks of her loss of family and the fact that she saved his life, but maybe he just loves her. Mirza has a bleak outlook on women, they are suspicious propery and slaves.
James Joyce’s “Araby” and the story of “A & P” by John Updike have many characteristic similarities as well as literary traits. These stories focus on a young man trying to learn the difference between the romantic fantasies that play in their mind and the bitterness that reality can bring to a young man. In both stories a young man has built an unrealistic expectation of women only to meet the tragic despair of being rejected by the object of their boyish fantasy. In both of these stories the authors choose to show that life is not always what it may always appear.