Men become victims of their misplaced trust in false friends - Essay Example

Men become victims of their misplaced trust in false friends. Panos Ioannides wrote Gregory in 1963. Gregory uses a first person narrator. It is about the story of a prisoner, Gregory, who places complete trust in the friendship of his enemy. Gregory was given two chances to escape to save his own life but he fails to run away. Gregory is materialistic. He cares only for his present which is comfortable enough for him. He does not realize his friend must obey his superior and that means that his friend will kill him. Gregory is shot but he does not die immediately. He hangs on to his friend for life or for death. His friend is forced to shoot him several times in order to make a clean killing. His friend honors Gregory by not humiliating his body with a public hanging. Gregory thinks that his friend has breached his trust by shooting him. His soldier friend blames Gregory's stupidity for his death. Nabil Gorgy wrote Cairo Is a Small City in 1983. This story is about Engineer Adil Salim, who is killed in revenge for his murder of a bedouin man, Mubarak bin Rabia. Adil is a proud man who has a big ego. He thinks of himself being intelligent because he is educated as an engineer. He makes the false overture of drawing attention to himself by his blatant courtship of a beautiful bedouin girl named Salma. He is watched and recognized as the murderer of Mubarak. The bedouins plot their vengeance craftily. They are above reproach as they use the girl, Salma, as bait to ensnare Adil. Adil falls into their trap and is killed. Adil is a victim of his own carelessness, ego, lust, stupidity and trusting nature. Cairo Is a Small City uses an omniscient narrator. This essay uses these two short stories to compare the similarities on how trust is betrayed. The essay takes the position that the two victims, Gregory and Adil, deserve to die, because of the fault of gullible trust in their personal characters. Adil trusted in the shopkeeper's strategy of befriending the woman because he saw that it worked. Gorgy and the omniscient narrator want to blame the shopkeeper for showing Adil the flirtatious method of bartering for the woman's affections. The narration says; '...had it not been for that day, Adil's mind would not have given birth to the plan he was determined, whatever the cost, to put through, because of that woman who had bewitched his heart.' (Hirschberg & Hirschberg 24). Adil does not question the consequences if the trust goes wrong. He is gullible and the fault is his alone. Adil trusted in his own bravery. The evidence that supports this argument is in the narration; ''As every man, according to Adil's philosophy of life, had within him a devil, it was sometimes better to follow this devil in order to placate him and avoid his tyranny.' (Hirschberg & Hirschberg 24). When Salma's father asks Adil many questions, alarm bells started ringing in his head but Adil chooses to ignore the feeling that something might be wrong. Instead, Adil sweeps the feeling of misgiving away. The narrator says; 'Though Adil noticed in the father's tone something more than curiosity, he attributed this to the nature of the bedouin and their traditions.' (Hirschberg & Hirschberg 27). Adil makes the mistake of taking the interrogation lightly. He places complete trust in Salma and her father who have invited him to their home. It is his mistake. Adil only realizes too late that his trust is misplaced; 'In the same way as Adil had previously built the seven storey building that represented the seven months, each month containing twenty-eight days, till he would see Salma's face whenever it was full moon, he likewise sensed that this was the tribunal which had been set up to make an enquiry with him into the killing of the man whom he had one day come across on the tracks between the oases of Kharga and Farshout.' (Hirschberg & Hirschberg 27). Adil was too trusting to walk into the lion's lair of the bedouins and he was served his punishment. In the story of Gregory, the narrator and executing soldier blames Gregory's trusting nature for ignoring the danger signals. He says; 'That very morning, although he had heard over the loudspeakers that Rafel had been executed, he believed that we would spare his life because we had been eating together so long.' (Hirschberg & Hirschberg 648). Gregory is a trusting fool who believes in a common saying to save his life. The narrator quotes Gregory's simple philosophy; '"Those who eat from the same mess tins and drink from the same water canteen," he (Gregory) said, "remain good friends no matter what."' (Hirschberg & Hirschberg 648). The narrator continues to give evidence that Gregory is a trusting fool when he mentions that Gregory does not escape when he was given the chances to run away. Gregory trusts that he would be able to live in comfort with his captors when he says that he is all right living in his captivity. Gregory thinks that if his captors trust him to wash laundry and perform chores alone, he should return the trust by not escaping. The soldier captors do not tell Gregory directly that they have received orders to kill him. Gregory trusts them to tell him if his life is in mortal danger. The narrator says; 'We didn't tell him anything when he came back from the washing. He slept peacefully. He snored for the last time. In the morning, he heard the news over the loudspeaker and he saw that we looked gloomy and he began to suspect that something was up. He tried talking to us, but he got no answers and then he stopped talking. He just stood there and looked at us, stunned and lost...' (Hirschberg & Hirschberg 650). This evidence places some fault with the soldiers who do not tell Gregory the truth. The narrator says that he has to save his own skin by obeying orders. This means that he has to kill his good friend, Gregory. Gregory now suspects that something is wrong but he is incapable of doing anything. The fault lies in Gregory. He trusts his so called friends but they cannot help him. The narrator repeats his argument that Gregory is a fool in trusting his enemies and so called friends. The narrator writes that since they have given Gregory two chances to escape and he ignores them, the blame now lies with Gregory. He writes; 'So now don't complain. Its all your fault, nitwit.' (Hirschberg & Hirschberg 650). There is irony in Gregory's murder because he does not die quickly but is conscious of his friend's act of the ultimate betrayal of trust. Gregory cannot understand that his friend belongs to the enemy forces and has to obey his superior's command. Gregory says that he hates his friend now because he thinks that his friend is to blame for the act of murdering him. This shows that Gregory has misplaced his trust in his friendship of his enemy. Although the stories of Gregory and Cairo Is a Small City share the common subject of trust, they differ in some aspects. Gregory trusts in his friends. Adil trusts in complete strangers. In both cases, their trust is misplaced and that costs them their lives. The story of Adil by an omniscient narrator does not convey Adil's personal reflections just before his death. Gregory is shown to be unbelieving that his friend could betray his trust by shooting him with the intention to kill him. The conclusion drawn from these two stories is that both Gregory and Adil deserve to die, because of the fault of their own gullible trust in their so called friends. The end. Works Cited. Gorgy, Nabil. "Cairo Is a Small City" Excerpted from Hirschberg, Stuart, & Hirschberg, Terry, Discovering The Many Worlds of Literature, USA: Amazon, 2006. Ioannides, Panos. "Gregory" Excerpted from Hirschberg, Stuart, & Hirschberg, Terry, Discovering The Many Worlds of Literature, USA: Amazon, 2006. Read More