The Role of Values in Marquez and El Saadawi - Essay Example

Driven to Murder: The Role of Values in Marquez and El Saadawi One thing that can be learned from reading the literature of other cultures is what values are most prized in their society. While individuality might be valued highly in Western society, an African tribal culture might have no use for it. Reading the literature of other cultures and seeing how the protagonists of the stories respond gives us a window into their societies. In Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi and Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, two stories that come from vastly differing cultures, the protagonists reactions to the events affecting their lives are a direct outcome of their belief in the values of their society. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the moral value in question is honour, whereas in Woman at Point Zero it is attainment of power. These values determine the characters actions and thereby shape their fates: “The work of Gabriel Garcia Marquezs Chronicle of a Death Foretold reads much like a Greek tragedy in that events proceed in an unforgiving inevitability” (website). In Woman at Point Zero, the protagonist Firdaus is manipulated and dishonoured by a number of people in her life. She has no power over the events that happen to her. She gradually learns the value of power and money which enables one to gain control over others and that becomes the utmost aim in her life. "All my life I have been searching for something that would fill me with pride, make me feel superior to everyone else, including kings, princes and rulers." Her life as a prostitute provides her a source of power she wields over men. She finds that men throughout her life mistreat her and use her until eventually she kills one of them. Firdaus is manipulated by all the elders in her life. All the major decisions in her life are taken on her behalf by her elders or the men. Firdaus life becomes a resistance against her male dominated society. She never takes delight in relationships with men. She needs to be treated as equal which in no way occurs within the respectable life of an office assistant. As a prostitute Firdaus has no need to show respect toward even the most powerful of men and thus gains her own dignity and free will. In Firdaus world, men wish to subjugate women, stripping them of all of their power. In this society, a respectable woman is one that submits to a man’s will and depends upon him for protection. By rejecting these values, Firdaus claims a sense of power and freedom over those that wish to imprison her mentally. The motif of captivity is central to the novel. For Firdaus, life outside the prison was one that she spent in captivity. She did not have the options of choosing to do as she wished whenever she chose to. This pervaded her person to such an extent that her mind was not her own; even though she was literally imprisoned while she was in jail, having her freedom stripped from her, she did not achieve a sort of mental freedom until her physical freedom was taken away. Firdaus agrees to meet with Nawal not to gain sympathy or to try to gain freedom; she does so to exercise the power and freedom that she achieved through her actions, as is demonstrated through this quote: Her voice continued to echo in my ears, vibrating in my head, in the cell, in the prison, in the streets, in the whole world, shaking everything, spreading fear wherever it went, the fear of the truth which kills, the power of truth, as savage, and as simple, and as awesome as death, yet as simple and as gentle as a child that has not yet learnt to lie. While before she gained power through money, now she gained power through the truth, which was something that those that wished to subjugate her could never take away from her. Similarly, honour as a moral value affects the lives of all the major characters in Chronicle of a Death Foretold as they exist in relation to a single major event. The defence of honour is the single driving force behind the plot of the story. No one is exempt from it, and one character pays with his life for an offence he probably didn’t commit. Not much is learned about Santiago in the novel. The narrator does appear to try to give him the appearance of innocence, as he claims to have no idea about what is going on when the brothers confront him: "His manner reflected not so much fear as confusion." His appearance of innocence is not enough to counteract the offence to Angela’s honour. The story is not pieced together in a linear manner; its more like a ritual of investigation providing no discoveries or results. The narrator is more interested in showing the events of the day from multiple viewpoints rather than to give a clear picture of the victim. This is done to show how everyone’s opinion is filtered through the idea of honour. Angela had lost her honour through the loss of her viginity out of wedlock. Because of this loss of honour, the rest of her life would be altered. She was given back to her family on her wedding night, she had to accuse an innocent man in order for him to be murdered to receive some sort of dignity back, and she had to wait many, many years to be with the man that she truly wanted to be with. Also, in order for her honour and her family’s honour to not be completely destroyed, she had to keep up her apparent facade for the rest of her life: "She would recount it in all its details to anyone who wanted to hear it, except for one item that would never be cleared up: who was the real cause of her damage and how and why.” The Vicario brothers are forced to defend the honour of their sister, which means that they were forced to commit a murder. This is obviously a very strong social determining factor if it impelled two men that were not criminals to commit an act as serious as murder. They didn’t really seem to feel as though they had a choice in the matter; it was something that they were compelled to do. As the fiancé of one of the brothers said: "I never would have married him if he hadnt done what a man should do". However, it is as though they spoke openly to the town’s people about their intentions in hopes that someone might intervene and keep them from committing a murder that they probably did not want to commit. Santiago pays the price for supposedly dishonouring Angela. Angela pays the price for not being a virgin. The Vicario brothers have to commit a crime to defend the honour of their sister. Roman has to discard his wife because honour means everything to him. All the characters display a variety of emotions. They show both negative and positive aspects to their personalities. But to all of the characters, it would seem that honour must preside over all else. In our society today, nobody would be killed over the loss of a woman’s virginity before her wedding night, and women aren’t forced to resort to prostitution in order to gain some sort of power over their own lives. In these societies, these values of honour and power held such a strong hold on the characters as to be considered fate. While fate is generally thought of as some sort of divine predestination, it could be viewed as the values of these societies because how they affected the outcomes of so many lives. Because of the loss of honour, it could be said that Santiago was fated to die; the entire town had been informed of what was to happen, yet no one did a single thing about it. Because men were determined to hold power over women in Firdaus’ society, it could be said that Firdaus was punished not only for killing a man, but for trying to alter her fate. Even though she felt free for the first time, she was not able to enjoy her freedom for long as she was executed. There is not much of a difference between saying that fate caused the actions as opposed to saying that the characters were forced into their actions by societal values. Most of the characters in both pieces suffered from an unfortunate and eventual fate. Works Cited El Saadawi, Nawal. Woman at Point Zero. Marquez, Gabriel Garcia Collected Novellas: Chronicle of A Death Foretold. New York, Harper Collins, 1990. http://www.mercy.edu/faculty/morales/chronicledeath.html Read More