Feminism on Phenomenal Woman (Poem)

The poem Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou contains the element of feminism as it presents the ability of a woman to be extraordinary and remarkable among others. It talks about a woman who is so proud to be woman, who is confidence and has faith in herself. She also believes in her inner strength that makes her able to achieve success in her life as man could be.

This poem represents the evidence of capability or power of a woman over anything which is directly denying the stereotypes of gender that people have on women. It proves that women are not like what has been claimed by post-structuralist feminist who inspired by psychoanalysis idea that the position of woman is founded on the notion of lack. Thus, it is believed that they are not eligible for the independent as men could be. Although they are founded of the notion of lack, which is referring to the lack of “the male equipment”, women are actually able to have place in society and have the rights as men could have. That perception is not true seems this poem has proved that a woman in this poem presented as someone who could work and survive for her life by the strength she has.

The poet also tells the readers by denying the fact that women could be success only just by using their beauty they have as it only lies much beyond the outer appearance and does not have much power to change the life except by our own will. The most important thing is the effort of the women itself toward achieving victory in their life. A woman in this poem is able to tackle the attention of the men even she does not have that much beauty of a woman supposedly has. What makes those men fancy her is the phenomenal appearance that she has which leads her to be successful in her life. While other women also interested to know the secret of her success which is actually lies on her confident and the towering personality she has. This shows that how a woman can be dominant and influential to everybody either to men and other women too when men are fancy her while the women envy her.

Through this poem I can discover that the poet somehow tries to say that women should have the right to engage with society and not to believe and follow the gender stereotypes blindly without an observation and experiment of how women can work and manage their life. Chance should be given to them and people need to trust their ability. What is important to be successful in life is not by choosing which gender are able to do well but the individual itself no matter it is a man or a woman as long as they have confidence and faith in themselves and they can work better in their life.

Feminism in So Long a Letter (Novel)

Feminism is defined as a propagation of women’s rights of political, social, and economic equality to men as well as it reflects concern with the silencing and marginalization of women in patriarchal culture which is organized in the favor of men. Realizing the meaning of feminism, I would like to relate this concept with the story of So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba. The author of this novel, Mariama Ba, has achieved a reputation as a writer who adds a strong, unique, and culturally relevant feminist to modern African literature. Ba also got salutation by feminist critics for creating female characters which are able to speak and act independently and have sense of personal identity. This is because her female characters have encountered a lot of struggle through virtual isolation to overcome these various injustices in society.

So, I can notice one of her work that is So Long a Letter, has presented those characters throughout this story. This novel recounts the stories of two women and their husbands, lifelong friends living in Senegal during the post-colonial period of national reformulation. It is written in the form of a long from one woman, Ramatoulaye, to her beloved friend, Aissatou. In this from the story, I found feminist element when Ramatoulaye’s husband, Modou, takes a second wife without his wife consideration and putting aside her feeling. Later, he also ignores his first family by focusing only on his second wife. Here, it can be seen that Modou has taken advantages of Ramatoulaye as his wife who should follow anything that her husband wish. As a woman, she also considered as weak and cannot do anything except just follow whatever desires by her husband. However, Rama still have strength and toughness in facing the challenging life when she remains performing her responsibility as a mother. She takes on the work of running a household alone and tries to do everything to entertain herself even though she is in deep loneliness. Later, she also learns to drive, opening up a newfound sense of independence by her friend, Aissatou’s encouragement.

As feminism deals with women’s liberation, Aissatou’s decision in divorcing his husband, Mwado, for marrying another girl is seemingly one of the acts of feminism. She tries to escape herself from her betrayal husband and also has proven her success regardless of miserable life she faced. It can be seen when she is able to pursue her education with a vengeance and finally being appointed to the Senegalese Embassy in the United State.

Some of male characters in the story tend to take advantage of women like the character of Tasmir, Modou’s brother who wants to marry Rama apparently for the financial support reason. Despite of having already three wives, he still wants to have another wife. His attitude shows that men like to treat women as property to be own. Iba, the one who has caused the out-of-wedlock pregnancy of Rama’s daughter also can be considered as someone who likes to take advantage of a woman when he did not marry her first before making her pregnant. Rama’s daughter, also name Aissatou is expelled from the school due to this problem while boys never suffer such consequences. It reveals the inequality and injustice women have to face in the society which could affect their future life.

In So Long a Letter, author Mariama Ba confronts with changing social climates and the role women play within it, paying particularly attention to the importance of education which allows women to lift themselves up. Based on Rama and Aissatou’s shared past and divergent adult lives, Ba conclude the narration of the story by presenting the ways women can buck tradition and create new spaces and roles for themselves and their daughters.

 

The Wedding of Zein

“The Wedding of Zein” is consider to be a great literary masterpiece of a renowned Arabic writer, Tayeb Salleh. This book was first published in Arabic language and had went through major translation of other distinctive languages. In an instant period, this book has being translated into German, Latin and English Language. “The Wedding of Zein” came into existence as a continuation within the writing of “Season of Immigration to the North”. Aside from that, this book can be recognized as an exceptional literary work as it embedded three distinguish short stories in just a single piece of book. Despite of its main narrative of “The Wedding of Zein”, Tayeb Salleh also included another short stories entitled “The Doum Tree of Wad Hamid” and “A Handful of Dates”.

           

The narration revolves around miscellaneous happenings that occurred at Zein’s place. In particular, Zein is regarded as the focal point of the story’s plot. The news of Zein’s nuptial has brought the whole villagers into a bombshell. Zein is being disdained by the villagers for having a peculiar appearance and they guarantee that no one would marry him. Once the news spread, every group of the villagers is shock to know that Zein is getting married to the most intelligent, pious, and pretty lady in the village, Ni’ma. While news of Zein’s nuptials dispersing all over the village, the presence of Haneen, Zein’s closest companion has also left the villagers puzzled. Haneen is seen at the village only several times and his disappearance sometimes is not known by the villagers. The narration also covered on occurrences that took place among the Imam’s group, Mahjoub and Seif ad-Din. All groups at Zein’s place portray varied characters and beliefs. Towards the end of the narration, Zein’s ceremony is being depicted with euphoria ambient. Nevertheless, the denouement is heart-rending with the death of Haneen and Zein is found weeping at Haneen’s tomb on his wedding night.

“The Wedding of Zein” is filled with colours of element that make the prose to be enthralling and worth reading. It combines realistic and fictional features all at the same time. In his book, Tayeb Salleh inserted the element of “sufism” through the character of Haneen. In Islamic religion, “sufism” is allude as an inner mystical dimension of its followers and this belief is often associated with mental detachment from worldly matters. Haneen is seen as a “Sufi” who strives for Ihsan (perfection of worship as if with the presence of God) and only focuses on his religion’s obligations. He seldom talk to the villagers and contemplate more on the creation of all existences. In addition, the narration also shares the concept of magic within a rational setting. Magical realism element is being marked via the event of Zein’s transformation. At the initial prose, he is being described as one who has eerie physical characters for having legs like a crane, rectangular face, reddish yet small eyes and having only two teeth in his higher jaw and lower jaw. Zein’s absurd appearance nonetheless changed into a complete transformation when he suddenly turned out to be of certain handsomeness. He was awake after some injuries with sparkling face, spotless white clothes and gleaming white teeth. Alongside with magical element, Tayeb Salleh also incorporates another identical element of supernatural features. Here, Zein also is pertained with events that are impotent to be described by laws of nature. Instead of having preposterous looks, Zein also possess extraordinary superhuman strength. He was able to lift a calf from ground and swing it round and throw it to the ground. Furthermore, Zein is being delineated as an emissary of love. For mothers, they would love to have a visit from Zein as he could change the fate of their daughters. Whoever that Zein met will be guaranteed to find a husband within merely one or two months’ time. This occasion might not be feasible for an ordinary human being and Zein’s ability is verily beyond natural phenomenon.

Apart from that, fictional images, settings and happenings that Tayeb Salleh conveyed in the story in a way can be related to the concept of Structuralism proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure. Structuralists interested in basic elements of units that make up meaningful system and they believe that the mechanisms are all the product of human mind. In “The Wedding of Zein”, it can be seen that the community living in the village is of various backgrounds. However, they are living harmonically and celebrate the feast together despite of their differences. This event is parallel to what De Saussure hold onto the notion of ‘meaningful system’ and ‘the product of human mind’. Tayeb Salleh succeed in giving a clear view of a meaningful system by the characters of the villagers and even they are indifferent, they are still able to live with bliss and honor each other traits. The way Tayeb Salleh structured the characters of the narration also can be seen from the concept of Post Structuralist’s theory. The villagers of Zein’s place are apparent to be divided into two incongruous groups; religious and unreligious. This event is ascribe to what Derrida refers to the concept of “binary opposition”. Any structure is believe to possess binary pairs or oppositions that placed in relation to each other. Thus, the religious group can be marked as one with positive attribute whereas negative can be called onto unreligious group. In the prose, the religious group is the one who devoted to Islamic religion such as Haneen, Imaams and Ni’ma. On the contrary, characters of Seif ad-Din and Mahjoub are seen to be in denial for religious aspect. They only concern on the worldly affairs and did not abide to the religious obligations.

 

The Kite Runner

Kite Runner is written by Khaled Hossaini in March 2001. The novel itself was published in 2015. When this novel was published, Afghanistan at that time is embroiled in a war with United States, but, still this novel receive great reactions and was sold in millions copies. Since Khaled Hossaini himself is an Afghan, he admitted that his childhood and his experience in United States do influence him in his writings. This can be seen in the characters’ favorites like playing with kites, the dispute between ethnicities, and especially the difficulties experienced by Khaled Hossaini in adjusting at United States when he first came to United States. His experience in the flea market, conducting business with his father also semeed to be included in the market with the context of Amir and Baba (Amir’s father)

Kite Runner is a heartbreaking story. The story is set as Amir is the narrator of the story and all the details of his childhood with Hassan is retold on his reminiscence about the past. Amir is now a grown man married to Soraya but has no child. On his journey back to Kabul, Afghanistan, he recalled a lot of his experiences. Amir returned back to Kabul upon a call from Rahim Khan, his father figure, his father’s business partner. Rahim Khan told him to come back, visiting him who is now sick with cancer and asked for his help in looking for Sohrab, a child of Hassan and his wife, Farzana. Rahim Khan also told him of Baba’s secret and told him that Hasssan is actually his half brother.

Amir was born to a wealthy and respected well known man called as Baba in the story. Amir’s mother die after three weeks of Amir’s birth. All the domestic needs in the house are catered by Ali and his son, Hassan. Hassan and Ali grow to be a close friend since both of them have lost mothers at the young age, Hassan’s mother ran away, recreating the friendship history of Ali and Baba. From Amir’s perspective, Baba is distant from him and did not shower him with love. Instead, he saw Baba to favour Hassan more than him. However, the truth is, Baba resents himself because he cant shower his love for Hassan directly because of Hassan’s status of Pashtun and because of Hassan is known to the public as Ali’s son. Because of this also, Baba cant shower Amir with love as it will be unfair to both of his sons.

On top of this, Amir and Baba come from a class who is considered to be a higher class, Pashtun whereas Ali and Hassan come from a lower class, Hazara. Besides, both Ali and Hassan are Shiah Muslim while Baba and Amir are Sunni Muslim.Consequently, this later creates an inner conflict in Amir, Amir sometimes treats Hassan as a servant. This is because at that time, Afgan view Hazara people as lower people and any associations and relations between Hazara and Pahtun are condemnable. In order to win Baba’s love, Amir is determined to win the kite race, as this is the only similarity found between Baba and him. Even Amir’s interest towards writing does not impress Baba. Amir did won the contest, and in order to gain the falling kite back. Hassan offered himself to take it for him. Unfortunately, an event happened that changed Amir forever. He saw Hassan getting raped by Assef, their nemesis and stood there cowardly, did not offer any help. Ripping by guilt, Amir framed Hassan and Ali by putting watch and money inside their hut.

Even though Hassan did not steal the money, Hasan willingly admit that. Suprisingly, Baba did not kick them out of the house, instead Baba forgives them. Probably because at this time, Baba is still feeling guilty towards Ali and Hassan and the thought of seeing them away breaks his heart.

Nevertheless, Ali and Hassan are adamant with their decision to go away, crying and still sobbing, Baba allowed them to go. Few years later, Amir and Baba moved to United States as the war is getting worse and lost contact with Ali and Hassan. Later, Baba died because of cancer and Amir got called from Rahim Khan who acts as the intermediator of Amir’s past and present. Amir still feels guilty with that incident and decided that, by retrieving Sohrab will atone his and his father’s sins.

From the summary itself, it is clear that the characters in the novel posit themselves with their own binary oppositions and with religion is the center. This is aligned within Derrida’s theory of Deconstruction. The binary oppositions themselves are in the sense of ethnicities between Pashtun and Hazara among the characters. They derived from the center themselves which in this context is Islam.To make situation more complicated, both of these ethnicities denote different sects of religion. For Pashtun, their sect is usually Sunni Islam and Hazara dominates the sect of Shia Muslim. In addition, Pashtun is considered to be from higher class and Hazara comes from lower class. This later proven to be a significant part of the binary opposition since Pashtun is seen as the positive one and is given a cultural value. This is because Pashtun and Sunni Muslim is marked as the order or systematic part in the society whereas Hazara and Shia Muslim is viewed as the corruptive part of the society.

Withins this structure, both ethnicities act accordingly to their purposes. Hazara serve as servants in the society like Hassan and Ali whereas Pashtun is to be the wealthy people in the society, for example, Amir, Baba and Assef. This is aligned with Sunni status in Muslim who is deemed to be the right way of practicing religion. However, when this structure is shaken, the characters’ status are shifted. Baba who practices Sunni and is a wealthy person turns out to have committed fornication. The result is, Baba has an illegitimate child whom he can’t publicly acknowledge as the child is Hazara descendant. In contrast with Hazara, it is Ali, a Hazara, who takes care of Baba’s son. Now, the centre is shaken up and Pashtun is no longer the right sect anymore. Assef who is also a Pashtun now is a member of Taliban, who practices the killing and is violent towards innocent person. In the end, Pashtun and Hazara criteria got mixed up and the structure is messed up. In regards to this, when the structure got shaken, the only way is to reject the whole scenario or build a new one, but according to Derrida this is worthless as the structure did is to go back at the square one.

SILENCED

Silenced is inspired by real life events happened in boarding school for deaf in Korea. In the early 2000s, children in Gwangju Inhwa School were sexually violated and were physically abused by the teachers there. This created brouhaha among the Korean residents at that time. Despite the heavy crimes, the offenders only receive light punishment for their crimes and were only prisoned for less than a year. This leads the best selling novelist and author, Gong Ji Young to write a novel inspired from it. This novel later proves to be a huge success because in 2011, the film version is released directed by Hwang Dong Hyuk. The film manages to attract the public attention again. The case was reopened and the law known as “Dogani Bill” was passed. As for the school, Gwangju city which the school was based on, officially shut down the school only after two months the release of the film. Some of the offenders plead guilty and one of them was sentenced to 12 years prison.

This film started with Kang Ho In appointed as an art teacher at Benevolence Academy, a deaf school for children in the fictional city of Mujin, North Jeolla Province. Having a daughter with the same age to most of the children in school. He tries relentlessly to being friendly to the children. However, most of the children seem distant from him and seems to avoid him a lot. That changes when one day he saved a girl from being drowned by a female staff. The girl later confessed how the headmaster in the school sexually abused her and her friend. Later on, a boy also came forward. Each one of them told how they were abused verbally and their confession was recorded on tape. Kang Ho In later notified his friend who he bumped earlier in the story. Together, they try to bring the perpetrator to jail and give the kids justice.

The Crucible or widely known as Silenced can be categorized as a mystery-horror movie which revolves around the dark experiences of the innocent students. This movie is full with suspense elements added with plot twist which absolutely left the viewers with compelling satisfaction. The major theme exhibited in the movie is mainly focusing on the mental and physical struggles that being faced by the victim, the students. Parallel to the genre type, this movie is entirely being set up in a very gloomy and dark environment. The atmosphere of the scenes insist the viewer in giving a realistic mood similar to the events experienced by the victims. Dark, black and lightless scene of the film is kind of a symbolism to the dark experience faced by the students which they need to go through many complications throughout their stay in the school. The students have being physically and sexually abused without any definite reasons. They are being treated like a slave to most of the fiendish and merciless school stuff and are consider as an object to fulfill their sexual desire and a place to release their anger.

Based on the film, the characters can be said to be derived from a huge gap whereby most of the main characters are all villainous and cruel. Only the students and minor characters are consider as having a righteous behavior. If to be looked at the context of post structuralism theory, this situation is alike to the concept of binary oppositions. Here, the Centre which being ruled by the concept of God (or human mind or unconscious) is being surround with the structures that always opposed to each other. The structures refer to the concept of binary pairs or opposition. Meaning to say, the characters portray in the film in a way can be related to what the poststructuralist believes which opposing characters are surely to be existed in one particular structure and the pair would definitely denote different values. Those who stay near to the Centre is believed to be stable and well mannered (as in the good characters of the film) whereas the villainous characters incline to be opposed to the prior character which poststructuralist thinks that they “move” and “play”. In this sense, Kang Ho In and his friend are grouped in the binary opposition of “good” while the headmaster or perpetrator is belong to the “bad” side.

However, there is a possibility for the structure to be diminished and shaken up which leads to the existence of Deconstruction by Derrida’s term. In this situation, the structures break down and ambiguity takes over. This event can be seen when the “good” characters begin to swirl and incline to be “bad”. For example, the victims’ family changed their decision to put the perpetrator in the prison once they had received the money from the perpetrator. This is a classic example of how the rich people have an influence to the society and the poor people. In conclusion, this film can be interpreted from the light of Derrida’s theory of Post Structuralism and Deconstruction.

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