Upward mobility Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Upward mobility - Essay Example This third time-level represents one facet of several possible comparisons between the narrator and Sa'eed, all urged by the construction of the novel around this pair of characters.At the very beginning of the novel, the narrator refers to his time in England as seven years of longing and describes the place as "a land 'whose fishes die of the cold'". The narrator's characterizations of his studies abroad are typically vague and completely lacking in detail (as in the preceding example) or dismissive. The narrative of Mustafa Sa'eed's experiences as a student, intellectual and Sudanese expatriate in England. This time-level first appears relatively late in comparison with the other time-levels, (Tayeb , 183) After offering this optimistic cross-cultural comparison, the narrator notes the ominously silent Mustafa Sa'eed, who "said nothing". Sa'eed's silence parallels the narrator's own reticence to share all his thoughts with the villagers, a reticence which possibly reflects deeper misgivings about the truth of his upbeat observation. The narrator thinks to himself that in England, just as in the Sudan. Some are strong and some arc weak; that some have been given more than they deserve by life, while others have been deprived by it, but that the differences are narrowing and most of the weak are no longer weak. This comparison begs the question, however, of whether the same can be said of the relationship between England and the Sudan, rather than within both England and the Sudan.30 For Sa'eed, as both we and the narrator learn in subsequent chapters, a chasm separates East/South from North/West, a gulf reflecting powerlessness and power, respectively, in response to which he embarks on his personal program of violent revenge. Even before Sa'eed's story is begun, however, Sa'eed questions the relevance of the narrator's experiences abroad. Sa'eed introduces himself to the narrator and remarks, in a vaguely dismissive manner, on the latter's achievements. (Tayeb , 183) Solid and unproblematic values, the humanistic act of studying another culture's literature, and the virtue of humility, all appear in conjunction with the narrator's experiences in Europe. Yet the dissimulation calls into question the values implicit in the narrator's very general description of his experiences abroad. Sa'eed responds by attacking the narrator's choice of subject: "We have no need of poetry here". Sa'eed's blunt criticism reflects the unviability of the naive model offered by the narrator for a possible relationship between England and the Sudan. The eager Sudanese student assiduously applying himself to the acquisition of the higher (in both senses) European literary culture offers, for Sa'eed, a pathetic reflex of the rapa ciousness of European Orientalism (including philology): "a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient. Even though it is Mustafa Sa'eed who is speaking, the narrator's own experiences in an idealized England populated by poets, humanists, and doctoral candidates render English poetry intelligible to him. Ironically, precisely those idealized experiences allow him to perceive Mustafa Sa'eed as an interloper in the otherwise (also highly idealized) cultural homogeneity and simplicity of the village. The narrator's