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Karen Oliveira

1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Karen Monique Oliveira

2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 English 2850

3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 Prof. Peer

4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Due Date: 11/14/16

5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 Essay 2: Season of Migration to the North

6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 2 First impressions are important. They determine how we see a person, place or thing and where our thoughts on the subject go from there. In literature we rely on the authors description to form our own opinions about a character. That first impression may or may not be correct but it remains the basis of how we interpreted a character would be. Mustafa Sa’eed quickly became the centerpiece of the story in Tayeb Salih’s book Season of Migration to the North. We were first introduced to him as a subtle character that took prominence in the mind of the initial young narrator. As a mystery to both the reader and the narrator it seemed as though Mustafa’s characters would be one that would just pass by but it may not seem so early on that he would be central to the story at least not from my initial impression. Early on in the story when Mustafa was still a mystery, he recites an English poem quite surprisingly after drinking with the men in the village and having mocked the narrator for studying poetry having it called useless. The poem speaking of war, he chose to recite was quite striking and a fore shadow of his true story and identity although the reader may not have realized at first read that this was the case.

7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 1 Those women of Flanders

8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 Await the lost,

9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 Await the lost who never will leave the harbor

10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 They await the lost whom the train will never bring.

11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 To the embrace of those women with dead faces,

12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 They await the lost, who lie dead in the trenches,

13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 The barricade and the mud.

14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0 In the darkness of the night,

15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 This is charing cross station, the hour’s past one,

16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 There was a faint light,

17 Leave a comment on paragraph 17 0 There was a great pain. (13-14)

18 Leave a comment on paragraph 18 1 This was the poem Mustafa recited clearly after drinking a bit. The narrator was agitated and upset because it came to a shock after Mustafa had mocked him and said he should’ve studied something other then poetry which was useless for the village. But when Mustafa recited that poem its as if he was a different man then he led on, he not only recited it clearly but the gaze in his eyes showed that it had in a way transported him. At first reading this part of the story, I did not think much of the content of the poem but more so of the fact that he had recited the poem in English so clearly at all in the first place. The interaction between Mustafa and the narrator that followed over shadowed the content of the poem. It was just a piece of writing in the midst of various actions and judgments being made by the narrator. However beyond the context of the poem, this episode in the story also showed that we as the reader and also the narrator know absolutely nothing about this man and for the author to include the narrator’s strong feeling about it, it must be important to the story.

19 Leave a comment on paragraph 19 1 “ It’s clear you’re someone other then the person you claim to be” said the narrator to Mustafa. He insists that they were only words of a drunken man but knowing the whole story now, we as the narrator and reader know that it is a false statement and that at this point we do not know that he is a traveled, educated, manipulating murderer. The narrator goes on to contemplate in his head who this man really is and why were his instincts about him all off. As the reader I still couldn’t grasp why the infatuation with this particular character, it seemed in some ways to take away from the narrator’s story. But after Mustafa invited him to tell him about his true story and once he became the narrator, it became clear that the story was now his and the book was about to take somewhat of a turn. As he told his story of growing up without a father and being educated and traveled, we could sense a twist coming and a narrative that started out as repetitive suddenly had purpose. And the previous context also began to make more sense.

20 Leave a comment on paragraph 20 1 “Life is full of pain”, said Isabella Seymour to him. Isabelle Seymour was one of the women he seduced and had relations with who eventually killed herself. She was at first less inclined to have relations with him but in his telling of their time together reveals that after doing so, she tells him that she loves him. Like the poem they discuss the pain that is inherent in life but either way there is an optimism that is necessary to keep going. In these women he has relationships with he is constantly searching for something that he isn’t going to find. He uses his intelligence to manipulate the women and get what he wants but somehow is completely detached to the emotions that follow.

21 Leave a comment on paragraph 21 3 Both Ann Hammond and Sheila Greenwood commit suicide by what they describe as fault of Mustafa. He seems completely cold and unaffected by this when being interrogated by his attorney. And when asked about Jean Morris , he openly admits to having intentionally killed her and also seemed unaffected by that. But as a human being, it is hard to believe that he is completely un phased by all this. The poem seems to describe how women wait for their men to return although what they are awaiting is already lost and that hope is non existent. In all these stories about Mustafa and his women, it seems as though his hope was never even there. How can hope die when it never even lived? Its as if his mind was a war. There is no true hope in war , even in the beginning. All these women were battles he created that he won over in the end but with nothing to gain. War seems inevitable to society at some point in time and also is simply destructive. But war is often justified through various opinions, histories, evaluations and in the end is plotted to seem important. Although war is how a lot of places are conquered, in the end life is still lost and the destructive aura remains in place. War is simply sad and from a humanistic point of view is unforgiving. Having read all of Mustafa’s story and the infatuation that the narrator had with him, the feelings seem similar. The things he did seemed justified and a man of his education couldn’t just be acting out of some sort of stupidity. We could blame it on his frigid relationship with his mother but that doesn’t change the outcome of the story. Four women died. Although suicide is something you do yourself, it is something that can be caused by the destruction one causes (such as war). And at other times it is more direct, as it was with Jean Morris. His intellect clouded his true being which was that of an evil person. Like war seems justified when it is for the sake of another group of people without realizing we are forsaking others in the process. Yet we are fascinated by it ,the way the narrator is fascinated by Mustafa. War is seductive, when the end promises are so enticing. The narrator keeps coming back to Mustafa’s story and in the end it drives him to want to commit suicide. But then something as small as his desire for a cigarette changed his tune. He still wanted something, he still longed for life. Of course the cigarette was just a metaphor that he still desired for the simple pleasure life has to give and it wasn’t his time to go.

22 Leave a comment on paragraph 22 0 They await the lost whom the train will never bring. To the embrace of those women with dead faces, They await the lost, who lie dead in the trenches,

23 Leave a comment on paragraph 23 1 The barricade and the mud. (13). There was nothing to gain from a war, but only a loss to be felt. Mustafa’s story was a series of losses and stories of his own intellect which seemed to have no concrete lesson or anything that seemed useful. His killing was romanticized , his relationships destructive and yet the author glamorized all this with his being an educated and traveled man amongst not so traveled men . He recited the poem and it was his first his slip of revealing his true identity and eventually we learned the destruction that he was. The narrator’s curiosity was somewhat fed but almost led to his demise. Concluding, his story was many things, shocking, active, romanticized but it felt as if there wasn’t much to gain from it.

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Source: https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/fall2016writing/?page_id=140%2F