reading to experience the other, an essay by gonzaga university in florence student linsey sekulich - the florence newspaper

Reading to Experience the Other, an essay by Gonzaga University in Florence student Linsey Sekulich

Essay by Linsey Sekulich, Psychology major, written during her fall semester 2007 at the Gonzaga-in-Florence University, for the course Studies in Fiction, Professor Gabriela Dragnea Horvath, addressing the relevant contribution of literature in knowing other cultures


Reading to Experience the Other

In order to understand people other than ourselves, cultures other than our own, or even our own family, sometimes we need literature. The power of the written word can be profound. Before reading novels like The Lover or Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, I lacked a fundamental understanding of certain cultural and personal perspectives. I have never interacted seriously with an Arab citizen, an Israeli Jew, a young Chinese communist citizen, an oppressed and inquisitive young girl, a sexually repressed older man, or even an adulteress, enough to truly understand each person’s respective viewpoint.

I have never really been able to imagine what life was like during the time of Mao Zedong or among a warring nation of Israelis and Arabs. Now I truly feel like I have had an interaction and a relationship of my own with each of these people and the environments they represent. Each of the stories we read contributed an insightful glimpse into unique characters and their cultures.

In The Lover, Yehoshua introduces his readers to the warring society of Israel in the 1970’s. He offers a unique examination of the situation by telling the story through the eyes of six narrators. One of the main characters, Adam, is a father and a husband who works as the manager of a car garage. He, an Israeli Jew, employs a large number of Arab workers with a calm and neutral attitude toward them. He believes they are cheap to employ and they all have family members to bring to work so there is never a shortage of workers.

It doesn’t go beyond that. He is generous and nice to them. He has a detached and cold relationship with his wife, who we learn he has lost his attraction to long ago.

They have almost a business relationship, very mechanical, largely attributed to her perfectionist and hard working personality. Adam is socially stunted, very quiet at parties, generous with the profits from his successful garage, and generally a simplistic man. He was pulled from his education at a young age. He fell out of love with his wife almost immediately after he married her, though this is not to say he didn’t try for a while. At one point he states, “Then I fell on my feet, kissed her knees, trying to arouse my desire for I had no desire.” Adam argues with himself over and over again about leaving his wife, Asya. He is unattached to her in almost every way. So one day, as an indirect result of this loss of attraction, Adam decides to bring home a lover for his wife. He manipulated this man, named Gabriel, because he knew he was weak and loosely tied to the community.

He brought him home under that façade of helping Asya with some of her work at home. For the readers, this action automatically throws up a psychological red flag for Adam. He knew almost instantly when their affair began, and he let it happen in their home in front of their daughter. He felt a sense of control over the situation and he enjoyed the power. I believe that on some level, he really wanted his wife to be happy with a new lover, but mostly that he wanted to take the attention away from his personal issues with her.

Another important issue to highlight with Adam is his sexual encounter with his daughter’s friend, Tali. He has such a suppressed sexuality during most of his marriage that it builds and builds until it finally breaks one day with Tali. This girl is 15 years old and he becomes attracted to her, he lusts after her, and he cannot resist her. Adam pursues Tali until he forces himself upon her while she resists at first, even cries, and finally falls silent. All of our personal glimpses into the life of this man create a disturbed character. While he can be such a generous and prosperous boss in public, he has significant social and sexual issues in his soul. Do we attribute these issues to the war? To simply his culture or religion? There are other men in the world just like Adam. It is not completely uncommon to develop serious issues like Adam’s in a situation like his or any other.

We are given insight into the culture created by war in this novel through encounters between Veducha and Na’im. She is an older woman and a more conservative example of one of the prejudiced generations living in present day Israel.

She is Jewish and believes that the Arabs are infiltrating everything, as illustrated in the story when she attempts to speak Arabic to him to make him feel comfortable and he responds in Hebrew. She is appalled at the idea that the Arabs are actually penetrating her life and sense of identity. Her disgust is indicative of ignorance and simple prejudice. Na’im on the other hand senses the old woman’s prejudice but retains his dignity by never biting back. He has mixed feelings toward her, but respects her enough not to sass her.

Along with Na’im, Dafi helps to represent the younger generation that is open to change and integration. They have grown up around the war; it is a part of their reality. Dafi, in particular, is an effective example of a typical young girl in this setting.

She is utterly appealing to readers like me because she is a universal character. I think that no matter what setting you put Dafi’s character in, she could remain static and unwavering at her core. She is a young impressionable girl who wants to retain her independence and keep happiness in her family.

She is secure in the face of neglect from her parents and loneliness at home. She studies the Bible in school and is opposed to war. She is unbiased in her friend selection and she is a shining symbol of Yehoshua’s hope for peace in Israel. She acts as a unique figure that can bring two worlds together and end an age old conflict.

In Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Sijie offers great insight into what was a very common experience during that setting. In communist China under the strict and demanding hand of Mao Zedong, young men and women were sent off to undergo “reeducation” which involved being trained to be better Marxists by farmers in small villages.

Our protagonist and his best friend Luo were two of those boys. They were in a small mountain village primarily being educated by the village headman, who happened to be an ex-opium grower. His character taught me a lot about the true effects of Mao’s policy. He was a symbol of blind obedience under Zedong’s regime. He put up no fight but instead conformed to the changes of Maoism. He was awestruck when he saw a violin, an alarm clock, and a book. I didn’t realize it was such an oddity to even lay eyes on objects such as these.

The protagonist, his best friend, the old Miller, the little seamstress, and Four-eyes also gave me a significant peek into the mindset of people in that experience.

Luo represented an enthusiastic and tenacious young man who was thrust into the oppressive and limiting life of a mountain village farmer under reeducation. He is attached to the concept of the outside world; one that is developing without him; one he has been harshly withheld from. He is adamant about the western books he finds in Four-eyes’ chest. He wants to use them as a tool for educating his lover, the title character. Luo believes that he can create a cultured, worldly, and exotic woman out of this simplistic Chinese farm girl.

The little seamstress begins as a modest character that only recognizes the true power of her beauty when the narrator and Luo come into her life. She rapidly begins to desire to learn, grow, and be more beautiful (according to western tradition). She learns about the rest of the world through the books that Luo reads her, particularly those of Balzac.

He teaches her about the world. One example of her true desire to leave her native world is when she is playing that game with Luo and the keys in the lake. It is a symbolic ritual where she is throwing his keys to the outside world into the lake so he can fetch them. She makes a huge sacrifice one day when the keys are lost in the bottom and she dives down to save them. In her efforts, she is bitten by something but tries one more time. She is so desperate to hang on to the idea of his exotic ties to the outside that his keys are the most tangible form of his appeal to her.

The protagonist seemed to be the most level-headed of the three. He puts up with the work he is given because I think he realizes that there is practically no use in arguing. If he puts up a fight it will most likely amount to nothing but pain or more misery. He accepts his forced duty but keeps the outside world close to his heart and can’t wait to get out of this situation, but makes the most of it while he is here. He appreciates the western books for what they are. He is a normal young man who envies certain qualities in his attention-winning and theatrical friend. He falls in love with a girl and creates a dilemma of loyalty to his friend. Our narrator is another example of a universal character, like Dafi.

Four-eyes is a character to slightly contrast with the narrator, Luo, and especially with the little seamstress. He is someone who happens to fall under the propaganda of Mao. He buys into the lifestyle of a Zedong communist. It seems to be because he is looking for a sense of security and prominence in society due to the fact that his mother is simply a poet who may not make it very far one day. He is offered official (or so he thinks) position that asks him to research and submit ancient village folk songs to a government magazine.

When he learns the old folk songs from the Miller (with the help of his friends), he is outraged because they completely oppose everything Mao is trying to instill. He decides to change the lyrics and give each song a completely different spin. Four-eyes also is part of the story that teaches us about the superstition of the old villages. Instead of completely conforming to the new societal demands, their village still partakes in a slaughter ritual for good luck.

The Old Miller is a character that contrasts everything about Mao Zedong’s regime. He lives by himself in a small house in the mountains. He lives a meager life, hungry, malnourished, and with poor hygiene. He directly differs from the Little Seamstress because he is above Maoism in a way that refuses change. He is a very pure character that existed before Maoism and that is able to retain his old traditions in light of it. When the plot brings the narrator and Luo to his house to learn old authentic village songs, he is welcoming and shows hospitality in the way he knows best.

He offers them his snack of jade stones. Although he is always drunk and slightly abnormal, he represents one of the only remaining perspectives of what China was like before Mao Zedong. I admire his character for being so formidable and unchanging. His unorthodox demeanor greatly increases the significance of his character in this story.

Each of these characters contributes to a well balanced and comprehensive understanding of their respective situations. I don’t know when in my life I would be able to interact with people who could lend such personal and detailed accounts of their experiences in those times.

The power of literature never ceases to impress and amaze me. I am so thankful we read these two novels in particular. After reading these novels, I feel like I have gained an enriching and insightful understanding of each respective character and the culture it represents. One thing I gather is that most authors like to imply youth as a key factor for hope and unity among cultures.

Both Dafi and the narrator of the Little Chinese Seamstress are well-rounded, innocent, hopeful, relatively indiscriminant young characters. There are characters who contrast them to lend a balanced perspective of cultures that are usually older. It almost makes me ashamed that I thought characters in these extreme settings would be so different from me, largely because they were so mysterious.

It is clear to me now that all over the world, there are exemplars of human nature who can each relate to one another on some level. We are all human beings with our own trials, triumphs, hardships, and awkward experiences. Overall, these stories are great text books for understanding that we all have something in common.

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