CVSP 204 Final, Spring 2002

AME ET VS ONIVER: LIBRARY OF BEIRUT Civilization Sequence 204 Final Examination Time: 2 Hours June 21, 2002 A. Arasoghli Answer TWO of the following questions: 1. At the beginning of Season of Migration to the North, the narrator returns with a great yearning for his people in that small village at the bend of the Nile. In England he felt like a “storm-tossed feather’; towards the end of the novel we find him saying: “There is no room for me here. Why don’t I pack up and go? “ a) Discuss the events that intrude on the narrator’s dream of a good life. b) Why does he find himself trapped half-way between north and south? “The construction of identity — for identity, whether of Orient or Occident, France or Britain, while obviously a repository of distinct collective experiences, is finally a constriction — involves establishing opposites and “others” whose actuality is always subject to the continuous interpretation and re-interpretation of their differences from “us”. Each age and society re-creates its “Others”... the construction of identity is bound up with the disposition of power and powerlessness in each society, and is therefore anything but mere academic wool-gathering.” (Edward Said, “Afterward to the 1995 printing”, Orientalism, p. 332). a) Discuss the above quotation. b) How would Edward Said’s argument apply to Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex? Discuss. “—but it (Orientalism) operates as representations usually do, for a purpose, according to a tendency, in a specific historical, intellectual, and even economic setting. In other words, representations have purposes, they are effective much of the time....”. (Edward Said, Orientalism, p. 273). a) Identify and analyze the main themes in the quotation. b) Does the quotation unfold Said’s definition of Orientalism? c) Conclude and state your opinion. MEK ws CNIVERSIT LIBKARY OF BEIRUT _ “Yet each one of them in that court would rise above himself for the first time in his life, while I had a sort of a feeling of superiority towards them, for the ritual was being held primarily because of me; and I, over and above everything else, am a colonizcr, I am the intruder whose fate must be decided. When Mahmoud Wad Ahmad was brought in shackles to Kitchener after his defeat at the battle of Atbara, Kitchener said to him “Why have you come to my country to lay waste and plunder?” It was the intruder who said this to the person whose land it was, and the owner of the land bowed his head and said nothing. So let it be with me . In that court I hear the rattle of swords in cartage and the clatter of the hooves of Allenby’s horses desecrating the ground of Jerusalem. The ships at first sailed down the Nile carrying guns not bread, and the railways were originally set up to transport troops; the schools were started so as to teach us how to say “Yes” In their language. They imported to us the germ of the greatest European violence, as seen on the Somme and at Verdun, the like of which the world has never previously known, the germ of a deadly disease that struck them more than a thousand years ago. Yes, my dear sirs, I came as an invader into your very homes: a drop of the poison which you have injected into the veins of history. I am no Othello. Othello was a lie”. (Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North, pp. 94-95). a) Explain the significance of the above passage. b) Why did Tayeb Salih fall under the influence of Freud when writing his novel? c) Examine the many contradictory selves of Mustapha Sa’eed. Discuss the end of the following texts: Midaq Alley, Waiting for Godot and Season of Migration to the North. Examine the relevance of each end to the main themes in the text.