Mrs *****
English A: Literature
20th of Feb , 2013
Reflective statement for Women At Point Zero
To what extent does the student show how his or her understanding of cultural and contextual elements was developed through the interactive oral ?
I think time and place are one of the most important settings in the novel since as we know Cairo have a huge amount of unemployment as women at that time didn’t continou their education so having a secondary school certificate didn’t allow Firadus to find a decent job, after she moved from the village to Cairo which led her to prostitution. On the other some Muslims there misunderstand Islam such that her huspand Sheikh Mahmoud used to go to the mosque for every prayer but in the same time he used to beat her up just because she can eat and he cant or because she lives some food on the plate…
Since I come from an Arabic background , it was easy to understand how much she suffered to survive life , but it was a bit difficult to understand her mentality because Firdaus is a Muslim and she became a prostitute which is totally forbidden by Islam , at the same time prostitution is illegal in Egypt but still some police men used to go have sex with her every now and then while their actual job is to put her in prison .
A connection that I have found similar to my own culture is that women at the age of 17 or 18 usually get married and stop education and that’s what happened to Firdaus.
The most interesting technique used in the novel is flashback since once you start reading the book and you know she has killed a man , you really want to know what happened, why and how she killed a man and why did she spit on the picture of every man in the news paper. What I found also interesting is how she narrated her story with every man she met which led her to loathe the patriarchal society she lives