Not Just Another River in Egypt...
Sorry, I couldn't use anything else for a title on a post about Denial...just wouldn't work.
Anyway, for some reason, this reminded me a lot of Poe's William Wilson. I don't know if anyone else got that vibe, but the whole bit about blurring out whether one or both of the characters was really dead rang familiar to me. In any event, it was an interesting idea to use the uncertainty of the characters'...I guess vitality would be the best word, especially next to the obvious religious themes.
One thing I wondered about was the setting. It seemed pretty obvious that the main characters were Muslim, which would suggest a Middle Eastern heritage (given the time period), but with the mix-mash of other religions and the more-or-less accepting nature of the various peoples, I had a difficult time placing them geographically (if this was even a real place at all). Given the title, I wondered if that really was an intended play-on-words, but on a second scan-through of the story, I noticed several mentions of caste systems and two or three Indian words.
Anyway, I thought it was very cool the way the writer mixes themes of life and death, religion, culture, family, gender roles, and social responsibility together into such a fantastical and philosophical story.
Thoughts?
Anyway, for some reason, this reminded me a lot of Poe's William Wilson. I don't know if anyone else got that vibe, but the whole bit about blurring out whether one or both of the characters was really dead rang familiar to me. In any event, it was an interesting idea to use the uncertainty of the characters'...I guess vitality would be the best word, especially next to the obvious religious themes.
One thing I wondered about was the setting. It seemed pretty obvious that the main characters were Muslim, which would suggest a Middle Eastern heritage (given the time period), but with the mix-mash of other religions and the more-or-less accepting nature of the various peoples, I had a difficult time placing them geographically (if this was even a real place at all). Given the title, I wondered if that really was an intended play-on-words, but on a second scan-through of the story, I noticed several mentions of caste systems and two or three Indian words.
Anyway, I thought it was very cool the way the writer mixes themes of life and death, religion, culture, family, gender roles, and social responsibility together into such a fantastical and philosophical story.
Thoughts?
posted by Tara at 10:54 PM
3 Comments:
I thought that this story was rather interesting in how it was written also. All of the lines are blurred between death and life, cultures and religions worked really well. One thing that was particularlly interesting to me was that the wife was so much more full of life when she was dead. I really did not catch on until the end of the story that the husband was not alive.
When I first read it, I assumed that the story took place in India or some place like that. Now that I go back and look at it, I'm not sure why, that was just the impression I got. On a side note, I was curious at the end of the story to know how long the wife had known she and her husband were dead? Do you think she knew immediately after the flood or only when they visited the graveyard and talked about it?
I didn't pick up on Yusuf being dead, too, either, although I felt like I should have once I finally read that part. XD I totally thought it was set in the Middle East or Egypt, mostly because of the names--I didn't pick up on any Indian references at all in it. I'm not sure you can name a story "Denial" and give it that kind of setting without expecting people to connect it with that old joke. ;)
I didn't think the wife knew she was dead, though? I got the feeling she figured out about the husband being dead the same way/in the same timeframe that he figured out she was dead--and it took both of them finally talking about it and putting on the bracelet to realize that, oh yeah, /both/ of them are dead.
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