Women at Point Zero
Below is a response to a discussion on the book "Women at Point Zero." I am sharing it becuase it is personal to me and hope it will encourage others to read the novel.
Essay Response to a discussion on the novel “Women at Point Zero.”
1. Firdaus states that “I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices” (76). Explain the import of this statement in the context of the entire novel.
I felt almost obligated to write on this topic. It might be because of the glaring instances in the book or the connection that such a topic has with me personally. Whatever the reason, this is what I have chosen and while the examples that I have pick out to discuss are clear to see in the narrated story I find them the most relevant to our lives as women, especially mine.
From the beginning of the book our narrating character, Firdaus, has been groomed, blindly by her immediate family in the commodity of human service. Reading through page 16 we see her mother displaying servitude to her abusive and dominating husband in exchange for staying in favor with him. That is the price her mother pays for living an honorable life of marriage and having a roof to take shelter in. As a grown girl with no live parents to provide for her, Firdaus is transferred to the protection of her uncle. For this her price is sexual submission to him. When her uncle marries Firdaus is in a position of servitude to the uncle and his wife. Her choice, or price, is to stay in a home and live honorably according to Islamic law or strike out on her own. When there is a decision made by her uncle and his wife to place Firdaus in an arranged marriage she decides that is too high a price for the guarantee of a home. When she is alone in the streets she awakens to the reality that her choice to be independent of a husband will be higher and more undesirable than agreeing to an arranged marriage. This thinking did not turn out to be true for her, because her husband was oppressive, greedy, and dominating to her. She had witnessed this before with how her father treated her mother and knew the price her mother paid, she had given her joy up for a life of bitterness and hate. Firdaus did not want another to determine who she would become so she left her husband and learned the life of prostitution.
During her journey through life between controlled by family and prostitution, Firdaus allowed herself to buy into her emotions of caring and love for another person. In these instances her purchase resulted in an empty return, like a coin slot that she had placed all her assets into and upon pulling the lever found she had lost it all. It was devastating her and cost her dearly each time. I think about this and see how it replays in her life, and how any one of us could replace ourselves with Firdaus, and gain empty returns.
How wise she was to understand through observation and experience that we all have our price we pay for what we want or fear we do not want to happen. We do things out of our comfort zone or against what we see as right living to stay in good graces, avoid and argument, or keep ourselves from living in poverty. In the end of the novel Firdaus transcendences the social pressure to pay a price for what others define as righteous living. Her act was violent but just as it was necessary to her decision not to go on paying the price for free living.
Most of us will never summon the courage and strength to rise above paying others in some way for what we want how we want to live. There will always be a trade off; looking the other way at work when others make harassing comments, keeping silent when you know someone or yourself is abused. For those who do sum up the courage to “blow the whistle” their life will change, some for the better, many for the worst, but it is in the conscious that those who do transcendent paying the price will find a return on their gamble.
Essay Response to a discussion on the novel “Women at Point Zero.”
1. Firdaus states that “I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices” (76). Explain the import of this statement in the context of the entire novel.
I felt almost obligated to write on this topic. It might be because of the glaring instances in the book or the connection that such a topic has with me personally. Whatever the reason, this is what I have chosen and while the examples that I have pick out to discuss are clear to see in the narrated story I find them the most relevant to our lives as women, especially mine.
From the beginning of the book our narrating character, Firdaus, has been groomed, blindly by her immediate family in the commodity of human service. Reading through page 16 we see her mother displaying servitude to her abusive and dominating husband in exchange for staying in favor with him. That is the price her mother pays for living an honorable life of marriage and having a roof to take shelter in. As a grown girl with no live parents to provide for her, Firdaus is transferred to the protection of her uncle. For this her price is sexual submission to him. When her uncle marries Firdaus is in a position of servitude to the uncle and his wife. Her choice, or price, is to stay in a home and live honorably according to Islamic law or strike out on her own. When there is a decision made by her uncle and his wife to place Firdaus in an arranged marriage she decides that is too high a price for the guarantee of a home. When she is alone in the streets she awakens to the reality that her choice to be independent of a husband will be higher and more undesirable than agreeing to an arranged marriage. This thinking did not turn out to be true for her, because her husband was oppressive, greedy, and dominating to her. She had witnessed this before with how her father treated her mother and knew the price her mother paid, she had given her joy up for a life of bitterness and hate. Firdaus did not want another to determine who she would become so she left her husband and learned the life of prostitution.
During her journey through life between controlled by family and prostitution, Firdaus allowed herself to buy into her emotions of caring and love for another person. In these instances her purchase resulted in an empty return, like a coin slot that she had placed all her assets into and upon pulling the lever found she had lost it all. It was devastating her and cost her dearly each time. I think about this and see how it replays in her life, and how any one of us could replace ourselves with Firdaus, and gain empty returns.
How wise she was to understand through observation and experience that we all have our price we pay for what we want or fear we do not want to happen. We do things out of our comfort zone or against what we see as right living to stay in good graces, avoid and argument, or keep ourselves from living in poverty. In the end of the novel Firdaus transcendences the social pressure to pay a price for what others define as righteous living. Her act was violent but just as it was necessary to her decision not to go on paying the price for free living.
Most of us will never summon the courage and strength to rise above paying others in some way for what we want how we want to live. There will always be a trade off; looking the other way at work when others make harassing comments, keeping silent when you know someone or yourself is abused. For those who do sum up the courage to “blow the whistle” their life will change, some for the better, many for the worst, but it is in the conscious that those who do transcendent paying the price will find a return on their gamble.
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