Enjoyment and Confusion

Blog number two of the day!

Grace Ogot’s The Rain Came is the story of a village that has not had a plentiful rain supply. The lack of rain is causing hunger and suffering. The only way for the town to get rain is if the chief’s daughter, Oganda, sacrifices herself to a sea monster.

I really enjoyed reading this story up to a point. I liked the beginning because of the vivid picture the descriptions painted with statements like “everyone moved aimlessly and fussed in the year without doing any work.” I also like the description of how chief Labong’o acts. He is supposed to be brave because he is the chief, but his own daughter is set to be sacrificed. With this burden on his shoulders, he cannot help but weep, and question what to do. I like this description of him because, to me, it gives him more depth. In some other stories, the chief fathers might just say that it is their daughter's fate and she must carry it out. In this story, however, Labong’o truly cares about his daughter, and this is visible his description.

The story continues on to describe Oganda’s actions whilst the family is discussing her fate. When I was reading the story, I started to view the scene through Oganda’s eyes at this point. I could see that she probably guessed her family was talking about her marriage because they excluded her from the discussion, and how when she heard the people singing that she must die, she was upset and scared. I liked the story at this point because I was able to get into the character's head and see the scene through their eyes.

The last thing in the story that made me enjoy it was the description of the start of Oganda’s departure. The picture is painted so vividly. I was able to see the villagers watching her and her mother hugging her. I also really liked the use of her song. Having the specific words to her song to read helped to visualize the picture that much more. The author could have just as easily said “Oganda began to sing a song to keep herself company,” but this would not have given any real meaning to the point of the song.

The end of the story, however, I did not like as much. For some reason, it bothers me that Osinda comes and saves Oganda. I feel like it does not entirely make sense. We know from the story that Osinda is the man that Oganda really would like to marry, but he is not really mentioned that much. I think that because of this, it seems random that he just appears out of nowhere and saves Oganda. In addition to thinking Osina’s appearance is random, the very ending does not make much sense to me. He saves her, and takes her to the water. Then, all of a sudden, it just starts to rain. Oganda’s fate was to die so that her village could receive rain. The ending to this story just leaves me asking the question why did it begin to rain if she did not die?

Similarities of Two Stories

Two blogs in one day. Ready, GO!

The short story No Music Before Mosque by Zebun-Nissa Hamidullah is the tale of a young man named Ali who plays his flute before prayer. This act is unholy, and he gets severely punished for it. While reading this story, I thought of a few similarities between it and A Thousand Splendid Suns. These similarities lie within basic story line similarities, and conceptual similarities.

The first story similarity I noticed between the two stories is that they both have similar settings. A Thousand Splendid Suns is set in Afghanistan during the late 1900’s and semi-modern day. No Music Before Mosque is set in Pakistan. The short story was published in 1992, so my guess is that it is set in or around that year. These settings are similar. Afghanistan and Pakistan have similar cultures and communities, and the time periods of both are the similar. The second of the story line similarities lies within the end of No Music Before Mosque and quite close to the beginning of A Thousand Splendid Suns. In end of No Music Before Mosque, Ali, the boy who played the flute, was found hanging from a tree. At the end of chapter five in A Thousand Splendid Suns, Nana is found hanging from a tree. This similarity is not really a huge comparison, but it relates the stories with the concept of the “jinn.”

In the beginning of A Thousand Splendid Suns, Nana continuously mentions an evil being called the “jinn” that will come to possess her if Mariam does not do as she is told. Mariam does not do as Nana tells her, and when she returns home, Nana has indeed been possessed by the jinn, and has hanged herself. In No Music Before Mosque, Nazo, Ali’s niece, goes to a tree by a pond, which is said to be haunted by the jin (spelled with only one “n” in this story). Even though it is never said that the jin had to do with Ali’s death directly, the mention of it in the story at all makes me believe that it could have had something to do with his death.

Another conceptual similarity I found between the stories was the characterization of Mariam and Ali. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Mariam is called a “harami” by her mother, which means she is a bastard child. This phrase puts a lasting shame on Mariam, and often in the novel she refers back to this shame. In No Music Before Mosque, Ali has a similar characterization. While he is not a bastard child, it is revealed that his playing the flute before prayer in the story is not the first time he has done this. His father is extremely angry with him, and continuously says he will severely punish Ali. This compares to Mariam because Ali has also had to grow up being punished for expressing himself with his flute. His father is putting shame on him by punishing him.