AP Worthy?

As someone famous once said, "all good things must come to an end."

The end of Dinah's story seemed a tad rushed to me, but overall, it was satisfying, especially given how Diamant ended the novel the same way she began it, with the word "Selah." According to the online Dictionary, Selah is a typical ending of biblical verses.

I hope I can bring a similar sense of justice to the end of this blog. And what better way to do so than to discuss The Red Tent's AP worthiness?

To begin, I would like to thank Mrs. LaClair for this opportunity. Looking back, I realize that it should have been hard to break the few requirements for picking a free choice book. But somehow, I managed to do just that. The Red Tent, while a thoughtful and thought-provoking novel, is easily more plot than it is substance. Not to say that it has no substance at all--remember the water motif, the numerous themes, and the clever character development. That said, it is hard to imagine The Red Tent among the list of recommended novels the AP exam offers:

(blog.prepscholar.com)

I say this because The Red Tent can't fulfill the same multitude of essay prompts as a novel like Song of Solomon--which I mentioned in my last post--can. In fact, Song of Solomon has so much to offer that my take-home essay suffered from too many ideas and a lack of clarity. I wanted to discuss the biblical references, the fairytale allusions, the different concepts of love, etc, etc. In the case of The Red Tent, I could easily write an entire essay centered around the water motif, (which I pretty much did in my last post) but that's about as far as I would stretch the novel.

You see, The Red Tent touches on feminity and gender inequality, but I would argue that The Handmaid's Tale covers the same themes better and with stronger literary devices. While Diamant's writing is beautiful and highly accessible, her imagery only does what it is meant to do--create images. Here's an example from my last reading: "The painful things-- Werenro's story, Re-nefer's choice, even my own loneliness--seemed like the knots on a beautiful necklace, necessary for keeping the beads in place" (Diamant, 264). I love how I can clearly understand Dinah's feelings from one simile, but that's all I get from it. On the other hand, Margaret Atwood of The Handmaid's Tale has a way of drawing meaning to the smallest things, such as choosing to make single sentences into paragraphs.

However, there is more to being AP worthy than being successful on the exam. I highly recommend The Red Tent for people from all walks of life. As Diamant notes in the author interview at the end of the novel, The Red Tent has Christian and Jewish readers, both claiming that her novel has helped to open the Bible to them in new ways. I belong to neither of the aforementioned groups, labeling myself as an atheist, but still, I found myself perceiving and understanding the Bible in ways I hadn't before. And, predictably, The Red Tent has traveled through generations of women, helping to give focus to feminist theologists and artists.

The Red Tent is one of those novels that is able to bypass the walls of a classroom, which I believe is one of literature's most important and defining factors in being AP worthy.

So, like my friend and fellow reader, Jennifer, (read her blog, Seeing Red (Tent)) I agree that The Red Tent is both AP worthy and not. If you want to get a 5 on the exam no problem, then The Red Tent is not the right book for you. But if you want to understand new and different perspectives of culture, history, religion, gender, etc, then The Red Tent is perfect. And hey, it has a pretty good tv show too.

Thanks for sticking with me for this past month, I had a great time. 

Meaning of the Work

I have finally finished The Red Tent, and I am thankful for this opportunity to share my thoughts with you.

First of all, I'm not sure how easily you have been able to follow along with the plot of The Red Tent through my analyses, but here is a brief summary of the ending: Dinah moves in with her midwife friend, Meryt. She gets married to Benia and is enjoying life until her son Re-mose returns to ask her to provide service to the vizier Zafenat Paneh-ah, who (spoiler alert) ends up being her long-lost brother, Joseph. Joseph takes Dinah back to her homeland because their father Jacob is dying. Dinah lives happily with Benia until she dies of presumably old age.

The Red Tent is home to many different literary themes: the meaning of childbirth, gender inequality, etc. I've decided to focus on a theme that doesn't get much attention: the impact of family on one's character and individuality.

From the very beginning of the novel, Dinah says that her story has been lost, that she is merely a "brief detour between the well-known history of my father, Jacob, and the celebrated chronicle of Joseph, my brother" (Diamant, 1). Of course, this also fits the topic of gender inequality, but I believe that it demonstrates just how much a family can overshadow an individual.

Dinah is a different person when she's with her mothers than when she is not. This part of the puzzle is also where the water motif truly comes into play. As a young girl, Dinah relies on her mothers for everything--how to think, act, feel, and remember: "I am not certain whether my earliest memories are truly mine, because when I bring them to mind, I feel my mothers' breath on every word" (Diamant, 75). Dinah also first encounters water in her childhood.

To be honest, I wasn't sure where I was going with discussing water in my style post, but now I understand its importance in the novel. I see the presence of water as a guide in Dinah's journey of self. When water first appears, we see her how it helps her break away from her mother and explore individuality: "My mother, Leah, would have said that I smelled the rotting grasses of the marsh and the mingled presence of so many animals and men, but I recognized the scent of this water the way I knew the perfume of my mother's body" (Diamant, 110-111).

And even though Dinah has chosen to cast her family away, she can't help but remember them. When she does, she also thinks of water. This is seen in a song she sings at many different times in the novel:

"Fear not, the earth is beneath you 

Fear not, we have water and salt 

Fear not, little mother 

Fear not, mother of us all"

Dinah eventually becomes a midwife, subconsciously inspired by her mother Rachel, who smelled of water. This is the song of the midwives, and it just so happens to mention water. So for Dinah, water is not stagnant. It flows from her past, which is why it is so often associated with her family, and it flows into her future, helping her to grow into her own person.

Dinah recognizes this when she tells her second husband Benia that "'the water soothes my heart and settles my thoughts, and it is true that I feel at home by the water, but I found my joy in dry hills, where the fountain is distant and the dust is thick'" (Diamant, 307). The dry hills of Egypt represent her new life and the woman she has become.

Although you may not see how (given how much this post is flooded ;) with water) this is supposed to be about the meaning of the work as a whole. I merely see water as an agent in helping get the theme of family versus individuality across to the readers. Perhaps it would make more sense if I compared this theme with a similar theme in Song of Solomon. 

Milkman's personal growth was hindered by his family's belief system and terrible greed. It wasn't until he dug deep into his family's history that he finally understood who he needed to become. Dinah isn't much different. Dinah was lucky because even though she was outnumbered by men in her family, she was still greatly loved and cared for. But, like Milkman, some of her family's beliefs and actions (remember her brothers decimating an entire kingdom) prevented her from discovering herself. I think this is a reason why Dinah originally says she is forgotten by history, but then contradicts herself by saying, "the story of Dinah was too terrible to be forgotten. As long as the memory of Jacob lived, my name would be remembered" (Diamant, 317).

Lastly, this theme contributes to the novel's relevance because it comments on other written works, including the Bible, and how, perhaps, one must be careful in creating a belief system on the words of someone else. The Red Tent is certainly an example of the danger of the single story, which, if you don't know what that is, watch this Ted Talk.

Anyways, thank you for keeping up with my ramblings, but today is not the end. I will be back with one final blog post in March!

Film Comparison

Happy belated Valentine's Day! My present to you is this third blog post.

The Red Tent was made into a two-part series on Lifetime in 2014. Lily and I watched the first forty minutes of the second episode because that best corresponded with our most recent reading. (If you would like to read Lily's take on the show, please head over to her blog, The Red Tent Interpretations.)

Rebecca Ferguson as Dinah
(thetimes.co.uk)

Some quick plot summary to help catch you up: Dinah fell in love with a prince named Shalem. The two got married but were not supported by the male members of Dinah's family. In a grand show of their displeasure, two of Dinah's brothers, Simon and Levi, murdered Shalem, the king, and all the men of his kingdom. Eventually, Dinah moved with her mother-in-law, Re-nefer, to Egypt, where she gave birth to her son, Re-mose.

The first scene I will be comparing is when Dinah returns to her family after the murder of her husband and confronts Jacob. To begin, this scene is different in the film version because it takes place over one afternoon, instead of in the book, where it takes place over an entire day and night.

Both the film and the novel do a great job in capturing the scene's emotional intensity. The film, however, ignores one of my favorite parts of the dialogue, when Dinah switches from addressing Jacob in second person to third person: "Jacob shall never know peace again. He will lose what he treasures and repudiate those he should embrace. He will never again find rest[...]" (Diamant, 206). This small detail does so much for Dinah. It gives her space from Jacob, and it also gives her power over him that can be likened to the power of the gods and goddesses they worship.

The other difference from this scene in the novel to the scene in the film version is Jacob's character. In the book, he doesn't speak once during the entire ordeal. He lets Dinah speak honestly and openly about him without interrupting and shows more fear instead of anger: "But I saw full understanding in his clouded eyes as he stood before me. I saw guilt before he had time to deny it" (Diamant, 206).

In the film, Jacob has the gall to claim that a true daughter would have waited for his consent before marrying Shalem. This addition helps to develop an idea of inequality between sons and daughters. One of the most famous lines in the film is Dinah exclaiming, "and I am only a daughter, which means I am nothing more than a piece of property." If you are interested in watching this scene for yourself, here is the link on Youtube.

Another inaccuracy that caught my attention was during a simple interaction between Dinah and her midwife friend, Meryt. In the film, we see Dinah and Meryt discussing how Dinah ended up--widowed--in Egypt, but in the novel, Dinah purposefully avoids the topic of her life before Egypt. Meryt makes many attempts to learn about Dinah, and when the results are not plentiful, she creates her own tales. Dinah says that she doesn't correct Meryt because she fears "that if I named my mothers or Inna the whole of my history would come pouring out of me and I would be thrown out of the house and my son cast out for bearing the blood of murderers in his veins" (Diamant, 236).

By choosing to ignore this detail, the film, in a way, neglects Dinah's independence and her transition to a new life. It may seem trivial, but Dinah's independence is a major element of the novel, and arguably, a reason why it was written. For example, part two of the novel begins just 75 pages in, and it is entitled: My Story. Dinah also interrupts her journey to Eygpt just to describe how her four mothers have perished, and how she is now truly alone.

One of the last differences that I noticed in the film was that they didn't introduce Dinah's new love interest, Benia, until after everything, more or less, was resolved. Whereas in the novel, Benia appears quickly after Dinah's son, Re-mose leaves for school. In spite of one of my favorite themes in the novel, feminism, perhaps Benia is meant to serve as something to fill the loss of male companionship for Dinah. (Since her brother Joseph was sold into slavery, her husband was murdered, and her son is all grown up).

In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed the film adaptation and hope to sometime finish it. Now, I'm excited to continue reading and see just where Dinah's new journey takes her.

Style

Welcome back to my blog! Glad to have you here.

Today I want to talk about style. As mentioned in my first post, Diamant's writing style is very descriptive. This is exemplified by the amount of similes Diamant packs into her imagery. Her use of similes also helps to fully characterize, define, and immortalize all of her characters, even the ones who only appear for a brief amount of time. One example of this is this description of a child Leah loses in Succoth: "Her eyelids were veined like a butterfly's wing, her toes curled like the petals of a flower" (Diamant, 140). Because the similes are able to make this imagery so vivid, it helped me to remember this inconsequential character. 

Beyond that, because I'm now halfway done with The Red Tent, I feel more comfortable commenting on the motifs that are beginning to make themselves present. Some motifs I've noticed include: the color red, water, and the word sweet. I'm not going to spend any time discussing the color red motif, as I believe it is one of the more obvious and over discussed motifs of the novel. Instead, I am interested in the last two motifs. 

The motif of the word sweet is my favorite, and one of the reasons why is because it doesn't really seem like it should be a motif (perhaps this will remind you of the peeing motif in Song of Solomon). However, I have chosen to call the word sweet a motif because of how much it is repeated in the novel. Its first appearance is on the last page of the prologue. Dinah describes her heart as "a ladle of sweet water, brimming over" (Diamant, 3). After that, the word sweet is greatly associated with Dinah's aunt, Rachel. In my previous description of Rachel, I mentioned how Rachel's nickname is "Tuki, which means 'sweetness'" (Diamant, 9). And now, in the second quarter of the book, Rachel is connected to the word sweet again: "I stayed by her side until nightfall[...]and woke in the morning to find myself covered by her sweet-scented cloak" (Diamant, 100).

Per my curiosity, I attempted to look up how many times the word sweet appears in the Bible. My attempts were fruitless, but I did find many Bible verses containing the word. My source is the website Knowing Jesus, and here are some examples: "How sweet are Your words to my taste!" and one that makes a smooth transition to the next motif: "And the waters became sweet." The word sweet seems to be an apt descriptor the Bible would use for its women, especially given that the women's stories are not paid enough attention to in the Bible (which is one of the reasons The Red Tent was written). I also feel that it works well as a motif because it alludes to the actual tone and language of the Bible.

While reading these next eighty or something pages of The Red Tent, I could not get the story of Percy Jackson out of my mind. This was brought on by something Imma said to Dinah: "'You are a child of water. Your spirit answered the spirit of the river. You must live by a river someday, Dinah. Only by a river will you be happy'" (Diamant, 112). There is one Percy Jackson scene in particular that makes sense here. Of course, I can only think of the movie version, so I don't remember if this actually happened in the books. In any case, there is a scene where Percy's hand gets cut, and he immediately crawls towards the water to heal himself.

In The Red Tent, water is a highly present motif. It is discussed alongside concepts such as blood, peeing, sisterhood, and more, but most importantly, it is discussed in Dinah's times of strife. Dinah finds water when she seemingly needs it: leaving her home, meeting Esau for the first time, and after Jacob was beaten. It was intriguing to read about a motif so seemingly linked to an individual character, and I believe if I follow the path of this motif, I will be able to learn more about Dinah.

I would like to end my post today with a recommendation. If you enjoyed reading The Red Tent or think you would like to read it, I also recommend reading Snowflower and the Secret Fan. The Chinese culture has something very similar to the red tent in this culture, and it is also a story of feminism and sisterhood.

Thanks for reading! See you next time.

Welcome!

Welcome to the first (and perhaps last) installment of me analyzing different works of literature.

Despite an earlier attempt to begin this journey with the novel Water For Elephants, The Red Tent by Anita Diamant is the perfect choice for this blog. The Red Tent is the story of the women of the Bible, who are horribly overlooked, and it is this combination of religion and feminism that drew me to this story in the first place. Actually, it was my mom who suggested I read the novel, but in any case...

For this first blog post, I read a total of eighty-seven pages. So far, I've seen that Diamant uses plenty of figurative language, (similes and parallel structure) and the flow of the novel is deceptively smooth for the sometimes uncomfortable material it discusses. Perhaps it is the refreshing dialogue that comes from the witty tongues of the five main women that helps move the flow along.

However, I wish to use the first of my five blog posts to discuss characters instead of the author's style. To the right of this post, you will see an abbreviated family tree because as I sometimes find, it is hard to keep track when there are as many characters as there are in The Red Tent. 

The protagonist, Dinah, is the daughter of not one but four women: Dinah's biological mother Leah, and Leah's sisters, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah.1 I expect each of these four women will play a different but equally important role in Dinah's life. And so, today I will make character profiles for myself as well as you, the reader, to keep track of their character development as the novel continues.

Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah are all the daughters of Laban, and eventually, all wives or handmaids of Dinah's father Jacob.  

Rachel is the first to catch Jacob's eye, and so, her story is the first Dinah tells. Dinah originally describes Rachel's presence as "powerful as the moon" (Diamant, 8), but Rachel's true saving grace is her beauty. Everything from Rachel's "brown hair shaded to bronze" to her "golden, honeyed, perfect" skin is, in lieu of a better term, perfect (Diamant, 10). She was even nicknamed Tuki, meaning "sweetness," but like any other human, she has her own flaws. Rachel demonstrates the most emotional instability among the four sisters. At times, she is irrationally angry and jealous: "She cursed him soundly, calling him a thief and a bastard, a devil and a pig who inserted himself into sheep and goats and dogs" (Diamant, 35). And at other times, she shows signs of depression: "She sat, too unhappy to weep[...]and whispered, 'Give me children or I will die'" (Diamant, 56). Ultimately, Rachel gives Jacob two sons.

Leah is the second one to meet Jacob. According to Genesis 29:17, "Leah was tender-eyed," commonly interpreted as having poor vision. The Red Tent claims that "Leah's vision was perfect" but goes on to describe the fear people show at the sight of Leah's two different colored eyes: "One blue as lapis, the other green as Egyptian grass" (Diamant, 11). For those familiar with the Toni Morrison novel, Song of Solomon, this aspect of Leah's character can be likened to Pilate's missing belly button and her life because of it. I believe, due to this, Leah is strong and ambitious and worthy of bearing Jacob's only daughter. I don't wish to fill this blog with mere plot summary, but I believe it is important to also note that while Rachel was Jacob's first love, Leah was Jacob's first wife and the first to lie with him.

Zilpah and Bilhah are both more handmaids than they are wives, the former being handmaid to Leah and the latter being handmaid to Rachel. Because of this, I believe they will be considered minor characters throughout the rest of this novel. Zilpah and Bilhah are introduced as the family's outcasts or black sheep. Zilpah is enthralled by mythology and even Dinah is "permitted to laugh at her" (Diamant, 14). Bilhah is also not described in the best of light. Dinah claims she is "not beautiful like Rachel, or capable like Leah, or quick like Zilpah. She [is] tiny, dark, and silent[...]Compared to the two other motherless girls, Bilhah was neglected dreadfully" (Diamant, 15). Nevertheless, Zilpah and Bilhah give Jacob three sons between the two of them.

I'm looking forward to diving more into Dinah's own story, and I will see you in a week or so.

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1While Dinah merely sees Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah as motherly figures, she identifies them using one of two terms: "mother" or "mother-aunties," (Diamant, 3) so I will also refer to them in this fashion.