Woman at Point Zero.

For my independent reading book, I chose Nawal El Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero. This book represented to me an image of a strong woman who has had to deal with life in a world where she is constantly being pushed down. I think that if Firdaus, the main character, had had different living conditions, she could have grown up to be a successful, celebrated woman in whatever career she had chosen. However, since she had the misfortune of being brought up in an extremely conservative and patriarchal Egyptian society, Firdaus goes through many disturbing events, including becoming a prostitute. This, of course, doesn't happen until AFTER she has lost both of her parents, sent to boarding school, forced to married a deformed old man who beats her, and raped repeatedly by a "friend" and his comrades.

The story starts out with narration by the author herself. It tells the true story of Firdaus, a real woman whom she met in prison a while ago while she was doing psychiatric work. Saadawi had heard of Firdaus and she wanted to hear her story. Firdaus was in jail for having killed a man, and was to be given the death penalty the following day. She had barely spoken a word since being admitted to the prison but Saadawi is determined to the story from her, and eventually she is able to talk to her.

The second chapter (which takes up the bulk of the book) is told from Firdaus's point of view. It is basically her life story, from when she was a very young child to the act that put her in jail, going through the horrors she had to suffer growing up in rural Egypt. Many of these events were extremely disturbing, and after reading them, I did not find it hard to believe that she would be filled with enough rage to kill someone.