Groundhog Day

It’s been years since I’ve seen the movie “Groundhog Day,” but I remember absolutely hating it. If you haven’t seen it here’s the blurb:

“A weather man is reluctantly sent to cover a story about a weather forecasting "rat" (as he calls it). This is his fourth year on the story, and he makes no effort to hide his frustration. On awaking the 'following' day he discovers that it's Groundhog Day again, and again, and again. First he uses this to his advantage, then comes the realization that he is doomed to spend the rest of eternity in the same place, seeing the same people do the same thing EVERY day.” (IMDB).

I found the repetition annoying and exhausting and I just wanted to GET ON WITH THE STORY.

Of course, there’s something very true to life about repetition… I won’t deny that. Every time I think I’ve gown/become a better person/moved on from an unhappy situation or relationship, etc. I find myself repeating the same shit all over again. Perhaps I’m a little bit wiser but still stuck in the saga.

So, if you haven’t already figure out where I’m going with this, here it is:

Although I found Nawal El Saadawi’s novel “Woman At Point Zero,” to be an amazing story filled with painful yet poignant truths about life, the repetitive element/ structure drove me nuts. In particular, the narrator (not author ;) repeats the word “eyes” so many times that I found myself both cringing and circling the word every time it appeared. Between pages 42 and 44, the words “eyes” appeared 18 times! Not to mention there’s that one description of the eyes that repeats over and over about the “whites become whiter and the blacks become even blacker…” The first time I read the description of the two eyes, (when, as a child, Firdaus looks into her mother’s eyes and sees that it is no longer her mother) I was amazed and struck by the beauty of the description. El Saawadi writes,

“She looked exactly like my mother… but when I used to look into her eyes I could feel that she was not my mother. They were not the eyes that held me up each time I was at the point of falling. They were not two rings of pure white surrounding two circles of intense black, where the white would become even whiter and the black even blacker every time I looked into them, as though the light of the sun or the moon kept flowing from them.” (17)

Stunning! And there continues to be so many beautiful and powerful descriptions of eyes but, at about the fifth one, it just took over...Instead of “enjoying” the story, I found myself annoyed by all the eyes. I almost considered skipping the four-page chunk that repeats almost verbatim (a major Groundhog Day moment) that first appear on page 29 with Firdaus’ teacher Iqubal and again on page 84 with Ibrahim, the only man Firdaus ever loves. The scene was beautifully portrayed and so full of emotion and power but I felt annoyed that I was being “forced” by the author to read it twice. Not to mention that, by page, 84, I was pretty burnt out on the long, detailed eye descriptions.

I think I get what El Saawadi was trying to do (craft wise) with all the eyes. She’s very successful at expressing the intentions (whether they are good or evil) of the various characters through their eyes. She also says so much about society and how blind people are to the truth. The phrase, “they were blind” is also repeated many many times. At the end (the climax), after Firdaus has had her heart broken, and killed the pimp, and the Prince gives her three thousand piaster for sleeping with him, she finally snaps. She says,

“the movement of my hands as I tore the money to pieces, tore off the veil of evil, the last remaining veil from before my eyes, to reveal the whole enigma which had puzzled me throughout, the true enigma of my life.” (107)

The last veil has dropped from her eyes, she sees the truth and the truth sets her free. She explains,

“They put steel handcuffs around my wrists, and led me off to prison. In prison they kept me in a room where the windows and doors were always shut. I knew why they were afraid of me. I was the only woman who had torn the mask away, and exposed the face of their ugly reality. They’d condemned me to death not because I killed a man—there are thousands of people being killed every day—but because they are afraid to let me live…I have triumphed over life because I no longer desire to live, nor do I any longer fear to die. I want nothing. I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. Therefore I am free. For during like it is our wants, our hopes, our fears that enslave us.” (110)

           

Wow! What an incredible woman and an incredible story. I was left with a feeling of deep awe; the feeling that Firdaus was the most powerful woman ever because she possessed the truth; a truth that no one could give her or take away.

The story itself, and the writing, and the message were all incredible. From a craft perspective, this major repetition is an “interesting” (my favorite passive aggressive word) and unique choice and I think, if El Saawadi would have toned it down a bit, it would have worked for me. Also, I could have done without the first and last chapters where El Saawadi explains her relationship and reaction to Firdaus. I thought that the author’s attempt to include herself took away some of the power by shifting the focus away from Firdaus. I think that El Saawadi could have simply give us the “low down” regarding her involvement in the Preface.