Through her Symposium article, Maryam Mohammed explains the value of 'freedom' as portrayed in various literary works...
No other topic of a universal value has had its share of ink flowing across so many centuries relentlessly as freedom. Perhaps, except for love; but then freedom and love (of it and otherwise) are not exclusive of each other keeping in mind the doubtable nature of stating ‘love’ as a universal value.
I begin divulging about freedom frequenting magnum opus of literature works by quoting The New Hampshire state motto: ‘Live free or die’. But what does it mean to be free? Common Wealth Writers First Book prize winning book, White Teeth by Zadie Smith goes about freedom boldly interlacing it with many subsidiary issues. One of the main first generation character Samad Iqbal is shown to face the music of his everyday unrooted life in a foreign land trying to find a common ground between his inner convictions of what freedom is and his actual war of a life. Being an educated man (even a scientist!) his inner sense of security which keeps him going on waiting tables as a bus boy(result of being an one-armed war soldier/hero/derelict relic) Is his complete confidence and absolute surety of what he wants from life. No matter if he messes up the ‘how’ if he’s got the ‘what’- True, unadulterated freedom. Freedom from dogma, from analgesic tradition, from the trends- all of it. Pure freedom; something philosophic not so much in theory as much as in practice. Paradoxically his wife Alasna has a total different take on freedom. Her definition is more towards the fundamental. Towards the roots. Freedom to her is in the sky and the earth. Freedom from that feeling that there’s an unpredicted- yet impending doom for sure; yet uncertain when. Freedom from the necessity to hold our lives lightly as she had to in her time in Bangladesh; her birth country (where hurricanes and untimely torrents of rain are no surprise- millions die so!) This quixotic equation made the real base work for her demand of freedom. Freedom to Alasna was what her life’s initial years hadn’t held: Certainty from God’s idea of a really good wheeze. To be sure as much as a person can be in this life-This was freedom to her.
The next literary work I choose is Jack Kerouac’s classic ‘On the Road’. The largely autobiographical novel is a defining work of the Beat generation; votaries of freedom with the novel’s protagonist’s living life against the backdrop of jazz, poetry and drug use. Freedom to this distinctive generation is seen through the wild and maverick life of Dean Moriarty-adventurous with a devil may care attitude, free-spirited and non- conventional by choice and consequently by circumstances. Life to them must be lived according to the stitch work of freedom; which entails fierce personal quest for meaning and belonging. In an era and a point in American History where conformity was encouraged and outsiders held suspect these Beatniks held intense internal and external conflict hand in hand with feverish production of answers to a single question: ‘How are we to live?’ The book is narrated by Salvatore ‘Sal’ Paradise (alter ego of the author) one of the two main characters of the book; the other being Dean who serves as an inspiration and catalyst for Sal’s travels. Amidst contradiction and conflict these friends set out on adventures so epic in nature; the text itself creating tremendous sense of faith in the belief of what is freedom to them. Kerouac shows how the very virtue of freedom is intoxicating.
The last piece of literature this article will elucidate for its stance(s) on freedom is the much acclaimed ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ by Khaled Hosseini. There are many vivid scenarios to be found in the novel relating to freedom as freedom is also one of the integral themes of the book. Mariam, a harami by birth seeks freedom in her conceptualisation of human interactions. To her love is freedom (reiterating love and freedom aren’t mutually exclusive). Her entry into the world as an illegitimate, unintended child of a lowly villager-a regrettable accident plays a great role for her want of freedom- Freedom from the stigma of being illegitimate, freedom from the fact of being unwanted, from her harsh mother and an insincere, pretentious father who serves a blow to her love of him by betraying her. Married to Raheed at 15 she yet searches for love: perhaps as a return for her continual self-denial, dutiful and sacrificing existence, for her literal ‘service’ to him only to be disappointed. Two decades later she finds freedom in a friendship with a local teenager which soon fosters into a mother daughter relationship. Her want of freedom seems immense until we see that when this want is met it’s only exceeded by her appreciation and preservation of it. Something that becomes her undoing; with courageous heroism to save Laila: the woman she loved and was loved back by completely and irrevocably she returns this gift of love with her own life leaving the world (once solitary and pitiable) as a friend, companion, guardian, mother and more than anything else as a person of consequence.
I conclude by quoting Seneca ‘Show me a man who isn’t a slave’. The truth of this statement can be found in all the studied three cases. Despite differences in their definition of freedom all the chosen characters (above) became in a manner or so a slave to that desire of wanting their conceptualised freedom. It seems apt to quote Voltaire here ‘Man is free at the moment he wishes to be’. Yet, what is constant throughout is the faith freedom gives to people, just the thought. Its idea is sweet with the unspoken yet promised fulfilment. All characters sought solace in freedom and that alone is enough for freedom: that the very idea has generated unprecedented amount of support.
"If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it - then I can achieve it." Muhammad Ali
No other topic of a universal value has had its share of ink flowing across so many centuries relentlessly as freedom. Perhaps, except for love; but then freedom and love (of it and otherwise) are not exclusive of each other keeping in mind the doubtable nature of stating ‘love’ as a universal value.
I begin divulging about freedom frequenting magnum opus of literature works by quoting The New Hampshire state motto: ‘Live free or die’. But what does it mean to be free? Common Wealth Writers First Book prize winning book, White Teeth by Zadie Smith goes about freedom boldly interlacing it with many subsidiary issues. One of the main first generation character Samad Iqbal is shown to face the music of his everyday unrooted life in a foreign land trying to find a common ground between his inner convictions of what freedom is and his actual war of a life. Being an educated man (even a scientist!) his inner sense of security which keeps him going on waiting tables as a bus boy(result of being an one-armed war soldier/hero/derelict relic) Is his complete confidence and absolute surety of what he wants from life. No matter if he messes up the ‘how’ if he’s got the ‘what’- True, unadulterated freedom. Freedom from dogma, from analgesic tradition, from the trends- all of it. Pure freedom; something philosophic not so much in theory as much as in practice. Paradoxically his wife Alasna has a total different take on freedom. Her definition is more towards the fundamental. Towards the roots. Freedom to her is in the sky and the earth. Freedom from that feeling that there’s an unpredicted- yet impending doom for sure; yet uncertain when. Freedom from the necessity to hold our lives lightly as she had to in her time in Bangladesh; her birth country (where hurricanes and untimely torrents of rain are no surprise- millions die so!) This quixotic equation made the real base work for her demand of freedom. Freedom to Alasna was what her life’s initial years hadn’t held: Certainty from God’s idea of a really good wheeze. To be sure as much as a person can be in this life-This was freedom to her.
The next literary work I choose is Jack Kerouac’s classic ‘On the Road’. The largely autobiographical novel is a defining work of the Beat generation; votaries of freedom with the novel’s protagonist’s living life against the backdrop of jazz, poetry and drug use. Freedom to this distinctive generation is seen through the wild and maverick life of Dean Moriarty-adventurous with a devil may care attitude, free-spirited and non- conventional by choice and consequently by circumstances. Life to them must be lived according to the stitch work of freedom; which entails fierce personal quest for meaning and belonging. In an era and a point in American History where conformity was encouraged and outsiders held suspect these Beatniks held intense internal and external conflict hand in hand with feverish production of answers to a single question: ‘How are we to live?’ The book is narrated by Salvatore ‘Sal’ Paradise (alter ego of the author) one of the two main characters of the book; the other being Dean who serves as an inspiration and catalyst for Sal’s travels. Amidst contradiction and conflict these friends set out on adventures so epic in nature; the text itself creating tremendous sense of faith in the belief of what is freedom to them. Kerouac shows how the very virtue of freedom is intoxicating.
The last piece of literature this article will elucidate for its stance(s) on freedom is the much acclaimed ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ by Khaled Hosseini. There are many vivid scenarios to be found in the novel relating to freedom as freedom is also one of the integral themes of the book. Mariam, a harami by birth seeks freedom in her conceptualisation of human interactions. To her love is freedom (reiterating love and freedom aren’t mutually exclusive). Her entry into the world as an illegitimate, unintended child of a lowly villager-a regrettable accident plays a great role for her want of freedom- Freedom from the stigma of being illegitimate, freedom from the fact of being unwanted, from her harsh mother and an insincere, pretentious father who serves a blow to her love of him by betraying her. Married to Raheed at 15 she yet searches for love: perhaps as a return for her continual self-denial, dutiful and sacrificing existence, for her literal ‘service’ to him only to be disappointed. Two decades later she finds freedom in a friendship with a local teenager which soon fosters into a mother daughter relationship. Her want of freedom seems immense until we see that when this want is met it’s only exceeded by her appreciation and preservation of it. Something that becomes her undoing; with courageous heroism to save Laila: the woman she loved and was loved back by completely and irrevocably she returns this gift of love with her own life leaving the world (once solitary and pitiable) as a friend, companion, guardian, mother and more than anything else as a person of consequence.
I conclude by quoting Seneca ‘Show me a man who isn’t a slave’. The truth of this statement can be found in all the studied three cases. Despite differences in their definition of freedom all the chosen characters (above) became in a manner or so a slave to that desire of wanting their conceptualised freedom. It seems apt to quote Voltaire here ‘Man is free at the moment he wishes to be’. Yet, what is constant throughout is the faith freedom gives to people, just the thought. Its idea is sweet with the unspoken yet promised fulfilment. All characters sought solace in freedom and that alone is enough for freedom: that the very idea has generated unprecedented amount of support.
"If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it - then I can achieve it." Muhammad Ali
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