main themes in the women s swimming pool

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Analysis of “The Can certainly Swimming Pool”

In “The Women’s Swimming Pool” by Hanan Al-Shayk, a picture is coated of a girl’s journey to Beirut coming from her country town 1982. The political and interpersonal ramifications of her universe create the frustration and loss natural in the binds she finds herself in inherited via her as well as society.

In this tale it is very clear that women where the girl can be from are quite disadvantaged and held back by way of a religious morals and customs in stark contrast towards the bustling town where “bared arms, inch “tight pants, ” and “girls’ locks, ” (1169) color metropolis of Beirut. At her rural source, she is controlled to the job of doing work in the camping tent “amidst mounds of tobacco” (1166). It can be here that her strongest tie and relation is to that of her grandmother, her only family members left, who “has welded [the girl] so near to her that the village women no longer care to make friends with me” (1167). Her family connections turn into problems, holding her back through the joys of youth and friendship. In her city, her grandpa was “the celebrated spiritual scholar” (1167) and yet the grandmother is definitely weaving cigarette, highlighting the inequality identified among the sexes, with the ladies left towards the duty of menial labor. Their values ingrained thus strongly that even “In this high temperature [the girl] still needed to wear that dress using firm sleeves, that head protecting over my own braids” (1168). No matter the soreness it induced, the customs were to be upheld. This style is portrayed again since the grandma is injuring her legs on the tarmac in order to response the Islamic call to prayer, “her knees that knelt around the cruelly hard pavement” disclosing “her tattooed hands that lay on the dirt. “(1171) The printer ink matching the main one on her chin, a noticeable woman, nearly as if used by the traditions so inbedded in her like the extremely tattoo it symbolized.

The girl talks her grandmother to visit the location that is house to her much loved sea. It truly is here that her “friend Sumayya experienced sworn that the swimming pool shed been by had been for women only. inch It is clear that the opinion systems of the girls people allowed for zero intermingling but rather a segregation of the genders as this was not socially, religiously or see acceptable, in addition to the hoops girls had to head to in order to get pleasure from swimming, although men may just hop right into the ocean. The consequences”If any kind of man would be to see you, inches her grandma exclaims, “you’d be done pertaining to, and so would your mom, and father and your grandfathershe was scared she more than likely go to heaven” (1168). There may be deeply inbedded shame and “evil” electric power attributed to the sight of womans physique, and tight religious effects for these kinds of a sight. This places extreme limitation onto the freedom of women in the girl’s position, because demonstrated by difficulty in even finding this certain children’s pool.

Whenever they arrived “it was rapidly all too evident that we had been outsiders to the capital” (1169). The culture of the young lady is that of the rural south, certainly not the modern and generous beliefs of people in the downtown city of Beirut, and as she realizes this she “[cries] inwardly mainly because [she] was born in the south” (1170) exactly where it was more traditional and spiritual, with very little freedom or perhaps opportunity to provide the young young lady. “[She] sensed how far taken off we were from these passers by, inch (1171) the alienation and seclusion of tradition is definitely felt deeply by the woman.

Amidst the strain currently felt in being through this new and wildly diverse place, when the girl prospects the grandma to finally go get the pool area, it is obvious the lack of knowing of such some thing is to the people of Beirut, highlighting their lack of comparable religious procedures and concern. When requesting just about everyone they will saw and passed by simply where the ladies swimming pool was, “nobody [knew] where it was” (1170). The people of Beirut take different planes of presence it seems, having no need to find out such things as this did not influence their lives personally. When the girl discovers the pool, and soon after finds her grandmother praying in the pavements, she feels like her granny was “destroying what lay in my tote, ” (1171) spoiling her dream as well as the sweet liberty the great waters would be to have brought.

The girl’s burden, religious entrapments and upbringing held her back through the sweet, salty spray of opportunity and liberation. Whilst the metropolitan sprawl bustles by, unphased and unrelatable.