Aladdin And The Devil Analysis

The Jinn’s characters are similar to the Christian entities of the Devil and his demons. However, the way that the West portrays the Jinn are caricatured, comic, and supernatural creatures. The Jinn are depicted as beings that grant wishes as the Disney’s version of Aladdin. In these accounts, the Jinn tricked humans and acted in a superficial matter. In a contrasting view, literature in the East represents the Jinn as frightful and sinister due to the Islamic religious beliefs. The divergent representation of the Jinn between Burton and Mahfouz asserts Said’s claims of personal dimension. The Islamic religion is the second most important religion in the world preceded by Christianity. America and Europe presented inaccurate misleading and …show more content…
Burton depicts the Jinn as prisoners subjected to the person who becomes the owner or the ring or rubs the lamp. The jinni has hideous aspect and appears and disappears to grant the wishes of the master (Burton 87). In one of the footnotes, he states that “the magical effect of the Ring and the Lamp extend far and wide over the physique and morale of the owner: they turn a “raw laddie” into a finished courtier, warrior, statesman, etc” (Burton 104). This statement alludes to the assumption that the jinni’s power and that the magical outcome produced refinement in Aladdin and his mother. In Burton’s version, it is clear that the Jinni is only an object that brings jewels, possessions, and power to Aladdin. The Jinni’s image is cartoonlike and as legendary monsters that their only purpose is to help the young Aladdin to gain love and wealth. Said’s points of personal dimension connect directly on how Burton transforms the Islamic methodology and theory about the Jinni to something exotic, enigmatic, and curious; he romanticizes it without understanding the character of the Jinn for Orientals (Said 33-36). Burton published his account portraying the Aladdin, Sultan, the princess, and others as raucous, uncultured, unintelligent because their descriptions and dialogue deviated from Burton’s personal values. He, …show more content…
More general, Said asks how individuals come to understand people, strangers who look different to us by virtue of the color of the skin. The central argument of Said’s remarks is the way the West, Europe and America, look the countries of the people of the Middle East is through a lens that distorts the actual reality of those places and those people. From that disparity, Burton and Mahfouz created their account of The Arabian Nights. In different ways, both tried to portray the reality, life, culture, and beliefs of the Arab world. Burton, as an outsider, tells the story of a mystic, exuberant, sexual, uncivilized, naïve, and erotic East. Mahfouz, as an Arab, illustrates a cynical, dark side of humanity that manipulates, destroys, and controls his and many societies. Mahfouz’s goal is to awake a sense of individual responsibility in social and governmental