Symbolism In Seasons Of Migration To The North

The Trains that Carry Troops: Reclaiming Colonization Mustafa Sa’eed was a misunderstanding. Interpretation in Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih plays a strong role in typecasting and oppression, ultimately leading Mustafa to contort his subjugation into a weapon. After explaining his court case to the narrator, mustafa tells the story of what led up to Jean Morris death, “the city was transformed into an extraordinary woman, with her symbols and her mysterious calls, towards whom I drove my camels till their entrails ached and I myself almost died of yearning for her” (30). Here referenced “the city” is London, where Mustafa was living to continue his higher education. The verb, “transformed” implies a great change, where …show more content…
There came a moment when I felt I had been transformed in her eyes into a naked, primitive, creature, a spear in one hand and arrows in the other, hunting elephants and lions in the jungle” (33). It seems, through the term, “hear me out” that Isabella Seymour is not actually listening to or taking Mustafa seriously, but just hearing him “out” as if to wear him out and let his interest die away. To also say “in silence” lives in an ambiguity that allows for both the interpretation that this woman isn’t speaking or that Mustafa doesn’t have a voice. The “Christian sympathy” in her “eyes” is the same sympathy that masks hate. Sympathy here can easily be equated with the white man’s burden and an idea that the western world is more civilized and should take pity on and help less developed areas. Mustafa refers to having “been transformed,” which explains that someone else through perception had changed him and he lacked agency. He was transformed “in her eyes,” not transformed in actuality, which is opposite to the situation before where Mustafa turned the city into a woman. Isabella makes him become a “naked, primitive, creature.” Not a human, and not civilized by commonalities such as clothes. He is described as being “primitive” which is a lesser state than civilized by most understandings; however, in this case, this sort of savage …show more content…
Not to teach anything in the language of those who’s nations they were, the colonizers used schools in Sudan in a way that contradicts the empowering nature of education. Normally “schools” are use to liberate through education; however, in this case the schools were use to “teach” compliance, something that would not benefit the colonized group, but instead behoove the colonizers. Teaching the oppressed group to say, “yes” in “their” language, overrides a natural inclination for one to not be taken advantage of, and allows the colonizers to win over the colonized. The “railways” which were set up to “transport troops,” who control by means of physical power. Now, the railways are transporting people from Khartoum—such as Mustafa—to London. In this case, these troops draw their power from the “guns” that were carried down the