Season Of Migration To The North Summary

Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih deals with an unnamed Sudanese narrator who left his village to travel to Europe for education purposes. Upon his arrival back to his village in Sudan after studying British poetry abroad the narrator had to adjust to the changes and find his sense of belonging again. However, one of the changes that attracted his attention the most is an ambiguous character named Mustafa; he too had lived abroad and he was the new face in the village whom the narrator did not know. As the story progresses, more is revealed about Mustafa’s background, education, his relationships with women and later uncertainty arises whether Mustafa and the narrator might be the same person because of the similarities …show more content…
Traveling includes losing his sense of belonging traditionally and gaining a new perspective and belonging abroad, oppositional mechanisms of the north and south; being an African man and having relationship with a European woman, and moreover the narrator causes a traditional disorientation in his culture. The narrator longs to be home when he was abroad however, upon his return he felt, “Because of having thought so much about them during my absence something rather like fog rose up between them and me the first instant that I saw them” (1). The narrator uses fog as a metaphor to describe the uncertainty and obscurity of being back in his native land and what he has lost. The narrator explains that, “ that life warmth of the tribe which I had lost for a time in a land ‘whose fish die of the cold’” (1). He makes the distinction between North and the South, and what he has lost during his time away. However the narrator does rather prefer to be in his homeland he argues that, “Over there is like here, neither better nor worse. But I am from here...”(41). Although the narrator gained education, and more knowledge about the other he chooses home because that is where he came from, thus this novel stresses the importance of gains and losses when traveling and …show more content…
The narrator notices the modernization that currently occurs in Sudan, and analyzes the impact this advancement has in the village. He describes that, “From my position under the tree I saw the village slowly undergo a change: the water-wheels disappeared to be replaced on the bank of the Nile by pumps, each one doing the work of a hundred water-wheels”(4). The imagery of the water pumps symbolizes the role of modernization in the novel and the Sudanese village, the narrator explains that the water pumps only bring benefits to the owner and not the rest of the village. He stresses that modernization only benefits some thus traveling abroad ties into the ideology of modernization. Earlier tribal cultures did not travel they would follow traditional ways of living, and money use to come from inheritance or the family you were born in. The role of travelling for education purposes highlights that the narrator could make his own money from his career despite his family background. The narrator went abroad to gain knowledge to develop Sudan as he states that,“Knowledge, though, of whatsoever kind is necessary for the advancement of our country”(9). Traveling for education when coming from traditional tribal cultures is a form of modernization, thus the novel highlights the importance of modernization through traveling to gain experience and apply it once