Basma Abdel Aziz wrote the novel The Queue, a dystopian science fiction novel that shows an oppressed people who have been taken over by a central authority that exerts control over every aspect of the people’s lives. This Authoritarian regime mimics real revolutions around the world, like the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and the Egyptian Revolution in Egypt, to warn about the dangers of inaction against an authoritarian regime. Using her protagonist Dr. Tarek Fahmy, one of several doctors in charge of the hospital’s Emergency Room Department, Aziz appeals to the reader’s own nature using the structure of the novel, characterization of the protagonist and the symbolism in the novel in relation to the protagonist, thus making this character
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Tarek Fahmy. One of the main symbols in this novel is the Gate. “Despite how often the Gate released these promising updates, it still had never reopened, and nothing had really changed. All it provided was hope for people to cling to and a reason to stay in the queue” (Aziz 110). Throughout the novel, the consistency of the Gate never opening, yet issuing decrees, unfulfilled promises and updates were a concrete representation of the Authoritarian regime the people were living under that gave orders, took from the people and never gave anyone any real hope. Such an authoritarian symbol of access with no access in the novel tried to replace hope with the idea of waiting in the immovable …show more content…
Furthermore, she takes this appeal further by her passive characterization of Tarek to emanate a powerful message of the preservation of human nature and using the symbolism of the Gate and Tarek to represent the oppressive structure of this tyrannical government and the hope that lives in every person,. Translating this message of warning to her readers by using her protagonist, Tarek, as a proxy for the reader and even herself. “Then quickly, he added a sentence by hand to the bottom of the fifth document. He closed the file, left it on his desk and rose” (Aziz 217). These last 2 lines of the entire novel show an expectation of choice and action that we all must take to prevent any totalitarian aspects of the government or any force from consume and dictating our human rights that we know we are inherent to
Tarek Fahmy. One of the main symbols in this novel is the Gate. “Despite how often the Gate released these promising updates, it still had never reopened, and nothing had really changed. All it provided was hope for people to cling to and a reason to stay in the queue” (Aziz 110). Throughout the novel, the consistency of the Gate never opening, yet issuing decrees, unfulfilled promises and updates were a concrete representation of the Authoritarian regime the people were living under that gave orders, took from the people and never gave anyone any real hope. Such an authoritarian symbol of access with no access in the novel tried to replace hope with the idea of waiting in the immovable …show more content…
Furthermore, she takes this appeal further by her passive characterization of Tarek to emanate a powerful message of the preservation of human nature and using the symbolism of the Gate and Tarek to represent the oppressive structure of this tyrannical government and the hope that lives in every person,. Translating this message of warning to her readers by using her protagonist, Tarek, as a proxy for the reader and even herself. “Then quickly, he added a sentence by hand to the bottom of the fifth document. He closed the file, left it on his desk and rose” (Aziz 217). These last 2 lines of the entire novel show an expectation of choice and action that we all must take to prevent any totalitarian aspects of the government or any force from consume and dictating our human rights that we know we are inherent to