Amina al-Sirafi Q3: Freedom and entrapment
Freedom and entrapment are the major drivers of the plot. Al-Dabaran is trapped in the Moon of Saba. Jamal/Dunya is trapped in the home. Amina is trapped by Salima's blackmail. Tinbu is literally trapped in prison. Majid has trapped himself in family life. Falco has trapped the marid. Amina is trapped by the contract with the peris. The climax of the story has Amina and Jamal trapped in a cave, released by the marid Amina released moments before.
The only person to buck the trend is the non-human Raksh, who gains agency when he's bound to a human.
Similarly, Amina gains strength and magical senses from her contact with the peris, and Falco and crew gain from their pacts with the supernatural.
Amina and her crew are only really happy when they're on the seas, free from the restrictions of settled society.
What do you think of this analysis of the book? Do you think it's accurate? Do you agree with what it says about human interactions, where connections to people limit you, but only connections to the supernatural will enhance you?
Comments
hmmm. I read books like this experientially. There is no analysis until digested and ruminated upon. In the book these things seemed organic.
The other cool idea I got from Barner was the notion that a community is a kind of semi-closed system in which one must accept both the good and the bad so long as one chooses to be part of the group. The ensemble of characters in the novel reminded me very much of this aspect of community and the characters relations to each other. Over the course of the novel, Amina builds her community. Many of its members are flawed- especially her husband and Salima. But they are nevertheless part of the community, even at the end. And this is a very appealing feature about the ensemble cast. Coming back to the question of traps, one could take the view that Amina is ‘trapped’ by her relations. But I don’t think that’s the case, here. I think she welcomes and finds comfort in being thus bound to this community.
I think this is a pretty interesting aspect to the book. I needed both you and Barner to help me see this, so Yay Community!
The theme of entrapment an interesting perspective, but it sort-of requires one's definition of being trapped to slide very loosely to and fro, perhaps to the point where one is just making things fit with a predefined idea? For example, Al-Dabaran and Timbu are, as you say, quite literally trapped. Their freedom of movement is completely curtailed. But the nature of the "entrapment" that Salima might have over Amina is very different - it doesn't stop her going anywhere. And Amina was free (in principle - I'm not saying she would exercise this option) of calling Salima's bluff, saying "I don't believe you'd do that" and just doing as she pleased. The theory runs the risk of being unfalsifiable since pretty much anything might be defined as entrapment if you slide the parameters enough!
Which relates very much to @Apocryphal and @BarnerCobblewood 's point about religion and community. From what I have seen, people who are personally deeply involved with religion or spirituality don't perceive it as being trapped, but rather as being liberated. So there's a switch of viewpoint as to which "side" is liberating and which entrapping, depending on one's personal position. And, I suppose, the same with family or community - people feel at different times and in different situations either trapped or enabled by these groups. As I mentioned in one of the other discussions, I think the community aspect of the ship, where everyone knows each other's strong and weak points and gets on with things anyway, to be a very good part of this book.
I was getting at the idea of of "entrapment" being a restriction over what you'd like to do. Amina doesn't want to be away from her daughter, and doesn't want to be hunting down magical artefacts. But she wants to be a good Muslim and a good mother, so I wouldn't call her "trapped" by either of those: there's nothing stopping her renouncing Islam and abandoning Marjana.
> there's nothing stopping her renouncing Islam and abandoning Marjana.
But, in this setting, I feel like there should be; societal pressure. Everybody’s a maverick in this book, aren’t they? (I’m struggling to convey why I feel the way I do about the book - I read it weeks ago before vacation and I’m now obviously too hazy on the details. But my overall impression was that we were reading about a bunch of Americans having adventures in fantasy Arabia, and not about a bunch of Arabs).
I think that's a fair point - there seemed to be legal pressure on the crew to conform to local regulations at the towns they visited, and magical pressure to act or not act in particular ways, but I don't recall any religious pressure being applied on anyone. Maybe that's right for this era but seeing as we're only like three or four hundred years since Islam was founded I would have expected it to be more vigorous.
Perhaps the arena that we were moving around in was sufficiently on the periphery that it was all more easy going, and we'd have had a different story in Baghdad or Medina? I understand the tolerance of Christians and Jews practicing their own thing, but I'd have expected that Amina and the others would be under a bit more pressure to conform?
Yes, they are under social pressure to conform. Look at Amina's mother, or Salima and Dunya. But they are the fringes of society, and the further you go from the center, the less effective that pressure is.