Edward Said States
States Edward: Said
“States,” by Edward Said is an essay written by a Palestinian man with first-hand accounts of daily life in that region of the Middle-East. Said was renowned in the literary community as one of the most “distinguished literary critics and scholars...” Born in Jerusalem in 1935, Said, at the age of twelve, fled with his family to Cairo during the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state. In his essay, Said begins to discuss the state of the Palestinian people. The content of his essay is an explanation and an informative look on the Palestinian people, as well their situation and their identity. In our English Composition class, we have been challenged to look past the aesthetics of “States” and look not at just what Said says or tries to convey in his essay, but to look at what he does.
If you read “States,” there are a few things that stand out past the “simple” reading that most students (in my own case) practice. In “States,” I see an empowering sense of pathos in the way he is writing and especially in the images he uses. If the average reader decides to read “States,” they are immediately drawn to a certain feeling: a feeling of pity, a feeling of misunderstanding. Some readers may ask the question: “Why does he feel the need to make the Palestinians look like this?” Said has had his own experiences with this issue. Even with the history of the Said family fleeing from the formation of Israel, does he need to share this with the rest of the world? Many people have said that the future can only be made better by studying the past. Said, in my opinion, twists this ideal. Although the instances and images from “States” are a bit dated, there is still an ongoing issue in the Middle-East. His intentions seem clear in this regard. If someone placed “States” next to Occupation 101 (the film we watched in class on the issue in Palestine), they would find some similarities in content, but not context. In the film, it is
“States,” by Edward Said is an essay written by a Palestinian man with first-hand accounts of daily life in that region of the Middle-East. Said was renowned in the literary community as one of the most “distinguished literary critics and scholars...” Born in Jerusalem in 1935, Said, at the age of twelve, fled with his family to Cairo during the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state. In his essay, Said begins to discuss the state of the Palestinian people. The content of his essay is an explanation and an informative look on the Palestinian people, as well their situation and their identity. In our English Composition class, we have been challenged to look past the aesthetics of “States” and look not at just what Said says or tries to convey in his essay, but to look at what he does.
If you read “States,” there are a few things that stand out past the “simple” reading that most students (in my own case) practice. In “States,” I see an empowering sense of pathos in the way he is writing and especially in the images he uses. If the average reader decides to read “States,” they are immediately drawn to a certain feeling: a feeling of pity, a feeling of misunderstanding. Some readers may ask the question: “Why does he feel the need to make the Palestinians look like this?” Said has had his own experiences with this issue. Even with the history of the Said family fleeing from the formation of Israel, does he need to share this with the rest of the world? Many people have said that the future can only be made better by studying the past. Said, in my opinion, twists this ideal. Although the instances and images from “States” are a bit dated, there is still an ongoing issue in the Middle-East. His intentions seem clear in this regard. If someone placed “States” next to Occupation 101 (the film we watched in class on the issue in Palestine), they would find some similarities in content, but not context. In the film, it is