Innocence Of The Devil Analysis

Women Struggling for Freedom in the Face of Oppression
Nefissa in the Innocence of the Devil by Nawal El Saadawi, Zabeth in A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul, The Mirabal sisters in A Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa, and Zaynab in Karnak Cafe by Naguib Mahfouz all struggled for freedom against their oppressive environments. Nefissa struggled in obtaining her freedom in Egypt where men told women how to behave. Zabeth struggled in her journey through the harsh physical environment of Africa to provide goods for her village. The Mirabal sisters fought against the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. Zaynab struggled with Egyptian society's expectations and against the torture administered by the revolutionaries.
Zaynab
She is accused of being a communist by Khaled and is "thrown into a cell and is subjected to the most humiliating forms of torture...” (70). Also, she sees Ismail in prison being interrogated. Zaynab starts crying and cursing because of how “humiliated and hopeless he looked” (70). She meets Khaled once again and he tells her that Ismail has confessed to being a terrorist. She yells and says, “The entire thing's atrocious” (71). Khaled Safwan orders his men to rape Zaynab in front of him. She feels as if she has lost all her innocence even though Khalid claims that she has been proved innocent. She is forced to become an informer and the “people she was working for had absolute control of everything” (73). She is “utterly horrified by what I'd lost…” (73). She decides to start behaving “like a dishonorable woman” (74). When the chicken seller and Zayn see her, they find "the path wide open” (75). Zaynab does this because she feels that she must sacrifice herself for the revolution. Zaynab seems to have started out as strong woman, but slowly her environment oppresses her. In contrast, Zabeth does not allow her physically oppressive environment to change her.
Zabeth seems to successfully fight against the oppressive physical environment in Africa until the end. Zabeth was a “marchande” (Naipaul 7), a retailer, who dwells in a fishing community. She was a good businesswoman because she knew her
To get her goods to the steamer, she had to attach the dugouts to the moving steamer. It was dangerous and "almost every trip the steamer made there was a report of a dugout being overturned... and of people being drowned” (7). When there was trouble, Zabeth simply “slept in the verandah of a grocery or a bar” (8). Also, Zabeth had to travel in the dark which surprises Salim. Salim says, “The river and the forest were like presences, and much more powerful than you. You felt unprotected, an intruder” (8). However, Zabeth “traveled without fear...” (9). She left the forest which had the “greatest security” (Naipaul 9) while other people were scared to go “outside his [their] territory” (9). Even when dealing with the officials at the bend of the river, “Zabeth took care then not to give away the entrance to her village. “…she waited for the steamer and the barge and the lights to disappear. Then she and her women polled back up or drifted down to their secret channel...” (8). Zabeth knows how to successfully travel to the river and obtain her goods even with all the difficulties she encounters from the physical journey and her lack of