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Literature Discussion - Lit-Talk.com
Co-cultural Reflections
By Khaled M.Kh.S Alnobani, Jordan
www.Author-me.com Middle East editor
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Co-cultural Reflections
by Khaled Alnobani
Every time I try to reach the frontiers of an American writer I find it difficult. When I read a short story I feel how much I miss of reaching sufficient comprehension or suitable appreciation to the full ideas’ forms and meanings of certain expressions of the author. The last short story revealed to me more about my limited acquaintance. I found it swirling about a pointless subject. My conclusion was related to relevance not values. I stood up and left the story. How could I read about a boy who lost his pet? It looked for me a freak act. I began to think of the differences between us, who find difficulty in maintaining life, and those Americans who have strange subjects to write about. After discovering that there was nothing else to do I returned to the same story, to know how it could be completed.
After reading three quarters of the “Last Cover” by Paul Annixter, I had a strong feeling about myself. The primary sense I had about the story turned to a feeling of futileness against my own life endeavors; it was so strong that I wished to throw the book away. When this feeling appeared I could not realize its reason, but when I revised the plot I could perceive and discover more. Many times we are defeated because of fearing to win. I realized how much ignorant to consider expedition rather than being still as an accident could ruin life; out of attention is as safe as reliable.
When I revised the plot taking my reflections into consideration, I could realize its power; reading is not to know more, it is to feel more. Not a glorious subject what should attract us, a wise plot can make us see through our own lives. Our feelings are a reflected view over the plot structure that a wise extracted responses to similar situations may need a unique understanding to discover new views, new methods or routes. The mother role in the story reminded me with my mother and what she used to say; she is the thrill to continuity.
I learnt that many fallacies could be casted inside a spontaneous conclusion. Observations are dragged toward inferences. To go through, overriding none syllogism argument is reached through reflections rather than establishing standards of appraisal. Not enough to know somebody or live with him or even to be close relatives, there are other powerful communications that can make people emotionally close. A shared conspiracy or a heart felt mutual understanding what made the father’s and the two brothers’ relationship intimate in the “Last Cover”.
I learnt that when reading “Initiation” (1912) for the Jewish writer Mary Antin (1881-1949), I should not be irritated by her self-pride considering Judaism a birth gift. I found out that the paradoxical dilemmas of coexistence between Arabs and Israelis can reach a solution by visualizing the stratum of existing reflections. The results are developing new criteria for new standards to be used crossing the two cultures. For example an Arabian would decline to go to pray in Alaqsa mosque in Jerusalem but he would fight to go to Israel to work. Normalization and peace process between Arabs and Israel suffer the absence of some important steps of this general procedure. The best quality of this wide spread personalized plan is that it does not begin with accepting the other side but ends where ever planned.
Critical thinking is a part of free choice; one cannot say “I am free,” if he is selective in using his mind. Arabs are entering new civilized phase and they are in need for contemporary working theories for reading, writing and analyzing texts. The present provided Arabian knowledge is an academic which help for building obscured views restricted to certain fields; it gives a set of rulers of different units and sizes, for the plot, for the settings, for the tone…etc.., so at the end one reaches a multiple choice answer with no insights or reliable measures. Fundamental questioning of religion, politics and ethics should be made. The contemporary Arabian writings are polarized to certain opinions about sex, politics and religion. Instead of being part of a critical thinking process Arabian media editors consider themselves supreme judges arguing a position; they keep categorizing and re-categorizing the same authors according to their subjects, styles and tones; laying there the Arabian amoral dispute.
