57 pages • 1 hour read
Abdulrazak GurnahParadise
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1994A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Gardens and Nature
Gardens in this story represent Paradise, the Garden of Eden or Jennet al Adn, which is the seventh level of Paradise or Heaven. The walled garden of Uncle Aziz’s home is where Yusuf first appreciates what peace and beauty a garden can bring, and he “desired nothing more than to be banished for a long time in the silent grove” (43). However, as a walled garden, it keeps some people (Amina and the Mistress) in while keeping others out.
There are other “paradises,” too. When Maimuna hears of the merchant’s garden, she complains that Yusuf is lucky and that God gave them “only the bush beyond their backyard which was used for rubbish. It shuddered with secret life, and out of it rose fumes of putrefaction and pestilence” (66). Hamid attempts to create a garden for his white pigeons, called his Birds of Paradise, but he gives up when it proves too hard. Paradise, as symbolized by the garden, is something that cannot be built through human effort alone, but rather seems to be a luxury randomly bestowed by God.
On the journey Yusuf makes with Hamid, he encounters a beautiful waterfall area, which the men speculate must be like Paradise. Hamid recounts the story of the Flood the God sent to destroy the world, but “the Garden was beyond the reach of the waters and survived intact. So, the original garden may still exist, but it is closed to men by thunderous waters and a gate of flame” (81). Again, the natural world and its beauty seem to be signs of a Paradise that is not accessible to everyone.
And even for those who do have access to the wonders of nature, such as Yusuf with his experiences of “thunderous waters,” dreams of a gate of flames, and regular work in the walled garden, arriving at Paradise comes with danger. Like Adam in the Garden of Eden, Yusuf experiences temptation and the tempter, or the serpent. Amina is the temptation, for Yusuf only continues his visits to see her and talk with her. However, the Mistress is the serpent. She wants him but will strike if he doesn’t do her bidding. At the end of the story, Yusuf hears the door of the garden bolted shut behind him, a symbolic banishment from the Garden of Eden.
Dogs
Dogs appear frequently in the story, often as harbingers of violence or danger. The first notable instance is Yusuf’s dream on the train with Uncle Aziz in which his mother is “a one-eyed dog he had once seen crushed under the wheels of a train” (19). He does not yet realize that he has seen his mother for the last time. The next dogs he encounters are real, though. The feral dogs that linger across the road as they sleep outside inspire nightmares of dogs on two legs, slavering over him. When the dog pack prepares to attack, Yusuf soils himself and cries out. After chasing the dogs away, Khalil chastises him for not saying something sooner, but Yusuf’s fear is also bound up in shame, as he didn’t think Khalil took any notice of them.
In one dream, the huge dog on two legs “straddled his open belly in search of his deepest secrets” (124). He awakes in the morning to the sounds of screams and growls, as a hyena had attacked one of the porters. The narrator does not disclose what Yusuf’s deepest secrets are, but what they are matters less than how they affect him. Most likely fears what he is ashamed of, as the first dream of his mother came before a dream of his cowardice born. Kalasinga notices Yusuf and Hamid’s frightened response when he talks of the German man with the dogs. He teases them about dogs “trained to hunt for Muslim man,” and Hamid calls him names, though Kalasinga responds, “Is it my fault if you Muslim people are so afraid of dogs?” (79). His query references the fact that that saliva of dogs is deemed unclean or impure in Islam, which has since developed into a stereotype that Muslims fear dogs. Perhaps the root of Yusuf’s fears is that he is in some way unclean.
At the end of the story, Yusuf sees the dogs eating at a pile of excrement and guarding it from him in “squalid recognition,” and believes they know “a shit-eater when they saw one” (247). He thinks again of his dream of the birth of his cowardice and runs off to join the men marching to war. What he projects onto the dogs is that they are eating something worse than rubbish, but they are guarding it fiercely for it is all that they have or were given. Yusuf understands that as long as he is in servitude to Uncle Aziz, he metaphorically eats whatever he is given. The dogs reflect him back to himself, and he makes the only choice he can think of in the moment to escape that destiny.
Gog and Magog
Khalil introduces Yusuf to the story of Gog and Magog, which appears in the Koran. He describes them as “brutes who had no language and who ravaged the lands of their neighbors all the time” (42). Dhul Qurnain, the “two-horned one,” also known by the name Iskander the Conqueror, helps the people at the edge of the world build a wall to keep Gog and Magog out. The story also appears in Hebrew texts, and there is some debate about whether Gog and Magog are individuals, groups of people, or lands, and whether, if they are individuals, they are human or not. It is widely believed that Iskander is Alexander the Great. Beyond the wall are “barbarians and demons” (42). The symbolic importance of this story lies in its distinction between civilized people and the non-civilized with whom communication is difficult.
Throughout the story, various characters, from Mohammed Abdalla to Hussein, consider themselves civilized and the people to the west “savages.” Hussein speaks of Gog and Magog being in the north, while the west “is the land of darkness, the land of jinns and monsters. God sent the other Yusuf as a prophet to the land of jinns and savages,” speculating whether Yusuf will be sent, too. Hamid’s visitor who tells the tale of his uncle’s journeys in Russia left him astounded by their lack of civilization, saying, “Their savagery made his uncle suspect that he was in the country of Gog and Magog” (105). Not only does the repetition of this story show the tellers’ basis for determining civilization from savagery, which usually involves different languages and customs, but the location of this land to the north is also indicative of the nascent colonization efforts of European nations in East Africa, notably the Germans, English, and Belgians. Throughout the novel, people share rumors of the Europeans’ ferocity and mythical powers. Some even speculate that they can eat metal or have iron heads or poisonous spit. They are cast in the role of the nefarious Gog and Magog, but their damage is only beginning.
