The Grass is Singing
Today, I am proud to introduce to you the fascinating and memorable novel "The Grass Sings". According to many novel readers, more than the style and context of writing a novel , creating the atmosphere of the story and portraying the story in the reader makes the novel more lasting and perhaps more immortal. In my own experience, I would like to mention two examples of novel books.
I have read Dolatabadi's novel, " Kelidar " more than 25 Years ,and the opening sentences of the book are still in my mind.
Also, about twenty years ago, I read the book named "My Bird" by Fariba Vafi, but it seems like I read it just last year.
Doris Lessing in this book "The Grass Is Singing" throws us from the first page into the middle of a story about which we know nothing and we have to wait to discover the facts.
We read in the first page of book.
“murder mystery
by special correspondent
Marie Turner, wife of Richard Turner, a farmer at Ngesi, was found murdered on the front veranda of their homestead yesterday morning. The houseboy, who has been arrested, has confessed to the crime. No motive has been discovered. It is thought he was in search of valuables.
The newspaper did not say much. People all over the country must have glanced at the paragraph with its sensational heading and felt a little spurt of anger mingled with what was almost satisfaction, as if some believe had been confirmed, as if something had happened which could only have been expected. When natives steal, murder or rape, that is the feeling white people have.” Page 1
Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007, was born to English parents in 1919 in the city of Kermanshah, Iran. Doris's father, " Alfred Tayler ", worked at the Shahshahi Bank.
Six years after Doris was born, she moved with her parents to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) which was then part of the British colonies. Influenced by the atmosphere there, Doris published her first novel, The Grass Sings, in 1950.
"The Grass Sings" addresses issues such as apartheid, the oppression of Zimbabwe during the British colonial era.
Notes from book:
“They, the geese that laid the golden eggs, were still in that state where they did not know there were other ways of living beside producing gold from other people.” Page7
sjambol. ( SHam'bak )(in South Africa) a long, stiff whip, originally made of rhinoceros hide.
“At the trail, which was as a Sergeant Denham had said it would be, a more formality, he said what was expected of him. It was suggested that the native had murdered Mary Turner while drunk, in search of money and Jewelry.” page 25
“Every woman in South Africa is brought up to be. In her childhood she had been forbidden to walk out alone, and when she had asked why, she had been told in the furtive, lowered, but matter-of-fact voice she associated with her mother, that they were nasty and might do horrible things to her.” page 60
“A few months after her marriage she found there was nothing more to do. Suddenly, from one day to the next, she found herself unoccupied. Instinctively staving off idleness as something dangerous, she returned to her underwear, and embroidered everything that could possibly be embroidered.” page 64
“Sometimes she would present the worn visage of an indomitable old woman who learned to expect the worst from life and sometimes the face of defenseless hysteria . But she was still able to walk from the room, silent in wordless criticism.” page 99
“Thinking of that holiday, that she was always planning, but which never seemed to become possible, turned Mary's thought in a new direction. Her life, for a while, had a new meaning.” page 106
“it was during these two hours of half- consciousness that she allowed herself to dream about that beautiful lost time when she walked in the office and lived as she pleased, before "people made her get married" That was how she put it to herself.” page 106-7
“For although their marriage was all wrong, and there was no real understanding between them, he had become accustomed to the double solitude that any marriage, even a bad one, becomes.” page 117
“The stinting poverty in which they lived was unbearable; it was destroying them. It did not mean that there was not enough to eat: it meant that every penny must be watched, new clothes foregone, amusements abandoned, holidays kept in the never-never-land of the future. A poverty that allows a tiny margin for spending, but which is shadowed always by a weight of debt that nags like a conscience, is worse than starvation itself. That was how she had come to feel. And it was bitter because it was a self imposed poverty.” Page138-9
“when she saw him weak and goalless, and pitiful, she hated him, and the hate turned in on herself. She needed a man stronger than herself and she was trying to create one out of Dick.” page 143
“for even daydreams need an element of hope to give satisfaction to the dreamer. she would stop herself in the middle of one of herself habitual fantasies about the old days, which she projected into her future, saying dully to herself that there would be no future.” page 150-1
“ It seemed that something had finally snapped inside of her, and she would gradually fade and sink into darkness.” page 151
“When a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and sees the human being (which it is his chief preoccupation to avoid), his sense of guilt, which he denies fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip.” page 164
“They were like two antagonists, silently sparking. only he was powerful and sure of himself, and she was undermined with fear, by her terrible dream-filled nights, her obsession.” page 191
“people who live to themselves, whether from necessity or choice, and who do not trouble themselves about their neighbors' affairs, are always disquieted and uneasy if by some chance they come to know that other people discuss them. It is as though a sleeping man should awake and find round his bed a circle of strangers staring at him.” page 192
“No one really believes in the malignancy of gossip, save those who know how they themselves have suffered from it.” Page 192
“She would walk out her road alone, she taught. That was the lesson she had to learn. If she had learned it, long ago, she would not be standing here now, having been betrayed for the second time by her weak reliance on a human being who should not be expected to take the responsibility of her.” page 231
“She was alone. She was defenseless. She was shut in a small black box, the walls closing in on her, the roof pressing down. she was in a trap, cornered and helpless. But She would have to go out and meet him.” page 234-5
THE GRASS IS SINGING BY DORIS LESSING (AUDIO)
The Grass Is Singing , the movie
