In the American culture, women are considered to be lucky compared to other countries. That is the main reason why many women want to migrate to the US, to be able to experience a level of freedom where gender is not the main cause of anguish. As I read Woman at Point Zero and watched "The Circle", I quickly noticed the strong connection between the two, which is generally dealing with the struggles that women have to undergo just to survive in their culture.
Women at Point Zero is a tragic story of, Firadaus who, standing on her own from the very beginning of her life, tries to find justice in a corrupt society. At first glance this book mainly deals with such various themes such as physical abuse, prostitution, and the attempt to gain some hold in life, with the addition of current importance such as corruption, hypocrisy and the exploitation of a minority.
This book was written in first person narrative, which lets you become one with the writer and be able to connect with what she is putting out. I think that this point of view makes the reader look at the book with a more open mind and actually be able to feel what the narrator has felt at that moment. With that, it allows a further sympathetic understanding to develop. .
Firadaus had experienced suffering since she was a little girl, with most of the credit given to the male gender, even though her mother did not make it any easier. Her encounters with men, has given her a permanent representation of hatred towards them. This is expressed in the beginning of the book, where she states "Each I time I picked up a newspaper and found the picture of a man who was one of them, I would spit on it" (El Saadawi, 11). Firadaus has undergone physical and mental abuse from her uncle as well as all of the rest of the men she has dealt with in her life. This has brought her into a new state of mind being that only the strongest will survive.
