Woman at Point Zero

Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1975

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Chapter 1

Chapter 2, Pages 11-50

Chapter 2, Pages 51-103

Chapter 3

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Eyes

Content Warning: This section includes descriptions of sexual assault and rape, physical violence, and domestic abuse.

A prominent symbol in the novella, eyes are multilayered in what they symbolize depending on context and whose eyes Firdaus is describing. The first person whose eyes stand out to Firdaus are her mother’s, and the way she describes her mother’s eyes repeats two other times during the story:

All I can remember are two rings of intense white around two circles of intense black. I only had to look into them for the white to become whiter and the black even blacker, as though sunlight was pouring into them from some magical source neither on earth, nor in the sky, for the earth was pitch black, and the sky dark as night, with no sun and no moon (17).

Firdaus’s mother’s eyes when she was very small were engulfing and wide and represented comfort and love (“Two eyes that alone seemed to hold me up” [17])—something that she was deprived of the rest of her life. This version of her mother is fleeting; Firdaus mainly recalls her mother as being empty, angry, and abusive.

Firdaus sees the same loving eyes in both Miss Iqbal and Ibrahim, the only people she ever loves. In these moments, she feels completely desperate and vulnerable, and her inner humanity is revealed (a rare occurrence). The deep contrast between the black and white of the eyes of those she loved illustrates the nature of love throughout her life: It’s a concept that contrasts with the very essence of her life experiences and one that she can’t hope to connect to.

In addition, Firdaus describes the gaze of men who stare at her with prying eyes, both when she’s a child and in her adulthood: “I saw them as they watched what went on around them with wary, doubting, stealthy eyes, eyes ready to pounce, full of an aggressiveness that seemed strangely servile” (13). These aggressive eyes terrify her on her first night alone in the street, and this is one of the fears she eventually overcomes. The eyes of men in this case represent patriarchal domination and the total inescapability of men’s control and desire. She can free herself from it only by disconnecting totally from the world around her.

Repetition

Woven throughout the story and throughout Firdaus’s life is the motif of repetition. Everything she experiences when she’s young, she experiences again in her youth and once again in her adulthood. Firdaus escapes to the streets countless times in an attempt to outrun the abuse around her, and eventually does so enough that the streets feel safer to her than anywhere else. Her encounters with love, which are brief and laced with pain, are described in a repetitive format, using similar phrasing and focusing on the black and white of each person’s eyes. In addition, she refers back to her early descriptions of the aggression in men’s eyes, as this is an experience that follows her through her life. This repetition is a disturbing cycle that for many years Firdaus tries desperately to escape; however, she eventually lets go of any desire to escape and starts to play the system to her own advantage instead. This works for a while, until patriarchal domination infiltrates once more and inspires Firdaus’s most extreme act.

Money

In Woman at Point Zero, money represents power, transactional pleasure, and love, and it’s part of the motivation behind patriarchal domination of women. Firdaus views men as people who seek only power and sex, often combining and conflating the two and seeing women as objects to serve men’s needs. Money represents hypocrisy and greed, as well as the subjugation and lack of influence that women experience in patriarchal societies. For most of her life, Firdaus has little or no money at all, and it’s therefore an important and life-changing moment when she receives her first 10-pound note as payment. It reminds her of the day her father gave her a single piastre, and she used it to buy candy that she chose. Firdaus uses the 10-pound note to buy a roasted chicken and is stunned by how the waiter treats her with such cautious respect now that she has money. This leads her to discover that she can hold power over men the way they once did over her: She can charge any fee, pay for lawyers, and afford her own living expenses. This strategy works for a time, until a pimp accosts Firdaus and takes most of her earnings. Money once again becomes a source of control over Firdaus, and she then decides she must let go of her attachment to it. She rises above the enslavement associated with desire and wants for nothing, allowing herself to be truly free for the first time.