The Power of Language
The story is much more direct on this topic. The Professor dominates the narration for the first half when he is in a culture dominated by French powers and capable of controlling his speech (literally and metaphorically). In the second half, he is in the hands of the Reguibat and loses all such control when his tongue is removed. From this point, the story proceeds entirely with the Professor as a background character. Only when the Professor is purchased by the Ouled Nail does his perception of language resume. The emotional climax of the story is when he sees written text for the first time in months and can hear words in his head again.
Read more about this topic: A Distant Episode
Famous quotes containing the words power and/or language:
“All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Any language is necessarily a finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations, and most of the words and phrases we use are “prefabricated” in the sense that we don’t coin new ones every time we speak.”
—David Lodge (b. 1935)