Free Essays,College Free Essays,Free College Essays at Anti Essays

War tends to come with its share of atrocities and destruction- whether it be destruction of buildings and cities or of lives and hope. Its consequences don’t merely extend to the “body count” at the end of the day or the national debt resulted from the amount of money required to go to war. Rather, its outcomes include that which isn’t as apparent in “Hollywood movies”, where the heroic soldier fights bravely on the frontline. One of the most profound tragedies involved is the number of innocent victims in the warzone who do survive but become disoriented after the destruction of everything they had previously known, and as they suffer from a loss of a sense of identity and value, they resort to different methods to deal with their bereavement.
In Naema—Whereabouts Unknown, the author, Mohammed Dib, explores these adverse effects through the persona of the narrator, who documents his experiences and thoughts in a diary. The manner in which he evolves is emblematic of a person caught in the midst war, and it is apparent, through the diction employed to reflect his emotions and his actions, that his psychological state as well as his perception of what is moral alters throughout.
Initially, the narrator, while concerned, is more optimistic about what will occur. He believes that his wife Naema, by “some sort of miracle” will come back (Dib 15). Here, the wife’s name is quite symbolic and representative of the narrator’s thoughts during the specific periods throughout the story. Naema means something that is heavenly in the narrator’s native language, Arabic. The hope of her coming back thus parallels the hope that good, heavenly, things will happen, that everything will be fine, that the war will conclude, and that her trial and justice will come. His optimism amidst all this is apparent in the contrast in the beginning between the scenery and what is actually occurring. He states, “The tenement is in a state of perpetual commotion. It was still...