De Niros Game Analysis

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De Niro’s Game, written by Rawi Hage approaches the realistic debate surrounding the question asked by people living through the Lebanon civil war through the senses of the main characters, Bassam and George. The question facing everyone is either to remain in familiar grounds facing the inevitable, or to escape towards the west, occupied by hostile nations. In first few chapters forced migration from the civil war is evident: “Ten thousand bombs had landed, and I was waiting for George. Ten thousand bombs had landed on Beirut, that crowded city, and I was lying on a blue sofa covered with white sheets to protect it from dust and dirty feet. It is time to leave, I was thinking to myself. My mother’s radio was on. It had been on since the start of the war, a radio with Rayovac batteries that lasted ten thousand years. My mother’s radio was wrapped in a cheap, green plastic cover, with holes in it, smudged with the residue of her cooking fingers and dust that penetrated its knobs, cinched against its edges. Nothing ever stopped those melancholic Fairuz songs that came out of it.” The phrase, “ten thousand" is repeated several times throughout the novel, which is a key element in the structural and the narrative aspects of De Niro’s Game. Exhaustion and excess are the two main contradicting visions that are constantly reminded, in which the author had experienced at the time of war nine years ago in Lebanon. Troops and bombs are sent "ten thousand" at a time only to create a hypnotic trance into uncertainty of what is really about to happen, as if Hage needed to reassure himself that what is occurring is real. The author inter-mingles an intricate style of descriptive poetry, with uneasy scenes between Bassam and George. After the endless attacks on Beirut, perhaps nothing can destroy it, not even ten thousand bombs, reconstructing this war-torn environment will

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