A Comparison of the Heat and Cold Imagery Used in Nawal El Saadawi's

A Comparison of the Heat and Cold Imagery Used in Nawal El Saadawi’s

Woman at Point Zero and Yasunari Kawabata’s Thousand Cranes

In the books Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi, and Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata, both authors use various forms of imagery that reoccur throughout the works. These images are used not to be taken for their literal meanings, but instead to portray a deeper sense or feeling that may occur several times in the book.

One type of imagery that both Saadawi and Kawabata use in their works is heat and cold imagery. In the works, Woman at Point Zero and Thousand Cranes, Nawal El Saadawi and Yasunari Kawabata each use heat and cold imagery to portray the same feelings of love and fear and /or the lack thereof.

In both works, the authors use heat and cold imagery in order to portray the presence and/or lack of love in three different forms. These three forms of love that are illustrated through the use of heat and cold imagery are protection, comfort, and intimacy.

Heat and cold imagery is used repeatedly in both works to provide a feeling of love in the form of protection and security, usually having the presence of heat or warmth representing a feeling of protection and security, and the absence of heat representing a lack of security or protection. In the following lines from Kawabata’s Thousand Cranes, it is a memory of Mrs. Ota that provides Kikuji a sense of security during a conversation with Fumiko: “Mrs. Ota’s warmth came over him like warm water. She had gently surrendered everything he remembered, and he had felt secure” (Kawabata 36). In Woman at Point Zero, Saadawi uses the warmth of Firdaus’ uncle’s arms as an image for love in the form of protection in the following lines: “During the cold winter night, I curled up in my uncle’s arms like a baby in its womb. We drew warmth from our closeness” (Saadawi 21). This passage provides an even greater sense of protection through Saadawi’s use of the simile, “like a baby in its womb” (21).

The second form of love expressed through the use of heat and cold imagery in both works is comfort. In Woman at Point Zero, heat is used in order to provide comfort to Firdaus who is “shivering with cold” and “soaked in rain” (63).

The third and final form of love expressed through the use of heat and cold imagery in Thousand Cranes and Woman at Point Zero is that of intimate relations. It is for this reason that Kawabata uses heat imagery as the prominent literary device to describe the intimate relationship between Kikuji and Mrs. Ota. For instance, “The very face of the Shino, glowing warmly cool, made him think of Mrs. Ota” the previous quote provides an example of how Kawabata uses heat imagery to describe anything that relates to Mrs. Ota or her relationship with Kikuji (Kawabata 137). In addition, sentences like, “The woman in Fumiko’s mother came to him again, warm and naked.” are used to portray the intimate connection that existed between Kikuji and Mrs. Ota (104). Heat and cold imagery is also used to portray intimacy in the following lines from Woman at Point Zero: “We talked very quietly for a long time and when we had said all we had to say, we gave ourselves to one another in a warm embrace” (Saadawi 82).

Nawal El Saadawi and Yasunari Kawabata also use heat and cold imagery in their works in order to display feelings of fear or uneasiness in a character. Usually it is a feeling of coldness that a character feels when he or she becomes scared or afraid. A prime example of this cold feeling due to an uneasiness is how Saadawi refers to the first time she ever hears Firdaus speak as “cutting deep down inside, cold as a knife”(6). Time and time again, Saadawi uses cold imagery to portray a look from the eyes, as in the following sentences which describe the look received by Firdaus from a co-worker, “His look was that of a top executive to a minor official. I felt it land on my head, and then drop down to my body