The Mongolian Wedding

Stanley Stewart’s “From the Empire of Genghis Khan” is a highly inspiring travel writing filled with hilarious plots vividly portrayed in chronological, fully-detailed, easily followed events. The extract is about a “Mongolian Wedding” which Stewart attended.

The extract is very precise as Stewart uses time keywords in chronological order such as “Throughout the evening”, “In the morning”, “By mid afternoon” and “At four o’clock” at the beginning of each paragraph making it easy for readers to follow up and relate to the story effectively. He first shows the reader a hint about the Mongolian people he met with; they are “unpredictable”, “boisterous” and “could be as bad as the next fellow they warn him about”.

He then mentions cultural traditions in Mongolian weddings such as the groom searching for his bride under a bed of one of the neighboring gers, the preparation of the bride’s family for the bridal breakfast and the groom’s family for the evening feast; that indicates that each family is both trying to show their excessive generosity, care and luxury to the other family. In addition to that, he shows that it was a custom for the sisters of the bride to serve both families with liquor and to make sure that everyone from the bride to the furthest guest are at their absolute comfort and satisfaction. Every Mongolian guest was supposed to give out a song related to weddings even the shyest of them all would have no problem in reciting as the others will accompany him/her later on in the following verses. Another tradition was that each guest had to drink as least three bowls of airag.

Stewart successfully maintained the reader’s interest to the matter by using an immense method for ridiculing strange traditions or reactions or by the aid of thriving language devices no to mention in compare to the Western culture. As for his comedic tone and great sense of humour, Stewart described every incident in full-detailed ironic manner. First he gave a light hearted comment how the old Russian truck carrying hordes of wedding guests was the equivalent of the wedding Rolls Ricer back in his hometown. Then he ridiculed the idea behind letting the groom pretend he is searching for his bride when her hiding place is previously distinguished! He clearly expressed the extent of the uninviting and unappetising state the breakfast meal was; “slabs of white cheese”, “boiled sweets were arrayed in dizzy layers” and “a mountainous plate of sheep parts”. He also described the delay of the guests with the couple in the Russian truck in the form of an algebraic problem by “concerning the number of miles to the bride’s ger, divided by the speed of the truck combined with the probable duration of the breakfast, and finally multiplied by the estimated consumption of arkhi.” This must be very hilarious. He also used irony as a tool in his story when he mentioned the “poster of the national wrestling champion, Batarden” on the wall which acted as a prophecy at what was about to come in the wedding! Stewart also used phrases that indicated extra humour by adding army diction which is quite the contrary of a wedding story that should be romantic. Words such as “lookouts”, “posted”,” camps”, “opposing enemies” and “tent” which causes the story to seem serious in an abnormal way.

As for figures of speech, Stewart used each device effectively in its proper occasion. He likened the separation and indifference of the two families with the metaphor “looking like the hour on the Tokyo Subway”.

Stewart was very elaborately amusing in the way he exaggerated things and described a few guests in the wedding. He said that the way the fat bride’s mother went down from the truck as if landing on “Terra Firma”, which is quite