5 REASONS DINAH FROM THE RED TENT BOUNCES BACK FROM
EVERYTHING
Dinah,
the protagonist in The Red Tent by
Anita Diamant, seems to have every wrecking ball thrown at her, from her
brothers killing her husband to losing her son. Yet even though there is so
much loss around her, she seems able to find the light in everything that
happens to her. Proving that she has steel bones and an iron mind.
1.
Her husband dies, yet she finds happiness.
In
most movies, when a loved one dies, the person goes through a bout of
depression. Especially if their own brothers killed them.Yet in Dinah’s case
she moves to Egypt and falls in love with the new country and bonds with her
late husband’s mother and the baby growing in her womb. And when her son was
born she rejoiced, saying “there should be a song for women to sing…a prayer to
recite… no words strong enough to name that moment” (282). This shows that she
found solace in the face of her husband’s death.
2.
Her son moves away and she moves on as well.
Dinah
was devastated when her son was accepted to a school a long way from home and
that she would not see him for many years. She then left her home and found a
job she loved: as a midwife; as her mothers were. She welcomed babies into the
world and said goodbye to her own. Dinah takes every single bad thing and spins
it into a whole new light.
3. She falls in love again.
Even
though she thought she could never love again, she met Benia and fell in love.
And though she had lost everyone, her family, her husband, and her son; she was
still willing to accept new people into her life. “We stood… hand in hand and
smiling like fools without speaking,” (338). She learned from every loss she
had and taught herself to hold onto good things and good people while she still
had them. She cherished every moment.
4.
Her brother threatened her son and she took it all in
stride.
She
reconnects with her son, yet his life is then threatened by her brother who she
thought was dead. Her son, Re-Mose, confronted her brother, Joseph, about his
father's death; and Joseph responds by condemning Re-Mose. Dinah realizes the
brother she had as a little girl was gone and that he was a different man. She
deals with this theoretical loss and convinces her brother to save the son who
then hated her.
5.
She confronts her family who killed her husband and
who she abandoned.
Joseph
took Dinah back to her family and she confronts the people who she cursed and
left behind. She also learned the fate of the mothers she loved and the brothers
she looked up to. Even though she swore never to see them again, she said
goodbye to her dying father, met her new family, and found consolation with
her mothers who had died. Being there “had given me [Dinah] peace… as long as
the memory of Jacob lived, my name would be remembered” (397). She took the bad
things in her life and learned from them. She found happiness from them.
This
is important because it shows that people need to take everything in stride and
that no matter what happens to you, it isn’t the end of the world. It gives
hope that everything will be ok in the end.
