The Swimming Race by Benjamin Tammuz Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Swimming Race by Benjamin Tammuz - Essay Example Someone placed this evil seed in his head and now he cannot get rid of it. Revenge is blind, it sees no excuse no distraction, it just goes in for the kill. The Swimming Race (1951) by Benjamin Tammuz is a great story about war and revenge. It tells that the victorious have complete autonomy over the defeated and oppressed. They do whatever they want to do with them. Problems don’t necessarily lie outside the individual. It is the interpretation of mind that turns an incident into a problem. The talk of a man dominated world has been around. When I read the Hand of Wax I immediately agreed with the authors thinking. If someone suffers in this world, it is not because of the circumstances (the male dominant society) but because of the victim’s acceptance to suffering. When the narrator of The Swimming Race (1951) goes to check the dead body of Abdul Karim, he looked as if aware of the narrator’s win on swimming contest (Tammuz 84). It is a bitter truth but most of the times we are our own worst enemies. Sometimes we cannot control our emotions, sometimes you're just blinded by revenge. It is a man's nature, his evil nature that pushes him to commit the crime, to shed blood, to kill to seek revenge. We built prisons around ourselves and cry feeling trapped. But passively we derive comfort from such a place. Our minds get used to the dark pessimistic environment that freedom seems strange. An unknown dimension can be very daunting. It might also require taking care of responsibilities. Most of the times the ‘victims’ in the story let things happen. Many times it is only a look of contempt against a stubborn thick-skinned man. This approach of passive aggression only lets things accumulate. It is also an indication to ‘him’ (the stubborn male) that there won’t be any serious consequences for letting him be. Be it, drinking, gambling or the husband putting a shield between his wife and him in the case of Hand of Wax.