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Title: Arabian Nights: The Thousand and One Nights by Husain Haddaway, Husain Haddawy, Muhsin Mahdi ISBN: 0-393-95906-6 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: January, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.13

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: Arabian Nights: The Thousand and One Nights
Comment: This is a book about a woman named Shahrazade who every night sits with her husband and sister and tells stories to distract her husband not killing her. Every time she would end the night, she would turn to her sister and say "tomorrow night I shall tell you something stranger and more amazing if the king spares me and lets me live!" I didn't understand why her husband would wish her to be dead but I did notice that she would only communicate to her sister. Not once did she turn to her husband and speak to him directly. It didn't seem like a loving relationship but more of a controlling relationship.
She tells these stories and in every one of them, it was explained that if you do wrong to someone that God will do wrong to you. That person never lives happily ever after because God will punish them. "Spare me and God will spare you." Shahrazade tells her stories in defense for her life explaining that she didn't do anything to deserve for her life to be taken away. Her stories are examples of innocent people being tortured or killed but at the end the ones who took peoples' lives in their own hands will be punished by God. You get the sense that Shahrazade believes in God and that God will protect her. I f she is meant to die, then she will, its all up to God. He is the almighty, not her husband and through out the story she doesn't give up on God. She still has faith in Him. I do think that is how one takes any situation that they are in, depend on God and he will help you. I do think that it is hard for people to look within God for help but Shahrazade didn't find it hard at all.
Shaharazade may be seen as being the weak one in the relationship because it's obvious that her husband has the power. However, I see her as being the strong one because she manipulates a man, who she is supposed to fear, to stall her execution. She held her life in her hands and she controlled it discretely. Even though a man is physically powerful a woman is more mentally powerful and the mental will always dominate the physical. She used her voice to save her because that is all she had and it worked in her benefit. This book proves my point because her husband wasn't smart enough to comprehend that his wife was trying to stall her death. She continued telling these stories and pleading for her life, and her husband was just interested in her continuing with the stories. He didn't even understand the moral of the story and that God holds the power, not him. I do think that her role in the story was very strong and she kept calm through the stories and that was because she never lost faith in God.
These stories that Shahrazade told were interesting to read and I loved how one intertwined with the other. I believe these stories she told symbolized her life and how unstable and crazy it was. The tales were all about men being the "strong" and powerful ones but at the end she told the tale of the Enchanted King where the man wasn't as powerful. This was a story of how a woman tortured her husband to be with another man. The tables were turned and the woman became powerful; she controlled her husband. However, at the end she was punished just like the other men in the stories Shaharazade told. I understood this to mean that Shahrazade wasn't looking for having power but she wanted to feel equal to her husband.