Essay Questions

How does Aeschylus’s The Persians underscore the so-called Oriental’s inferiority?

Said reports, “Aeschylus portrays the sense of disaster overcoming the Persians when they learn that their armies, led by King Xerxes, have been destroyed by the Greeks. The chorus sings the following Ode: “Now all Asia’s land/Moans in emptiness/Xerxes led forth, oh oh!”...What matters here is that Asia speaks through and by virtue of European imagination, which is depicted as victorious over Asia, that hostile “other world” beyond the seas. To Asia are given the feelings of emptiness, loss, and disaster that seem thereafter to reward Oriental challenges to the West.” The Ode underscores that Persians who are emblematic of Orientalism are doomed. Comparatively, the Greeks (who are representative of Europe) are characterized are victors in war who effortlessly trounced the Asians. According to Aeschylus, the Orientals are inferior for they lost to the Europeans.

Expound the irony of Mohammed’s death.

Said elucidates, "Yet where Islam was concerned, European fear, if not always respect, was in order. After Mohammed's death in 632, the military and later the cultural and religious hegemony and Islam grew enormously, First Persia, Syria, and Egypt, then Turkey, then North African fell to the Muslim armies; in the eighth and ninth centuries Spain, Sicily, and parts of France were conquered." The death ironically results in the expansion of Islam. Ordinarily, Mohammed's followers would have been discouraged after his death. The rapid and ironic expansion of Islam following his death underscores the potency of Islam ideology. Europeans are shocked by the expansion because their objective is to promote the dominance of Christianity.

Deconstruct the implication of “The Ottoman peril”.

Said expounds, “Not for nothing did Islam come to symbolize terror, devastation, the demonic, hordes of hated barbarians. For Europe, Islam was a lasting trauma. Until the end of the seventeenth century the “Ottoman peril” lurked alongside Europe to represent for the whole of Christian civilization a constant danger, and in time European civilization incorporated that peril and its lore, its great events, figures, virtues, and vices, as something woven into the fabric of life.” The “Ottoman peril” elicits Islamophobia attitude whereby Christian Europe feels threatened by the immense expansion of Islam which is spearheaded by Ottoman Muslims. They employ aggressive strategies in proliferating the religion to the degree that they are deemed beasts who are a danger to Christians.