Oriental versus European
Said elucidates, "Many terms were used to express the relation: Balfour and Cromer, typically used several. The Oriental is irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, "different"; thus, the European is rational, virtuous, mature, "normal." But the way of enlivening the relationship was everywhere to stress the fact that the Oriental lived in different but thoroughly organized world of his own, a world with its own national, cultural, and epistemological boundaries and principles of internal coherence." Stereotyped portrayals of so-called Orientals as imprudent, decadent, undeveloped and non-conventional render them inferior to the Europeans who are portrayed as intelligent, honorable, and civilized. The divergent portrayals result in the Oriental versus European binary upon which imperialism is founded.
The Imagery of Pentheus
Said reports, “In The Bacchae, perhaps the most Asiatic of all the Attic dramas, Dionysus is explicitly connected with his Asian origins and with the strangely threatening excess of Oriental mysteries. Pentheus, king of Thebes, is destroyed by his mother, Agave, and her fellow bacchantes. Having defied Dionysus by not recognizing either his power or divinity, Pentheus is thus horribly punished, and the play ends with a general recognition of the eccentric god’s terrible power.” Pentheus’ ending is intended to undermine “Dionysiac cults.” Emphasizing Dionysus’s bizarre atrociousness is projected to inform audiences about the tragedies that are inherent in ungodly religions. Adherents of the cults are bound to have tragic endings and suffer due to the wickedness of the gods.
Mohammed in “Dante’s Inferno”
Said expounds, “What Dante the pilgrim sees as he walks through the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso is a unique vision of judgment…“Maometto”- Mohammed-turns up in canto 28 of the Inferno. He is located in the eighth of the nine circles of Hell, in the ninth of the ten Bolgias of Malebolge, a circle of gloomy ditches surrounding Satan’s stronghold in Hell.” Here, Mohammed is punished for his depravity. Dante’s ideology is to undermine Islam by placing Mohammed (who is an authoritative and revered figure in Islam) in the Inferno. Mohammed’s suffering covertly suggests that Muslims will end up in hell and Christians in Heaven.
