The picture of Saint George the Martyr in Elishva’s house reveals the old lady’s evolving relationship with the memory of her son, Daniel, who was killed in the Iran-Iraq War, and with her family as a whole. As the Christian saint is shown to calmly fight against an evil dragon, the image highlights, for Elishva, the importance of trusting in God and of combatting injustice. This takes different forms throughout the novel. For example, Elishva’s trust in the saint’s powers initially leads her to believe that the Whatsitsname is a version of her son, Daniel. She supports the Whatsitsname’s strategy of revenge, celebrating the death of Abu Zaidoun, the man responsible for sending her son to war.
Later, Elishva’s meeting with her grandson Daniel marks a radical shift in her life: instead of focusing on revenge and imaginary dialogues with the saint, she now puts her faith in positive human bonds. The saint, in this sense, might have fulfilled his promise—he brought her a version of “Daniel”—but he might have also become irrelevant: Elishva no longer needs him now that she is going to integrate a safe, loving environment. In this sense, Elishva’s relationship with the image of Saint George reflects the evolution of her relationship with other people: from isolation and loss, the old lady now turns to peace, openness, and the cultivation of love in the present.
The Picture of Saint George the Martyr Quotes in Frankenstein in Baghdad
She looked at the picture of the saint hanging in front of her, his lance raised and the dragon crouching beneath him. She wondered why he hadn’t killed the dragon years ago. Why was he stuck in that posture, ready to strike, she wondered. Everything remains half completed, exactly like now: she wasn’t exactly a living being, but not a dead one either.
There were people who had returned from long journeys with new names and new identities […]. There were people who had survived many deaths in the time of the dictatorship only to find themselves face-to-face with a pointless death in the age of “democracy”—when, for example, a motorbike ran into them in the middle of the road. Believers lost their faith when those who had shared their beliefs and their struggles betrayed them and their principles. Nonbelievers had become believers when they saw the “merits” and benefits of faith. The strange things that had come to light in the past three years were too many to count. So that Daniel Tadros Moshe, the lanky guitarist, had come back to his old mother’s house wasn’t so hard to believe.
The Picture of Saint George the Martyr Symbol Timeline in Frankenstein in Baghdad
