Summary
Firdaus’s voice suddenly falls silent. The psychiatrist moves her body slowly, as if waking up from a dream or trance. The ground is cold underneath her, but she cannot feel it. She wonders if she’s dreaming, but she realizes she’s not when the door suddenly opens. The policemen have come to take Firdaus away for execution. The psychiatrist sees Firdaus walk out of the cell with the men, and she never sees her again. Firdaus’s words continue to resonate in her ears; she envisions Firdaus’s words spreading across the world, spreading truth, and the fear that comes from truth.
The psychiatrist gets into her car and drives away from the prison. Inside, she feels shame; looking around, she sees a world full of lies and hypocrisy. She presses hard on the accelerator of her car in an attempt to run over the world and its lies—but right after she accelerates, she stomps on her brakes. At that moment, she realizes that Firdaus had more courage than she.
Analysis
Chapter 3 is brief, but it ties up the threads of Woman at Point Zero effectively. Its brevity also allows the reader to process Firdaus’s journey of suffering and triumph. The point of view of the novel switches back to the psychiatrist. Firdaus’s story was so engrossing that it takes the psychiatrist some time to wade back into consciousness. The psychiatrist herself compares this to waking up from a dream. Tragically, before the psychiatrist can say anything to Firdaus, the prison guards come and take Firdaus away for her punishment. In a way, this is fitting, because Firdaus has shared her story and now has no more to say to anyone. She is ready to surpass every living person, including kings and rulers, by embracing death. She has come full-circle and finally reached complete self-actualization.
Though Firdaus is gone, her influence and the truth she symbolized live on. The psychiatrist realizes this as she leaves the prison and looks around at the world around her. She sees the fear of truth Firdaus spoke of and feels ashamed that Firdaus had to die because men feared her and the truth she spoke. The psychiatrist realizes that she, too, is guilty of allowing this fear to govern her life. Firdaus did not, and this is why Firdaus was a woman apart. This harkens back to the first chapter when the psychiatrist was comparing herself to Firdaus. Finally, the psychiatrist admits that Firdaus is more courageous than she.
Women at Point Zero’s major conflict is whether or not Firdaus will find a way to free herself from the patriarchal society that abuses her. Firdaus is successful, but the price she pays for her success is death. This is fine for Firdaus, who doesn’t fear death, sees death as the one truth everyone runs away from, and embraces death because it’ll make her superior to the world. But, for everyone else who isn’t as courageous as Firdaus, her “success” feels unsatisfying and bittersweet. Some would argue that death being Firdaus’s only means of true freedom is a testimony to the pervasiveness of patriarchy. So while Firdaus may be satisfied with how her story ends, no one else is.
Finally, as Firdaus’s story closes, we’re left to wonder about the status of women in society. Saadawi, via Firdaus’s story, argues that, so long as society is patriarchal, women have little to no real freedom. Though published more than 40 years ago, her message remains relevant and resonant, as women struggle to both gain rights and hold onto rights already won. Thus, Firdaus and her story remain pertinent in the present day.
