One of the most endearing passages, also rich in diction, occurs in the first lines of the prologue:
“We have been lost to each other for so long.
My name means nothing to you. My memory is dust.
This is not your fault, or mine. The chain connecting mother to daughter was broken and the word passed to the keeping of men, who had no way of knowing. That is why I became a footnote, my story a brief detour between the well-known history of my father, Jacob, and the celebrated chronicle of Joseph, my brother. On those rare occasions when I was remembered, it was as a victim. Near the beginning of your holy book, there is a passage that seems to say I was raped and continues with the bloody tale of how my honor was avenged.
It s a wonder that any mother ever called a daughter Dinah again. But some did. Maybe you guessed that there was more to me than the voiceless cipher in the text. Maybe you heard it in the music of my name: the first vowel high and clear, as when a mother calls to her child at dusk; the second sound soft, for whispering secrets on pillows. Dee-nah.” (Diamant 1)
This excerpt begins with a second person perspective, establishing an emotional attachment with the reader and grabbing attention in the first line of the novel. Diamant goes on to provoke interest by having Dinah metaphorically compare her legacy to dust, implicating the untold details yet to come.
Maternal imagery is revealed as Dinah refers to the “chain” that connects mothers and daughters. More of this type of imagery is present in a description of Dinah s name; the image of a mother calling to her child. The idea of secrets whispered on pillows embodies the struggle of women to have their traditions remembered through their daughters.
Dinah compares her part in the bible as a detour, illuminating the unclear nature of her story. The irony in the bloody slaughter of Shalem and the other men of Shechem is foreshadowed, as Dinah implies that she was not raped, but willing and in love.
When Dinah returns from Shechem the first time, Diamant s diction helps to emphasize her discovery of secrecy:
“When we returned to camp, my mother hugged me without sensing the new heat in my body and sent me to the olive grove, where the harvest was busy. Zilpah was there overseeing the press and barely answered my greeting. Even Bilhah of the discerning heart was preoccupied with a batch of oil jars that had cracked, and she saw nothing.
Their inattention was a revelation to me. Before my trip to Shechem, I had supposed that my mothers could see my thoughts and look directly into my heart. But now I discovered that I was separate, opaque, and drawn into an orbit of which they had no knowledge. (Diamant 185)
Dinah s naivet is illuminated here. She has, for the first time, realized that she is a person separate from her mothers. She calls herself “opaque”, at the time referring to her new-found ability to hide her secret thoughts, but this can be seen as a foreshadowing of the obscurity that surrounds her in the Bible.
Dinah uses metaphors to relate her awakened desire to the reader, pointing out a “heat” in her body, meaning the desire she feels for Shalem. Her private “orbit” is meant to express her impression that her mothers did not know the type of love she is experiencing.
Near the end of the novel, Diamant uses diction to her advantage once more. She paints a sensitive and graceful picture of death:
“In the darkness surrounding the shining lights of my life. I began to discern the faces of my mothers, each one burning with her own fire. Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah. Inna, Re-nefer, and Meryt. Even poor Ruti and arrogant Rebecca were arrayed to meet me. Although I had never seen them, I recognized Adah and Sarai as well. Strong, brave, wonderstruck, kind gifted, broken, loyal, foolish, talented, weak; each one welcoming me in her way.
Oh, I cried, in wonder. Benia held me even tighter and sobbed. He thought that I suffered, but I felt nothing but excitement at the lessons that death held out to me. In the moment before I crossed over, I knew that the priests and magicians of Egypt were fools and charlatans for promising to prolong the beauties of life beyond the world we are given. Death is no enemy, but the foundation of gratitude, sympathy, and art. Of all life s pleasures, only love owes no debt to death” (Diamant 320)
Dinah s death, being presented as a reminiscence, creates an awe-inspiring effect on the reader. It is rare for a novel to include the death of its narrator, and having Dinah describe her own end is a clever way of summing up such a personal story. It concludes the story on a note of comfort, allowing the reader to experience the release of Dinah s pain.
A contrast between dark and light emphasizes Dinah s passing. The “darkness” that surrounds her is oncoming death, while the “shining lights” are her loved ones that have gathered around to provide comfort to their dying friend. Tied to this extended metaphor is the image of Dinah s mothers, ” each one burning with her own fire” (Diamant 320). Their fires represent their distinct personalities and their connection to Dinah.
Syntax
Diamant uses a variety of sentence structures, but there is a predominance of loose, complex sentences, such as, “The messenger walked out of the tent, and seeing us arrayed around her, she bowed deeply, with her fingers stretched wide, in an unfamiliar gesture of obeisance” (Diamant 144). These are by no means the only types of sentences used in the text, however. The author also makes use of extremely simple sentences, such as “All of the men grew weary” (Diamant 120), and of periodic sentences: “With Adah gone and no other elder to take the part, Leah, nursing her son, became the welcoming mother” (Diamant 45).
Dinah is usually quick to come to a point, but when she falls in love with Shalem, she begins to ramble and string together her thoughts about his perfection: “Would he come for me? Were these callused hands too rough to delight a prince?” (Diamant 186). This stream of consciousness method of conveying Dinah s thoughts effectively relates her anxiety and naivet to the reader.
The passages previously used to identify diction can also trace the use of syntax in the text. The short sentences that begin the first excerpt, “We have been lost to each other for so long. My name means nothing to you. My memory is dust” (Diamant 1), convey a feeling of familiarity and regret on Dinah s part. A particularly long sentence describing the vowel sounds of Dinah s name is strung together by a colon and a semi colon, maintaining the flow of thought but separating the simile and personification: ” the music of my name: the first vowel high and clear, as when a mother calls to her child at dusk; the second sound soft, for whispering secrets on pillows” (Diamant 1).
The second passage focuses mainly on character development, the author using a combination of long and short sentences to display Dinah s revelation and confusion. Sentences such as “Their inattention was a revelation to me” (Diamant 185) bring Dinah s astonishment across to the reader.
Diamant accentuates Dinah s awe with her syntactical structure in the third quotation. This feeling of wonder is assisted by stream of consciousness sentences: “Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah. Inna, Re-nefer, and Meryt” (Diamant 320). The use of a semicolon after another string of rambling words brings Dinah back to the world of the living for a moment: “Strong, brave, wonderstruck, kind gifted, broken, loyal, foolish, talented, weak; each one welcoming me in her way” (Diamant 320). After rambling for so long, the coherent words which end the paragraph demonstrate the way Dinah is careening between life and death.
Imagery
In Diamant s graceful, poetic writing there are several different kinds of images used to assist Dinah s story. Sensual imagery, mostly visual and olfactory, are used to maintain the intimate connection Dinah has already established with the reader, as in this passage: ” watching the water lap against the shore, my mind as calm and wordless on the surface as the river. I inhaled the loamy smell of the river and listened to the sound of water on the hull ” (Diamant 306). Dinah s imaginative reaction to simple things endears her to the reader throughout her life story.
A very important motif in The Red Tent is maternal imagery. First evident in Dinah s reference to a ” chain connecting mother to daughter ” (Diamant 1), images related to birth, motherhood, womanhood and fertility reinforce this type of imagery in the text. The practice of midwifery provides examples of birth images: “She was half dead, and there was no strength even to scream when the baby finally came, tearing her flesh front and back” (Diamant 59). This picture of painful sacrifice is the essence of ancient motherhood, as most times ” the ordinary passage of life into life became a struggle between life and death” (Diamant 225).
The connection between mother and daughter is central to the text, thus appearing in images throughout the text. A good image of this connection
Along with images of birth, there are a number of death images in the text as well. Referring to a child born of her mother, Dinah describes a heartbreaking scene: “The women looked away from the tiny doomed girl, but I saw only her perfect beauty. Her eyelids were veined like a butterfly s wing, her toes curled like the petals of a flower” (Diamant 140). The child s death, as most of the death images in the text, is spoken of with such tenderness and likened to such beautiful things in the similes that the image is more peaceful than sad.
Symbolism
The most significant symbol in The Red Tent is, in fact, the red tent. It symbolizes the celebration of womanhood, of unity and of fertility. Its presence in the dwellings of men symbolizes the importance of women in ancient times, and illuminates their absence in the bible. The red tent brought women together, telling stories and cherishing their femininity: “In the ruddy shade of the red tent, the menstrual tent, they ran their fingers through my curls, repeating the escapades of their youths, the sagas of their childbirths” (Diamant 3). Dinah s connection with her mothers is solidified in her days spent inside the red tent, where she learns what it is to be a woman, a wife and a mother.
As a recurrent image, water is also a symbol in the text. Tied to the maternal imagery, it connotes the continuation of life. Dinah falls in love with the river, which flows on despite any obstacles. The same is true of Dinah herself; after her heartbreaking tragedies she reroutes her life and triumphs. Water also symbolizes the depths of knowledge that are unwritten in the Bible: “If you sit on the bank of a river, you see only a small part of its surface. And yet, the water before your eyes is proof of unknowable depths” (Diamant 321). With this statement Diamant is trying to make the reader understand that the very existence of the Bible is proof that its subjects lived, even though many of their stories are untold. Dinah is a symbol in the vein, symbolizing the forgotten women of scripture.