The importance of language

John Barth’s short story Dunyazadiad from Chimera seems to be conveying that language is the most powerful tool in anyone’s arsenal. All of the various characters throughout the story manipulate and play with language to suit their own needs.  From the genie, to Sherry, and even the kings use language as a manipulative tool. Sherry uses language to tell the stories to save her sister’s life.  The Genie who comes from the future can also magically speak the same language as Sherry and Donny, despite thinking he is speaking in English.  And the words that Shah Zaman’s first wife said stayed with him forever.

Sherry only decides to tell these tales to the king after a genie has come from the future and literally told her the outcome of their story based upon what he has read in the thousand and one Arabic nights story that he so greatly cherishes.  In fact when first communicating with this “genie” he tells them of the world he comes from and that the language he speaks is English.  Despite never hearing of this language or knowing of the land that this man comes from, they can still communicate with him fluently and without problem.

At the end of the story when Dunyazade is telling her new husband that she is going to kill him he tells her a quick story as to how he and his brother had made the horrible arrangement to sleep with and murder 1000 virgins.  While doing so he recants the first girl he had ever done this to.  And how something she said reminded him of something his first wife had said. “Even death at my hands would be sweeter to her than life at another’s”  This is clearly untrue because earlier we discover that she was with his chief cook only moments after he had left visit his brother.   This implies that language, whether it be true or not is the most powerful tool that any human can have if mastered properly.

Even while Dunyazade is holding a knife ( an actual phycial weapon) to her new husband’s manhood he fights back with the stories most powerful weapons, his words.  He tells her a story of how his brother and he had originally started that pact.  He even goes as far as to say “what your Genie said concerning marriage could have come from my own mouth if I had the gifts of words….” This just further places emphasis how important Barth considers language to be.