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Conclusion
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onclusion. FALLACI'S RICH LITERARY dramas fuse intimately with her personal ceremonials-a combination that thrusts her image before the public eye. The decision to make herself her own main character did not occur by chance. It was U1C product of reflection and deliberate choice. Fallaci has always hungered for dignity and power in . her life and compares herself to Merlin the wizard. The power of this medieval figure consists of his intellectual creativity rather than military might. He is neither a king nor a skillful magician but a refined, cultivated, and highly intelligent individual whose brain power determines his comse of action and earns his prestige. In the case of Fallaci, she suffered periods of poverty in her youth-a condition associated with weakness, infirmity, and subservience. At the same time, however, she possessed the haunting desirecharacteristic of many underprivileged people-to acquire moral dignity and intellectual clistinclion. "It is not the richness of money but that of dignity that inspin~s power. He [a poor person] knows that he cannot have temporal, material, monetary, or social power. He therefore associates cultme with the idea of power.,,1 225 226 CONCLUSION Fallaci's father embraced polities; he even sketched and painted. Her mother's relatives induded artists and sculptors. Both Edoardo and Tosca Fallaci indoctrinated their daughter with the notion/ of the special social status of writers. She then accepted that the highest honor in life and single most accessible power was the book. Her goal never focused on success as an actress, a singel; or a gymnast. She wanted to write, to put her own story into the hands of readers everywhere. This success would give her the intellectual authority toward which she aspired. "Because the immortality of the writer, that which he produces, remains alive when he dies. If you are obsessed with death, you are fascinated by books, by writing.,,2 Whether confronting a page of writing in Inshallah-novelist-documenting a historical phenomenon in the Mexico City artides-champion of the oppressed -or revealing the massive power of New York City in Penelope at War-wide-eyed visitor to America-Fallaci treats every occasion as a stage for creating a new version of herself, of generating her own mythical status. Her powerful performances and literary journalistic style, despite their narcissistic plea for attention, aggressively seduce readers into accepting her official image. Fallaci carves out her place as a notorious self-advertiser. Nearly everything she has ever written is an overt reconstruction and contemplation of her personal self-image. Proof of her worldwide success can be found in her 1993 visit to Beijing to deliver a speech at the Academy of Social Sciences. The enthusiastic reception demonstrated how interested people were in the writer herself, as well as in her books. Students arrived by the busload, despite official resistance to their attending, and jammed the corridors of the meeting hall. During the question-and-answer period after her speech, Fallaci told Alberto Sinigaglia in an interview, a student of Italian spoke. I am not here to ask a question because I have been reading you ever since I know how to read, and I aheady know the answers. I am here to thank you in my name and on behalf of my fellow students.... I thank you, we thank you because through your books and your interview of Deng you have taught us two things which are the most important things in the world: com'age and freedom.... Please do not die.... \Ve need you very mueh.3 The stuclent's comments are evidence of a phenomenon: connecting her books to her life, as though she not only speaks against tyranny and moral evil but also lives her convictions every day. In Fallaci's opinion, some [18.117.196.217] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 09:05 GMT) CONCLUSION 227 authors write well and live badly; their actions betray what they WI'ite. She mentions Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a case in point. He eloquently composed an educational treatise but abandoned his OWIl chilch'en. She specifically criticizes servants of the Fascist power structlU'e in Italy, in particular the wTiters Elio Vittorini, Vasco Pratollni, and Benede11:o Croce. "I live like I wTite. I have never given in.,,4 During times of war and peace she claims to have remained faithful to her personal principles and to have struggled on behalf of freedom against all forms of totalitaTianism. The Chinese student in Beijing sensed that...