“The Woman Who Had the World Enthralled” by Michiko Kakutani | Published 11/1/10 | A Book Review Analysis

        In “The Woman Who Had the World Enthralled”, Kakutani weaves together a skillful essay using many rhetorical devices to analyze Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff. One of those rhetorical devices is parallelism. This is seen when she describes Cleopatra's life as, "epic in scale, mythic in symbolism and operatically over the top" (Kakutani). The above example is also a good example of Kakutani’s use of the “rule of three”, or tricolon to make her essay sound better. Moreover, she helps the flow of her essay and emphasizes her points through repetition, for example, when she says, “Cleopatra would go on to lose it, regain it, nearly lose it again, amass an empire and then lose it all" (Kakutani). Furthermore, Kakutani uses alliteration in her writing. For example, when she says, “a charismatic and capable woman...and highly competent" (Kakutani). Furthermore, Kakutani skillfully used diction to better her writing. A specific diction choice that really struck me is when she says, "when 'two civilizations, passing in different directions, unexpectedly and momentously' touched" (Kakutani). Her word choice of "touched" struck me because as I was reading this sentence, in my mind, I though, "momentously collided", because two civilizations colliding is a cliche image. Kakutani's word choice of "touched" made me stop. go back, and think about the connotations of "touched" v. "collided". "Touched" implies gentle contact. "Collided" implies violent contact. Although I would normally think of Egypt and the Roman empire's contact as more violent than gentle, I can see where Kakutani is coming with this. Overall, Kakutani's use of rhetorical devices in her essay makes it flow easily and helps her convey her point in an easy to understand manner. The only weakness I see in Kakutani's essay is that it reads more like a summary of Cleopatra's life than an analysis of a book about Cleopatra's life.

            In analyzing Nemesis, Kakutani used Formalist criticism with a hint of feminism thrown in. In her book review, Kakutani mostly summarizes Cleopatra: A Life. Kakutani describes Cleopatra's rise and fall and places her deeds in the context of her time. Yet Kakutani also emphasizes the misconception of Cleopatra as a "wanton tempress symbolizing 'insatiable sexuality' and unlawful love", and instead describes her in more manly terms, "she was a resourceful leader: disciplined, self-assured and shrewd" (Kakutani). Kakutani talks extensively about how Cleopatra was not the "whore queen" everyone thought she was: she was an "enterprising politician" similar in many ways to Caesar.

            Kakutani’s description of Cleopatra reminds me of the novel, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and I think the title of this novel would be extremly appropriate to Cleopatra's life. Both Cleopatra and Okonkwo are natural leaders who, if they lived at the height of their society's glory, would have gone down in history as one of the greatest leaders to have ever lived. Yet as fate has it, they both were born in the wrong society shortly before a fatal clashing of societies. Finally, when all is lost, rather than submit to the conquering party, they both committed suicide. "'An honorable death, a dignified death, an exemplary death'" (Kakutani).


Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/books/02book.html?ref=books&pagewanted=print