Student: Rami Daher

Teacher: Lana Zantout

Class: Eng 203 section 18
Reading response 2

Arranged marriage

The post “Arranged Marriage: Old-School Online Dating” written by Amne Alrifai was

published in her blog “Unveiled Thought” on May 25, 2014(Alrifai 227). This post’s ideas

revolve around the topic of arranged dating and marriage. In the text Alrifai dwells to the core of

the topic and explains every point of view on it. She tackles the negative aspects of this

phenomenon. Also she sheds light on some possible positive sides of arranged marriage. Alrifai

did a very good job with the content and the style of her text.

She focused on working on the content of her post. She uses analogies to deliver her

ideas about the topic to the readers in a very simple and smooth way. For instance, she compares

arranged marriage to buying a car. She says that “in this little analogy, Miss Eligible

Bachelorette is the car” (Alrifai 227). Here, the buyer which is the man recruits people to look

for a “good girl” for him to marry. When these recruits find the bride, the groom goes and talks

to her parents, so if they agreed he starts planning for the wedding without asking the girl or

without even knowing her. Moreover, Alrifai used her real life experience on the topic to support

her ideas. At first she used to see arranged marriage and dating as bad things that were unfair for

the girl. With time her point of view changed. She says that she is starting to see things

differently (Alrifai 228). In conclusion, the content of her text was very sufficient and good.
 Regarding style, Alrifai used many stylistic factors in her text that somehow made the

text more readable and less confusing. First of all, she put to use a set of simple sentences that

made way for the ideas to flow directly to the readers’ minds. For instance, Alrifa says “I am

starting to see things differently” (228). This way of writing makes the text more interesting and

fun to read since when the reader sees this simple sentence, he will be curious to find out how the

writer’s opinion changed throughout the text. He becomes eager to find out whether this change

will affect his opinion on the matter. In addition to that, Alrifai deployed one of the most

efficient weapons in the world of writing in her text. She delivered the simple sentences

mentioned about in an informal and sarcastic way. She kept making jokes about arranged

marriage, and comparing it to buying a car. She said that the awaited bride in this analogy is the

car and the person who is looking for this car and wants to buy it is the groom (Alrifai 227).

Therefore, we can see that besides her work on the content of the text, Alrifai worked on the

style in which the text is presented to the reader, and she did a very good job in that.

In a nutshell, the post “Arranged Marriage: Old-School Online Dating” written by Amne

Alrifai, and was published in her blog “Unveiled Thought” on May 25, 2014 is a well done piece

of writing (Alrifai 227). Alrifai’s text is a result of some hard work she had done concerning

both content and style. Meanwhile, this work couldn’t have been flawless. Throughout some of

the good points in her text, they were made a bit suspicious. Some people might find the analogy

between women and cars a bit offending, and this might in its turn affects the general

background of the text. Therefore, Alrifai should have been careful to this during writing the

text.
 Work-cited:

Alrifai, Amne. “Arranged Marriage: Old-School Online Dating”. Shifting Narratives, edited by

Sinno et al. Center for Educational Consultation and Research Educart, 2017, pp. 227-230.