Carolyn Richard
LITR 5734
Dr.Craig White
6 July 2001
Final Exam

Family Dynamics and the Voices of Colonialism,

Postcolonialism and Postmodernity

Throughout the texts read in dialogue in this class there ran a thread of familial discourse that seemed consistent with colonial/postcolonial thought.  Robinson Crusoe is a typical colonial text where the European colonizer both exploits and attempts to improve a native he considers to be inferior.  Things Fall Apart shows the reaction to this treatment.  Familial thoughts continue even in the postmodern novel Lucy, and in the postmodern sections of God of Small Things.  In terms of colonizing, it seems often that colonizers had paternal feelings for the colonized.  They wanted to take care of them as a mother or father would want to take care of their child.  They wanted to make sure their offspring had material comforts as well as food, shelter and clothing, so colonizers often came with the idea of trade in mind.  They wanted to make sure their offspring had some sort of moral code to cling to, so they came with Bibles in hand to bring the word of “the one God” to their adopted children.  Colonial texts bring with them these thoughts. 

Representative of this is Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.  As a colonizer,  Crusoe brings with him his own personal story of rejecting his father to explore the world.  This experience colors his parenthood.  His first “child” Friday becomes what Crusoe wanted him to be as he is taught to tend the crops and worship the Christian God.  Derek Walcott chooses Crusoe the colonial as the subject of his poem  “Crusoe’s Island.”   This postcolonial poem shows many of the colonial family dynamics.  In the third stanza he refers to his father as God.  Here, the postcolonial figure has accepted the religion of the colonizer and has meshed it with the concept of patriarchy.  God the father is also the head of the household, not just a figure to be worshipped.  The fifth stanza compares the island to Eden.  God made Eden, and blessed it with everything Adam and Eve needed to survive.  Crusoe the colonial grew crops and made living quarters and furniture.  Although this was ostensibly for himself, these resources were shared by Friday, his colonized subject.  The sixth stanza compares Crusoe to Adam and gives him the “congenital heresy” of colonizer.  This negative view of the colonizer is shared by postcolonial texts and is especially apparent in Things Fall Apart.

Postcolonial texts represent the colonized now grown up and pulling away from the mother and father who commercially exploited them and took away their comfortable gods.  However, they may still use many of the ideas brought to them in terms of writing style and discourse.  Their voice still has the overtones of the colonizer. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe represents the postcolonial voice.  Although the action of the novel is placed slightly before and during a period of colonization, the actions of Okonkwo show the viewpoint of the colonized.  Okonkwo the child pulls away from a parent who does not represent his value system.  As an adult, Okonkwo and his tribe are treated as children by the colonizers.  The colonizers who deem it to be superstitious marginalize the tribal belief system.  Christianity is introduced, and tribal members begin to grow crops for profit, not for their family.  The colonizers who feel that Africa has no history or culture, spread this thought to the villagers, thus destroying their traditional village culture.

In this novel, the child Okonkwo could not accept his parent’s “authority.” Feeling rejected by his tribe and family, Okonkwo commits suicide.  Achebe is clearly demonstrating that from a colonized point of view, the rejection of his culture on the part of the parent-colonizer is destroys the self-esteem and reason for being of the colonized-child.  Okonkwo’s initial rejection of the colonizers is seen as the morally and socially correct attitude for the colonized.

Postmodern texts are representative of the child still rejecting the family as there is a radical skepticism of Western thought. However, there is also a rise of a sort of world culture.  In his article “The National Longing for Form” found in the PCSR, Timothy Brennan says that singular nations are being replaced by a world culture.  As the children come home to roost, different languages and cultures and ideas are spread throughout the world. Jamaica Kincaid’s novel Lucy shows the colonized rejecting the Western ideals of the colonizer.  The title character makes not only a break from her Caribbean family, but also from Mariah, who represents the colonizer/mother.  She has left her formerly colonized home and had traveled to the home of the Western thought that once pervaded her island.  Lucy is unable top accept Mariah as her mother because of the cultural differences.  However, she does accept her as a person complete and independent in her own right.  Mariah tries to be mother to Lucy.  When her attempts to control and form are rejected, Mariah is able to settle into a new relationship with her au pair that is based on a mutual trust and borders on friendship.

Arundhati Roy’s novel The God of Small Things shows a shift from postcolonial to postmodern thought.  Ammu is the postcolonial who rejects her family and moves away.  She shunning the value system of her parents she has an affair with Velutha.  Infected with the cultural rejection characterized by postcolonial thought,  this affair becomes a destructive force that tears the family apart.   Esta and Rahel represent the postmodern thought. As postmodern children, the twins accept the unconventional.  Their friendship with Velutha is presented in a positive light.  One aspect of the postmodern novel that Brennan discusses is the rethinking of aesthetics.  Roy will capitalize major ideas and run words together.  These devices bring new meaning to Esta and Rahel’s thoughts. 

In his article “Orientalism” in the PCSR, Edward Said rejects the idea the Orientalism is solely a thought constructed by Western Ideals, but has a history and culture totally independent of the colonizers.  Rahel attempts to bridge both cultures by moving away from her family and living in the Western world.  She returns to India and her brother and finds that her home is truly with her brother.  In her postmodern world, she is able to move between both cultures, but truly belongs in only one. The history of the colonizer-colonized thought runs similar to family dynamics.  The parent wants to protect and raise the child in a moral light. The colonizer wants to bring his values and economy to the colonized.  The child may embrace the values at first, but feels the desire to explore the world on his/her own.  The postcolonial may accept some of what their colonizers brought them, but also wants to return to their original culture.  The child and the parent learn to live in mutual harmony.  The postmodern world is one where cultures are spread throughout many nations, and the concept of nationality has a tenuous grip on what is becoming the new reality.

Dear Carolyn,

The concluding parts of this essay became a little frustrating as they lost the focus on family issues or paradigms that developed such striking insights in the first half or so. Like all well-chosen paradigms of interpretation, your emphasis on the family structures that the colonists both brought and undermined created an effulgence of insights. The sustained development of these insights becomes problematic, however, as you shift into the discussion of postmodernism. Your nod toward a more global society (in implicit contrast to the local nature of the family) makes a good start, but thereafter the connection between postmodernism (and then postcolonialism) and the family becomes less convincing, more asserted than proven.

One technique that may help you avoid this problem in future exercises would be to pay more attention to “topic sentences” of your paragraphs. Notice how the opening 1-2 sentences in the first 5 paragraphs maintain the attention to the starting issue of the family. In the later paragraphs, however, this central theme is dropped until later in the paragraphs. This dropping causes two problems: the reader loses track of the supposed theme, and hanging on to the supposed theme requires more work than the reader’s contract stipulates; and the writer finds that, by postponing consideration of the central theme, its opportunities for development are shortened.

Sorry if this sounds quibbling. You demonstrate that you’re an ambitious intellectual and a good reader, and you give pleasure and interest to your reader. But the really hard thing about ideas is finishing them, and the suggestion I make above is one technique that, if remembered, forces us to finish.

Final exam grade: