Sylvia Krzmarzick
Colonial and Post-colonial Literature
Dr. Craig White
July 6, 2001

Final Exam

The novel, in general, can be viewed as a narrative or dialogue in which certain ideals are represented. In studying the dialogues that occur between colonial and post-colonial literature there seems to two types: the conscious and the unconscious. Timothy Brennan evaluates his definition of the novel in the article “The National Longing for Form.” He noticed that certain “writers of encyclopedic national narratives that dismember a . . . particularized history in order to expose the political dogma surrounding and choking it” (PCSR 174). This description falls in line with a ‘conscious’ dialogue or intertextuality and is especially seen in Chinua Achebe’s response to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in the novel Things Fall Apart. However, there are more subtle or ‘unconscious’ uses of the novel. Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy can provide an alternate perspective on the character Friday in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.

As Achebe is quick to point out, there is a “dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination and Conrad merely brought the peculiar gifts of his on mind to bear on it” (Heart 261). Conrad’s “peculiar gifts” entailed withholding culture, tradition, speech, and even basic humanity from the natives in HD. Alternately, Achebe gives each of those traits to the natives in TFA. Therefore, it appears that Achebe seems to be consciously answering Conrad in a bold and straightforward manner.

One of the first descriptions of the natives in HD is from Marlow’s “excellent aunt” who expresses the illustrious desire to “wean those ignorant millions from their ignorant ways” (16-17). However, the Ibo people seem hardly in need of such assistance. In their culture, where tradition and survival are taught orally, the children know “the names of all the birds and [can] set clever traps for the little bush rodents” (TFA 28). The education of the Ibo children is simply different and taught through “an endless stock of folk tales” (34).

Conrad also rarely refers to the natives as having human traits. They have “faces like grotesque masks” or are “bundles of acute angles” (17 & 21). They are otherworldly creatures or “savages” who do not have a language except to say “’Mistah Kurtz - he dead.’” (21 & 69). In answer to this negligence or ignorance, Achebe paints a rich culture full of tradition and many of the same universals that exist in European society. Obiageli uses tears to her advantage against her parents after breaking a pot and Okonkwo and Ekwefi feel the same concern any parent would feel when their child is seriously ill (43 & 85). The Ibo people also have a hierarchal system of government where even though the laws may seem wrong, “the law of the land must be obeyed” (69). Furthermore, Achebe addresses European universals that are conflicting or different in the Ibo culture. When the locusts descend on the village, the natives are not afraid of the Christian biblical allusion. They are viewing “a tremendous sight, full of power and beauty” (56).

Where Achebe seems to consciously address and almost indict Conrad’s portrayal of the natives in HD, Kincaid’s depiction of Lucy and her relationship with Mariah creates a dialogue that is unconscious in nature with Robinson Crusoe. Defoe’s portrayal of Friday’s relationship with Crusoe is told from the point of view of the benevolent master, while Kincaid evaluates the same relationship from the point of view of the servant.

Crusoe has the same “savages” that Conrad does. He, however, has the opportunity to “get [him] a servant, and perhaps a companion or assistant” (206). Through that declaration the master/servant relationship is set into motion. The first words that Crusoe teaches his new cohort is his new name, “Friday,” thereby stripping him of his old identity. He “likewise taught him to say Master, and then let him know, that was to be [Crusoe’s] name” (209). Crusoe then teaches Friday “every thing that was proper to make him useful, handy, and helpful” (213).

Lucy undergoes a similar transformation. However, it is told from her point of view. When she lands in the states for the first time, Lucy finds that “all these places” that she sees “were points of happiness” (1). But she quickly points out the reality of the situation. “Now that I saw these places, they looked ordinary, dirty, [and] worn down” (2). She learns that she will grow to like some of the conveniences (such as a refrigerator), and undergoes a level of shock when she finds that “the sun [can] shine but the air remain cold” (5). Lucy is also immediately relegated to the role of servant when she is given “the maid’s room” (7).

As the unconscious dialogue between the two works unfolds it seems that Lucy actual gives Friday a voice of sorts. Friday’s story is told from Crusoe’s perception. Friday’s affections are described as “like those of a child to a father” (211-212). And Crusoe does, in fact, take responsibility for Friday’s spiritual being in an ultimate act of paternalism when he “began to instruct [Friday] in the knowledge of the true God” (218). After Friday learns English, it is important to note that, even though he is given a voice, the story is told based on Crusoe’s view of what transpires in the novel. Lucy gives the reader a more realistic view of a relationship between master and “minion,” and more interestingly she evaluates the paternal bond that typically exists in this setting.

Lucy’s voice can actually serve to give Friday a more valid one. She can answer Mariah’s “minions” comment by noting that “a word like that would haunt someone like [her]” (37). Furthermore, instead of Friday’s apparent undying devotion, the reader can view the conflicts that exist within these relationships. Even though “Mariah reminded [Lucy] more and more of the parts of [her] mother that [she] loved,” she is given the voice to declare,

“The times that I loved Mariah it was because she reminded me of my mother. The times that I did not love Mariah it was because she reminded me of my mother. (59 & 58)

Therefore, Crusoe’s desire “to instruct savingly this poor savage” can be answered by Lucy when Mariah “want[s] to rescue” her (RC 221 & Lucy 131).

Overall the dialogues between these four novels (whether deliberately imposed or not) can serve to give a more rounded view of colonial and post-colonial literature. Perhaps the poet Derek Walcott can provide some insight into the importance of having a dialogue between novels. In “The Divided Child,” there is “a book left open by an absent master” and it seems that much of his poetry is an effort to create a “new book . . . whose lines / match the exhilaration” of the reader (145 &149). The “new book” can be viewed as a direct dialogue between novels, such as TFA and HD or it can be one that is consciously imposed on texts, such as Robinson Crusoe and Lucy. Nonetheless, these dialogues are an integral facet of understanding colonial and post-colonial texts.

Time 7:15 - 10:10 (virtually no breaks)

Dear Sylvia,

I encountered a few exemplary problems with your handling of “novel” and “dialogue,” but one result of your essay is worth any trouble: how Lucy explains Friday. I hesitate to say that such a maneuver on your part is clever, because that may trivialize it. It has the flavor of subversion, and the ability to help “the subaltern speak” testifies to your imaginative and sympathetic powers.

Rather than a dialogue, however, I might have characterized Lucy’s augmentation of Friday’s voice as . . . a chorus? Here I attempt to demonstrate, self-consciously, some flexibility or improvisation in the critical vocabulary. You demonstrated such flexibility, but you weren’t very self-conscious about it. Thus “novel” and “dialogue” show up from the start but rise and fall without much systematic awareness of the terms’ usefulness and limits. As you advance in your studies, such self-consciousness is required, though not to the point of paralysis. You might review Kimberly Jones’s exam on the web for an illustration of how she, with a little more experience now than you, works with critical sources in a helpful but open-ended manner.

My analysis and suggestions here may not be perfectly clear because they strike at a problem I find inherent in the course: how technical or literary terms like dialogue tend to lose their technical or literary significance and instead soak up the content of whatever text we’re studying. I haven’t thought my way out of this problem yet, but you could see the problem in the way I’d try to introduce literary considerations, but discussion would quickly abandon them for the sake of the action and ethics and personalities at hand. Well, it’s natural to do so, but literary criticism works best when it’s not just about “what the book’s about,” but exposes the content as indivisible from its mode of expression. Big talk, huh?