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LITR / CRCL 5734: Colonial &
Postcolonial Literature Verena Ollikkala The New Person:
Looking Past Colonialism When reading colonial, post colonial and post modern literature, we tend to focus on the historical events. We even might try to evaluate the colonizer, as he will often be the more prominent figure. But we also have to question: How does the colonized cope with or experience this invasion into his life? Does he sink into quiet acceptance, will he adapt or most important, how and with what will the colonized emerge as a new person? Derek Walcott finds himself in his poem (17) “A Far Cry from Africa” as this newly emerged being. He recalls Africa’s bloody emergence from colonial rule as he speaks of “the bloodstreams of the veldt” in this convulsing continent. He accuses that African colonial history is still counted by the white man, who uses “statistics [to] justify and scholars [to] seize the salients of colonial policy”. But he also, despite the “peace” imposed by the colonizers, is drawn to the English language and education, which he reluctantly received. He found that now he had become a hybrid – torn between his African roots, yet appreciative of the new world, which has been opened to his mind. He asks how to “choose between this Africa and the English tongue” which he has learned to love. Chinua Achebe in his novel “Things Fall Apart” presents a similar dilemma. His tragic hero Okonkwo, an Ibo village elder, has to find ways to adjust to his rapidly changing world. His daily village life always revolved around his physical strength; he uses traditional proverbs as an oral transmission of wisdom in conflict resolution, and he dispenses justice under the mask of magic. The advent of British colonialism in the form of Christianity intruded into this world. Achebe points out to us how the contact with the “modern world” created the end for the traditions of Ibo society. Okonkwo owns a gun, which “never shot” as his wives laughingly claim. Guns were not a traditional weapon in tribal Africa, but guns were brought into Sub-Saharan Africa early on by Muslim merchants, yet would have been a fairly unusual, but powerful symbol to possess. This gun, which never shot, marks the beginning of things falling apart. Okonkwo accidentally shoots a boy and is exiled. His consequent seven years of exile in Mbanta are not only a personal disaster, but it removes him from his home village at a crucial time so that he returns to a changed world, which he can no longer adapt to. British administration has arrived in Nigeria and missionaries have drawn the lower echelons of his society into Christianity. This new religion demonstrates unmanly und unworthy values for Okonkwo. He violently rejects its intrusion, but slowly the other villagers succumb to the lure of progress. This progress allows for mercantilism and British education, but results in the loss of independence and tribal life. Okonkwo stands opposed to this development: He understands only that his people have been broken. Because he cannot acquiesce to subjugation, he chooses suicide instead. He vanishes into history, unable to adapt to the changing times. Achebe is the product of the merger between old Ibo tribalism and modern English educated society. Achebe tries with his novel to straighten the literary record, which depicts Africa traditionally only through the lens of the European imperialist experience. The white colonial writers have shows us a dark continent, which contained only primitive and mindless savages. It did never allow us to see the rich, oral traditions, the wealth of social institution within tribal cultures and it denied the diversity of peoples in Africa. But Achebe can reach out to us not in his own native tongue, but has to the intruder’s English language, which serves as the bridge between his story and our understanding. Abdul R. JanMohammed explains in his essay “The Economy of Manichean Allegory” (PCSR 18) that colonial literature, when written by a European novelist, is an exploration of a world beyond the borders of civilization. In this literature the world is still chaotic and uncontrolled, containing evil. As the colonizer expands his realm he has to confront completely alien races, languages, values and customs. This confrontational approach emphasizes the “otherness”, rather than the likeness between people. JanMohammed claims that colonial literature falls victim to this categorization, because it does not allow the writer the exploration of the racial other. The writer relies on ethnocentric assumptions and projects imagery, which reinforces the reader’s stereotype about the inferiority of another culture. Joseph Conrad with his novel Heart of Darkness is such a writer. Conrad is a European colonial novelist, who depicts the advance of trade and the utilization of the Congo Basin at the end of the 1800s under Belgian rule. His title Heart of Darkness already set the mood in our mind. We are led to believe that Africa is impenetrable and its natives are mere reflections of humanity. On the surface of the novel is the inferiority of the natives that run like a threat throughout. Marlow, the narrator, describes them as mostly black and naked, incoherent in their mumbled sounds to the refined European ear. He only acknowledges the use of English language by a native, when on two occasions important messages have to be offered: “Catch ‘im – give ‘im to us. Eat ‘im” ( 42) and “Mistah Kurtz --- he dead” (69). Achebe vigorously rejects Conrad’s depiction of the African man as being racist, ahistorical and voiceless in his critique “Image of Africa” (Norton Critical Edition: 255). But Conrad inadvertently also showed us a different side of colonized people. He speaks of “Zanzibaris”. The spice island Zanzibar is a part of Africa, which fell under the British Crown. Zanzibaris are colored people, too. On Conrad’s account they already had adapted to colonialism and progressed to become imitations of the colonizer as they carried out clerical jobs or soldiered for Britain and Belgium. But Conrad is also inconsistent with his description of Congolese: His novel allows for a select few to be able to rivet the broken river vessel, to use guns to defend themselves and their masters from attack, and even to run the dilapidated steamer’s engine to the manager’s satisfaction. As Conrad wrote his novel from his own African travel notes, he actually had found already the hybridized African, the native man in the process of adapting between two cultures. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe provides another view through European eyes. Even so this novel is a celebration of the triumph of Puritanism and of the ingenuity of European man, it also lets us consider Man Friday. Friday appears in the last third of the novel as clean as an unwritten sheet of paper. He is without language to be comprehensible to the enlightened man, he is naked and over all, he is without evil. He trustfully places Robinson’s foot on his head to convey his gratitude and begins his life of utter devotion to the European man. As Defoe leads us through the events of the island life, he develops Friday towards modernity and acquisition of values from a different culture. Defoe’s first interaction lets him instruct Friday in the English language. Language is the most important cultural transmission to be dispensed, when two cultures merge. Only through the use of this foreign language will Friday be able to utilize the technology presented to him by Crusoe. How else could Friday even imagine the functions of guns, the values of European maritime law to punish mutineers or the advantages of farming for future food supplies? As Friday became more apt at conversations with Crusoe, his philosophical concepts can emerge, too: He begins to debate abstract models of God and punishment. Why does this God not exterminate evil, if he is so powerful? (220) Thus Friday convinces Crusoe of his human value and potential for rehabilitation according to European virtues. Crusoe’s Friday eventually evolves into a perfect adaptation of the European “ideal man”. Friday is capable of expressing himself in English, he understands to behave and act like a nobleman, and he fights honorably with wild beast to be of service to his English master. As extensive scholarly literature now documents, slaves were sometimes successful in asserting their autonomy within white society and European culture. I find it interesting, that the concept of “adaptable native” had already emerged in (early colonial) nineteenth century and Crusoe allowed us with his novel a look into the future, which we live today in a multi-racial and inter-cultural society. Jamaica Kincaid presents this future, which we are living now. In her, we encounter the hybrid result of this cultural enmeshment. As a descendent of African slaves she finds that enslaved Africans were victims of their predicament, but were still agents of their own identities within the confines of slavery. Lucy, the character in her novel of the same name, struggles between the American middle class world and her Antiguan childhood experiences. She is constantly sensitive of her otherness, because her cultural awareness ties her to Antiguan history. The label “Made in Australia” (9) reminds her, that this large island continent also had been populated without the consent of its own people (the aboriginals) and without the consent of the people deposited there (the prisoners). Would this have been Friday’s predicament, in a different scenario, as he journeyed with Crusoe to Europe? Lucy reacts in anger to learn that spring brings “daffodils”, a flower she only knew from her school poems. The poem was in English, the only language available to her to express such visions of beauty, as her own African language was lost in imperial history. This emotion is reminiscent of Walcott’s poem. He, too, is torn between his love for English language and his African colonial past. Living in America makes Lucy feel alienated, because she has – as did her forebears – to adapt again to a culture, which does not yet have much meaning for her. Even so she speaks and thinks in English, her memories of Antigua and her mother have shackled her to her history. She remembers her mother’s voice: “You can run away, but you cannot escape the fact that I am your mother, my blood runs in you ”(90). This is the mixed blood of the people of Antigua, who had to bow to the English crown. But Lucy has to learn to make sense of her American life, by putting events into Antiguan context: Marijuana does not have an illicit taste to her; she knows it as a plentiful weed, used to “eat with fungy and salt fish” as a vegetable (99) or is worn as a clown’s costume at Christmas time by children. The convenience of a refrigerator does not impress her, because in Antigua are no leftover meals to be preserved in it. And fish is not a trout, it is either boiled or fried 37). Lucy (as does writer Kincaid herself) needs a tool to make sense of the new worlds they inhabit. This tool is the English language, which has been imposed by Britain on its dominion. The language allows the stranger to integrate the experiences of a different culture. As Conrad’s Zanzibaris and Defoe’s Friday, Lucy/Kincaid had to adapt their language and their skills to develop again their own identities within a new culture. But for Kincaid and Lucy (as her alter ego), this language also is a constant reminder of their status within the Commonwealth. As Kincaid explained in an interview: '”In my generation, the height of being a civilized person was to be English and to love English things and eat like English people. We couldn't really look like them, but we could approximate being an English person'' (New York Times). Protesting her inadequacy, she began to detest all Englishness in her Antiguan life. In her short, non-fiction essay “A small Place” (PSCR 92) she tells an imaginary tourist, that the British do not know that “no natural disaster imaginable could equal the harm they did.” This harm is the destruction of her African culture, her original language and the imposition of colonial culture upon her people. Chinua Achebe seconds Kincaid’s split emotions as he recalls his childhood, caught between his parents adoration for all things English, and his Ibo roots which taught him tribal rituals and oral history (PCSR 190-193). Achebe says, that his first book, Things Fall Apart, was “an act of atonement” with his past, as he relearns what it means to be Ibo. Colonial and postcolonial novels help to shed light on our world history from many different angles. As Conrad and Defoe relied on their imperialist eyes to look at their world, we find, that we also need the influence of the African writer and his descendents to illuminate their life under colonial or postcolonial pressures. As the English language has, unwillingly or not, been adopted as the most common vessel to carry literary voices, is also has become empowered by the expression and strengths of the varying sentiments. Walcott correctly asks: “Who in the New World does not have a horror of the past, whether his ancestor was torturer or victim?” (PCSR 371) I agree with him, because history is a progression of events, which cannot be undone anymore, but allows humans to evolve to greater heights. Our human duty is to learn from all those voices, which tell us their own truths and attempt to learn from their mistakes or victories.
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