LITR / CRCL 5734: Colonial & Postcolonial Literature

Sample Student Midterm 2003

Dendy Farrar
Dr. Craig White
LITR 5734
9 June 2003

Common Objectives in Colonial Literature:  An Analysis of common threads in Walcott’s “A Far Cry From Africa,” Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

According to the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory, Post-colonial theory is meant to “examine the culture of former colonies of the European empires, and their relation to the rest of the world.”  With the advent of Post-colonial theory, European imperial narratives have a “counter-narrative”  (155).  To further complicate the understanding of the theory known as Post-colonialism, Post-colonial concerns often overlap with Postmodern, and Poststructural concerns, among others.  What emerges from these concerns is a set of common objectives.  These objectives serve as a common thread that runs throughout the literature studied in this course.  This course, Colonial and Postcolonial Literature 5734, according to the UHCL course catalog, is designed to explore “First-World colonialism and imperialism … texts in dialogue with corresponding texts from the perspective of the colonized” (270).  This “dialogue,” incidentally, is listed as the first objective in our course objectives.  Many of these course objectives have emerged in the literature in this first half of the course and I have begun cataloguing them and compartmentalizing them in my mind.

One of these such objectives is objective 1c, which explores the “emergent notions of ‘hybridity’ and ‘cross-cultural identity’ which contrast with traditional historical notions of national or ethnic ‘purity.’”  This notion of “cross-cultural identity” is most clearly expressed by Derek Walcott in his poem “A Far Cry From Africa.”  In this poem the reader clearly senses the speaker’s feeling of divided loyalties.  As a person born of mixed European and African heritage, Walcott is placed in a very precarious position, and with this position, inevitably comes questions.  Walcott must be asking himself, “How can I choose sides?”  “How can one man fight himself?”  These questions are unanswerable and Walcott understands this.  He knows this is not a “black-and-white” problem with clear-cut answers.  Africa, his mother country, and English, the mother tongue, call to him with equal force.  This internal struggle is evidenced in the lines, “I who am poisoned with the blood of both, / Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?”  (18).  What is most striking about this poem is the speaker’s realization at the end of the poem:

I who have cursed / The drunken officer of British rule, how choose / Between this Africa and the English tongue I love? / Betray them both, or give back what they give?/ How can I face such slaughter and be cool? / How can I turn from Africa and live?  (18).

The speaker’s inner division portrayed in these lines is the heart of the poem.  Even though Walcott ends his poem with questions, we appreciate the fact that he is asking these questions, and in essence, the questions are the answers.  By asking these questions, Walcott is coming to terms with his divided identity.  Clearly, Walcott’s poetry serves as a means of reconciling the division inside of him, while at the same time forming questions into art.  Walcott will not chose sides, but he nevertheless will always experience a sort of inner struggle due to his mixed racial heritage.  In his poetry, Walcott successfully embraces both sides of his culture and the outcome is miraculous.

Another reemerging objective in the course literature is objective 2a, “the genre of the novel combines the fundamental representational modes of narrative and dialogue … they represent oral or unwritten speech traditions.”  This objective surfaces in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.  In both of these novels the example in the objective, “the narrator is a literate voice, while the characters’ voices represent oral or unwritten speech traditions” holds true.  For instance, in Things Fall Apart, Achebe’s Okonkwo says very little at all.  Instead of long speeches or dialogue between characters, the action of the story is revealed through exposition rather than a dramatic unveiling of the action.  What results is a reader who is told about Okonkwo and his actions, rather than a reader who gets the information “straight from the horse’s mouth,” so to speak.  The effect is notably similar to that of an oral tale.  Achebe’s use of the proverb and animal fables aid in the creation of a traditional oral tale, or tale within a tale.  Stories of how the tortoise’s shell came to be bumpy and the story of the sacred python are revered and communicated among the tribe.  The result is a somewhat fragmentary story of many sub stories or tales, which honors the concept of shared oral tradition.  This honor of oral tradition on behalf of the Ibo illustrates the complexity and harmony of the people, therefore contradicting the stereotypical view of Africans as savages.  In Achebe’s essay “An Image of Africa:  Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,” he asserts that through his use of language in the novel he also challenges stereotypical representations of Africans.  He further states that Europeans tended to see Africans as a people of silence, without a voice of which to speak.  Achebe’s answer to this is a novel with an African people who speak a highly complex, specialized language full of proverbs, folk tales, and literary devices.  The manner in which Achebe sprinkles into the narrative traditional Ibo words that simply could not be translated into English adds a cadence and rhythm to the piece that could not be achieved by translation.  The reader is left with a sincere appreciation for the beauty and intricacy of the language.  In a sense, Achebe has created, to use one of the objectives in another manner, a “hybrid” language that borrows from both cultures.  For instance, words like “osu,” “obi”, “uli,” and “chi” appear several times, and as a result, the reader begins to have an understanding of these words and an understanding of this blending of the languages.  As Dale Marie Hlavaty pointed out in her 2001 class presentation, “language works in Achebe’s text to deconstruct notions of African inferiority.”

In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness , we encounter a narrator, Marlow, who has no qualms about narrating events.  Literally speaking, the action of the novel is simply the act of storytelling aboard a ship in order to pass the time.  While Marlow is a confident storyteller, at certain times in the narration he seems at a loss for words and his speech comes to an abrupt stop.  He serves as our “literate voice” while at the same time “representing oral or unwritten speech traditions.”  Toward the end of Marlowe’s tale he expresses his frustration with language:

‘Kurtz whom at the time I did not see – you understand.  He was just a word for me.  I did not see the man in the name any more than you do.  Do you see him?  Do you see the story?  Do you see anything?  It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream – making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is the very essence of dreams . . . .’

He was silent for a while.

‘. . . No, it is impossible, it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence – that which makes its truth, its meaning – its subtle and penetrating essence.  It is impossible.  We live, as we dream – alone . . . .’ (29-30).

In these lines we see the nature of orality.  Language is unstable and elusive.  Conrad has set up a parallel structure concerning language and meaning.  In this quotation, Marlow becomes aggravated because it is “impossible” for language to do certain things.  He is frustrated because when faced with the task of communicating something deeper than surface level narration of events, he is speechless – essentially, the words fail him.  He has trouble communicating its “truth” “meaning” and “essence.”

Another one of our course objectives that I keep coming into contact with in the literature is objective 3 concerning “repressions of gender in the traditionally male-dominant fields of cross-cultural … literature.”  In both Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the issue of gender repression is evident.  Achebe’s Okonkwo is so preoccupied with appearing strong and masculine that he sacrifices his allegiance to tribal law in order to prove his strength.  He equates weakness with femininity, and therefore, he avoids being perceived as weak at all costs.  In chapter four, Okonkwo beats his youngest wife, Ojiugo due to her failure to prepare supper.  Okonkwo is reprimanded for this; however, as Kirsten Holst Petersen points out in her essay “First Things First:  Problems of a Feminist Approach to African Literature,” Okonkwo was punished, “not for beating his wife, but for beating her during the weak of peace” (254).  While the Ibo culture is fairly democratic, it is, in fact, profoundly patriarchal.  Wife beating is an accepted practice and it is perfectly acceptable for a man to control his wives.  Okonkwo never comes to terms with his “feminine side,” so to speak.  His exile upsets him because it forces him to spend time in a “womanly” place.  Nice foils to Okonkwo; however, are the characters of Ikemefuna and Uchendu.  They demonstrate tenderness and affection toward others.  Uchendu laments the loss of his five wives and expresses the belief that women are not objects, and that there are things one should value in a wife; such as, experience, wisdom, and intelligence.  With the coupling of abrasive masculine characters and tender, sensitive male characters, the reader gets a fairly representative depiction of male characters.

There is not an absence of strong female characters in Achebe’s novel, however.  Ekwefi has lost nine children, and this experience has made her a strong woman.  When Ekwefi follows Chielo and chooses her daughter over the gods, she demonstrates that strength, bravery, and conviction are not solely masculine traits.  The presence of a priestess, a woman of high power in the community, is very remarkable in and of itself.  She is a woman, however a respected woman in high position, and even Okonkwo respects her authority.  While women are, in fact, repressed in the novel, they are also celebrated, and as the novel progresses, we get a glimpse into the strong female bond that occurs between the women of the village, particularly Ekwefi’s friendship with Chielo. 

As in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, adds fuel to the gender repression fire.  Women are, for the most part, absent from the narrative, and when they do make an appearance, it is through Marlow’s eyes and in keeping with British ideologies.  The women in the novel are presented as if they are “out of it.”  Marlow asserts, “Girl!  What?  Did I mention a girl?  Oh, she is out of it – completely.  They – the women I mean – are out of it – should be out of it.  We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own lest ours gets worse” (49).  In Marlow’s eyes, women are naïve and out of touch with truth.  However, there is a poignant passage in which Marlow describes the African woman:

“…And from right to left along the lighted shore moved a wild and gorgeous apparition of a woman.  She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments.  She carried her head high, her hair was done in the shape of a helmet, she had brass leggings to the knees, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces … She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous stately in her deliberate progress … Her face had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the fear of some struggling, half-shaped resolve” (60).

While Marlow frequently asserts that women are the keepers of naïve illusions, he also comments on the majesty and beauty of women.  As in Achebe’s work, Conrad’s work provides the reader with a fairly equal balancing of negative and positive portrayals of female characters.