LITR / CRCL 5734: Colonial & Postcolonial Literature

Sample Student Midterm 2003

J. Kirby Johnson
Independent Study – Litr 5734
June 9, 2003

Fighting to be Heard  

            Georg M. Gugelberger’s article, Postcolonial Cultural Studies, entails two quotes that really struck me.  The first is Walter Rodney’s claim that  "To be colonized is to be removed from history.”  The second is a similar claim by Memmi, which states, "the most serious blow suffered by the colonized is being removed from history.”  These claims lead Gugelberger to define postcolonial writing as “the slow, painful, and highly complex means of fighting one's way into European-made history, in other words, a process of dialogue and necessary correction” (Course Website, John Hopkins Link).

 Being American with European heritage, fighting for my history to be heard or for my culture and language to stay alive has never occurred to me.  My history lies with the colonizer - the power hungry white man who was fortunate enough to be born amongst the “civilized.”  A history that tells the story of the good willed European spreading his knowledge and religion of love to uncouth savages.  This history was written by a culture that devalued and dehumanized all others.  This European-made history has been drilled into young peoples’ minds all across the globe.    This is a one sided history.  This is a history that ignores various cultures it does not understand. 

Colonial and Postcolonial literature gives the colonized a voice.  Authors like Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Jamaica Kincaid are giving voice to cultures that were being stifled by European colonization.   History is no longer one sided and the people of Africa are no longer “a black and incomprehensible frenzy” (Conrad 37) of “limbs or rolling eyes” (Achebe article 254). 

For the Europeans, colonization was a means to increase their power.  Whether it was for economic, social, or religious purposes, they were all means to increase power.  As Marlow gazed upon a map that was “marked with all the colors of the rainbow,” he notice an area with a “vast amount of red” and thought that was “good to see at any time because one knows that some real work is done in there” (Conrad 13).  This attitude turns colonization into “[t]he conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves [which] is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much” (Conrad 10).  

Marlow distanced himself from colonization, that taking away from.  His distance enabled him to dehumanize the African people.  As he came upon some Africans that were dying from being overworked he mused, “They are not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation lying confusedly in the greenish gloom…fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest” (Conrad 20). 

Marlow does not fully recognize the fact that these people were dying because of the colonizers.  He does not even recognize these people as being human.  Instead they are “black shadows” and “bundles of acute angles” (Conrad 21).  And like mere tools of colonization they become “inefficient” and are “allowed to crawl away” and die.  (It really isn’t a pretty thing when you look into it.)

Chinua Achebe sought to fight these negative representations of African people.  In his essay Named for Victoria, Queen of England, Achebe states “[after reading] some appalling novels about Africa [I] decided that the story we had to tell could not be told for us by anyone else no matter how gifted or well-intentioned” (Achebe, Postcolonial Reader 193). 

In his novel Things Fall Apart, Achebe gives voice to an African culture and history before and during colonization.  This novel does not beg for a European/American reader’s sympathy and it does not paint a picture of an oppressed culture.  Those ideas are far from Achebe’s purposes.

Things Fall Apart offers present day readers a glimpse into African culture and how the people deal with colonization.  Achebe shows Western readers that their so-called savages lived in a harmonious world that contained order.  Achebe also offers insight into how the colonized could accept new religions and faiths.  A prime example of this is the character Nwoye. 

Nwoye was captivated by “the poetry of the new religion, something felt in the marrow.  The hymn about brothers who sat in the darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question that haunted his young soul – the question of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed.  He felt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul” (Achebe 147).    With passages like these Achebe paints a picture of an understanding and tolerant culture, even more so than the European culture.

To further this idea that the African people are more understanding and tolerant of other cultures, we have the above passages from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and a few characters in Achebe’s novel that represent this quite well.  Those characters are the missionaries. 

Mr. Brown, the first missionary, “spent long hours with Akunna (a great man in the village) in his obi talking through an interpreter about religion.  Neither of them succeeded in converting the other but they learned more about their different beliefs” (Achebe 179).  He “came to be respected by the clan, because he trod softly on its faith” (Achebe 178).

 I would not call Mr. Brown an adequate representation of the colonizers.  He tried to understand, instead of enforce.  A more accurate depiction of the power hungry colonizers comes with the second missionary, Reverend James Smith.  “He condemned openly Mr. Brown’s policy of compromise and accommodation” (Achebe 184). He was not there to understand an inferior culture. Smith was there to enforce the dominant Western values and morals on the African people.  He was there to colonize.  That was his duty. 

That may sound harsh, but after reading Jamaica Kincaid’s essay, A Small Place, one feels the impact of colonization from the colonized point of view.  Kincaid states:

          [The English] don’t seem to know that this empire business was all wrong and they should, at least, be wearing sackcloth and ashes in token penance of the wrongs committed, the irrevocableness of their bad deeds, for no natural disaster imaginable could equal the harm they did…what went wrong [is] they should never have left their home, their precious England, a place they loved so much, a place they had to leave but could never forget.  And so everywhere they went they turned it into England; and everybody they met they turned English…The English hate each other and they hate England, and the reason they are so miserable now is that they have no place else to go and nobody else to feel better than  (Kincaid, Postcolonial Reader 92).

Kincaid sees colonization as an injustice done to her people and her culture.  She has nothing to call her own, because the Europeans enforced their standards and beliefs on her culture. 

Kincaid goes on to speak of the schools and libraries that were put up in her country in which Europeans “distorted or erased my history and glorified your own” (Kincaid 94).  She also feels that she is among “the millions of people…made orphans: no motherland, no fatherland…and worst and most painful of all, no tongue.  For isn’t it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who committed the crime?”  (Kincaid 94)

Ngugi Wa Thiong’o also confronts the issue of the enforcement of English language on his people in his essay entitled The Language of African Literature.  He states, “In Kenya, English became more than a language: it was the language, and all others had to bow before it in deference” (Thiong’o, Postcolonial Reader 288). 

European schools were also put up in Thiong’o’s country.  If one was caught speaking the native tongue instead of English they were punished with spankings on the buttocks or they were made to wear signs that stated: “I AM STUPID or I AM A DONKEY” (Thiong’o 288). 

Europeans were using their language to control these people.  Thiong’o felt that the enforcement of the “language and literature were taking us further and further from ourselves to other selves, from our world to other worlds” (Thiong’o 288).           

As with my previous class in Minority Literature, it is hard for me to read these works and not get emotional.  The Europeans saw differences and felt they had to correct them.  I do not understand why colonizers did not offer compromise.  Who gave them the right to invade countries and erase cultures?  Now, people have to fight to have their history told.  One’s history should not have to face struggle to come into light.  One’s history is their natural right.

Colonial and postcolonial literature has opened many doors.  The colonized are no longer being silenced.  They are fighting the half-truths of the European-made history.  Their voices keep cultures alive. 

I would like to conclude with a powerful quote from Achebe.  This quote is taken from his essay Colonialist Criticism.  I wish the Europeans had felt this way, instead of feeling that they had to conquer the world.

“Let every people being their gifts to the great festival of the world’s cultural harvest and mankind will be all the richer for the variety and distinctiveness of the offerings” (Postcolonial Reader 61).