LITR 5734: Colonial & Postcolonial Literature

Sample Student Final Exam 2005

Beth Cordell

Only Connect

     In one of E.M. Forster’s most famous utterances, he implores us to “only connect.” The only way it is possible to connect with other individuals and cultures is to dialogue and ask questions.  There have been aspects of the course in Colonial and Postcolonial Literature which have helped me crystallize a personal vision for my future scholarship and come to a better understanding and sense of peace in our frightening global situation.

     The experience of the class has fostered more or less a paradigm shift in my thinking. I’m sure I’m not the only student who tries to integrate new knowledge in isolation.  The usual class model has been primarily based on lecture.  An accumulation of facts which leads to additional knowledge occurs, but it is insular and private.  Our class setting encouraged a dialogue among the students which paralleled the dialogue between the texts. The class became a microcosm of the global situation and the world writ small. For me, learning happened as though a stone had been tossed into a pond and the ripples reached beyond the local to the global. The tectonic shifting in the mind is that there is no going back to a former mind-set. We are a global culture and must adjust to that fact.  The only way to adjust is to learn how to connect.

     In our last class, Mary Brooks led a seminar discussion which was a dialogue between Lucy and Jasmine.  An observation was offered that the dilemma faced by Lucy which concerned limited job prospects (nurse, nanny) might actually date the book in some way and that the particular problem of possible job aspirations for women should have  been resolved.  Also, Mary observed that her experience of a woman’s studies course is that the feminists seemed to be angry and concerned with the same issues so that the feeling is that nothing has really changed.  It was good to have this discussion because it shows that we have a space in our personal discussion which is analogous to intertextuality.  The novels may be read on several levels and students are connecting rather than taking polarized positions.

      The readings of Lucy and Jasmine as postcolonial texts were the most important aspects of the class for me.  Not only are the characters Lucy and Jasmine products of the postcolonial period of their respective countries, they are attempting to be postcolonial as individuals.  To be colonized is to be inculcated with the belief system of the colonizers. Lucy’s mother thinks the safer route for her daughter is to emulate what the women in the culture have always done. According to the research link on Jamaica Kincaid, Kincaid is the eldest of four children, the younger three boys.  Lucy is also the oldest of four children, the younger being three boys also.  Who knows what causes a person to question how things were always done and in fact question authority and resist.  Is one born recognizing injustice?  Does one feel the repression of a natural instinct toward joy as unfair and try to seek another way?

     Conformity and convention seem to be the safer route.  Lucy and Jasmine are postcolonial in a feminist way because they are seeking a way of being for a woman which may not have been discovered.  Mariah represents a colonized woman, not simply one of the former colonizers of the Caribbean. The relationship between Mariah and her husband reflects the ongoing struggle of the power dynamic in marriage. There are many ways to find a working balance within a marriage, something which benefits all concerned including the children.  The husband was presented as someone who exploited the resources of his particular colony (the marriage) and then brutally moved on having conducted himself with the arrogance of the one with the “winning hand.”  He had the economic power to make the major decisions. I daresay, his behavior could be compared to Jasmine’s attempt to reinvent herself by moving from man to man finally leaving a man who had become disabled during the marriage. Even though Jasmine was dependent economically on Bud, he was emotionally dependent on her and loved her (although he had abruptly left his own previous marriage). We are left with questions about what constitutes marriage and from a feminist angle we should look at why Jasmine would seem almost as brutally insensitive as the husband portrayed in Lucy. The conventionality in this paradox would be our inculcated notions of the roles men and women are to play.  Lucy and Jasmine studied in Colonial/Postcolonial courses or as part of Women’s Studies will keep the dialogue alive.  My future scholarship will involve trying to find ways to have issues discussed which encourage understanding and a sense of ongoing improvement in what are considered problems of self-actualization encountered by women and a getting away from anger that results in polarization.

     The personal is the political. In my life, I have found that the biggest misunderstanding among people continues to be how to become actualized and free in one’s identity and be in relation with another individual or group of individuals. It is quite difficult to be free and happy in a frightening world. I have realized that questions must be asked on both sides. The tragedy occurring in France concerning the Muslim youth might have been prevented had there been an open dialogue between them and the government.  Martin Luther King has said that a riot is an attempt to be heard. Instead of hearing the concerns of the youth, the official stance toward them is contempt.  The problem I have with our American way of thinking is that it continues to be nationalistic and hegemonic.  To have gone against the ten criteria for beginning a war which are mentioned in the Charter of the United Nations, is appalling to me. The Middle East is the cradle of civilization.  How arrogant of the U.S. to practically obliterate landmarks, museums filled with antiquities, assume our way is better than their way.  To deal with Saddam Hussein is one thing, to change a culture already in place is another. It is because of this class that I have expanded my understanding of Islam.  I was pleased to learn that in the year 2007 the department of Islam Art in the Louvre will be significantly expanded thanks to a donation from a Middle Eastern country.  I was saddened to think how little understanding Americans have of other cultures and yet hopeful that someday people will learn about a culture before a war and not after, will seek to understand each other to prevent wars from ever happening.

     So to resolve the American ways of thinking, my choice is to begin with myself. I choose to become more knowledgeable, to remain open to others by having empathy, to ask questions, to “just be kind” as Mrs. Moore said in A Passage to India. We can do so much more on a local level to improve our lives.  The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2004 and the first woman from Africa to win it is Wangari Maathai of Kenya who founded the Green Belt Movement where for nearly 30 years she has mobilized poor women to plant 30 million trees.  Because of deforestation, the land was not sustaining life and the women, even in extreme poverty, through Maathai’s vision could effect lasting change. A good beginning is to connect with others in your own community.

Timed Essay 10:30-1:00 p.m.

Beth Cordell

Essay II

Wherefore Unsatisfied Soul?

Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them.

E.M. Forster A Passage to India

     Edward Said formulated the theory of Orientalism to encompass the yearning for the mysterious other.  The occident versus the orient or the western versus the eastern. India, with its ancient religions seemed as old as time, primal, an earthly paradise. Walt Whitman composed “Passage to India” as a quest for India itself.  E. M. Forster wrote A Passage to India from the viewpoint of the privileged British, although because of his experience living in India he was able to impart nuances of the religious cultures he had encountered. Khushwant Singh lost his ancestral home in the Punjab after the Partition of India and wrote of the effect of that cataclysmic event from the perspective of rural Indians in Train to Pakistan. Much later, Bharati Mukherjee would write Jasmine the story of a woman seeking an entirely new identity in America.  In the reading of these texts, we realize the effort on the part of the characters to reconcile their religious beliefs with their tumultuous surroundings. Since Whitman’s poem envisions a union with India as the ideal transcendent state, I will intersperse passages from the poem.

                  The flowing literatures, tremendous epics, religions, castes   (line134)

    In A Passage to India Aziz reads Persian poetry and weeps.  The weeping is his response to beauty and he us unable to interact with others except through his heart. Otherwise, he must defer to the British, adjust his reality to exist.  He is happiest in the mosque. “He would contemplate the ninety-nine names of God on the frieze which stood out black, as the frieze stood out white against the sky.  The contest between this dualism and the contention of shadows within pleased Aziz, and he tried to symbolize the whole into some truth or religion or love” (16). Aziz doe not feel at peace unless he is in the mosque or in a state of quiet contemplation in his modest home.   In contrast, a Britisher on a visit to India, Adela Quested is not given the same contemplative spirit that Aziz possesses. Forster writes, “She would see India always as a frieze, never as a spirit” (48).

        Old occult Brahma interminably far back, the tender and junior Buddha, (line 135)

     Another character in A Passage to India, Professor Godbole, is a Hindu Brahmin.  He, unlike Aziz has learned to detach somewhat from his surroundings. When asked to explain the mysterious Marabar Caves to Adela and Mrs. Moore, he was somewhat evasive. It was as though “a power he could not quite control capriciously silenced his mind” (80). In this curious interaction, we are told that Adela missed the point of the conversation and that “the comparative simple mind of the Mohammedan had encountered Ancient Night” (810).  The Hindu religion is the oldest in India and Godbole has learned a bit of serenity. Unlike the relation Aziz has with his religion in the interactions with non-Muslims, Godbole takes great comfort in his.  Godbole does not let the actions of others disturb his practiced tranquility.

What dreams of the ideal? what plans of purity, perfection, strength?

What cheerful willingness for others’ sake to give up all?

For others’ sake to suffer all? (lines 215-218)

     Whereas the India in A Passage to India is primarily seen through the eyes of the British, the India seen in Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan is from the perspective of the rural Indians. The villages are remote from any centralized British influence, and in fact the story is taking place during the Partition. In a dialogue between the two novels conducted by Betsy Barnes she reported that “Aziz is honest about the situation between the different Indian cultures; he seems to understand that the cultures will not be united forever.”  The little village of Mano Majra has only three buildings.  One building belongs to the moneylender Lala Ram Lal; the others are a Sikh temple and a mosque. “There is one object that all Mano Majrans venerate…the three-foot slab of sandstone; it is the local deity, the deo to which all the villagers, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim or pseudo-Christian repair secretly whenever they are in special need of blessing”(2).

     The character Jugga Singh is perhaps the most troubled of the rural Indians encountered in Train to Pakistan.  He is a Sikh involved with a Muslim woman in the village of Mano Majra.  Because his father and grandfather were dacoits or troublemakers, he firmly believes it is his fate to follow suit. Also, there is the Punjabi code which “believes in truth, honor and financial integrity but values being true to one’s friends and fellow villagers.” Jugga is arrested in connection with a crime committed in Mano Majra and spends time in jail. He is unaware of the encroaching catastrophe which will involve the deportation of the Muslims from the village including Nooran who is now pregnant.

     Jugga who has spent his entire life in an almost aimless pursuit of criminal behavior decides to make a change at the last moment.  When he determines that the gang which committed the dacoity in the village is plotting to sabotage the train carrying the Muslims to Pakistan, he decides to act fast.  He goes to visit Meet Singh and implores him to read a few lines from the Guru.  The lines which firmed his decision to act were “And God Himself their actions honors. /There are sorted deeds that were done and bore fruit, /From those that to action could never ripen.”  He asks what those words mean and Singh replies, “It is just the Guru’s word.  If you are going to do something good, the Guru will help you; if you are going to do something bad, the Guru will stand in your way. If you persist in doing it, he will punish you until you repent, and then forgive you” (174). Jugga makes a split second decision to repent for all his past behavior and sacrifices his life to save the passengers on the train to Pakistan.

Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only,

For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go (lines 249,250)

   Finally, we have the character of Jasmine from the book Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee.  Jasmine is told by an astrologer in her village that she is fated to be a widow and an exile.  She decides at an early age to question her fate.   According to a web reference, Mukherjee has Jasmine undergo several rebirths in an attempt to improve her life; these rebirths often include aggressive and violent change. Mukherjee’s philosophy includes the idea that the immigrant must adapt. In Mukherjee’s words, “The decision is made to become an immigrant, and although (the fictional characters) are often hurt or depressed by setbacks in their new lives or occupations, they do not give up. They take risks they would not have taken in the country they have left behind.”  The character Jasmine decides her chance for a better life will happen in America.

Doubts to be solv’d, the map incognita, blanks to be fill’d (140)

     Godbole, Jugga and Jasmine practice various forms of the Hindu religion, and Jasmine puts a curious twist on her idea of reincarnation to be able to survive the violent changes in identity.  One possible explanation for the rampage of identity transformations is Jasmine’s view of her mission in her present life.   After her father is killed, a Lahori friend comforted her mother by telling her that family life and family emotions are all illusions and when the assignment on earth is completed you are called home for the next assignment (59). Jasmine has a conversation with Taylor explaining her viewpoint. “The scale of Brahma is vast, as vast a space as the universe. Why shouldn’t our lives be infinitesimal? Aren’t all lives viewed that way equally small?”(60). Taylor states he could not live in a world like Jasmine’s if it meant “rearranging a particle of dust is as important as discovering relativity, that’s a formula for total anarchy. Total futility. Total fatalism. Where’s the incentive to do anything?”(61).  Privately Jasmine tells herself that the incentive is to treat every second of your existence as an assignment from God because everything you do is equally important in the eye of God (61). Although Jasmine has left her little village in the Punjab of India far behind she appropriates tenets of her religion in order to adapt to her new country.

The lands, geographies, dancing before you, holding a festival garland,

As brides and bridegrooms hand in hand.  (lines122-123)

      While imminent and drastic change compelled Jugga to actualize a counter karmic action, and a forsaking of the traditional exiled Jasmine from her homeland, Aziz crystallizes his identity as a Muslim in India and Godbole offers a vision of unity which transcends the earthly. After the trial and the revelations about the inability to really be friends with the British, Aziz resolved to communicate more with Indians who were not Muslims.  In the process of trying to write a poem, Aziz realizes “Islam itself, though true, throws cross-lights over the path to freedom.  The song of the future must transcend creed” (298).  Because of the unpleasant experience of the Marabar Hills he wanted to love India as a whole, be like Japan and fight for nationality. Aziz transforms from an emotional man to a man with practical, earthbound resolve.

       In a very different way, Godbole visualizes a unity for India.  Two years after the disastrous occurrence at Marabar Hills, Godbole is set to lead a choir in the anticipation of the birth of God at midnight. It would take place in a courtyard of “beautiful white stucco,…its pillars and vaulting scarcely seen behind coloured rags, iridescent balls, chandeliers of opaque pink glass”(318).  Godbole himself was barefoot, in white with a pale blue turban.  He was already so transfixed at the presentation of the choir that “his gold pince-nez had caught in a jasmine garland and lay sideways on his nose”(319). Forster lets us know that the singing was not to the God who confronted them but to a saint, and that nothing they were doing would be correct to a non-Hindu.  The singing continued in a frenzy and Godbole mentioned something to the drummer who “broke rhythm…and produced a new rhythm…the singers’ expressions became fatuous and languid.  They loved all men, the whole universe, and scraps of their past, tiny splinters of detail, emerged for a moment to melt into the universal warmth” (321). Godbole is able to recall Mrs. Moore among the images from the past and he “impelled her by his spiritual force to that place where completeness can be found. Completeness, not reconstruction”(321). He was even able to recall a wasp and tried to recall where the wasp was seen.  When he realized it would take logic and conscious effort to produce the setting, Godbole almost broke the spell he was under by finding himself on the red carpet dancing.  With yet more noise, lights and dancing, Godbole “detached the tiny reverberation that was his soul”(321).

Alternate light and day and the teeming spiritual darkness,

Unspeakable high processions of sun and moon and countless

 Stars above.  (lines 83, 84).

      In conclusion, excerpts from A Passage to India describing Godbole’s experience of a unity with God, or God as Love as Mrs. Moore wished, which transcends earthly concerns:

The clock stuck midnight…Infinite Love took upon itself the form of SHRI KRISHNA, and saved the world. All sorrow was annihilated not only for Indians, but for foreigners, birds, caves, railways, and the Stars; all became joy, all laughter; there had never been disease or doubt, misunderstanding, cruelty, fear…the human spirit had tried by a desperate contortion to ravish the unknown, flinging down science and history in the struggle, yes beauty herself…Not only from the unbeliever are mysteries hid, but the adept himself cannot retain them.  He may think, if he chooses, that he has been with God, but as soon as he thinks it, it becomes history, and falls under the rules of time.    

(eight hours . . . over several sittings)