LITR 5734: Colonial & Postcolonial Literature

Sample Student Midterm 2005

Samantha McDonald

4 October 2005

Colonial and Post-Colonial Texts:  A Step in Globalization

Even after years of studying literature, I am continually fascinated by the way different types of texts are intertwined and related, often in ways the authors probably never imagined possible.  I believe it is inevitable that anyone who studies literature for a significant amount of time will find a genre or an area of study that they are drawn to repeatedly.  I found myself pleasantly surprised with the colonial and post-colonial texts in this course because they provided a fresh opportunity for me to look at two literary questions that fascinate me:  the impacts of changing from an oral to a written culture and why texts that have appeal across multiple genres and to a extremely wide and often diverse audience are constructed.  Especially in Things Fall Apart, the transition from the oral culture of the natives to the written culture of the colonizers, both the impact on each society and the attitude with which each society acknowledges those changes, is distinct and provides insight into the cultures.  In addition to viewing texts in this context, Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart are in some way familiar to audiences across the world much in the same way some fairy tales are.  While a cocoa farmer in South American descended from Mayan Indians may not be able to relate well to Shakespeare, he probably has heard some form of a Cinderella tale and could envision some of the changes and conflicts described in Things Fall Apart happening to his ancestors or may be even in his own culture today.  One of the most powerful aspects of literature is the potential to create a sense of empathy between the text and a reader who is outside the author’s intended or immediate audience and colonial, post-colonial, and stories about the colonized do this naturally as part of their genre.

            Prior to this course, I have viewed moving from an oral to literary culture a matter of cultural maturity and education.  When a more mature culture interacts with a developing culture, the transition from an oral to written tradition is accelerated but still seemed to be a natural progression.  A certain level of cultural maturity and educated individuals is required for a literary culture to develop, but Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart clearly show that the transition can be wholly artificial.  In the case of the Africans in Things Fall Apart, the acceptance of British authority, which is founded on written laws and a religion centered on a book, the Bible, is a matter of survival and the only possible path of advancement in this new society.  In contrast, Heart of Darkness shows the need for a common mode of communication but mainly for the comfort and ease of the British with very little positive benefit to the natives.  Marlow sees nothing of value in the native culture and Conrad presents Marlow’s view as that of a typical Englishman.  The British essentially are giving the natives the only culture they consider civilized, their own, and that culture is founded on written laws and religion.  What Marlow, and presumably the typical Englishman, neglect to recognize is the uniqueness and value in the native culture that already exists.  In Marlow’s work, the only culture of value is the British culture.

Marlow sees the natives as just another animal in the environment – they just happen to be animals that resemble their superiors and can communicate with them in a limited manner.  Even so, Marlow paints a picture of the natives that makes their inability to communicate seem less developed than the voice of the animals and the jungle that surrounds them.  Conrad gives the Earth a voice as Marlow walked to the Company station.

The rapids were near and an uninterrupted, uniform headlong rushing sound filled the mournful stillness of the grove where not a breath stirred, not a leaf moved, with a mysterious sound, as though the tearing peace of the earth had suddenly become audible (Conrad 20).

While the setting is very beautiful and tranquil, Marlow finds the natives in the same scene very disturbing.  While the description of the natives is very bleak, “ the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of blind , white flicker in the depths of the orbs which died out slowly” (Conrad 20), the description is even more disturbing because no kind of sound is associated with it.  Conrad transitions from an active, noisy jungle environment to a soundless grove of natives, an unnatural, lifeless fixture in a setting teeming with activity and sound.  Even when offered a bit of food, the starving man makes no sound – no thanks, no joy.

Even Marlow accepts that the native are men, though savage and cannibalistic.  This assumption is not based on the native’s ability to communicate or even on his position in society.  Even the more civilized natives hired as part of Marlow’s crew are depicted as cannibals.  Marlow views the natives as savages because of their race and their lack of culture, both in language and written word.  Achebe noted in his critical analysis of Heart of Darkness that “Conrad . . . was strangely unaware of the racism” (Achebe 262) inherent in Marlowe’s attitude toward the natives.  Since Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness, many attitudes towards racism and other cultures and beliefs have changed significantly, but the belief that an oral culture, especially one in an exotic language, lacks the depth and richness of a literate culture seems to still be a common position. 

Achebe goes to great lengths to dispel this impression in Things Fall Apart and this novel is a direct contrast to Heart of Darkness.  The Ibo are a culture that uses folktales and ceremonies to commemorate the beliefs and stories they cherish.  This oral tradition is used in the place of written words.  As Denny Farrar mentions in his 2003 midterm, Achebe emphasizes the oral traditions of the Ibo by including Ibo words throughout the novel.  This seemingly simple technique shows that the Ibo have a rich and intricate culture that predated the British presence in their village.  Okonkwo told the boys “stories of the land – masculine stories of violence and bloodshed” while the women told them “stories of the tortoise and his wily ways, and of the bird eneke-nti-oba who challenged the whole world to a wrestling contest and was finally thrown by the cat” (Achebe 53).  Both taught the beliefs and values of their culture as they were taught to children for generations.  Achebe gives this oral culture a voice through his novel in a way author’s like Conrad never considered by having the characters tell the Ibo stories.  This provides an excellent contrast to Heart of Darkness since the people are not poor, they are not starving, and they are not conquered.  Regardless, their culture is quickly and irreversibly impacted not only by the British but also by the written works in the forms of laws and the Bible the British bring with them.  Throughout the novel Achebe describes the systematic destruction of this oral tradition from the priest’s denouncement of beliefs in the sacred serpent to the enforcement of written British laws with complete disregard for the tribe’s traditional laws.

            The ability to record laws and customs in written form is even more critical in Things Fall Apart.  The traditions of the villagers are simply brushed aside when the Europeans appear with their written laws.  Even the village elders are willing to forgo their customs for these laws, though the threat of violence certainly contributes to their decisions.  The idea that when written a concept becomes more powerful, that it is a more global possession and not just the possession of the person uttering it, was not lost on the natives.

            While the natives develop an uneasy respect for British culture, the same cannot be said for the British view of the native’s oral culture.  Things Fall Apart ends with the most striking example of the casual British attitude toward native culture I have found in any of the texts studied thus far in this course.  When the Commissioner leaves as his men are cutting down Okonkwo’s body, his thoughts of this tragedy are the final thoughts expressed in the novel.

The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading.  One could almost write a whole chapter on him.  Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate.  There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out the details.  He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought:  The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger (Achebe 209).

Achebe depicts the Commissioner as a typical British agent much as Conrad does Marlow – racist, superior, and arrogant.  Whether Achebe intended the Commissioner to be oblivious to the actual reasons for this tragedy or whether he did not see this as a tragedy is unclear.  What is clear is that the Commissioner considers the death of a native inconsequential.

            All texts are biased both by the writer and the reader.  Whether Conrad meant for the Commissioner’s attitude to be callous or whether he believed this was the common and appropriate attitude for a British agent depends on the reader’s perspective.  Achebe is obviously angry about the racism and violence his culture has endured and this colors his writings.  Both authors do convey a sense of loss, each from their own perspective, but Walcott conveys this loss through his poetry more powerfully than either novel.  The passage that most draws me is from “A Far Cry from Africa”.

Threshed out by the beaters, the long rushes break

In a white dust of ibises whose cries

Have wheeled since civilization’s dawn

From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.

These are things that stood long before the British colonized and it has been forever changed by their presence.  I have never seen these places nor have I any point of reference that makes the places or scene familiar.  I feel Walcott’s sense of loss though I have never experience that kind of loss myself nor has anyone I know.  I do not empathize with the racism or anger conveyed by the other authors, but I do empathize with the loss.  This is the power I have found in the texts in this course so far.  A person cannot help but relate to some aspect of the texts being studied.

            Few, if any, cultures cannot be classified as either part of a colonizing or a colonized culture.  Those few that are difficult to classify were colonized so long ago it is no longer a significant part of their cultural memory and their society today is an integrated mix of the native population and the original colonizers.  It would be a mistake to say that colonizers relate to Heart of Darkness while the colonized natives relate to Things Fall Apart.  Regardless of which situation a person is in, strong reactions to both novels are to be expected.  The advantage to studying these novels together is that individuals from countries like the United States, which is a collection of both colonizers and colonized people, and countries whose colonizers or colonization occurred in the distant past is that both perspectives, though both or one of those perspective may be biased, are presented.  When combined, readers are virtually guaranteed to be able to empathize and understand how at least one of the cultures is being impacted, which will in turn provide the basis for understanding the more foreign culture.  One of the primary objectives of this course is “to mediate the ‘culture wars’ between the ‘old canon’ of Western classics and the ‘new canon’ of multicultural literature”.  By giving readers a way of empathizing with and understanding familiar texts and simultaneously providing the opportunity to use this newly honed skills to analyze a more unfamiliar text, readers develop the ability to rationally and logically examine all types of literature.

Colonizers of Africa, India, and the Americas began uniting the world centuries ago and that unification has expanded well beyond land and wealth.  When those first explorers and many that followed them left their homes, there was little to no debate about what was considered literature.  The canon was well defined and very limited.  Both Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart graphically show the brutal aspects of colonization, but both also represent a cultural enlightenment of sorts.  That same colonization that enslaved nations and attempted to extinguish cultures also exposed Europeans to ideas and attitudes that ultimately changed their cultural view of themselves and the world.  Now literature that depicts virtually every point of view and culture is studied not only by scholars but also by the masses.  Though a scholar may find that particular area of literature that he is interested in, the interwoven nature of literature that continues to increase in complexity and diversity guarantees that the same scholar will be exposed to more thoughts and styles of literature than was ever before possible.  With the continued inclusion of these nontraditional texts in the literary canon, literature will continue to expose people throughout the world to cultures and beliefs other than their own and thrive in a global setting.  Without that exposure, how could Walcott ever relate the violence in Africa to the plight of the Jews as he did in “A Far Cry from Africa”?  Would Achebe have bothered to create a novel that gave voice to the rich and complex nature of the Ibo culture?  Would he have had the opportunity to expose such a large audience to the intricate and beautiful nature of African culture?