LITR 5734: Colonial & Postcolonial Literature

Sample Student Final Exams 2008

Essay 1: Describe and evaluate your learning experience or learning curve (Objective 3 + others)

Karen Daniel

Why Should We Get to Decide; American Attitudes towards Colonization

Like many other students whose midterms and finals I have read, when I first took this course, I had absolutely no real idea what Colonial or Post-colonial literature was—as matter of fact, until I looked at the course website, I really thought we would be reading literature written in the days of American colonization.  Talk about ethnocentrism, though in all fairness, I guess that would be considered colonial or post-colonial as well, it’s just not the literature to study on that subject.  At any rate, the first and most profound lesson I was to learn is that many countries have their own colonial stories to tell, and that many of them have rich and profound influences on the inhabitants of the cultures in which they exist. 

I think the two texts that impressed me the most were the two that I had read in other courses.  While this may sound strange, I had already been exposed to them so it would follow that they would have less impact not more, they affected me strongly because reading them in the context of this course changed them for me. 

First, as I have stated before, Heart of Darkness changed dramatically for me in the context of this course.  I have been saying that reading it in this course enabled me to understand it more fully; however, upon further study, I now think that understand is perhaps not the term I was looking for.  The text, especially when read in conjunction with Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, now means more to me.  I had always read it with the mindset of understanding what the point of Marlow’s journey into the jungle was.  Now, after taking this course, I know that the real question one should be asking is how Marlow’s journey, and the journey of other agents before him, affects the natives of the Congo.  Who were the natives before Imperialists came into the picture, and how has colonialism and Imperialism changed them?  Rather than focus on the colonizer, through the texts in this course, I have learned to focus on the oppressed—not always an easy thing for Americans.

In my midterm, I argued that Conrad was not racist, that in fact he may have written Heart of Darkness purely to spark British knowledge of the evils of colonization.  I recently read a interesting essay that took that idea further.  The critic I read (Lackey, Michael) argues that Conrad was actually trying to use characters in the novel, specifically Kurtz, to show that “morals” in general were responsible for the negatives about colonization; that morals demanded genocide based on the fact that the natives corrupted the colonizers and they had to protect the chosen people.  Hmmm…interesting but a stretch, and it made me wonder if perhaps I was not reaching to make excuses for Conrad.  I still don’t think he’s racist, but was he aware of the negatives of colonization or oblivious as most Americans appear to be?

The other text that had the biggest impact on me was Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy.  Like Heart of Darkness, I had read Lucy before, for a class on women in literature.  Unlike Conrad’s novel, I really liked it the first time I read it; however, it never occurred to me that it was a political (post-colonial) piece; instead I saw it as simply an enjoyable alternative to reading longer and more difficult works. In other words, I missed the true literary value of Kincaid’s work.  Reading it this semester in conjunction with other post-colonial novels, opened up new meaning for me in the text, making it much richer and more significant. I didn’t understand her anger before, or her choice to leave her homeland voluntarily.  Now I realize that Lucy had no choice but to leave if she wanted to truly find where she belonged in the world.

My second research posting centered on Lucy’s voluntary exile and her hatred for her mother.  I found that the two were deeply entwined.  Lucy sets her mother up as a symbol of the post-colonial environment she grew up in, therefore she hates her.  Perhaps Lucy feels safer blaming her mother, who she knows she can reconcile with at any time, instead of blaming her homeland.  With the typical ambivalence of a colonized person, Lucy is torn between loving and hating her homeland—far easier to project that on her mother than to try and sort it out another way. Lucy resents many things about her post-colonial upbringing, and Mariah consistently fails to understand Lucy’s points about it.  The relationship between them, the lack of ability to communicate, seems parallel with the American attitude towards colonization in general.  We just don’t see what they problem is…so they are forced to read dead-white-guy novels and learn the history of a country that means nothing to them…they are lucky because we came in and saved them. 

Objective 3 states that as Americans we have “difficulties with colonial and postcolonial discourse.” I may have argued this concept months ago, but have had a change of heart about that.  I still am not sure which side of the fence I come down on about colonization. In a particularly heated classroom discussion, Dawlat asserted that Americans, and other nations who have colonized peoples, have a responsibility to stay and clean up their messes after colonization.  I disagreed with her in most ways, and still do; however, for the most part, I agree that we often should not be there, but there are exceptions to that. I concede though that as Americans we do have a problem with colonial and post-colonial discourse, because it argues against some of the truths that we hold dear.  It is hard for us to see that people are not always better when we come in and save the day, and we don’t particularly like literature that brings that to the surface—in effect we get defensive.  I have had to learn to read this sort of discourse with a more open mind, and to look at the literature as a study in the long term effects rather than as a purely political assault on the American way of life.

So, I am glad I took the class—glad that I am more aware of my insidious Imperialistic ideals that everyone is better off with our interference.  How wonderful to be able to do that in the context of literature, because I believe that if I had attempted to study the same thing in a history or anthropology class I would have been far more resistant to the ideas.  I still think there are positives to colonization, but it is different to look at these positives against a background of the long term effects that our texts addressed.  Who’s to say where to draw the line and when the negatives outweigh the positives?  Prior to studying the literature in this class I would have said the more educated and successful culture, but now I have an awareness of the fact that we will always think others would be better off with our interference, seriously calling into question our right to a vote in the matter.