LITR 5734: Colonial & Postcolonial Literature

Student Midterm 2008

Dawlat Yassin

Feb.18 2008

           A Colonial and Postcolonial Experience in Literature

I became familiar with colonial and post colonial literature several years ago when I studied Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in my under- graduate courses in Lebanon.   Upon my first reading of Heart of Darkness, I thought it utterly condemned colonialism for I could not see anything racist about it. All I could find is Marlow’s compassion towards the Africans. He seemed critical of the Europeans practices in Africa and exposes their cause as having nothing to do with religion and enlightenment, but with economic expansion and  profit. My surprise was when the professor said that Heart of Darkness was a racist novel that justified colonialism. This idea took quite an effort from me to grasp and support with evidence from the text as Conrad directed a lot of criticism to the white men, and his racism was quite unclear to me. Reading it now in dialogue with Things Fall Apart and the essay “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” makes that more clear. However, the first narrator of heart of Darkness states from the very beginning that it is an “inconclusive experience” (7), and this is exactly what I have found out about it.    An evil act of violating other people’s land, human dignity and rights can not be done on such a big scale as nations and peoples without an argument to justify it.  I grew interested in searching and understanding the colonizer himself; how he could first reconcile himself to what he is doing, and then gain the support of his fellow citizens back home in Europe. Add to this, keeping the outsider’s cultural and political hegemony over the indigenous people is a task that worth to be examined closely.  

Natives are usually taken by surprise, while the colonizers have engineered the process ahead in time and kept searching for best ways to keep hold of the land and its people.  Colonialism is not only a process of occupying other’s territories and exploring them, but is a textual act too. Works of literature justify occupation, experts and travelers have studied the geopolitical and religious aspects of the colonized people. Imperial Europe has framed means to rule and keep its cultural and political hegemony over native societies. And of course, where there is hegemony and power, there will be resistance. A good example of the textual part of colonialism-apart from the novella itself, is Kurtz’s eloquent pamphlet that he has prepared for the International Society for the Suppression of Savage customs for its future guidance. His words come “Terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: ‘Exterminate all the brutes’ ” (Conrad 74). Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness carries a lot of the Western hegemony and Achebe’s essay “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” and his novel Things Fall Apart are typical of resistance literature, while Walcott’s “A Far Cry From Africa” is neither one of them. It is the split soul screaming its pain at the suffering of the Africans caused by the Europeans and the love of a language and culture that has dug its way deeply into the poet’s heart.

The way colonial and post colonial literature communicate is best articulated by Kimberly Dru Pritchard in her 2005 midterm

The substance of post-colonial thought allows the creation of a dialogue which results in a decidedly fresh and innovative perspective in the microcosm of critical theory.  Ultimately, the tension and resulting dialogue between colonial and post-colonial texts lies in the use and treatment of language and voice and the notion that layers of colonialism will inevitably cloud the root of post-colonial thinking and its subsequent literature.

Colonial literature justifies the brutal acts of the Europeans in Africa. By dehumanizing the natives and throwing a national and religious light on the colonizer’s motives, colonial literature justifies the criminal acts Europeans commit against the natives. On the contrary, post colonial literature answers it back where it made wrong to the native societies. Colonial literature silences the native culture while the later gives it voice. Colonial literature gives a mass picture of indigenous people while the postcolonial one presents different types of characters and individuals. 

African identity is constructed by the Europeans in a way to serve their imperialistic goals. It was “Africanized” and made the different “Other” who needs a superior being to help and exploit him. African identity is made opposite of and  inferior to the white civilized one. Without the superiority of the white man, there would be no explaining of his presence in the continent. The place and its people are made up and stereotyped by the European writer. Its geography is dark and savage and its people are dark and savage. The very idea of civilization tends to take a bias definition and becomes exclusively the White –Christian culture. Anything else becomes savage and uncivilized.

In Heart of Darkness, natives are portrayed as completely helpless. Conrad through his two layers of narration, striped them of their will, dignity and humanity. He presents the situation, which he himself has built, as a reality conveyed by the trustworthy witness, Marlow. The colonizers are capable of putting the natives to work like animals that are used for cultivating land when they are worn-out and useless they are allowed to “crawl away to rest”  forever. Their treatment is even less than that of animals. A section of unfortunate humanity is left to die in pain and hunger. In colonial literature, the natives are presented as displaying no resistance because they are not capable of thinking or feeling. This picture of what was happening in Africa during the early times of colonization is completely denied by post colonial writers. What we see in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, is a different kind of society. It’s members can resist, discuss, accept or reject faiths and ideas. Members of that society are able of thinking in different ways. Even before they were introduced to Christianity, some of them have displayed doubts and unhappiness with their religion and practices. Many of those doubtful and unhappy members ( i.e. Nwoy, the twins’ mother) are converted to Christianity willingly. They choose to embrace a faith that makes sense to them and defy their fellow tribesmen and old traditions.

         Heart of Darkness ‘s main focus is the Europeans in Africa rather than Africa itself . We know nothing about the African society as if it does not exist. African voice  is completely muted and not allowed to present any tradition, culture or even a language. Africans are deprived of having a language which is the means of thinking. They have no dialogue either among themselves or with the whites to unfold any of their traditions or ways. This treatment on Conrad’s side is inexcusable because it can not be interpreted in any way other than mere dehumanization. All Africans could produce are groans or “babbles of uncouth sounds (25) and the best of it are “grunting phrases” (59) .When they are allowed to talk and use language, they are made to provide a service to the white man. In one of the two times they speak in language we have the following dialogue: “ ‘catch ’im’, he snapped with a bloodshot widening of his eyes and a flash of sharp teeth- ‘catch  ‘im. Give ‘im to us.’ “to you, eh? I asked ‘What would you do with them?’ ‘Eat  ‘im’ ”  (59). By this way, they offered a proof of their  cannibalism and savagery.  

In Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe presents a broad indirect answer to Heart of Darkness. He portrays the disintegration of the African society in a way that retains dignity to the natives. Before the appearance of the white man on the African land or specifically on the land of the Ibo people, their society has been stable. Disorder and collapse start replacing stability when the white man interferes with them bringing his religion, trade and government. However Achebe is honest in showing the flaws as well as the merits of the African culture. He is not shy to show wife beating, throwing of twins into the Evil Forest or the unjust killing of Ekemfuna. Those practices are too negative, but each culture has its negative and positive habits.  Achebe implies that African descendents should be proud of their heritage and that the west should stop thinking of the Africans as subhumans with no culture or history. They have a worthy culture, different from the European’s but not less rich. It is like any human culture that has its flaws as well as its merits.

  Achebe invests both narrative and dialogue in his novel to give the most comprehensive picture possible of the Ibo society. The society we encounter in Things Fall Apart has traditions, rules, courts and justice. We see this in several occasions; Okonkwo is fined for beating his wife during Week of Peace and is banished for seven years for manslaughter of a kinsman. In that traditional society, there is no written constitution, but spoken traditions kept in the hearts and minds of the Ibo people. While introducing Okonkwo to us, Achebe mentioned that Ibo people respect age but revere achievement. They have their own code of manners and behavior. We read Okonkwo’s words asking Ezinma, when she is seven, to sit like a woman. They have their own standards for how an Ibo “ lady” should behave.  For every situation they face in life, there are proverbs telling them how to react. Moreover, they have a good deal of story telling learned by heart and passed from generation to generation. Their stories are evolved in the animal kingdom where animals are personified to speak, think and act. Achebe is aware of the fact that this tradition is transferred into the English culture and wants to remind the English speaking people that Ibo traditions contribute in a way or another to their heritage of post colonial time and beyond.

             Achebe inserts many words from the Ibo language into the English text to contradict colonial literature’s indirect denial of the presence of African language or may be languages. Ibo people not only have a language, culture and tradition but they also have the ability to choose and resist. Eventually, they can make the colonizer reevaluate his policies and compromise them. Their rigid adherence to their traditions and faith makes Mr. Brown soften his treatment and avoid any direct or problematic contradictions between the two faiths. He is wise enough not to contradict his beliefs and to respect theirs at the same time, “he trod softly on [the tribe’s] faith” (Achebe179). On the other hand, when his proceeder Mr. Smith fails to be as diplomatic as Mr. Brown, he ends up with a ruined church and disastrous effects on the natives. In post colonial literature, natives are not desperately helpless and the outsider is made softer. The natives can not be stripped of their will and human dignity to be treated and exploited like animals.  

 In his essay “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,” Achebe  intended to offer direct answers to Conrad’s treatment of the African culture in Heart of Darkness, but he ends up launching an attack on Conrad in every possible way. Achebe looks sensitive to everything said by Conrad. Even when Marlow sympathizes with the suffering Africans he refuses his sympathy as fake sentiments that are expressed to show Marlow as “one holding those advanced and humane views appropriate to the English liberal tradition of all Englishmen of decency” ( Achebe 342). It is the over reaction of one whose identity is attacked in an unjust humiliating manner by the people who come to show some sympathy after all the harm that has been done. Achebe denies the greatness of the novel as an offensive racist book.

On some instances, Achebe is right, especially when he talks about the silencing of the African culture and history and the dehumanization of the natives, but he is not just on many other occasions.  In my opinion, Conrad’s saying “going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginning of the world”( Conrad 30 ) needs not be criticized the way Achebe does. I think anybody who comes from an industrialized and technologized background and voyages up that river is likely to think the same way simply due to the difference in the picture between what he had known before and what he sees in Africa. He will see the place as the precedent situation of what they have in Europe. It is a place still unexploited and at the sametime undeveloped by human builders of civilization and devastators of nature. Conrad’s impression is natural and is not supposed to expose him to any blame.

Again, it is true that Conrad shows the Africans in mass pictures while giving details of European individuals and personalities. In fact, his concentration on the Europeans as individuals is meant as a criticism rather than elevation or dignifying of them. Conrad exposes the greed, corruption and hypocrisy of the pilgrims and the immoral and bestial nature of their conspiracies against each other and their treatment of the natives.

While Achebe is criticizing discrimination based on race, he discriminates on base of gender.  Of course, this might be disputed as an effect of an accepted attitude towards women in African society and that Achebe did not mean it or is unaware of the discrimination when he said “Conrad lavishes a whole page on an African woman who has obviously been some kind of mistress to Mr. Kurtz” (340). If falling in discrimination is to be excused as an effect of one’s background, then Conrad must be forgiven on the same basis! I think it is a human nature to discriminate against weaker members, a bad nature that needs to be corrected.

However, Achebe’s dismissal of Heart of Darkness as “an offensive and deplorable book” (Achebe 345) that should not be considered a classic or chosen to be taught in schools is certainly wrong. Without it we will not have the opportunity to know how the colonizers behaved when they first arrived in Africa, what thoughts they had in mind about the “other” and how Europe as a whole contributes to that kind of abuse of other people’s place and cultural identity.

I think Achebe is more successful in establishing a dialogue that corrects cultural misunderstandings in Things Fall Apart than in his essay “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”.  In Things Fall Apart, Achebe regains the Ibo identity with all that constitute it. He shows how the intruder’s task of destroying the established Ibo society is never easy as it is portrayed in colonial literature. The process is that of a dangerous encounter between two established cultures and identities that can clash with each other and at the same time affect and get affected by each other. The product of this encounter and adjacent of these cultures will produce a hybrid one that can deny the effects neither of them.

A good example of this post colonial hybrid identity is represented in Derek Wallcot’s “A Far Cry from Africa”. Walcott’s identity becomes a dilemma, he is “ poisoned” with both bloods, the native’s and the colonizer’s. His mixed and unidentified identity tortures him. Walcott is aware of all the disasters Europeans have inflicted on the Africans, but at the same time, he does not deny the cultural effects colonialism has on the place and its people, especially the post colonial generations. His being in love with English language will not make him accept the brutal acts people of his beloved language have committed against the Africans. Despite the fact that the poem is ended with a question, we can conclude that Walcott does have a resolution which is not to give up anything. He will be able to carry both the pain of Africa and the love of English in his heart. This reconciliation will work to put his hybrid identity at peace.

Historically, humanity tended to occupy others lands for economic benefit and to extend the area of their authority. Some colonizers were driven away and others remained and mingled with the natives but in both situations there was no way to avoid the cultural effect they have on one another. The post colonial situation has been always irreversible. Studying colonial literature does not legitimize colonialism, but makes students comprehend it as a complicated process with reasons behind and effects to follow. The same way, studying post colonial literature, especially in dialogue with colonial one, make us think twice before we condemned all that resulted from colonialism. It explains how post colonialists reacted to the harm done to their native culture and on what terms they come to reconcile with an irreversible hybrid one.