Barbara Trevino

December 11, 2009

Dynamic Perspectives of Reading Literature

            As a graduate student working on my Masters in Humanities, a mother of two young children, and recently becoming a junior high teacher of English Language Arts, I had begun to become a bit apathetic and slightly bitter towards my studies and entered maintain mode. While I still put an effort into my academic studies, my new job as an educator started to take precedence and the passion I had once felt for my own path of new learning started to fade. I found myself in the mindless rut of showing up for class, taking the obligatory notes and churning out assignments that were technically correct, but void of passion. However, this class has reawakened the spark that would formerly light my academic career. Even while my career is more demanding than ever, I now find myself looking forward to class again, and anxious to hear the insights Dr. White and my fellow classmates have on our readings. This class has brought a new perspective to my literary studies that I have been able to utilize in my academic, professional, and personal life.

            Objective 1 and 1a reshaped my preconceived notions of literature so dramatically, that I am now more cognizant of what I read, how I critique, and how I utilize literature in all aspects on my life. Before this class, I tended to view literature at face value based on my modern interpretation of it. Not only did I view it from my American or Westernized view, but from an academic and politically liberal view as well. While I believed that I was accurate in labeling Conrad, Dafoe, and other colonial writers as inherently racist and imperialistic, it is now apparent that texts by these authors are historical accounts of the time periods and societal views of those times.  Further, the New Historicism movement has allowed me to use colonial and post-colonial texts as a tool to identify, define, and understand the modes of power and ideologies present during the time periods the texts were written. By reading texts intertextually, a dialogue is created which creates a more holistic approach to literature aiding in comprehension of themes, biases, and symbolism within the texts.

            Upon first reading, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad can be seen as an account of one man’s journey through “dark lands” and his encounter with madness. However upon closer examination in dialogue with Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, a reader begins to understand the depth of these dark lands. They now become a place such as Africa, and the dark inhabitants become human. While devoid of speech, literacy, and even emotions at times, in Heart of Darkness, Conrad’s same indigenous people become thinking, feeling individual members of intricate tribal societies in Things Fall Apart.

            According to Objective 2a, the novel is defined as utilizing and combining the representational modes of dialogue and narrative. This combination allows the reader to develop a more humanizing view of both the colonizer and the colonized. This has been particularly helpful because I am usually very quick to make judgment and label the colonizer as good and the colonized as saintly. Through the use of dialogue, I have been able to see glimpses of humanity, kindness and sometimes compassion in the characters of colonial texts as well. Through narrative, the journey protagonists travel is made clear and offers a more historical and humanizing view of colonial as well as post-colonial characters.

            In the novel Jasmine, dialogue and narrative have helped to develop a more realistic perspective of the main character Jasmine. Through her journey and interactions with characters in the novel Jasmine is taken from the conceptualized innocent, oppressed, colonized individual to a human being with thoughts, feelings, and most importantly vices. Jasmine is seen by the reader as an immigrant who has been raped, committed murder, cared for children, loved, hated, and sought vengeance. In other words, Jasmine is humanized.  By interpreting the novels through use of dialogue and narrative, a more liberating and realistic understanding is attained.

             In addition, Jasmine has broadened my view of transnational migration as referenced by Objective 1b. Upon reading previous essays, I came across “Defending the American Experience as Third Wave Colonialism” by Danielle Lynch 2008.  She stated,

You see, the American (or western world’s) resistance to or the ignorance of postcolonial criticism on a grand scale may be present but in the end, it’s the Jyotis,  Lucys and Millats who act as a type of colonizer and find this type of   colonization more difficult than other nations would imagine the United States found it as an imperialist nation colonizing other countries.

This statement really stood out, because I could not disagree more. First, the United States does not share the colonized nation’s experience because instead of colonizing the indigenous population, they were eradicated and replaced by colonizers. Further, while there has been a recent surge of immigrants, the fact remains that they are immigrants and while some ties to their original cultures may be kept, the power is not in their hands. They, or the “other” does not come into the United States and oppress the citizens by enforcing new customs, values, and government entities on the United States citizens. Instead, as shown by Jasmine, most immigrants come, mesh and may create new subcultures to further diversify the United States, but the shift of power does not change as it does in colonized nations.

            Postcolonial Literature has opened my eyes to the many different facets of literature which aid comprehension of the social, political, and philosophical ideologies at play within our globalized world. This class has helped me to become a better teacher, student and mother because through the comprehension I have gained, I am able to transfer and utilize my broader more objective view to other areas of my life.