Catherine Louvier

Emerging from Colonization

By focusing on literary form, I have come to understand how the novel is simultaneously a product of modernization and also has a hand in producing the modern the world. Arising out of the socio-economic forces that caused European exploration of distant territories, this genre came out of minds that looked inward to replace the holes left by a rapidly changing landscape where the family and small community was falling victim to “progress.” Ironically, the same imperial forces that devastated the formerly colonized cultures we have looked at over the course of the semester gave rise to the novel. It is only fitting that the power of the novel is used to give voice to those affected by colonial expansion. Oftentimes, I feel presumptuous stepping into an “other’s” world without permission and find it hard to do so uninvited. Novels give me that invitation.

While the novels and poetry contained in this intertextual reading span three continents, together the show a sequential progression of British colonization on their formerly colonized territories. First, Chinua Achebe’s, Things Fall Apart, tells the story of a traditional culture disrupted in the early stages of colonization. In Train to Pakistan, Khushwant Singh shows the annihilation of a traditional culture in the aftermath of colonization. Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine shows the effects of cultural devastation on the next generation. And the poetry of Derek Walcott gives a picture a man finding individual identity within the legacy of colonization and searching for between the traditional culture and the modern world.

Things Fall Apart shows the effects of colonization on a culture in the earliest stages. When the novel begins, Okonkwo’s village could be located at almost any point in time. Achebe creates a picture of a completely traditional culture by mimicking story telling techniques of an orally transmitted history. In doing so, he eschews the practice of using the African landscape as a backdrop for a colonial narrative described by Vanessa Olivier on her final exam in 2008. While the British troops show up at the end of the novel, the Ibo villages crumble from within when Christian missionaries disrupt religious and social traditions, degrade the cultural patriarchal order, and turn one faction of the population against the other. Achebe inspires the reader’s sympathy for Onkonkwo despite the fact that he disrespects his father, ritually murders his much-loved adopted son, and beats his wife brutally, all in an attempt to honor the traditions of his people. Somehow, the author manages to prompt the reader to sympathize with a protagonist with completely alien values, and to see tragedy in the demise of the culture that produced him. The time differential between Things Fall Apart and Train to Pakistan is less than a hundred ears (1861-1947). The British began colonizing India in the sixteenth century. While the intrusion of England into Africa and onto the Indian subcontinent was not identical, early contact with white invaders had to be somewhat similar. Singh’s India underwent the sort of cultural interruption in Okonkwo’s story much earlier. The havoc wreaked by the partition of India was the result of three centuries of entrenched British rule.

I think that the two Indian novels we read work well together because the textsl texts show an interesting progression of one culture in the aftermath of colonial occupation and show that culture’s transition from the post-colonial condition into the trans-national identity. In addition, both texts tell the story of disaffection without directly accusing the colonizer and in doing so makes the indictment even stronger.

Train to Pakistan seems so real to me that is almost like history comes to life. It feels as intense as reality. Unlike the village in Things Fall Apart, Kalyug was untouched by British troops. Instead, Indian governmental directors visited and exacted the control on behalf of the British government. By the time of the partition, Indian officials were so fully identified with the colonial government that villagers are barely aware of the British withdrawal. The author exhibits the evolution of the novel form by using more than simple narrative techniques to direct the reader’s attention. He infuses the text with cues that keep the story focused in the direction of his choosing. For instance, he makes the train a central point of reference throughout the novel. The town marks time through the comings and goings of the train. Continued interruptions of schedules reflect the lawlessness that is taking hold. By the time the first train of corpses comes through the station, the reader is programmed to focus their attention on the train and watch it like the townspeople do. Also, Singh makes the village a microcosm the larger conflict. He shows how good things happen in the absence of an obviously good guy, and bad things happen in the absence of an obviously bad guy. The hero saves one women, thousands of others go along for the ride. Ironically, Nooran will only feel betrayed by Jugga because she will never know what he did.

When I first read Jasmine, I thought the protagonist was heaping the suffering of her parents on herself. While her parents lived through the conditions described in Train to Pakistan, they look back on their past like some sort of golden age. The years that pass between the partition and the time of Jasmine’s youth are dwarfed by the memory of Lahore. Because I assume their experience crossing the partition to the Hindu side of the Indian/Pakistani border is like that of the train crossing into Pakistan, I found Jasmine’s identification with Du a little presumptuous. The time-frame in the novel suggests that Du is a Cambodian refugee. If so, he would have experience the extermination of entire populations by the Khmer Rouge. He would have seen entire villages slaughtered and heaped into mass graves, sometimes left unburied, rotting in the sun. His experience was more like the one in Train to Pakistan giving him more in with Jasmine’s mother and father than with Jasmine. After just having read Train to Pakistan, my tolerance for suffering was so elevated that I tended to minimize the things Jasmine went through and underestimate her very real tragic experience (well fictitiously real ).

On the surface, Jasmine only retains the parts of her culture that others can romanticize, like her cooking Indian food. She avoids telling others about her past. However, the reader knows she hangs onto that core while she is figuratively reborn many times. The monologue of the novel serves as a dialogue with the reader (albeit a rather one-sided dialogue) and her direct address invites a response from the reader.  Consequently, those things she refuses to say in front of other characters, she confides in the reader. In this way, readers of Jasmine get more insight into the workings of her mind and see how the situations of the past determine her actions.

Although Derek Walcott is a poet rather than a novelist, he uses the alternate genre to show a reconstruction of the colonial fractured identity not touched on in the novels. Actually, I see him more as a balance of tension than an amalgamation of two heritages. In “A Far Cry from Africa,” Walcott shows his struggle to negotiate a truce between his love of the English language and the role of the English in the Mau Mau uprising. His passionate attachment to the means by which he creates his art (language) makes his attachment to the English part of his heritage emotionally intense, while loyalty to his African heritage demands that he give up that language. Since he knows he will not give it up, he is forced to reconcile the two parts of himself. In “Crusoe’s Island,” he uses double articulation to tell two narratives with the same words. In doing so, he shows how the English speaking artist and the white ancestor grapple with the island of his African past. In the first narrative, the artist fills his loneliness (the island) with his own image; he is the second Adam who re-forges the world according to his own design. In the second narrative, he is the colonizer who takes over the island and renames everything according to his own will. In both instances the innocence of the black children transcends the artifice of the adult interloper.

Literary fiction simultaneously entertains and educates, so it is a meaningful addition to any curriculum. This semester, we read novels from around the world that contained detailed pictures of places and points in time not ordinarily covered in history books. More importantly, each novel provided a glimpse into the heart of its author and in so doing, revealed something about the feelings of the people towards their former colonizers. Postcolonial novels encourage the reader to understand a point of view that is not readily available in the insulated environment of American life and fosters a measure of intercultural respect. In this way, fiction extends more than the parameters of a reader’s knowledge; it also encourages a greater understanding of the cultural interaction between people outside of our own borders. Furthermore, novels expose the reader to valuable information in a manner eminently more palatable than a dry history or political science book. By telling the story of the characters, the narrative of the novel becomes the narrative of history. At the same time, it provides the opportunity to explore locations and events in relation to a story making it more meaningful and likely to be remembered.