Allen Reid

12/8/09

Essay 2

                                    The “otherness” In Postcolonial Literature

            In studying colonial and postcolonial theory, I have learned to analyze text from a different perspective. One of the main things that grasp my attention whenever I am looking at a text from a postcolonial/colonial perspective is the binary system of “us” and the “others.” It is interesting that some characters seem knowledgeable of this fact and use it to their advantage and others appear oblivious to the nature of such an idea. The novel gives the reader a more personal way of studying international relations and history. It does so through narrative and dialogue. Through these two literary devices give the reader more than just dry facts. The reader is brought into the experience. Characters become known to the reader and we relate to them, we like them, hate them, love them, and we sympathize with them. Through their conversations with one another and the descriptions of the narrator we learn about their experience as if we are actually there witnessing it firsthand; and that is something that you cannot get from reading an anthropology book or history book. Studying colonial and post colonial literature the reader gets a very personal experience of the idea of “us” and the “other.” Maybe many of “us” can now picture ourselves as the “other.” And as many of the characters in our novels that we read this semester showed us recognizing ourselves as the “other” can be most helpful.

    In Conrad’s Heart of Darkness the narrator seems to be one such character. He makes the reader get a good sense of the idea of “us” and the “other.” “You could see from afar the white of their eyeball glistening. They shouted, sang; their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces like grotesque masks” (11). Then a few pages later we are presented with the idea of the European described as the “other.” “This was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be” (13).  Hence, in the first quote that I gave the reader is given the idea that the native is the “other,” whereas in the second quote the narrator is self aware that he too is seen as the other in this foreign land.

Achebe in his article on The Heart of Darkness is quick to judge Conrad’s text as racist and an unworthy piece of literature to be placed in the canon. Achebe lays claim to the idea that Conrad, and Europe, need Africa to use as a foil, as a place of negations. He described Conrad’s description of the savage on the river banks of the jungle stamping their feet and rolling their eyes, as a condescending description to compare to a more sophisticated European model of proper civilized behavior. Achebe seems to insinuate that Conrad and other Europeans incline to accept the narrative of the backward African who does not conform to modern times. However, I think that Achebe gives us the same first impression of Africa. “Without further argument Okonkwo gave her a sound beating and left her and her only daughter weeping” (TFA, 38). With this reference to wife beating and all the talk about superstition, I think that any western reader will see Okonkwo as the “other.” He is maybe one step up on the evolutionary chain from his African forerunners seen in Conrad’s tale. A modern western audience would certainly perceive both Okonkwo and the natives dancing on the river banks rolling their eyes and stamping their feet as less civilized and backwards compared to modern standards. Hence, maybe Achebe sees himself as better than Conrad because he deems Conrad a racist, but I think without using Europe or America as a back drop or foil to his novel, Achebe’s western readers are still getting the idea of the backwardness of Africa. I think this represents the idea that we cannot escape the idea of the “other” and “us.”

In Peter Mwikisa’s Conrad’s Image of Africa: Recovering African Voices in Heart of Darkness, Mwikisa argues against the interpretation as purely ethnocentric, but instead argues that it is a warning against unrestrained power. Where Kurtz’s character, who is look at as powerful like a god to the natives, is overzealous in his capitalist and colonial pursuits and pays the ultimate price.  I too disagree with the ethnocentric interpretation of the novella. I do not think that Conrad was a racist and I certainly do not think that his text nor any other text for that matter can be racist. A text is a non-thinking thing, and therefore does not have any notions of racism or anything else for that matter. Like all other art the texts only exist. The artist creates it for what it is. It is up to the viewer to interpret it. Therefore, whether or not one reads Conrad’s text as racist, or one who reads Achebe’s novel and gets the idea that Africa is backward, it is purely in the readers mind, and may or may not have been intended by the author. The idea of the “other” African and “us” Americans is still in Achebe’s novel, just like it is in Conrad’s.

            In Train to Pakistan, Iqbal too seems to be well aware of the idea of the “other” and how to change to conform to be the person who he needs to be in order to benefit himself. “He did not have to say what Iqbal he was. He could be a Muslim Iqbal Mohammad. He could be a Hindu, Iqbal Chand, or a Sikh, Iqbal Singh” (TP 35). Iqbal knew the psychology of people. He understands by not being perceived as the “other” he will have better success. “The man had obviously taken him to be Muslim. Just as well. All the passengers appeared to be Muslim on their way to Pakistan” (TP 39).  Time after time Iqual shifts from one person to another in order to camouflage his identity so to appear like everyone else.

            Like Iqbal Jasmine too knew that change is necessary in order to be successful. The whole novel is about her evolution that was necessary for her to survive. She is always the “other” in the novel. With her husband Prakash she is a village peasant girl who only feels a sense of self accomplishment by the number of kids she can produce. When she arrives in America we see the idea of the “other” is not a binary system; e.g., when she first arrives in Florida she is not American, ergo, she is the “other,” but she is not the only “other” there.  She was among many immigrants from different parts of the world. Her stay with Prakash’s old professor is interesting. When she was with them she was not the “other,” but they were sequestered from mainstream American culture; they had their own India here in America. Her move to Iowa made her the “other” among the small town farmers, but unlike her stay with Taylor, here her foreignness frightens them. It is Jasmine’s “otherness” that excites Bud. “Bud courts me because I am alien. I am darkness, mystery inscrutability” (200). For jasmine Bud is security. Therefore, she plays the role of Jane Ripplemeyer conforming herself to be one of “us.”

            It is the idea of “us” and the “other” that is always constant in colonial literature. The observance of these phenomena makes the reader hyperaware of his/hers own “otherness.” I think we as reader really gain a lot of knowledge observing characters like Lucy and jasmine and watch them grow. The novel allows the reader to experience things that they would not normally experience in life. With the novel a westerner can experience what an eastern immigrant experiences migrating to the west. It is a personal experience that you cannot get from a textbook.