Chrisoula Mouliatis

30 September 2009

An Appreciation of Colonial-Postcolonial Literature through Intertextuality

             Upon signing up for this course, my intentions were to explore literature in a topic of which I was previously ignorant. I did not realize colonial-postcolonial literature had such depth and magnitude. My appreciation for the genre does not stop at the end of the novels we read. It continues to incite interest in me so much that I yearn to put myself into that unknown world in which the characters lived and explored. The fact that there is so much more to these texts than a narrative of a life unknown to me is proof that the genre is not for everybody. It takes a person willing to appreciate and delve further into the text and dialogue to really understand what was happening in the time period and welcome different perspectives. After reading Robinson Crusoe, A Small Place, and Lucy, I realized, with the help of our three objectives, that understanding becomes a lot easier and gratifying when looking at the literature intertextually, with the perspective of self and other, and through a reflection of ourselves. With these objectives, I gained a greater knowledge of colonial-postcolonial literature and all that it entails, and I know that it will help me further comprehend the texts we are soon to read in the course as well. In this essay, I will discuss that which I have learned through the course thus far and how my perspective on colonial-postcolonial literature has changed.

The first novel we read was Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and there were so many elements involved in this text that portrayed a sense of self and other amongst the characters. I’ve chosen to look at all elements of the novel, including the differences between Crusoe and his father, Crusoe and Friday, and Crusoe and the reader. When we are first introduced to Crusoe, Defoe sets up the argument between him and his father about class differences and the key to comfortable living. His father, taking the more humble approach, tries to convince Crusoe that his travels will only endanger his potential success. We immediately find out that Crusoe’s motives throughout the novel are purely economically and only for his benefit. He disregarded the concerns of his family and, in turn, made himself an outcast. In Ian Watt’s critical text “The Rise of the Novel”, he confirms the reader’s notion that “profit is Crusoe’s only vocation, and the whole world is his territory” (Watt 67). From the reader’s perspective, we can, at first, appreciate Crusoe’s ambitious nature and see it as a heroic trait, but throughout his travels, we see that his ambitions were not well intended. This leads us to the relationship between Crusoe and all others he encounters.

The second objective really comes into play here because it is through the characters’ discourse that we can observe the self and other aspect of the novel. Crusoe, whether knowingly or not, spoke to others outside of his social circle in a way that dehumanized them. He coined the name “Friday” simply because it was the day he met his soon-to-be companion. He very hypocritically sold a boy into slavery after the same boy helped Crusoe escape it. These instances take away from the heroic qualities of Defoe’s protagonist because we as readers value characteristics like friendship and loyalty. When the question arises from the second objective as to whether or not colonizers can be understood as other than villains, I find my answer to this in Leah Guillory’s class discussion and Camille Buxton’s poetry analysis. Both women brought up the historical context of the novel and how it plays into the self and other objective. As readers, we must understand Crusoe’s world as a product of the time and environment. After all, it is Crusoe’s story. Regardless of the social commentary we can place on the text now, colonization and the effects of post-colonialism were a very real and very large part of our world’s progress in history. Reading Derek Walcott’s “Crusoe’s Island” is another way in which intertextuality plays into our understanding of a culture’s historical significance through the eyes of “the other”. Who is to say, though, that the differences between Crusoe and the reader actually exist? For us as readers, we have the opportunity to digest the literature and dissect it to fit accordingly to our standards of right and wrong. Even today, not every person will agree on what those standards are. For us to antagonize Crusoe because he took advantage of people to get ahead proves that we do not really have a full grasp on the time period, that we are not weighing all the options that were (or were not) available. We do not know if Defoe intentionally wrote the novel as a criticism of said behaviors. This is what makes colonial-postcolonial literature so complex. We must step outside of ourselves for a while to see the world that is narrated before us through the eyes of the characters. There are so many different perspectives to analyze which made it that much more interesting and rewarding for me because the texts were not intended to be understood at face value.

Moving on to the second piece we read entitled “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid, I would like to address the third objective which concerns the “American” response to colonial-postcolonial literature. Although it is a short text, Kincaid has an in-your-face, powerful statement to make about the place she once called home and the place colonialism turned it into. She addressed her reader as if we are the “self” and she is the “other”. By this, I mean she referred to her reader with use of the second person which automatically made it a more personal reading. She has knowledge of something so complex and so emotionally charged that we must read and listen closely in order to identify with only a small piece of her world. Her series of anecdotes let us know that although this part of her life was full of struggle and turmoil, she has not yet been jaded by its effects. Instead, she very passionately made her case and took her side opposing colonialism and stating “that this empire business was all wrong…” and “no natural disaster imaginable could equal the harm [it] did” (Kincaid 92). I am happy we get to hear Kincaid’s side of the story. I am glad to hear the argumentative attitude that is so representative of everything we are not taught in grade school. This is what makes colonial-postcolonial literature so interesting; I no longer have to be ignorant of this kind of criticism that is rejected simply because we are the inherent “self” to all those not like “us”.

By analyzing the text with Abby Estillore’s presentation of the film “White Teeth”, I feel that Defoe’s Crusoe becomes easier to understand because we have been given something new to which we can now compare the old.  Previous to this course, I did not realize that there was such a wide array of literary and critical responses to colonial-postcolonial life. The comedic aspects of “White Teeth” prove that postcolonial criticism does not have to be as fiery and hardened as Kincaid’s responses, nor does it have to be narrated to us in detail by Crusoe. The comedy in “White Teeth” did not dilute the purpose, but portrayed it in a different light so that we may better understand the concept through other creative outlets. The film and texts together make up our first objective in the course which is to establish the connection between old and new world responses. The fact that I could better understand an eighteenth-century novel after previewing a twentieth-century film is shocking to me because I never would have thought the two correlated in any way. The relationships between Crusoe, Friday, Archie, and Clara are so different yet they bear the same distinctions when it comes to race, class, and religion. A couple of centuries later and there are still obstacles when it comes to having an interracial relationship. The same factors that kept Crusoe from really befriending Friday are the same ones that try to keep Archie and Clara apart: race, religion, class, and tradition. Despite the couple’s love for one another, they were dehumanized by others in their society simply because they were not one of the same. This allows us to explore Crusoe’s poor behavior with Friday long enough for us to sympathize with him in that he really did not know any better. Regardless of Defoe’s intentions while writing the novel, it serves its purpose in a colonial-postcolonial course because we can take it apart and analyze it against modern works of art and literature. Objective one allowed me to give new meaning to texts I only read for face value before. Robinson Crusoe was once the story of man’s life on a desert island until I came in contact with Kincaid’s works and Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth”. Crusoe is still not a character I rooted for throughout the novel, but I appreciated his endeavors nonetheless.

Furthermore, the clip of the film we viewed in class also prompted my understanding of Kincaid’s Lucy. Lucy saw through our gilded America, one that promised her opportunity, but whose freedom derived from enslaved people, corrupt politics, and a prejudice society. Lucy’s reaction to her new world was eye-opening for the reader because they were seeing the third wave of postcolonialism which is transnational migration. Transnational migration is a topic I was familiar with before this course, but Kincaid’s novel brought it to life in a way that was more relatable. The family Lucy has back home are her ties to another nation completely different from the America she is getting to know. She scrutinized the relationships between mother and children, husband and wife. Through this scrutiny, Lucy realized life in a new country was not as pleasant as she had hoped. She was cynical to appreciate the simple, beautiful things in life because she felt she would be naïve in doing so considering Mariah was oblivious to any negativity going on around her. Lucy’s mother expected her to thrive for the sole purpose of her sons’ success. Her remittances from her job were to go towards their education. This is a big part of transnational migration because it shows how Lucy could never rid herself of her ties in the West Indies. She was in-between, not knowing whether to embrace her culture although she despised the change that overcame it, or to embrace this new life that was unfamiliar to everything she once knew. Lucy never felt she was a priority to her mother, but she had expectations of her own to fill. Throughout the novel, Lucy explored her new world with a hesitant eye. She also explored herself and her sexuality which led her to discover her independence which is something that gave her complacency in life. Seeing the mother/daughter struggling relationship motif in “White Teeth” play out in Lucy was very interesting because I could then link two modern works to Defoe’s Crusoe and the strained relationship he had with his father. Family relationships are one way ties cannot be broken no matter how far one may travel away from home. They share the same blood, but different beliefs, thus they must live a life that links both worlds together.

What furthered my interest in Kincaid’s works were the allusions to art and poetry in the novel. With the help of Sylene Linde’s class discussion about intertextuality and Melissa Hollman’s reading of Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, I felt I could understand Lucy’s life and struggle better than I did before. The poem and Lucy’s passionate hatred for it signified another obstacle she faced in conforming to the American way-of-life. Her bitterness towards daffodils stemmed from the mandatory memorization of the poem that was required of her back home. Lucy did not want to be forced to learn something simply because British colonizers felt her education was not good enough. They wanted to assimilate her to their way of life as soon as possible, and they did not care if she was interested. It was especially infuriating to her when Mariah brought her to a field of daffodils because she felt Mariah would never understand the oppression Lucy knew so well. It was not a hatred for Mariah, the daffodils themselves, or even Wordsworth that skewed her vision of the flower, it was the principle behind the poem. The way it was required of her by people who did not really care about her at all. It was required of her to memorize the poem by people who wanted to change her and made her feel as if she could never be good enough, but knowing this poem might help her chances. Reading her reaction incited so many questions in my mind about what life would be like for a girl like Lucy. I did want to judge her character until I finished her story, and once I did, I was happier for it.

Overall, I have been very pleased with the readings and discussions in class so far. Colonial-postcolonial literature is something I’ve been exposed to before, but never in this way. Reading texts simultaneously and linking them together expands my knowledge of the subject and ultimately has lead to a better understanding of Caribbean history and culture. By following our primary objectives, I find it much easier to stay on track in the course. It is still amazing to me how an 18^th century novel can draw on subjects from a 21^st century text. This course and its readings have only increased my appetite for colonial-postcolonial literature, and I am sure the remainder of the course will quell those cravings.