Christina Crawford

Representations of Millennialism in Post-Colonial Literature

An aspect of post-colonial literature that should not have been a surprise, and yet was, is the trend towards apocalyptic rhetoric throughout the texts.  Millennialism is a broad term that has been held by specific groups to have a particular meaning, but for the purpose of this course we have used it to describe ‘end of days’ imagery and themes within the texts.   Jasmine and Lucy are both stories of transnational migration; in class we discussed transnational migration as a third step for colonized populations.  These cultures were subordinated by colonizers, gained autonomy, and then became a distinct presence in the colonizer’s home country through migration.  The voice in these novels is distinctly modern; the narration lets you in the character’s head, so the novels possess a striking psychological realism.  The modernity of the novels leaves little room for millennial narrative, and the stories have the same gritty sense of disillusionment and searching found in western modern literature after World War I. 

            Turning our focus to Train to Pakistan and Things Fall Apart reveals how entrenched apocalyptic language and imagery is in post-colonial work.  Both of these texts are written describing a demarcation in time between free and colonized.  Things Fall Apart describes the coming of the white man to an interior African village; while Train to Pakistan depicts the divvying up of an independent India after British sovereignty.  Both novels focus on villages that had existed almost apart from the larger national scheme.  Village life is originally described as steady and unchanging, but the novels depict a time of great violent change and how the sweeping changes of the country come to impact even the steadiest and smallest of locales.

Achebe tells the story of one man being overtaken by the changing times, but the narrative gains depth in the detailing of many people who are a part of that man’s life.  Many separate stories are related in the telling of Okonkwo’s life.  Nwoye, Okonkwo’s oldest son, is one the only sympathetic character to embrace the new way of life; but to effect so great a change he must separate himself entirely from the life he knew.  Okonkwo is unable to adapt to the change happening in his world; essentially his world is ending with the arrival of the white ministry and the end of tribal customs.  If his actions against the soldiers had been triumphant, leading to a rousting of the colonizers, Okonkwo would have been a hero; but his actions could not stop what was happening.  The spirituality of the villagers is beautifully rendered in the text; and the passage when their ‘ancestor’s’ spirit is unmasked is one of the most strikingly apocalyptic moments in the novel.  The villagers behaved according to their customs and beliefs, and to have something like this happen flies in the face of all their tradition holds sacred.  The incident represents the new world in a way that all the armed occupants and new laws could never match.

Singh’s novel also captured the diversity that exists in a small village; Train to Pakistan does not focus on one man’s journey, but through brief vignettes tells many separate stories that give shape to the whole narrative.  Debbie Sasser argued in her final exam that the train is symbolic of the millennial nature of the novel; her argument was that the train was as regular as clockwork in the beginning and the upsetting of the time schedules was an indicator of when things started to fall apart.  I think she makes an excellent point; that could be carried farther by bringing up that it is only by the train that change comes to the village.  The train is the ultimate vehicle for change in the text: Iqbal begins the novel riding on the train observing the other passengers, Nooran boards the train to leave the village, and Jugga ends the novel run over by the train.   The novel is about the ‘end of days’ for this small village.  Intertextually, I think it is interesting that both these novels feature a violent millennial atmosphere while representing opposite ends of the colonization process.  It leads to a conclusion that change as dramatic as colonization or decolonization is not something that can take place peacefully, but can only happen when accompanied by a violent apocalypse. 

The violence of revolution is dramatically underscored in Yeat’s poem, “The Second Coming.”  A far cry from hinting or suggesting apocalyptic undertones, this poem is explicit and consciously rife with millennial imagery and messages.  The first stanza sets a stage of bloody chaos and confusion, and the second stanza tells of the birth of an Anti-Christ.  It is fitting that Achebe titled his novel from a line in this poem.  The ‘end of days’ described in the poem is one that he sees as having happened again and again during colonization. 

Walcott’s “A Season of Phatasmal Peace” is the only post-colonial work we read that leaned closer to the sublime than to the tortured.  Birds are, by and large, connotative of peace and freedom; and the airy metaphysical language used through-out the poem balances with the reference to “battalions… waging.”  The overall message of the poem is one of the sublime and unworldly. 

In comparing these novels to these poems the larger question of the novel as a definitive genre of modernity comes to the forefront.  In Train to Pakistan and Things Fall Apart the novels work because they illustrate a whole range of voices and how those voices together form a community, but each of the poems deal solely with one point of view.  There is no dialogue or competing message in the poetry.  Novels, as complex as the ones selected for this course, require action from the reader and provoke discussion; the actions and message of the characters and the story can be examined ad nauseum, and every reader can come away with different perceptions.  Our class discussion on the texts certainly reflected this point.  Walcott’s and Yeat’s poems are beautiful and complex and completely full of imagery and meaning, but there is no dialogue happening within the poem.  The action is described in a beautiful, if one sided, fashion.  Maybe my partiality is born of my familiarity with the genre, but I really do think that Objective 2 is correct when describing the novel as the defining genre of modernity. 

In undertaking to study literature from a Colonial- Post-Colonial point of view a student has to recognize the ‘end of days’ influence in the work.  The title of the course expresses the fact that we are studying change. Change that has already happened in the world, and how that change has impacted the literary art of the cultures touched.  The post-colonial writers we have studied are all products of a background rife with violence and dramatic upheaval.  Hopefully by recognizing the influence of millennialism in their work we can unpack something different from the texts.