Christina Crawford

(Essay 1:) The Caribbean Castaway: A Comparative Character Study

          There is one character that resonates through our novel and poetry selections for the Caribbean, a castaway.  The castaway is at the pinnacle of the romantic adventure story.  He represents the triumph of the independent spirit over all adversity.  The castaway is closer to nature and at the same time victorious over it.  The other side of the coin reveals a dark almost gothic side to the castaway; he is a wild man, alone, in the wilderness.  He becomes dangerously ‘other’ with experiences so far outside of our own.  Daniel Defoe and Derek Walcott have, in their works, embraced the image and idea of the castaway.

          Daniel Defoe’s novel, Robinson Crusoe, is about an Englishman who washes up on the shores in the Caribbean.  Crusoe is the epitome of the romantic castaway.  The only reason he is on the ship is as a result of his rebellion in running away from home.  Once on the island he conquers, not undergoing any change in himself but by changing his surroundings.  Throughout the novel Defoe presents Crusoe as a model of unassailable English virtue and sensibilities.  The text revolves around the action of Crusoe, there is very little prying into the minds or subconscious of the characters.  The story is one of adventure and triumph over adversity, there is also a subtext of empire and the righteousness of English superiority.

          One could not find a more different representation that to look at Derek Walcott’s poem “Crusoe’s Island.”  The modern free verse poem deals with the idea of a castaway in a much more diverse fashion.  Walcott casts his castaway as a hermit, implying that his isolation is self imposed.  The castaway in Walcott’s work is definitely leans closer to the other; he somehow unknown or unknowable, there is a mystery about him.  The poem also ends on a note of renewal; the reference to a “second Adam” and “Friday’s children” pull in the idea of a future, light, and hope. By utilizing free verse Walcott is able to give the poem a depth of meaning, his use of extremely symbolic language loads the simple stanzas with many layers of meaning.   

          We have discussed Defoe’s novel as the first of its’ kind, and theorized the novel as the defining genre of modernity. If we stand by Bahktin’s reasoning that the novel is “meeting of many voices or worldviews” then I do not understand how this would apply to Crusoe.  The voices and worldviews within the text seem limited to one, the voice of Robinson Crusoe.  It is similar to the experience of reading a contemporary young adult novel where the protagonist is a rebellious teenager; who runs away from home because their parents just do not understand them, has great adventures, sees amazing things, and in the end gets to impose their own views (unchanged by everything they have seen and done) upon mold their world. 

          Jamaica Kincaid is a novelist whose novel, Lucy, we read for our post-colonial Caribbean work.  Lucy is a contemporary story and there is no literal “castaway” or shipwreck in sight.  I think that the character Lucy resonates very strongly with the same archetype characteristics found in Defoe and Walcott’s castaways.  There is a very strong sense of isolation and seperateness from those around her; also Lucy is in a strange place far and distant from her home.  There is a flip here in that Lucy as a castaway represents the “other” and the place in which she is stranded is familiar to many readers.  This novel also contains the psychological realism to understand and sympathize with the many different characters and world views espoused.  I think this makes Lucy a better representative for Bahktin’s argument about the modern novel than Robinson Crusoe will ever be.

          The castaway, as found in all three Caribbean texts, is a character archetype that persists in our novels, poetry, and dramas.  I think it is the isolation that resonates so strongly with the human condition.  Everyone has times when they feel alone, or as though no one can understand/has ever been through what they are going through.  The castaway is a character of catharsis that can purge these feelings from readers.  This can take place either through a triumph as in the works by Defoe and Walcott, or by wallowing in the feelings as found in Lucy.  I imagine it is the picturesque and exotic tropical beauty of the Caribbean that makes the castaway such a particularly resonant character there.

Works Cited

Walcott, Derek. “Crusoe’s Island.” Classroom website.

White, Craig. “Theorizing the Novel.” Classroom website.

(Essay 2:) Midterm Reflections

          Entering my final semester as a graduate literature student I was intrigued by the course offering of Colonial and Post-colonial studies.  The atmosphere of change and revolution inherent in such works both excites and provokes me as a reader.  I hope to teach literature and the exposure to such diverse and dynamic work is a huge gain in taking the class.  Sarah DeLaRosa’s essay on the appropriateness of this work to a “contact zone” classroom demonstrated a clear and specific path that she plans to use in teaching these or similar texts.  I am not as certain about how I would use them in the classroom, but I do think that exposure to this kind of work can bring a beneficial diversity to a classroom that typically includes more of the western classics. 

          In studying the colonial and post-colonial works from the Caribbean the class has engaged in really exciting discussion.  The excerpt from Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place was by far the most incendiary text.  Reading the way that she interprets the British colonization of her island and how the results of colonization have continued to impact her personally highlights the dramatically different attitude America has regarding its’ own time as a colony.  In class we covered a great many examples of how America has separated itself from being a British Colony.  The simplest example is in the language; the Caribbean, India, and South Africa all speak variations of the Queen’s English and recognize it as such.  In America we speak American English.  Most Americans trace their roots back to foreign shores and are proud of their heritage.  After considering Kincaid’s work, I wonder if her attitude would resonate more poignantly with a person of Native American descent; because the people she is trying to give a voice to are the natives of the island, not the settlers and not the slaves.

          Comparing Robinson Crusoe to Lucy reveals the dramatic and startling evolution of the modern novel.  Crusoe has been heralded as the first novel, and when new it was no doubt viewed as exciting.  The singular narrative and point of view played off of some dialogue gave the story a sense of immediacy.  To contemporary readers the novel is almost painfully dry.  Dafoe imagines Crusoe as a narrow minded man and the work contains little if any psychological realism.  Readers can sympathize with Crusoe’s need to rebel against his father’s wishes and to seek out adventure, his isolation on the island also appeals; but the novel seems limited by the morals and status quos of the period in which it was written.  Kincaid’s Lucy, on the other hand, is startlingly up front with the characterizations.  The things about Lucy that appealed so broadly in class revolved around the realistic portrayal of the character, and the writing that allowed the reader to so thoroughly inhabit the characters’ minds.  Lucy is so very complex and individual and Kincaid’s writings relay these complexities in such a way that the reader feels an intimate connection to the character and that connection pulls the novel out of the pages in a way that Dafoe’s tale of adventure simply does not measure up to.

          The other exciting formal aspect of Lucy is the way the text constantly refers outside of itself.  In class, discussion looked at the work of Paul Guaguin and the Wordsworth poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.”  Dr. White’s presentation of Guaguin’s work led to a discussion of primitivism that brought out some untapped thoughts concerning the novel.  I think the interplay of text and artwork is something worth pursuing in context with the other readings for the class (see Research Plan). Veronica’s presentation of Wordworth’s dandelion poem made us stop and really consider its reference in Lucy and what it represented in the novel.  It is fascinating how Kincaid took such a simple and lovely poem and endowed it as a vehicle to expose the torrent of emotions Lucy feels toward the British colonists. 

          Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King made a dramatic starting point for shifting the course from the Caribbean to India.  The stark landscape imagery of the text contrasted sharply with the lush tropical atmosphere found in the previous works.  It is easy to see prevalent English attitude towards their colonies in all of our colonial leading men.  Robinson Crusoe took Friday as his slave and inhabited his island while retaining his firm view of English superiority and righteousness.  Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan do the same thing in India, even going so far as to establish a Mason lodge with themselves in charge.  Kipling’s voice is that of a colonial; he endows India with all the characteristics of the romantic other.  India appears dangerous, exotic, and wildly different from what the readers might be familiar with.

          At this point I am eager to get started with Train to Pakistan.  The intertextual relationship that we are looking at between the colonial and post-colonial works makes me think that Train to Pakistan will bring out more from The Man Who Would Be King.  India has always held a great fascination for me, as a country with such a complex history, that I knew so little of.  I am sure this is just another example of the exotic appeal of the East to the West, but it certainly makes me glad that I selected to enroll in this class.  Most of the civilized world has at some point been a colony of one great empire or another, but I think the regions Dr. White selected for this course are more interesting for their relatively contemporary emergence as independent nations.  I close this midterm reflection with only a feeling of anticipation as to where this course is leading next.