Amy Shanks

The Self and the Other Conflict

On the ABC series Lost, the passengers of a commercial flight inexplicably crash onto a mysterious island and are thrust into a fight for survival. The castaways soon realize that the island is inhabited and tension builds between the two groups. Because of past colonization attempts by outsiders, the indigenous group fears similar motives from the castaways and takes aggressive tactics to ensure the safety of their home. As this fear-driven conflict escalates, the castaways label the inhabitants of the island “the others,” a name that lasts the duration of the series. This distinction only perpetuates a combative mindset that manifests into the power struggle between the castaways, who consider themselves the good guys, and the “others,” who, thanks to that label, are considered the bad guys. 

The concept of the “self” and the “other” is the driving force for every narrative, real or imagined, providing a platform for intertextuality.  From the War on Terror to the plot of Romeo and Juliet, the two labels foster conflict because they create binary opposition. Labeling a person or a group as “other” is dissociative from the self. Whether the term “other” is used from the perspective of the colonizer or the colonized, the marker is marginalizing. Europeans could guiltlessly steal American lands from the natives since they marginalized an entire nation of people with the “other” mindset. It is much more difficult to conflict with a relatable enemy than it is to go against a disassociated unknown.  While perhaps the writers of Lost were not intentionally providing colonial/postcolonial commentary, the series provides a perfect example of how a conflict driven is facilitated through “self” and “other” terminology.

For the colonizer, the “self” perspective validates the conquering of the “other.”  With an analogous setting and circumstance to Lost, Robinson Crusoe is shipwrecked onto an island and begins perceiving the inhabiting cannibals as “others” from the moment he encounters just a footprint. Crusoe even has his own terminology for the “other.” As Charles Colson observes Crusoe creates “ his image of the “other” as the most loathsome of savages.” (“Theorizing the Novel” http://coursesite .uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/5731copo/models/2009/midterms /mtes09colson.htm). Crusoe not only disassociates himself with the savages, he praises God for being, “distinguished from such dreadful creatures as these.” Crusoe spends much time fantasizing about their destruction: “if there were twenty, I should kill them all. This fancy pleased my thoughts for some weeks, and I was so full of it that I often dreamed of it, and, sometimes, that I was just going to let fly at them in my sleep.” His preoccupation with disassociation overrules his life resulting in a reclusive retreat to physically distance himself from them.   

The relationship of the “self” and “other” also manifests in Crusoe’s treatment of Xury and Friday. He naturally falls into the role of master because of racial and class bias the “other” concept perpetuates the new social structure. Crusoe is European. It does not even phase him that he too has been a victim of slavery; slaves are still “other” to him. Because he is able to disassociate himself from the two, he can justify selling off Xury when it benefits him and immediately falling into the role of master upon meeting Friday.

In Rudyard Kipling’s “ The Man That Would Be King,” Daniel Dravot’s “other” is racially constructed, similar to Crusoe’s; However, Dravot, at least verbally, makes attempts toward narrowing the gap of the Kafir “others,” but this attempt is only to vindicate his colonization. While Crusoe’s slave/master relationship works well with the stringent “other” perception of Friday and Xury, Dravot’s role as a ruler necessitates a slightly altered perception of the “others.” Dravot claims he sees the potential of the “others” to become like the European “self” stating, “they’re Lost Tribes, or something like it, and they’ve grown to be English” (19).  He has to see them as more like the “self” in order to be their ruler, but the ruler/subject nature of the relationship still shows Dravot’s perception of a superior “self.” As his power increases, Dravot begins to even lower his perception of his colonizing partner Peachey. Dravot confesses in a conversation with his cohort that “somehow you can’t help me, Peachey, in the way I want to be helped” (19).  Peachey’s reaction is to think to himself, “it did hurt me sore to find Daniel talking so superior when I’d drilled all the men, and done all he told me to” (19).  Dravot’s statements might have implied that he readily accepts dominance, that is until the veil of “self” and “other” is lifted and the Kafirs grasp that Dravot’s elevated status is a farce. Realizing Dravot is not a god, the Kafirs perception of “other” is altered and Dravot ultimately losses his life because of this shift.

The “self” and the “other” concept is not limited to colonial texts; the postcolonial perspective experiences conflict using the same terms. In Jamaica Kincaid’s novel Lucy, the titular protagonist is a native of the West Indies who has a difficult time assimilating to life with her American employers. While Crusoe’s discomfort and distancing of the cannibals was a result of fear and his poor treatment of Xury and Friday were an act of dominance much like Dravot’s, Lucy’s driving forces are anger and resentment from experiencing colonialism. Despite her employers’ receptive desire for Lucy to “regard them as family” (7), Lucy’s perception of them as the “other” is analogous to the Lost natives’ perception of the plane castaways: the “other” will always be a threat to the “self.”  Lucy even admits that she, “believed them to be sincere,” but she is unable to change her dissociative perception stating, “After all, aren’t my family the people who become the millstone around your life’s neck” (8). Her sentiment does not go unnoticed. The family soon realizes that Lucy “seemed not to be a part of things” and she is referred to as the “Visitor” (13), revealing the employer’s slip into a counter-perception of Lucy as an “other” in reaction to her behavior.  

Despite these observations, her employer Mariah makes several efforts to overcome both party’s perceptions of “other” and to connect with Lucy by bringing her to see daffodils and buying her presents, but Lucy continues to keep her at a distance. Lucy does not limit this sentiment to her employers. From her sexual relationships to even in her choice of friends, Lucy perpetuates this divide by keeping herself distant from the men she is involved with and by choosing to spend time with a person she admits to being “not alike” (61).  Though Lucy does identify some Americans as friends, her emotional state at the end of the novel reveals her inability to make true connections with them. Just as Crusoe never truly waivers in his treatment of Xury or Friday, Lucy is unable to identify with the Americans and still desires at the end of the novel to “love someone so much that I would die from it” (164).

Kincaid shows an intensified example of postcolonial resentment for the colonial “other” in “A Small Place.” Here, the other is the colonizing English residing in Antigua. While Lucy conveyed bitterness for the “other”, “A Small Place” intensifies the divide through terms of disdain.  Referring to the English as the “bad-minded people” (92), it is clear Kincaid is completely disassociating from the colonists.  She describes the English as attempting to recreate the home they once had, stating, “everywhere they went, turned it into England” (92), but according to Kincaid they are unsuccessful: “But no place could every really be England, and nobody who did not look exactly like them would ever be English, so you can image the destruction of people and land that came from that” (92). Kincaid is able to unleash her rage upon the colonists because they are invaders. They are not like her “self” nor will they ever be. These “others” pose as a threat to her people’s identity by making them “orphans” because their sense of “self” was overrun by their “other” ways.

As long as the “self” and “other” dichotomy exists, conflict is inevitable. The series Lost began with an unjustified fear of colonization that incited a series-long battle resulting in an overthrow of power. The struggle between the “self” and the “other” is the foundation of humanity’s struggles with each other, as evidenced by Robinson Crusoe’s temperament toward the cannibals and his treatment of Xury and Friday, Dravot’s colonization of the Kafirs, Lucy’s inability to see Americans as non-threatening, and in Kincaid’s disdain for the English. Luckily, for novelists and fans of literature, as long as humanity incorporates the “other” label, there will always be an endless source of conflict to drive a plethora of narratives.