Ryan Smith

September 29, 2011

Through And Beyond Evil

            Two novels and a number of shorter works comprise a minimal body of words, but when those texts are loaded with historical significance and modern relevance, there is no lack of material to be explored. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy are both fitting examples of loaded texts. The novels stand in stark contrast to one another, yet the issues each raises are closely connected. One is a deceptively straightforward tale about an Englishman’s resourcefulness and dealings with the New World, which reveals the nature and attitudes of colonialism in its blatant portrayal of non-whites and the “other.” The other is a story drenched in the pain of memory, partially concerned with postcolonial issues, such as problems with assimilation and the persistence of past.

Reading these texts together sometimes elicits emotional reactions to certain characters or scenarios. One is tempted to use the labels “victim” and “villain” with too little restraint, marking what we do and do not approve of. While this can be satisfying, and in a certain sense correct, it is often misleading, and points away from the true social significance of a text. The aim, instead, is to understand why characters behave the way they do, always keeping in mind the historical context appropriate. Using this historical approach, Lucy and Robinson Crusoe each present their protagonists in ways that are open to reader interpretation. Who is a villain? why? and vice versa. By connecting these two texts the lines are blurred between villain and victim, with the focus instead on why characters are the way they are, and what is implied by their thoughts and actions in relation to postcolonial studies.

Robinson Crusoe presents its title narrator and protagonist in mostly positive terms. When he is not, it is usually to offer moral advice: heed your elders or come to ruin; trust in God will eventually be rewarded, etc. Crusoe is English, which gives him a god-like intelligence and authority that non-Europeans in the text simply do not have. All native people discussed, for example, while sometimes afforded something like tolerance, are never given anything like respect or dignity. If they are, it is the respect one may give a child or dog, it is inferior, diminutive respect. This type of white supremacy is prevalent throughout the book, and, for those not expecting it, is disturbing and even shocking. An early example of Crusoe’s apparent villainy is found in his dealings with Xury: “he offer’d me also 60 Pieces of Eight more for my boy Xury, which I was loathe to take, not that I was not willing to let the Captain have him, but I was very loathe to sell the poor boy’s liberty, who had assisted me so faithfully in procuring my own” (29). He goes on to sell Xury, under the condition if the boy converts to Christianity, he will be set free in a decade. This sort of attitude—humans as property—is one that Crusoe holds indefinitely, and it tempts the reader to demonize him. (I myself labeled this passage, “Human INdecency,” while the previous passage, in which Crusoe peacefully interacts with natives I labeled, “Human decency.”) How, indeed can we see someone as human who refuses to see others as human? To answer, we must consider times when times when Crusoe is presented as a victim, as well as the total context of the work

            Daniel Defoe presents Robinson Crusoe in a positive manner, and although he is lacking in emotional depth—simply because the novel was written much too early for that type of characterization—he is a likable character. He is honest, tireless, and even humorously hypocritical at times. While the reader is obviously distracted by the racism implied, Defoe works to present Crusoe as a hapless victim, deserving prayers and worried sympathy. Indeed, those only vaguely familiar with the novel with probably remember little but the story of a poor man who is shipwrecked on and island for years and must learn to survive. And of course, it is pitiful that someone should be alone and terrified for nearly thirty years. Other instances in the book invoke something like sympathy, for example, a passage in which Crusoe considers the nature and actions of the cannibals: “When I had consider’d this a little, it followed necessarily, that I was certainly in the wrong in it, that these people were not murtherers in the sense that I had condemned them…any more than those Christians were murtherers, who often put to death the prisoners taken in battle” (135-6). Here, Crusoe approaches something like tolerance and even respect of another culture, going so far as to allow a sort of moral relativity to right and wrong. If he could continue this frame of mind, perhaps he could bring light to some of the bigotry and ignorance of the Europeans—but, alas, he reverts to his violent dreams of slaughtering all cannibals too often to let moments like this take hold. Regardless, Robinson Crusoe, must be seen as a man of his time, limited in his thinking, and therefore his actions, by the ideas of the age in which he lived. When we move past judging Crusoe with the black and white dichotomies of good and evil, we can explore the actual meaning behind such a character. Not only will the novel’s original context and meaning be revealed but its modern-day significance and impact. Meaning will be retrospective, in such a case, and instead of looking backwards at some long-distant wrong, we can identify—and hopefully eliminate—the same kind of ignorance and injustice that our era clings to.

            As a kind of companion piece, Lucy marks a total change in style and function. Compared to Defoe’s dry style, Kincaid drips with emotion; whereas Crusoe mostly implies political ideas, Lucy explores them openly. But many of the same themes are present: colonialism/postcolonialism, the “other,” race and class power structures and so on. Like Crusoe, Lucy can also be identified in terms of “victim” and “villain.” If, in Crusoe, most readers attributed “villain” to the ever-conquering colonizer, here we assume this misplaced minority is a “victim.” In a certain sense, those assumptions are correct. Robinson Crusoe and his European brothers were and are the people who abused their power by colonizing, killing and enslaving as much of the planet as they could; and Lucy is the child of some of the people being thus dominated. But a closer look at Kincaid’s character reveals a character much more complex than a simple minority heroine. There are a number of moments, in fact, when Lucy’s boldness and sexuality may startle the reader. Mariah asks Lucy is she considers herself “a very angry person,” and the reply is, “Of course I am. What did you expect?”(96). It is hard, even when she first thinks, for Lucy to blunt her raw honesty, making her prone to hurt people, even (or especially) those she cares about. This, in addition to her imprudent sexual explorations, can push readers toward negative assumptions about the character, seeing her, perhaps, as a kind of anti-hero or antagonist that moves the plot of the novel.

But this would ignore numerous sympathetic moments, as well as what the book is actually doing in presenting a girl, broken by numerous past experiences and memories (some entirely cultural), who is unable to find the deceptive complacency of that defines and mars the lives of Mariah and Lewis. This contrast between the lives of postcolonial conquering race (white) and postcolonial conquered race (non-white), often marks passages in which it is difficult to resist the sadness or hatred Lucy feels about her marginalized place in history. Midway through the novel, Lucy considers the irony of Mariah “longing to have less; less, she was sure, would bring her happiness. To me it was a laugh and relief to observe the unhappiness that too much can bring; I had been used to observing the results of too little” (87). Here we see both perspectives at work, the paradoxical desires of the colonizer and the straightforward miseries of the colonized. But since Mariah is clearly not an actual colonizer, although through her husband she is given implied blame, and Lucy is not an actual colonized, the tone shifts to something more topical, the postcolonial reactions to problems left over from colonial eras and policies. While she is not a direct victim, Lucy has clearly suffered from many of the same issues her implied ancestors did: race and class restrictions which reduce her choices and limit possibilities, painful memories associated with (if not directly caused by) imperialism, and the double colonization of being a minority woman, as examples. It is perhaps too easy to be led astray by emotional reactions to Lucy’s character, positive and negative. In doing so, we lose focus with the big questions; why is Lucy so angry? Is it justified, and if it is, how do we acquire justice? What happened on those islands, and what is there to be done now? These are all valid, useful points for interpretation and discussion, but we can’t get to them until we both acknowledge the victim/villain dichotomy and move past it. 

Jamaica Kincaid is also responsible for A Small Place, whose tone and message is clear even from the small excerpt we read for class. And despite what has been said about the use of the term “villain,” Kincaid’s brutal honesty in the piece reveals not only the nature of the colonizers, but the effects of their control. This analysis of imperial intent, however passionate, moves away from labeling and towards discovering the motivations and reasons behind actions and ideas. Kincaid even has a proposal to offer so many failed empires, in retrospect:

And so all this fuss over empire…always makes me quite crazy, for I can say to them what went wrong: they never should have left their home…a place they had to leave but could never forget. And so everywhere they went they turned it into England; and everybody they met they turned English. But no place could ever really be England, and nobody who did not look like them would ever be English, so you imagine the destruction of people and land that came from that (92).

Kincaid has given us, here, a succinct reason for much of the cruelty accompanies imperialism (intolerance towards unknown cultures and people), as well as a theoretical way to prevent such cruelty (stay home!). A Small Place is an excellent text to read with and against Robinson Crusoe. On one hand, you have the eternal classic, on the other, you have a relatively recent minority writer. But the insight gained by retrospective reading is not to be ignored. Without texts like Kincaid’s, Robinson Crusoe could be read in an academic vacuum, forever lacking new meanings and interpretations. These perspectives, like the postcolonial one mentioned above—one could imagine a valid and useful feminist reading of Crusoe—invigorate the text and allow us to both consider its original context and its topical relevance.

            It is a temptation of mine, especially when reading historically or politically significant texts, to judge and mark my own victims and villains. I think it makes sense to remember certain evils (slavery and racism in Crusoe, for example) so that they can be avoided or even eliminated on a “bigger” level. It’s hard to ignore the direct bigotry of works like Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King. When Dravot, talking about the local (non-white) women, says, for example, “Boil ‘em once or twice in hot water, and they’ll come as fair as chicken and ham,” how can one not readily condemn the foolishness, stupidity even, of the imperial attitudes embodied by both opportunistic men (2.50)? Even blunting such moments with comedy, the story shows a side of colonialism that is selfish, tyrannical and doomed to fail. It makes me uncomfortable, and perhaps that’s good. Maybe that desire to demonize needs to be tempered with the realization that these “demons,” as I have suggested, were men of their times. Were Robinson Crusoe born now, chances are he would find it difficult to operate with almost of the ways of thinking he once held. All of this underlies, I think, America’s—or any empire’s—inability or refusal to come to terms with its past, and even its present. To coolly consider the shocking evil of Crusoe’s willingness to enter the slave trade is one thing. It is entirely another to think about people like Lucy, who are far closer to us than we think. When we read these texts in a way that points not to individual villainy, and the victimization of a single person, we start to see the villainy of entire systems: modes of thinking, economic and foreign policies, religious and social biases—all are implied.