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Sample Final Exam submissions 2013 (2013 final exam assignment) |
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Oyinna Ogbonna
December 13, 2013
Essay I: Americans and Postcolonial Studies
During my years as an undergraduate English student in the
University of Houston, I was exposed more to literature written mostly by
canonized dead white men from Europe or America. In those days, we were not
encouraged much to seek literature outside the realms of this canon. While we
were exposed to American history in reference to its independence from Britain,
we were hardly aware of the fact that the United States had colonized and
continue to colonize not only the Native Americans, Hawaiians, Puerto Ricans and
other peoples within its “territories,” but they are also big players in
worldwide neo-imperialism.
Americans are mostly unable to reconcile their thoughts with
the ugly reality that America, the democratic land of freedom, is indeed an
imperial power. Furthermore, the reason why Americans experience difficulties
with colonial and postcolonial discourse is because they do not see the United
States as a colonial or imperial power. They know that the United States is a
superpower among other nations with the role of bestowing freedom and democracy
on less developed nations. This ideology is dominant in schools and in the
media. In the same grain, colonial ideology in literature had expressed the
colonial powers’ desires to “civilize” the savages and save them from
themselves. They took the good news of the gospel to the colonies and brought
them new ways to live. The question is this: how is this idea of America as the
world moral police and do-gooder any different from the ideology prevalent in
imperial countries during the colonial era?
As a Cross-Cultural Studies student who grew up in a former
colony in West Africa, I have been exposed to a lot of postcolonial literature
and theories, but I enrolled in the class because of my interest in the subject
and because I had hopes of expanding my knowledge. Reflecting on my learning
experience throughout the semester, I realize that I’ve gained a tremendous
appreciation for the postcolonial novel’s ability to illustrate the effects of
imperialism and colonialism in the global south and its contributions to
contemporary migrations.
Throughout the semester, I learned that several questions
continue to resonate in postcolonial theory: how did colonialism affect colonial
subjects in its time? In what ways does colonialism still affect former
colonized subjects today? Has self-rule proven to be much different from
colonial rule? If not, why? Postcolonial novels and post-1990 novels from
diasporic novelists from former colonies answer these questions clearly. In my
midterm assignment, I explored the links between colonialism and independence—as
represented in the colonial and postcolonial novels we studied in
class—alongside contemporary migration movements from the former colonies to the
West. I found that the effects of colonialism are still evident in former
colonies and responsible for the dreadful socioeconomic conditions found in
these regions today, which in turn lead to these migratory movements.
The postcolonial novels that we studied
in class exhibit an almost homogenous timeline of progressions from the time of
colonial encounter to the era of independence in the Caribbean, Asia, and
Africa. These timelines represent the era of colonialism to nationalism, from
nationalism to independence, and from independence to neocolonialism.
Postcolonial novels from these continents particularly demonstrate themes of
alienation, disillusionment, and the struggle for survival following nationalism
and independence. Khushwant Singh’s
Train to Pakistan
and Bharati Mukherjee’s
Jasmine demonstrate the
complexities that followed the era of nationalism and independence in
postcolonial India. Singh’s
Train to Pakistan and
Jamaica Kincaid’s
A Small Place
particularly demonstrate the shift from independence to neocolonialism while
Lucy,
just like Jasmine, exemplifies the subsequent emigration that followed in the
wake of the anarchic nations that replaced colonialism.
I found the reading assignments and
seminar discussions to be highly educative and engaging, but as I write this
essay I can’t help but point out that since one of the course’s objectives is to
account for Americans' difficulties with colonial and postcolonial discourse it
would be very helpful to put things in perspective by incorporating elements of
the post independence American novel/literature and juxtapose it alongside
Native American novels, such as James Welch’s
Fools Crow
or some of Sherman Alexie’s works as well as works from other minorities from
current and former United States territories.
And in other settings, how did American
occupation in Vietnam and the Philippines affect the natives? What was life like
in Puerto Rico before Spanish conquest and the subsequent American invasion? How
about the Kingdom of Hawaii before it was taken over by Americans? The list is
endless when one really thinks about it. Can these same postcolonial theories be
applied to American territories and former territories? Will it have the same
form of trajectory found in the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia—which is from
colonialism to nationalism, and from nationalism to independence and finally to
neocolonialism? Of course not, well, because some of these situations are
ongoing.
Essay II:
Moving
Forward in Former Colonies
In this essay, I will conduct an
intertextual analysis of colonial texts from George Orwell’s “Shooting an
Elephant” and Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness
alongside postcolonial texts from Chinua Achebe’s
Things Fall Apart,
Khushwant Singh’s
Train to Pakistan and
Bharati Mukherjee’s
Jasmine, postcolonial
novels from Asia and Africa which present detailed narratives of the changes
that occurred during colonialism and in the wake-up of independence. As
mentioned earlier in my previous essay, postcolonial theory is concerned with
how colonialism affected and continues to affect former colonies and colonized
subjects. Postcolonial theory also considers the changes that occurred during
the nationalism and independence era in order to understand whether self-rule
has been more beneficial to former colonized subjects. This essay will attempt
to illuminate the manifestations that followed colonialism, nationalism and
independence in former colonies using the colonial and postcolonial novels that
we studied in class.
In “Shooting an Elephant” George Orwell
writes about the conditions of the colonized in Burma, observing that the empire
locked away its opponents indefinitely and tortured them physically and
mentally. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad’s protagonist Marlow makes the
similar observations of black men with iron collars attached to their necks like
animals, linked together in chains like slaves as they labored on the railway.
In Achebe’s presentation of early colonization in Nigeria, he writes about the
harsh punishments meted out to rebels by the white man’s court: offenders were
beaten, tortured and imprisoned along with their families while others were
publicly hung without fair trials.
In the face of these atrocities committed against
the natives in the colonies, Orwell makes an interesting point; “I did not even
know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great
deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it” (Orwell…).
To return to the questions we started
with, I will reference some memorable quotes and exchanges between Iqbal and the
villagers in
Train to Pakistan:
Iqbal tried to take the offensive. “Why don’t you people want
to be free? Do you want to remain slaves all your lives” (Singh 48)? “Yes, the
Englishmen have gone but the rich Indians have take their place. What have you
and your fellow villagers got out of independence? More bread or more clothes?
You are in the same handcuffs and fetters which the English put on you” (Singh
60).
“After a long silence the lambardar answered: “Freedom is a
good thing. But what will we get out of it? Educated people like you…will get
the jobs the English had. Will we get more lands or more buffaloes?
“No,” the Muslim said. “Freedom is for
the educated people who fought for it. We were slaves of the English, now we
will be slaves of the educated Indians—or of Pakistan” (Singh 48).
Singh’s
Train to Pakistan
is undoubtedly one of the most insightful postcolonial novels on life after
colonialism, nationalism and independence.
The previous exchange from
Train to Pakistan
justifies Orwell’s predictions about postcolonial Asia in many ways. Without
even referencing contemporary globalization with its “free markets” or modern
day neo-imperialism, Orwell might have well been talking about neocolonialism in
the former colonies.
Furthermore,
Train to Pakistan
fully demonstrates the colonizers strategy to conquer foreign territories by a
divide and rule policy, and how this culminated in the violent ethnic and
religious strife found in not only India and Pakistan but also in other former
colonies till this day. In other words, the British not only categorized natives
according to their religious groups, but they also capitalized on these
differences in religious ideologies. So while Indians were unified in their
ambition to gain their independence from Britain, the British policy of divide
and rule had already created divisions and mistrust among the Sikhs, Muslims and
Hindus.
Train to Pakistan not only does an excellent
job of recreating the confusion and violence that followed the Partition of
1947, it also highlights the consolidation of neocolonialism in India, as well
as the ways in which violence was gendered.
Although we did not carry out an
in-depth exploration of the transition from colonial rule to independence in
African nations in class due to time constraints, I mentioned in my project that
Buchi Emecheta’s
Destination Biafra (1982)
does a similar job of demonstrating the conflict that followed the transition to
civil rule in Nigeria. Like in India’s case, the British’s shady handover of
power and hasty departure from Nigeria resulted in a deadly civil war that
lasted for three years a few years after the 1960 Nigerian independence.
Furthermore, I mentioned that Chinua Achebe in
No Longer At Ease
and Jamaica Kincaid expose the consequences of neocolonialism in
A Small Place.
Finally, while
Train to Pakistan
does an excellent job in presenting the chaotic transition from colonial rule to
self-rule, Mukherjee’s
Jasmine further
illustrates the complexities of religious and ethnic divisions in the wake of
the Partition and India’s independence on a personalized level through her
protagonist Jasmine.
Jasmine demonstrates the
ways in which religious and ethnic violence not only tore families and
communities apart, but also took on gendered patterns, which affected women
greatly. More importantly, Mukherjee’s protagonist Jasmine represents the post
independence generation of migrants that moved from the former colonies to the
West when life became unbearable for them in their own homeland, thanks to the
violent political transitions situations left behind by the British colonial
masters.
Reference:
Achebe, Chinua.
Things Fall Apart. New York:
Anchor Books, 1994.
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. London: Blackwood
Magazine, 1889.
Kincaid, Jamaica. “A Small Place”. The Post-Colonial Studies
Reader. Eds. Bill
Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. New York:
Routledge, 2003, 92-94.
Mukherjee, Bharati.
Jasmine. New York: Grove,
1989.
Orwell, George. "Shooting an Elephant." Trans. Array1936.
Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
<http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/Poco/OrwellElephant.htm>.
