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Sample Final Exam submissions 2013 (2013 final exam assignment) |
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Kristine Vermillion
Dec. 10, 2013
Nations and Individuals Revisited
I took this course primarily to fulfill the
Multicultural Literature requirement on my plan on study; however, I took this
Multicultural course because I wanted to study Colonial and Post-Colonial
Literature specifically. I also wanted to fill in the gaps in my own personal
literary repertoire. Somehow along the way I had never read Daniel Defoe’s
Robinson Crusoe, nor had I read
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
This class served as my conscientious effort to cover these standard materials.
I am satisfied that I have now read these “classic” works, and I am glad to have
read them within the context of this course as we brought them into conversation
with their post-colonial counterparts. The resulting dialogue between the texts
and within class has been provocative and enlightening.
In my midterm I explored the idea of nations
versus individuals as it was presented by Defoe in
Robinson Crusoe. Defoe explored the
relationship through Crusoe’s encounters with various people groups, but with
the cannibal tribes in particular. I also explored the idea in Jamaica Kincaid’s
Lucy by looking at the idea of the
power of language and the reaction of individuals against the colonizers
national language. Kincaid works with the post-colonial resistance and
questioning of the language. Derek Walcott in “A Far Cry From Africa” and literary criticism written by Ngugi wa Thiong’o also explore this question of
language and its power. I still find this language question to be utterly
fascinating and want to continue to explore its ramifications in the near
future.
The dialogical quality of the novel is a
great forum where the relationships between individuals and nations are
distinguished. Many characters from the works we read are shown struggling with
and against the stereotypes that their country or region of origin provide about
other countries and regions and vice versa. George Orwell’s
Shooting an Elephant provided the
first look at an individual acting with great reservation as he had to make
decisions based upon the various social expectations of his nation and the
Burmese people. Orwell provides an acute presentation of the conflicted position
he found himself in. Orwell’s description about what was going on in his head as
he was deciding what to do about the elephant reminds me of the psychological
processing we see Marlow going through in
Heart of Darkness.
Marlow left the country obviously filled
with European stereotypes about Africa—a vast area on the map of “uncivilized”
places waiting to be explored and claimed by colonizing nations. Yet, as Marlow
travels the river on his mission to extract Kurtz from his post, the
pre-conceived ideas that had consciously and unconsciously been imbedded in his
mind are challenged. Western ideas of civilization and the relative worth of
their colonizing endeavors are brought into question as the supposedly civilized
are revealed to be more barbaric than the supposed “savages” who become less
savage and more human with every encounter. Each encounter with his people
leads Marlow to see that true savagery and darkness resides not in the foreign
wilderness of distant lands but rather within the hearts of the best his
civilization had to offer. I think this same idea is also reflected in
Robinson Crusoe, because the most
villainous and treacherous people Crusoe encounters are the pirates that come
from his own nation.
Bharati Mukherjee’s
Jasmine shows the stereotypes working in the opposite direction. Jasmine and
Prakash have many ideas about what America was and what it would eventually
provide for them. However, as Jasmine enters the land starts to travel through
it, she continually comes across people and situations that do not align with
her stereotypical expectations. First she notices how much trash there is (128),
and then she realizes that she hadn’t even seen an American face (129). Jasmine
finds America to be yet another place where dreams are shattered and violence
prevails. Yet in the midst of the realities, Jasmine’s steady journey west does
offer some type of freedom and character development, and the American dream,
though continually frustrated throughout, it not totally a wash.
My personal appreciation for the dialogical
aspect of the novel, heightened by the dialogical aspect of the class, has
helped me to maneuver and understand the nation vs. the individual question and
the American conundrum in response to colonial and postcolonial discourse. I am
an American, yet I do not agree with or align myself to national politics or
party platforms. I challenge the American stereotype. While traveling in and
building relationships with people from other countries, I have often heard it
said, “You’re not like we thought an American would be like” or something to
that effect. When I have asked what they are talking about, the answer usually
is premised upon what they have seen on TV or in the movies—which usually means
sex-crazed and violent. My family’s business associates from Australia were
initially hesitant to come here because they were afraid that there would be gun
play in the streets and things blowing up around every corner. We assured them
that it wasn’t so, and now they come every two years to buy American jeans and
shoes because they’re so much cheaper. However, this past Friday an acquaintance
of mine’s son was shot to death by a policeman in San Antonio, and I am thinking
it is more like the movies than I’d like to admit. The desire to make
stereotypical judgments about cops is very tempting at the moment.
Stereotypes about other countries and
peoples are always going to be there. The “other” and the “unknown” are things
that you can’t theorize away. However, in my own personal experience, as an
individual talking with other individuals from all over the globe, the dialogue
we have engaged in has been very beneficial. I do not like being judged by
American stereotypes, and I have decided to extend the favor to others and
refuse to make blanket judgments or stereotypical statements based on
nationality, race, religion, or profession. The same attitude is also needed
toward fellow Americans—the need to not judge based on the state they come from.
There are many stereotypical blanket judgments made in academic settings about
Texans that I find very troubling. The same can be said about Californians or
those “damned Northeastern states that are running the country.” Statements like
these are just as dangerous as the colonial ideas of the “other” and the
supposed hierarchy of social ideas—providing false justification for policies
and measures to suppress people groups and various ideologies.
I appreciate how dialogue functions within novels, and I look
forward to opportunities to teach in the academic setting to bring these
narrative qualities to the forefront and perhaps help to enlighten or curtail
the damage caused by these ways of thinking. I am haunted by the lines in Yeats’
poem The Second Coming: “The best
lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity” (lines
7-8). As “anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loose,
and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned” (lines 4-6), those
clinging to such stereotypes and easily drawn binaries are much more able to act
than those of us see that it is not as simple or as black and white as it seems.
How do you act with conviction when you are more aware of the consequences that
your actions might cause?
Migration Patterns
I have spent a good majority of the past year delving into
the garden and wilderness tropes and how they are used in literature. I wrote an
essay titled The American Wilderness
Journey for the Literature course titled
American Romanticism. In the essay I
explored the ways the wilderness theme was used by various American writers. The
key ways I identified were: The wilderness as enemy territory, the wilderness as
a loss of one’s home which parallels the loss of one’s woman, the wilderness as
symbol for the struggle against personal sin, and as the wilderness as the
sublime place where God speaks. The wilderness theme is intricately tied to the
garden theme for they are antithetical. In the American story the two are
combined because the original settlers and explored came to the new nation under
the premise that it was a paradise, an Edenic type garden where people could
start over and have another try and building civilization. The entire garden and
wilderness ideology is convoluted in the American project. They left their homes
and civilization behind, came to a wilderness they viewed as a pristine and
primal paradise, and they built new homes and civilizations that became just as
corrupt as what they left thereby making the garden wilderness into the
wilderness of civilization. In every regard, the idea of paradise was elusive
and unattainable. The idea of a paradise is illusory and phantasmal at best.
The idea of the illusory paradise is the
heart of utopian fiction. The word utopia,
coined by Sir/Saint Thomas Moore, means both “no place” and “good place.”
Moore’s and all subsequent utopian projects and literature are human endeavors
to create or recreate a paradise of sorts where the problems with human
civilization are straightened out, made productive and peaceful. My paper for
this course titled The Garden Motif in
Utopian Literature focused on how the utopian writers used the garden and
wilderness theme within their texts. To reach most of the utopian locations, one
had to travel through wilderness landscapes. When the travelers finally reached
the utopian destination, they observed beautiful gardens. The gardens served as
the place of work, production, entertainment and relaxation for the residents of
the ideal community. My essay
analyzed the connection between the work required in the maintaining and
cultivation of a garden and how at every step of the process, the wilderness is
barely kept at bay. Gardens require
constant maintenance. Weeds are
always a problem, and they signify that the chaos of the wilderness is always
close at hand. This lends to the
idea that utopias are always on the brink of becoming dystopias, and that to
sustain them, they must be kept under constant maintenance, renewing and
changing with the times.
The thematic work regarding place that I
have worked with in these previous places has been very useful and insightful in
this course on Colonial and Postcolonial Literature. I have found that the
garden and wilderness theme is not only very relevant, but it is also very
predominant in the texts that we have been studying, and I want to engage the
materials on this level and within the context of the work that I have already
done. However, this is a difficult task because the themes are almost too big to
tackle. Colonial and Post Colonial literature take us across the globe to
multiple locations, and it in reality, the theme is too big and broad to nail
down. However, the Edenic story is appealed to time and again, and the
antithesis of the wilderness is also extremely relevant. To begin I will briefly
discuss the aspects of the Edenic archetypal paradise to highlight the main
ideas that surface in the class texts—especially the idea of migration.
A part of me is dismayed that I have to
return to this story yet again. I grow tired of it and all of the controversy
that it evokes and provokes. This origin story surfaces everywhere, and seems to
be mentioned or alluded to in almost everything. Whether you love it or hate it,
the story is there, and it has to be dealt with. The way I deal with it operates
outside of any given tradition. In general, the story answers questions of
origin and purpose. The origin of mankind is through the creative powers of a
loving God. The reason they were created is to rule, subdue, and multiply on the
earth in order to make it fruitful. Before the fall, garden work was good and
the relationship between man and woman was good. They had no knowledge of “good
and evil,” and they lived in a state of innocence. They were created as fully
mature adults. They were created with a fully developed language. Therefore, the
original story has man and woman working together in mutually beneficial ways,
speaking the same language, united in purpose for the benefit of the world on a
mission of fruitfulness.
After the curse, Adam and Eve leave the
garden, bear Cain and Abel, and then Cain kills Abel. In consequence, Cain is
sent further away from the garden and into the wilderness. Generations proceed
through Cain the wanderer and Seth the “son of promise.” Language is divided,
the people are dispersed throughout the land, and the long story progresses.
Though fallen and in a cursed world, humanity still works to make the land
fruitful, and there is a continual movement of people and nations. This idea of
movement outward is later emphasized when the resurrected Christ gives his
disciples what is known as the “Great Commission.”
They were to go out into the world and make disciples in all nations.
This is the reason for Christian missions, and it is a type of fulfillment of
the original mandate. The spreading out and reaching out to all the world is a
fundamental tenet of the Christian religion. I think this is interesting since
there’s at least a strain of it at the heart of the colonial project by European
nations.
Where I first became aware of this theological justification
for expansion was in Walt Whitman’s poem “Passage to India.” Whitman sings about
the great achievements of mankind that he sees. The underlying attitude is that
all the industrial innovations along with man’s increasing knowledge of and
exploration of the globe is something glorious. The mention of Adam and Eve in
section five is directly related to the idea of man’s original created purpose
to rule the world and make it fruitful by working and multiplying in it and the
subversion and frustration of this drive due to the effects of sin and the
curse.
Down from the gardens of Asia descending radiating,
Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad
progeny after them,
Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless
explorations,
With questionings, baffled, formless,
feverish, with never-happy hearts,
With that sad incessant refrain, Wherefore unsatisfied soul?
And
Wither O mocking life? (4.8-13)
The reason for the drive to explore and create and work is
attributed to the prescribed purpose given in the creation story. Whitman, the
poet, uses this imagery to indicate that this particular drive is justifiable.
“Yet soul be sure the first intent remains, and shall be carried out” (4.21).
Humanity’s work will be carried out. All the vocations Whitman lists, he aligns
with the original creation idea. Captains, engineers, inventors, scientists,
chemists, geologists, ethnologists, poets … all are doing what they were
designed to do. He seems to parallel the product of their work with the idea of
“fruitfulness” in the original mandate given to mankind. He then connects the
time of the second coming of the “true son of God shall come singing his songs”
(4.28). This can be read and interpreted in a variety of ways, but within the
context of the garden and the mandate to work, the idea of the creator God
coming back and singing the praises of man’s work to justify the works and fruit
produced. When this happens, humanity will be reconciled to itself an no longer
frustrated or unsatisfied. “Nature and Man shall be disjoin’d and diffused no
more, / The true son of God shall absolutely fuse them” (4.41-42). Whitman uses
the creation story here to justify the expansion and work of humankind across
the globe. He unveils through the story the “inscrutable purpose, some hidden
prophetic intention” (5.6), and knowing what we know about the consequences of
explorations of man across the globe on various people groups and cultures, this
line of reasoning resoundingly lays the blame at the foot of the Christian
tradition. Whitman’s accolades for the Genoese Admiral, that is Columbus, and
his dismay about the aspersions made about him by “calumniators” (6.44),
unwittingly and undeniably links him to the side of Colonialism.
ASIDE: The third section of Whitman’s poem is especially
interesting to me, because in it he extols the wonders of the railroad that cuts
across the western states, which just happens to be the very same railroad that
I grew up looking at and pondering in juxtaposition to the magnificent landscape
of the West. The North Platte and
Wind Rivers, the Laramie plains, the unique butte and rock formations scattered
throughout the land, and the many mountain ranges mark the landscapes of my
childhood and early adult years. They are mighty to behold. One of my favorite
mountains is the very same Elk Mountain that Whitman refers to in the poem. The
railroad, the “duplicate slender lines” (4.28), is so teeny tiny in comparison
to the base of the mountain. Every which way you look, you are surrounded by
vast empty spaces with imperturbable mountains. In any direction, the nearest
city is over a hundred miles away. This place radiates the sublime and the utter
puniness of humanity. I found it so strange and yet so fascinating all at the
same time, that the very place I seem to equate with my own weakness and utter
meaninglessness within the grand scheme of things, is the same place that led
Whitman to praise the works and ingenuity of man due to the accomplishment of a
network of trains. The West is immense and formidable, yet humanity crosses it
daily and even lives there due to their relentless work and their awesome
inventions. Interesting.
This same desire to move and explore is seen in the character
of Robinson Crusoe who just wanted to go on an adventure. He writes, “I
would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea; and my inclination to this led
me so strongly against the will, nay, the commands of my father, and
against all the entreaties and persuasions of my mother and other friends, that
there seemed to be
something fatal in
that propensity of nature, tending directly to the life of misery which
was to befall me” (1.3). He reasons that it was something in his nature that was
propelling him to leave and go to sea. It reminds me of the birds in Walcott’s
“The Season of Phantasmal Peace” who, when the season was come, migrated because
it was written in their nature. It was time. “No one hearing knew / what change
had brought into the raven’s cawing / except it was their seasonal passing,
Love, / made seasonless, or, from the high privilege of their birth” (ll. 22-23,
27-28). The high privilege of the birds’ birth is literally the heights that
they can soar to, but if these lines are symbolically read as the high privilege
of those who are doing the moving because it is their perceived time or inherent
nature, the words “the high privilege of their birth” reads with condemnation.
The desire to migrate is also seen in Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness. When Marlow was a
lad he says he would “lose” himself “in all the glories of exploration” (42),
and when he was a man, “I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had
a mind to go” (43). He even builds the idea that somehow distant lands were
somehow calling out to him to be explored. “I watched the coast. Watching a
coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is
before you—smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and
always mute with an air of whispering, Come and find out” (48).
Yet in the midst of his tale, he includes what he has learned along the
way. He identifies what is at the heart of the drive, while at the same time
showing the ramifications of the drive in the fallen world.
The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it
away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than
ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it
is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an
idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down
before, and offer a sacrifice to ….(41)
Whitman, Defoe, and Conrad all work off this idea—the grand
idea that exploration and movement around the globe is a primal tenet of what
it means to be human. The movements and migration of humanity are identified as
natural and almost obligatory. The idea does contain an element of glory and
adventure, but as Conrad says, if looked at closely, it is an ugly monster.
The idea of human movement in Conrad’s work
is intricately tied to the idea of the wilderness, and his brush with the
wilderness contradicts this drive, this idea of movement, migration, and
exploration. Nature and the land itself, according to Marlow, gives off the vibe
that it doesn’t want visitors, and that they are not welcome. “Nature herself
had tried to ward off intruders” and “the general sense of vague and oppressive
wonder grew upon me. It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints of nightmares”
(50). The revealing of the opprobrious actions and attitudes of the colonizers
toward the initial inhabitants is successively revealed. Kurtz, the great and
wonderful man of civilization is revealed to be a chasm of evil and darkness.
“His intelligence was perfectly clear—concentrated, it is true, upon himself was
horrible intensity, yet clear …. His soul was mad. Being alone in the
wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you, it had
gone mad” (112). Kurtz, like Dravot and Carnahan in Kipling’s “The Man Who Would
Be King,” was seeking his own divinity and wanting to establish his own kingdom,
and in the process the natural drive was corrupted and turned into pure evil.
The lines from Walcott’s poem, “A Far Cry From Africa” shed an eerie light on
his dark character: “The violence of beast on beast is read / as natural law,
but upright man / Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain. / Delirious as these
worried beasts, his wars / Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum” (ll.
15-19). And because of this, “corpses are scattered through a paradise” (ll. 4).
Corpses and dying frames of men cover the paradisal lands of the Congo as
well—heads on sticks and rumors of atrocious crimes.
The idea of the migratory patterns of
animals as an underlying idea behind the movement of peoples is also a strong
theme in Khushwant Singh’s Train to
Pakistan. Repeatedly throughout the book Khushwant incorporates elements of
animal life to hone in on the cyclical feel of the novel. The village of Mano
Majra, for example, was a rest stop for officers due to the animal life. “They
go for the waterfowl at sunrise, for partridges during the day, fish in the
afternoons, and once more for ducks when they come back in their evening flight”
(17). This attraction and movement to the land is based on the cycles of the
seasons and the resultant animal movements. The train that runs through the
town, the agent of people movement, is also described in a cyclical
way—evidencing that it also regulates the life of the people (5).
The apocalyptic type event of the story is
caused by the forced and unnatural migration of peoples across the land. This
forced movement of people and the resultant destruction and loss of life that it
causes is pictured and juxtaposed against the idea of natural migration.
Veronica Ramirez talks about this in her essay “Colonial Driven Migration.”
Ramirez writes: “The most obvious migration pattern … is the forced migration of
Muslim refugees to Pakistan. The migration due to political regulations by the
former colonizing power does nothing but create upheaval in the village, cause
murder and destroy love.” The lines
of Walcott’s poem are so applicable to the disturbing scenes in Khushwant’s
novel. “Again brutish necessity wipes its hands / upon the napkin of a dirty
cause, again” (ll. 22-23).
The idea of natural and unnatural migratory patterns caused
by “upright man” are a main theme in colonial and postcolonial texts. How the
patterns of transnational migration play into this theme I haven’t quite figured
out yet. Lucy, for example, both embraces and challenges the idea of migration.
She condemns the British culture that moved in and took over her island nation.
In embracing the name Lucy as a derivative of the name Lucifer, she embodies
resistance to the western mindset and challenges everything the western
tradition has imposed upon her. However, she also chooses to migrate to another
land, and while she is there, she only sees the people she works with as the
foreign other, judging and condemning them the entire time. While her character
doesn’t leave a path of destruction like Kurtz does in
Heart of Darkness, the path she takes
regardless of other people and totally focused in on her own self and her own
perceived needs is not very different from the aggressors of the colonial texts.
She leaves everything behind just like all the others to find her place—to be
her own ruler. The darkness in Lucy’s character is perturbing. For example: Why
did she want to be on the receiving end of sexual abuse? I can’t figure her out.
Regardless, the idea of place is very important in Lucy, and she progressively
learns that there’s no perfect place or state of being. “I was now living a life
I had always wanted to live…. The feeling of bliss, the feeling of happiness,
the feeling of longing fulfilled that I had thought would come with this
situation was nowhere to be found inside me” (Loc. 1378). The situation and
place she had desired and had arrived at turned out to be a mirage. The paradise
of freedom and autonomy brought the fetters of isolation. The ideal place lay
beyond her grasp.
Mukherjee’s character Jasmine is also a transnational migrant
in the post-colonial setting. She too sets out on a journey to find herself.
Jasmine is plagued with the idea that everywhere she goes, somehow she wreaks
destruction and death, yet she is driven by the idea that there’s some sort of
purpose and mission that can be found by her movement forward, which in her case
involves a gradual movement west. What I find particularly interesting about
this story is that it speaks from outside the western tradition, and yet there
is still a drive that says that to find yourself you have to go somewhere
else—leaving home and family behind. Both the motto and the nickname of the
state of California are ironic in this context. Eureka, which means “I have
found it” and the name the “Golden State” both allude to the idea of arrival in
the land of promise and plenty. Jasmine’s life in India and her first years in
the American east are her journey through the wilderness to find herself. We are
left with her heading off on a mythic journey to a land of promise where she
will eventually find herself.
People have always been on the move, and the reasons for
their movement are diverse. The idea of a “better place” however, is an
interesting idea. The associated idea of humanity’s intended purpose to rule the
world and make it fruitful is also interesting. The colonial and postcolonial
discourse is just a small piece of the bigger picture that questions the reasons
for the historical movements of people across and around the globe and the
effects that these migrations have on various people groups and nations.
Migration seems to also be a primal drive in people as well as in animals.
The novels we read were great in that they
provided characters and stories working within the colonial and postcolonial
context. This aids in helping to contextualize the history and the struggles of
individuals in that history. I am surprise by the power of the poetry selections
in this course and how they were able to get at the heart and nerve of this idea
of the migration of humanity. The poetry, in my own personal experience, made a
more lasting impression, and that’s saying a lot, because the novels were great.
