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Sample Final Exam submissions 2013 (2013 final exam assignment) |
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Marichia Wyatt
Difficulty in Discourse
Americans seem to have a lot of difficulties with colonial
and post-colonial discourses. I
believe that this is simply because we do not grasp the entirety of the subject.
We learn as children about the thirteen colonies, and we idealize them as
they were the beginning of “this great land.”
That is the extent of what we learn about colonization growing up in
America. Of course, as a graduate
student I have had several years of advanced studies, and knew a little more on
the subject; however, unless you dig a little further into the matter, you do
not understand the full scope of colonization in the world outside of America.
It was only through taking this class that I began to understand that
colonization has very little to do with America’s thirteen colonies, and is
primarily concerned with a much larger picture of the world.
My favorite narratives this semester have
come from the perspective of the colonized. That is due to the fact that they
are written from a completely different view of the world than my own.
Through these narratives we are given a glimpse of what it means to
become an American; a subject most Americans never even try to comprehend.
To us, it seems strange to think of our general speech and behavior as
different; to us, it is as natural as breathing.
We are American; we were born and raised here, and it is a fundamental
part of who we are as people. Most
of the time, Americans go about our daily routines without a single thought that
our views may differ from, and seem strange to, someone who just immigrated
here. I myself am guilty of this.
Although, I was not aware to what extent until I was able to see this
through a different lens; the transmigrational novels we have read this
semester.
In reading and discussing Jamaica Kincaid’s
Lucy, in dialogue with Bharati
Mukherjee’s Jasmine we are able to
get a clear picture of what it means to become Americanized.
Both Lucy and Jasmine are immigrants to America; both characters let go
of their pasts, adapt, and become American, while constantly dealing with the
pressures of being different, and misunderstood.
In a world where we are constantly striving to be politically correct, we
do not fully realize how insensitive this must seem to the person we are trying
not to offend.
When Mariah’s friend Dinah meets Lucy, she
asks her “so you are from the islands” (Kincaid, 56).
Lucy is justified in her anger towards this generic statement about her
homeland. She wants to say “which
islands exactly do you mean?” (Kincaid, 56).
The more appropriate question would have been phrased the way Dinah’s
brother, Hugh asked, “Where in the West Indies are you from?” (Kincaid, 65).
This question portrays genuine interest in Lucy as a person; genuine
interest to learn where exactly she
is from. This can also be seen in
the way Jasmine is referred to as “Bud’s Asian wife” (Muhkerjee, 14).
Jasmine is simply Asian to the American farmers; “Asia had transformed
[Bud], made him reckless and emotional” (Muhkerjee, 14).
The exception to this is Darrel, Mother, and Karin who also are incorrect
in their desire to not inquire too fully into the specifics.
Darrel asks Jasmine to name the club he is thinking of building
“something in Indian” (Muhkerjee, 10).
Jasmine does not have the heart to tell him “you mean in Hindi…there’s no
such thing as Indian” (Muhkerjee, 10).
In generalizing foreign customs, languages, and lands Americans do not
show genuine interest in the world outside of America; the world in which
colonial and post-colonial discourse lives.
Mariah’s friends had all been “to the
islands…and had fun there. [Lucy]
decided not to like them just on that basis…somehow it made [her] ashamed to
come from a place where the only thing to be said about it was ‘I had fun when I
was there’” (Kincaid, 65). For the
travelers “the islands” were a place of enjoyment; a place to pass through, but
not look too closely at the hardships of native life.
I found this to be in accordance with Du’s teacher who put Du in a box
with “the kids who hung around us in Saigon” as they were all generalized as
“quick studies” (Muhkerjee, 29).
This same inconsiderate teacher “tried a little Vietnamese on” Du, without even
acknowledging how this may make him feel (Muhkerjee, 29).
Jasmine, outraged and humiliated for Du, can only think to herself “How
dare you? What must he have thought?
His history teacher in Baden, Iowa, just happens to know a little street
Vietnamese? Now where would he have
picked it up?” (Muhkerjee, 29).
Perhaps if she would have said this out loud to the teacher it could have
prevented him from making the same mistake in the future; it could have possibly
allowed him the opportunity to learn from his mistake and teach his students the
proper way to carry out a post-colonial discourse.
Both Jasmine and Lucy find comfort when they
come across plants native to their homelands; especially because these plants
are so out of place. At a party in
the city, Lucy sees plants that are “regarded as a nuisance, weeds” at home;
in Paul’s apartment, “they were treasured, sitting in a prominent place
in a beautiful room, a special blue light trained on them” (Kincaid, 99).
For Jasmine it was the coriander, cumin, and turmeric Darrel planted for
her that brought a piece of India to her home in Baden.
Jasmine had been “subverting the taste buds of Elsa County” by bringing
her “Indian recipes” to the county pot luck dinners (Muhkerjee, 19).
Of course, no one could pronounce the names of her dishes; not even Du.
When she asks him the name of her dish, gobi, Du pronounces it “globey”
and she feels that this is “close enough” (Muhkerjee, 19).
At least Du is trying; Du understands as “he’s called Yogi in school,
mainly because his name in English sounds more like ‘Yo’” (Muhkerjee, 18).
Foreign names are not “easy on the tongue” like “names like Peters,
Smith, Jones, and Richards” (Kincaid, 64).
Even mother who loves Jane, and feels close to her suffering cannot bear
Jasmine’s stories. Jasmine explains
this as she states: “It’s like
looking at the name in my passport and seeing ‘Jyo--’ at the beginning and
deciding that her mouth was not destined to make those sounds” (Muhkerjee, 16).
For me, this is a big part of why
Americans have such difficulty with colonial and post-colonial discourse; we
automatically dismiss things we cannot understand at the first glance.
In my opinion, Americans seem to have such a
difficult time with colonial and post-colonial discourses because we are not
taught the correct way to approach the subject.
In America, and especially Texas, we do not spend very much time on world
literature or history in school; however, there is an entire semester in high
school and college devoted to Texas history.
We have a reputation for being proud of our state, proud of our country,
and think that everyone should adapt to our way of thinking.
Americans tend to generalize things they cannot understand, and dismiss
foreign names and words by “deciding that [our] mouth was not destined to make
those sounds” (Muhkerjee, 16). I
believe this problem can and will be remedied through education.
I certainly feel that the novels we have read this semester have helped
me come to a greater understanding of the subject by allowing me access to a
different perspective on America; America through the lens of an immigrant.
Adaptation:
Colonial and post-colonial studies show us that the world is
a treacherous place full of twists and turns, ups and downs, with no end in
sight to the progress of its people.
Heraclitus of Ephesus said it best when he stated that “the only constant
in life is change.” Some may find
this platitude shocking, and disagree completely within the comforts of their
homes; while others will agree wholeheartedly without any further inquest into
the matter. However, with regard to
post colonial literature we must ask how is one to survive in such a world?
Throughout the semester we have read several texts concerned with
colonial, post-colonial, as well as transmigrational literature.
One theme that seems prevalent in all of these narratives is the
characters’ ability or inability to adapt to the ever changing world surrounding
them. This theme can be traced in
any of the texts we have encountered this semester.
It is especially apparent in a class such as this; a class that allows us
to use intertextuality to outline the ways in which each text correlates to the
others. Adaptation is a very
important aspect of how one handles change, and it seems to be best illustrated
through a comparison of Bharati Mukherjee’s
Jasmine, and Chinua Achebe’s
Things Fall Apart.
Throughout Mukherjee’s transmigrational
novel Jasmine, the main character
adapts to her changing circumstances by adopting a new identity for each new
place she lives. It is only through
adaptation that Jasmine can survive in the ever-changing world in which she
finds herself. The novel begins
with “lifetimes ago, under a banyan tree in the village of Hasnapur, an
astrologer cupped his ears…and foretold my widowhood and exile” (Mukherjee, 3).
Here the narrator is using a specific form to foreshadow the theme of
reincarnation that will be present throughout the entirety of the novel.
The reader is left with a sense of foreboding to come; while wondering
who this narrator, this woman, is.
It is not until the second chapter, seven pages into the novel, where the
narrator gives herself a name, yet we are not sure which it is:
“The Ripplemeyer land: Bud’s
and mine and Du’s. Jane Ripplemeyer
has a bank account. So does Jyoti
Vijh, in a different city” (Mukherjee, 7).
This allows the reader to question whether her name is Jane, Jyoti, or
neither.
In direct contrast to the transmigrational narrative of
Jasmine, Chinua Achebe’s
Things Fall Apart, takes place in the
pre-colonial Ibo villages that make up part of the present day Nigeria.
Where Jasmine encompasses the
theme of change, Things Fall Apart
shows us what happens when we refuse it.
By incorporating an omniscient narrator throughout the novel, the reader
is able to see many different views from different characters.
However, the stories central character is Okonkwo who from the beginning
of the novel is rooted in tradition:
“Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond.
His fame rested on solid personal achievements” (Achebe, 3).
The novel begins in Umuofia, which is said to be the most powerful of all
the nine villages that make up the Ibo:
“Umuofia was feared by all its neighbors.
It was powerful in war and in magic, and its priests and medicine men
were feared in all the surrounding country” (Achebe, 11).
The novel’s main character and his home are dripping with tradition.
Through the course of
Jasmine, we learn that Jasmine has been Jyoti, Jasmine, Jassy, Jase, Jazzy,
and finally Jane. With each change
in life, each new place, and each new lover, she changes her name. It started
when she married Prakhesh: “to
break off the past, he gave me a new name:
Jasmine…Jyoti, Jasmine: I
shuttled between identities” (Mukherjee, 77).
This was the beginning of her new life; her transformation from a rural
traditional girl, to a modern woman who calls her husband by his first name in
public.
Jyoti never fit in properly in Hasnapur; she was very smart,
and did not fit into the traditional mold of the blindly obeying female.
To be born a girl was a curse; a curse her mother tried to remedy the day
she was born. Yet, Jyoti lived
despite her mother’s attempt to save her from a sorrowful life:
“My grandmother may have named me Jyoti, Light, but in surviving I was
already Jane, a fighter and adapter” (MUkherjee, 40).
Jyoti lived to be transformed into Jasmine, Jassy, and Jane.
Although she could not escape her fate; the astrologers prophesy was
true, and Prakesh was murdered in her arms.
In opposition to Jasmine, Okonkwo embodies the traditional
culture of his tribe; he is hard working, a celebrated warrior, he has many
children, is a part of the tribal council, participates as one of the
egwugwu (spirits of their ancestors),
and has good personal chi. Okonkwo
believes in hard work and duty above all.
The only change in the novel that he does not question is the entry of
Ikemefuna into his home. Ikemefuna
becomes a part of his family, and all is well for three years.
In the third year, the council decides that he must be sacrificed.
Okonkwo, “afraid of being thought weak,” slays the boy who calls him
father (Achebe, 61). When Okonkwo
allows change, the change becomes a natural part of his identity (a son more
like himself), and then is tragically ordered away from him by the council he
holds in such high esteem. This is
the only time we see Okonkwo weak:
“[He] did not taste any food for two days after the death of Ikemefuna.
He drank palm-wine from morning till night, and his eyes were red and
fierce like the eyes of a rat when it was caught by the tail and dashed against
the floor” (Achebe, 63).
However, it is not the only time in the novel where the traditions that
Okonkwo holds dear cause him pain.
In committing a female murder, murder by accidental causes,
the tribal law dictates that the one who commits the offense should be exiled
for seven years. Okonkwo had to
leave his home, give up his titles, and return to the land of his mother to seek
refuge. The change in going to
Mbanta is the beginning of the end for Okonkwo.
However, he is able to adapt to this village, and even become an integral
member of his mother’s family.
While this change is accepted by Okonkwo as a traditional, tribal law, he still
clings to his home: “even in his first year in exile he had begun to plan for
his return” (Achebe, 171). It is only through a visit by Obeirka, two years
later, that he begins to realize that his home is not the same as when he left
it. He knew that he would not have
his titles as “a mans place was not always there, waiting for him.
As soon as he left, someone else rose and filled it,” but he could not
understand how fully the extent of the change was until he returned home
(Achebe, 171).
Jasmine does not share Okonkwo’s need to return to the way
things were; she does not want to return home.
When Prakesh died, she went back to Hasnapur and lived with her mother.
It was too hard to go backwards; she could not turn back the dial of
time. Once she was transformed, she
could not fall back into the rural traditional role that was to be her fate in
Hasnapur. Jasmine decided she would
take a journey to lay Prakesh’s suit on the lawn of the school he was to attend
in Florida, and light herself and it on fire.
Jasmine knew she would never be the same again.
She did not know that once she came to America, she would not be able to
carry out her plan to escape her life; her fate.
Jasmine began her second transformation in Florida, after an
aggressive rape and the death of her rapist with her own hands.
It was new clothes, and her reflection in the mirror that seemed to make
her let go of her old life: “Once
we start letting go—let go just one thing, like not wearing our normal clothes,
or a turban or not wearing a tika on the forehead—the rest goes on its own down
a sinkhole” (Mukherjee, 29). This
time, unlike with Prakesh, she mourned the loss of her old identity:
“There are no harmless, compassionate ways to remake oneself.
We murder who we are so we can rebirth ourselves in the images of dreams”
(Mukherjee, 29).
Jasmine constantly remakes herself; she must be reincarnated
in order to survive. In Flushing,
she lives with Prakesh’s former teacher, but she finds that it is the same as
Hasnapur; she cannot go backwards.
In taking a job in the city, she lives with Taylor, Wylie, and their adopted
daughter Duff who is to be her charge.
Jasmine becomes Jase in New York, and it is there that she begins to feel
happiness somewhat akin to the way she felt with Prakesh.
Taylor is the only man she has ever truly loved besides Prakesh; and she
is as happy as she can be. However,
the dangers of Hasnapur follow her to New York, and she must leave Taylor and
Duff; she must leave the only happiness after Prakesh behind her, and remake
herself once again.
While Jasmine does not want to leave Taylor, she knows she
must. Okonkwo does everything he
can to resist change at all cost.
He knew that the white man had come and wiped out the village of Abame through
his conversation with Obeirka. He
believed firmly that they should fight, and not allow the strange white men to
infiltrate their villages and convert their people to the new religion.
However, he was gone when it happened; in his exile, he missed his
opportunity to lead his people against the onslaught of the new religion and
people. By the time he returned,
Obeirka told him that it was too late: “Our own men and our sons have joined the
ranks of the stranger. They have
joined his religion and they help to uphold his government” (Achebe, 176).
The tribe that once ruled the nine villages had fallen subject to the
white man’s laws, religion, and justice.
Umuofia had changed in his absence; the old Umuofia was no more.
Okonkwo urged his tribesman to fight for their old way of
life; Umuofia was once a great village.
Now Okonkwo “mourned for the clan, which he saw breaking up and falling
apart, and he mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia, who had so unaccountably
become soft like women” (Achebe, 183).
Okonkwo had lost so much; Umuofia was forever changed and “worthy men are
no more” (Achebe, 200). However,
when Enoch commits the great crime of unmasking an egwugwu, the tension between
the Christian church and the tribe rise to a point of no return:
“For the first time in many years Okonkwo a feeling that was akin to
happiness…It was like the good old days again, when a warrior was a warrior”
(Achebe, 192). Much to Okonkwo’s
chagrin, this sentimental warrior based, tribal unity did not last.
The white man came to break up their tribal meeting and ordered them to
end it; “in a flash Okonkwo drew his machete…[it] descended twice and the man’s
head lay beside his uniformed body” (Achebe, 204).
The crowd did not follow Okonkwo, and because of this “he knew that
Umuofia would not go to war” (Achebe, 205).
Okonkwo knew that the old way was dead; he knew the white man had won.
Okonkwo had no other choice than to kill himself; he could not live in
this new world. The great warrior
was diminished to nothing but “a reasonable paragraph” in the District
Commissioner’s book “The Pacification of the PrimitiveTribes of the Lower Niger”
(Achebe, 209). The old Umuofia
died; Okonkwo died with it.
Jasmine is much more adaptable than Okonkwo; she will not die
with the old ways, she will remake herself and live.
Jase becomes Jane in Baden, Iowa:
“Bud calls me Jane…But Plain Jane is all I want to be.
Plain Jane is a role, like any other” (Mukherjee, 26).
She is not happy, but describes herself as “happy enough” (Mukherjee,
21). Through her relationship with
Bud, she is able to conceive the child she had longed for with Prakesh; the
child Taylor could not give her because he is sterile.
In Iowa Jasmine transforms into a mother of two; the child in her belly,
as well as Du, the child bud and her adopted from Vietnam.
Du and Jane have a very special relationship as they are both immigrants,
and they have both survived and escaped their former lives; their loved ones
have not. However, Du leaves Jane
to join his sister in Los Angeles.
Shortly after this, Jane gets a letter from Taylor exclaiming that Duff and him
are on their way to see her. Jane
begins to feel relief: “I realized
I have already stopped thinking of myself as Jane” (Muhkerjee, 240).
She had made up her mind; Jane was no more.
Jane was dead. It is through
the life and death of Jane that allow a future with Taylor.
Jase could not have Taylor’s child; Jane could have Bud’s, and then raise
it with Taylor. However, we do not
know what new identity she will take with Taylor and Duff; we only know that as
she leaves with them she is “greedy with wants and reckless from hope”
(Muhkerjee, 241). Jasmine will
live; Jase will adapt and survive.
Through colonial and post-colonial literature we realize just
how treacherous the world can be.
In every text we have read this semester, the themes of change and adaptation
have been present. Change is
inevitable; how you handle change is not.
By outlining the changes that occur in Bharati Mukherjee’s
Jasmine, along with Chinua Achebe’s
Things Fall Apart, and tracing the
way in which the characters deal with change, we are able to see that adaptation
is a key element to survival in colonial and post-colonial literature.
Jasmine was able to reinvent herself over and over; she was able to
embrace change, and because of this she is able to find happiness.
Okonkwo is not able to accept change; in resisting change, he meets his
end. Okonkwo cannot live in the new
world; Jasmine is able to thrive in it.
