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Sample Final Exam submissions 2013 (2013 final exam assignment) |
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Jenna Zucha
Fostering Empathy through Post Colonial Literature in
Converse with Colonial Literature:
The multiple perspectives approach that this
course takes has been very beneficial to my own professional development because
I have been given an opportunity to redesign the curriculum for the World
Literature (sophomore) English class on my campus.
As it stands now, the course has been viewed lightly as a non-restrictive
platform for teachers to choose whatever literature they like, as long as it has
not been covered in the other more restricted courses, like British Literature
and American Literature. As a
result, the “World” in this course becomes very small and still manages to focus
on Western male authors. However, one of the primary objectives of the
Colonial-Post colonial course is “to
mediate
the ‘culture wars’
between
the ‘old canon’ of Western classics
and the
‘new canon’ of multicultural literature
by studying them together rather than separately” (1a). This more balanced
approach to reading literature is crucial because both canons have so much to
offer the overall learning experience. Pairing authors like Chinua Achebe and
Conrad, as well as authors like W.B. Yeats and Walcott creates a dichotomy of
discourse that exposes issues that are often overlooked in world cultural
history. Creating a dialogue between such texts can lead to a more exercised
notion of empathy through universal subject matter and shared social
experiences.
A recent study
published in the journal Science
entitled “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind,” shows that people
who read literary fiction as opposed to popular fiction or serious non-fiction
scored higher on tests measuring empathy, social perception, and emotional
intelligence. The editor of the study explains that “Theory of Mind
is the human capacity to comprehend that other
people hold beliefs and desires and that these may differ from one's own beliefs
and desires. The currently predominant view is that literary fiction—often
described as narratives that focus on in-depth portrayals of subjects' inner
feelings and thoughts—can be linked to theory of mind processes, especially
those that are involved in the understanding or simulation of the affective
characteristics of the subjects” (Kidd and Castano 377). Literary fiction
encourages the reader to use his or her imagination to make inferences
concerning character motivations and to connect with individual perspectives
even if they differ greatly from their own views.
In Things Fall Apart,
Achebe utilizes the accessible literary format of the Greek tragedy to tell the
story of Okonkwo and his ultimate downfall. Okonkwo is a leader in his village
and is a prosperous farmer and Husband who had risen from the depths of poverty
and hardship; “Anyone who knew his grim struggle against poverty could not say
he has been lucky. If ever a man deserved success, that man was Okonkwo. At an
early age he had achieved fame as the greatest wrestler in all the land” (Achebe
27). Here it is revealed that Okonkwo values physical strength above all else
and this manifests as extreme violence against his wives and children. The hero
in this story is not static and has many layers, some that are admirable and
some unsavory. Achebe constantly mixes the personal with the political to
individualize the experiences of the African man and his environment because it
had been washed over and dehumanized by colonial texts like
Heart of Darkness and
Mister Johnson by Joyce Cary.
In Heart of Darkness,
Marlow, describes the natives he sees as “black shapes crouched, lay, sat
between the trees leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half
effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and
despair” (Conrad 63). This impressionistic style partially erases the native
people and turns them not only into savages but into walking metonymies of
desolation. Chinua Achebe aims to darken the lines of contrast that have been
blurred to near annihilation. In my midterm I touched on the idea that one of
the principal motivations behind writing literature from a postcolonial
perspective is to establish a voice to represent the many eradicated voices of
Colonized Nations. As a result, we see a perversion of the dehumanizing tropes
found in colonialism and colonial literature. The dominating mechanism of
Imperialism was the re-education of the Native and the god-like elevating of the
Colonizer. This turning of the trope is apparent in Achebe’s novel in his
depiction of the two Reverends that inhabit Okonkwo’s village: “Mr. Brown’s
successor was the Reverend James Smith, and he was a different kind of man. He
condemned openly Mr. Brown’s policy of compromise and accommodation. He saw
things as black and white. And black was evil” (184). Both men are given
generalized names like Brown and Smith to comment on the irony their presence in
the village created. Just as the colonizer’s had a tendency to polarize and
categorize the natives, they too saw little more than surface identifiers in the
men who came to civilize them through the Christian religion.
The idea of reading literary fiction that provides multiple
and global perspectives, along with the issues raised in objective 3, which is
to account for Americans’ difficulties with colonial and postcolonial discourse,
and the issues of American ignorance of larger world and alternative worldviews,
has motivated me to take a more active and reflective stance towards the text
list offered the high school sophomores on my campus. Pairing traditional
Western texts with postcolonial texts can hopefully foster empathy within my
students as well as preparing them for entering into a global market that is
tipping away from viewing the United States as a “superpower.” As part of his
final exam essay for this course, Michael Russo, defines two types of necessary
reading that defends both the colonial and postcolonial texts offered in the
colonial-postcolonial class.
There is certainly great value in reading the ideas and
thoughts of people who are not profoundly different than oneself; this exercise,
which I call “refinement reading,” is useful primarily because it allows the
reader to focus on exploring subtle differences in human viewpoints and
philosophies on topics that are both familiar and comfortable.
Yet there is great value too in the practice of understanding, or even
attempting to understand, the viewpoints of those people who are most unlike
oneself, and who bring with them radically different ideas about the world; this
type of reading I call “exploratory reading” because it brings the opportunity
for exposure to ideas entirely outside of the reader’s previously existing world
view.
Russo is picking up on this idea of global empathy and the
human’s capacity to comprehend that other people may have values and beliefs
that differ from their own, but are no less valuable to the progress of
society. Empathy towards a unified social condition can also manifest through
the analysis of poetry because this genre responds more directly to abstract
notions of love, death, good vs. evil, and spirituality that can transcend
borders and cultures. In her discussion of Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming,”
Valerie Mead highlights some of these universal themes and their connections
with the novel Things Fall Apart.
Mead points to three primary themes that a present in both the poem and the
novel: Religion, Change vs. Chaos, and Good in comparison to Evil. “Yeats states
in his poem, ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is
loosed upon the world’ (3-4). This seems to refer to the chaos that usually
accompanies the collapse of a system, and Achebe could be using this to refer to
the ending of tribal ways in the community and British colonial influence”
(Mead-Class Handout). Both authors are responding to monumental changes they
have observed in their worlds. Yeats is expressing a deep distress with the
state of the world after the destruction of World War I, and Achebe is
responding to the destruction of tribal life in the face of colonizers and the
Christian religion. This demonstration of personal and political unrest
manifesting in poetry is also present in Derek Walcott’s poem “The Season of
Phantasmal Peace.” Both Walcott and Yeats use bird imagery to comment on the
human inability to see beyond their own miserable existence. Walcott proclaims
“Love,/ made seasonless, or, from the high privilege of their birth,/ something
brighter than pity for the wingless ones/ below them who shared dark holes in
windows and in houses,” (27-30)and similarly Yeats says, an ancient sphinx “is
moving its slow thighs, while all about it/ Reel shadows of the indignant desert
birds” (16-17). In both poems the birds have the ability to view the chaos and
destruction from above, and from this, their perspective is widened to behold
the ever-turning spiral of history. Both poets use bird imagery in their poems
but each carries a different tone. For Yeats, the birds are “indignant” and
provoked by the chaos, and for Walcott, the birds express something beyond pity
and Love for their flightless brothers. Both pieces highlight universal ideas
that can be accessible to people from many different cultures.
All in all, the dialogue that is created
between these texts and others presented in the colonial-postcolonial course
provides a platform for addressing issues of race, class, culture, long-lasting
colonial influences, and gender discrepancies that might be missed or ignored
when texts from the traditional cannon are read in isolation. Not only did it
open up intertextual discourse between fictional texts, but it also provided
outlets for exploration in research. The empathy that is sparked through reading
fiction like Jasmine and
Train to Pakistan lead me to research
real issues concerning violence against women in India. My research exposed me
to religious and political veins within the culture that I would not have had
access to without first emotionally connecting with the characters in these
novels. This underscores the overall importance of reading literary fiction from
multiple perspectives and points in history. This course has exposed me to
authors I had never been introduced to before and has made me realize how much
more I have to learn outside of my Westernized bubble. It has also inspired me
to channel this global awareness and sense of empathy towards my own students in
their studies of literature.
Works Cited
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Anchor,
1994. Print.
Conrad, Joseph, A. Michael. Matin, and George Stade. Heart
of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics,
2003. Print.
Kidd, David C., and Emanuele Castano. "Reading Literary
Fiction Improves Theory of Mind." Science 342 (2013): 377-80. Web. 4 Dec.
2013.
Mead, Valerie. "W.B. Yeats' "The Second Coming"" Discussion
Seminar LITR 5831. UHCL, Clear Lake. 11 Nov. 2013. Lecture.
Walcott, Derek. “The
Season of Phantasmal Peace.” N.p.: n.p., n.d. LITR 5831
Colonial-Postcolonial Course Site. Web. 2 Dec. 2013.
Yeats, W. B. "The Second Coming." LITR 5831
Colonial-Postcolonial Course site. Dr. Craig White, n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2013.
Female Violence in the conflict between Tradition and
Modernity in Colonial and Postcolonial Literature
When bringing classic literature of European colonialism and
emerging literature from the postcolonial world into
dialogue—a
conscious debate emerges between the authors of these texts and later readers
who are concerned with the treatment of women in a given society. A dialogue
that addresses the role of modernity and its cultural struggle with tradition in
the ongoing subjectification and violence towards women within these previously
colonized areas. If there is one thing that colonial and postcolonial
literatures share it is the habitual mistreatment of women in society, and
subsequently, in the literature depicting these societies. The concept of
modernity cannot be defined by any set period in history; instead it is a
constant movement that favors constant change over the static nature of
traditional views. On the surface, this progressive movement towards a more
contemporary way of life seems complimentary towards gender concerns that aim to
empower women, but in postcolonial regions like India and Africa, the struggle
to regain control over a stolen cultural identity has led to more extreme
instances of female suppression. This essay will focus on the negative effects
of neo-traditionalism in the face of modernity in the postcolonial texts
Jasmine and
Train to Pakistan, and will also
address the violent customs against women depicted in
Things Fall Apart, and how traditions
in religion allow for some power reconciliation in the female community. This
analysis will reveal the usefulness of such complicated fictions and highlight
the importance of learning about the colonial-postcolonial dynamic.
Even though many strong female role models exist in Indian
culture and religions, violence against women has been the norm for many
generations. This has been attributed to many factors, but the two I will
focus on here are the stories and myths that promote female chastity and
subservience within the culture, and the postcolonial phenomenon of younger
generations responding towards colonialism’s absence through a return to
traditions in the extreme. This extreme and violent return to the traditional is
apparent in Bharati Mukherjee’s novel
Jasmine, in which the young female protagonist describes an interaction
between a young man belonging to the Khalsa Lions and her brothers:
“I brought him a glass of water and a glass of sweet tea, but he didn’t touch either, as if drinking anything in our impure, infidel home would contaminate him…they got started on their boisterous political arguments about the future of our state more quickly than usual…I couldn’t shut out the flat, authoritative voice of the new guest. The Khalsa, the Pure-Bodied and the Pure-Hearted, must have their sovereign state.”
The man goes on to tell the
brothers that the only way to do this is to “Renounce all filth and idolatry. Do
not eat meat, smoke tobacco, or drink alcohol or cut your hair. Wear a turban
and then you will be welcome.” The brothers then ask if there is anything else
to add to his extreme requests and the man responds, “Yes. Keep your whorish
women off the streets” (64-65). This conversation shows that many radical
groups, comprised of the younger generations, began to emerge after India’s
independence from British rule, and not only where the groups concerned with
physically and mentally separating the Muslim caste from the Hindu caste and
Sikh caste through extreme reservation and a return to tradition, but much of
the aggression was/is taken out on women because they represent uncontrolled
sexuality. Prakash, the man that Jasmine will marry, does not agree with
Sukwinder and this conflict will later lead to his death and the emotional
crippling of Jasmine as she seeks solace in America. Prakash represents
modernity while Sukwinder represents the traditional and the conflict between
the two is often violent and deadly.
We see this conflict between traditional values and modernity
and its effect on women in Khushwant Singh’s
Train to Pakistan. In this novel
modernity attempts to replace and transform traditions with revolutionary
activities through doubt in the prescribed, inquiry, the push of individualism,
and a more future-oriented outlook. In this case modernism has a negative effect
on the community. Prior to the forced division between the Muslims and the Sikhs
the villagers all lived together in harmony. No dominant group ruled over
another—they all coexisted, but the modernity seems to bring on unnecessary
divisions in the community. Modernity is represented by two extremes in this
novel: the passive observer who needs to be recognized for his good deeds, and
the reckless and violent youth who wants to take action no matter what. With the
first extreme there is a reserved and distant approach, as is seen with the
educated and religiously undefined, Iqbal Singhi, who has a more anthropological
approach-making observations and respecting traditions without really doing much
of anything. He is motivated by a need to be recognized, and in the end makes no
noteworthy move. In contrast, the wily youth’s exposure to the modern
perspective brings out violence and a desire to handle justice on his own; “The
leader had an aggressive bossy manner. He was a boy in his teens with a little
beard which was glued to his chin with brilliantine. He was small in size,
slight of build and altogether somewhat effeminate; He looked as if his mother
had dressed him up as an American cowboy” (147-148). The youth’s immaturity and
eagerness for action makes him disregard age and status, as well as the severity
of what he is asking the villagers to participate in. Both examples shed light
on the mindset and motivation behind youth extremists who often express little
to no empathy for people outside of their religion and gender. The lack of
experience and social interactions with different types of people, along with
romanticized images of heroes in the media, support a terrorized approach
towards a return to traditions, or a passive apathetic approach that is
nonviolent, but it is also ineffective. In the midst of all of this division, a
recurring motif keeps the two sides together. If they can’t agree on caste or
religion, they can agree that women deserve to be treated poorly. The common
insult to any man in this novel is to compare him to a woman, as seen in the
example given above, the idea here is that women are weak and incapable of
making important decisions, and women become the one way to get back at any man
who has wronged another man. A man will threaten to rape and kill the wives,
mothers, and mother-in-laws of any man as a way to exact revenge, with no regard
or even thought towards the women they are threatening to harm. It is as if
their lives only matter as they are connected to the man.
This extremely patriarchal ideal is perpetuated through stories and myths
in the culture that tell of women’s ultimate subservience to the men in their
lives. This concept is apparent in
Jasmine as well when it is brought up on multiple occasions that it is a
curse to be born a girl in a country that only recognizes and values men; “[a]
daughter had to be married off before she could enter heaven, and dowries
beggared families for generations” (39).
As the fictional tale of the Nigerian tragic hero will
reveal, it is just as bad to be born a girl in India as it is in Africa;
“Okonkwo ate the food absent-mindedly. ‘She should have been a boy,’ he thought
as he looked at his ten-year-old daughter” (64). The village life in
Things Fall Apart is another example
of this gendered divided society in which women have little say in the political
issues concerning their tribe, and only when they are in the guise of a
priestess do they have any sway over the male dominated community. Similarly, in
India, women hold powerful positions in the religions, but this value is not
carried over into how they are treated on a daily bases. In the novel,
Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo takes
great pride in his ability to control his many wives, and he often beats them
severely. On one occasion Okonkwo beats his second wife for no other reason than
being bored; “[a]nd then the storm burst. Okonkwo, who had been walking about
aimlessly in his compound in suppressed anger, suddenly found an
outlet…Okonkwo’s second wife had merely cut a few leaves off [the tree] to wrap
some food, and she said so. Without further argument Okonkwo gave her a sound
beating and left her and her only daughter weeping” (Achebe 38). Even though
there is some resistance to Okonkwo’s brutality towards his wife and children,
he is free to treat them however he pleases, and “[n]either of the other wives
dared to interfere” (38). The only instance in which Okonkwo is forced to listen
and follow the demands of a woman is when she is in the guise of a priestess.
Okonkwo is forced to comply when the woman Chielo, possessed as the priestess
Agbala, calls on Ekwefi’s daughter. “Okonkwo was still pleading that the girl
had been ill of late and was asleep…The priestess screamed. ‘Beware, Okonkwo!’
she warned. ‘Beware of exchanging words with Agbala. Does a man speak when a god
speaks? Beware’” (100-101). With this warning, Okonkwo, backs off and allows the
possessed women to take his daughter to Agbala’s house in the hills and caves.
As a vessel for the communities’ sacred religion, Chielo, is able to supersede
the patriarchal society. Strong female roles represented in the Hindu religion
create similar outlets for women to take control of their lives and find
strength against the brutality, but this is not enough. Many women in both India
and Africa live in constant fear of violence on many levels, and the desire to
hold on to lost traditions in the face of modernity, along with the overall
community support for violence against women, hinders any attempts at
progression. Sharon La Franiere asserts in her article, “Entrenched Epidemic:
Wife-Beatings in Africa,” that
“[w]omen suffer from violence in every society. In few places, however, is the
abuse more entrenched, and accepted, than in sub-Saharan Africa. One in three
Nigerian women reported having been physically abused by a male partner,
according to the latest study, conducted in 1993.”
Violence against women is a common problem in many countries
but a desire for education seems to be a key component towards change. La
Franiere notes in her article that much of the discourse surrounding this
problem and possible solution is education-based. She records the testimony of
Ms. Isometo-Osibuamhe, who escaped the violence of her abusive husband at
Project Alert on Violence Against Women. Ms. Isometo-Osibuamhe says “our men
need education” so do “our mothers, our fathers, our sons,” she added “The whole
society needs to be overhauled.” This
desire for education connects with the colonial-postcolonial objective that
focuses on how literary fiction may instruct or deepen students’ knowledge of
world history and international relations compared to history, political
science, and anthropology (2a). Literary fiction has the ability to peer into
the lives of individual people which can help unfamiliar audiences connect with
their stories on a more intimate level. Fiction is also useful in this capacity
because it characterizes the complicated nature of issues like violence against
women in postcolonial nations because it illustrates the struggle between a
desire to hold on to lost traditions while dealing with constant change brought
on by internal and external forces.
Works Cited
Achebe, Chinua. Things
Fall Apart. New York: Anchor, 1994. Print.
Mukherjee, Bharati.
Jasmine. New York: Grove, 1989. Print.
Khushwant, Singh.
Train to Pakistan. New York: Grove, 1956. Print.
LaFraniere, Sharon. "Entrenched Epidemic: Wife-Beatings in
Africa." New York Times. LITR 5831 World Literature-Colonial-Postcolonial Course
sites, n.d. Web.
