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Sample Final Exam submissions 2015 (2015 final exam assignment) Essay 1 Sample |
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Assignment: Describe and evaluate your learning experience, referring to texts, seminar, objectives, research, and midterm. (may incorporate or overlap with midterm essay[s])
Heather Minette Schutmaat
6
December 2015
Essay1: The Effectiveness of Reading Novels in Dialogue
When
reflecting on what I’ve learned during this course on Colonial and Postcolonial
Literature, there is truly an ample amount that comes to mind, especially in
terms of the course objectives that we’ve thoroughly covered throughout the
semester. However, what stands out to me the most, considering the nature of the
course, is the way that reading texts in dialogue can generate new and extended
meanings, which was the primary focus of my midterm essay, and also, how reading
colonial and postcolonial texts in dialogue essentially gives voice to both
sides of a story, and as a result, we can mediate the opposing narratives of
colonial and postcolonial worlds.
The
focus of my midterm was an examination of post-structural linguistics and the
process of intertextuality. In my essay, I explained how “the process may take
place on an explicit level and according to an author’s intentions, as writers
sometimes draw directly on previous literary works to generate meaning in their
own texts, and other times it takes place according to the connections readers
make as they move back and forth from one text to another.” As we moved forward
in the course, I continued to identify this process taking place on both levels,
and became even more fascinated with the theoretical concept.
In my
midterm, I exemplified the process of intertextuality taking place according to
connections readers make by referring to my experience reading
Lucy in dialogue with Daniel Defoe’s
colonial novel The Life and Adventures of
Robinson Crusoe. I explained how, as I read
Lucy, my mind formed an associative
bond between Kincaid’s novel and Defoe’s novel, and drew parallels between
Crusoe’s treatment of Friday and Mariah’s treatment of Lucy, in the way that
that both Crusoe and Lucy both exhibit ethnocentric and colonial-like
determination for Friday and Lucy to see the world in the same way that they do.
In the second half of the course, this sort of mind work persisted, as I
continued to make connections not just between colonial and postcolonial texts,
but also between postcolonial novels. For example, after reading Lucy’s
experience as a transmigrant, in my reading of
Jasmine, I continually and almost
instinctively compared and contrasted their experiences as female,
transmigrants, and was perhaps more attuned to the depth of the experiences in
Jasmine after having read
Lucy. I believe this further supports
the theory of intertextuality and reinforces the idea that “all readings are
preconditioned by other texts and readings, which are themselves in turn changed
by what you're reading now.”
In my
midterm, I used Jamaica Kincaid’s use of William Wordsworth’s poem “I Wandered
Lonely as a Cloud” as an example of intertextuality taking placing on an
explicit level. The daffodils of Wordsworth’s poem symbolize for Lucy, not
beauty as they generally would to readers, but instead “a colonial education
that forced her to memorize and recite a poem about flowers she wouldn’t see
until she was nineteen, and about a sentiment that may never speak to her
reality.” I felt that this was Kincaid’s way of having a formerly colonized
person speaking back to his or her colonizer. In the second half of the course,
I found that Achebe Chinua’s novel Things
Fall Apart was an even more powerful example of intertextuality taking place
on an explicit level, as Chinua seems to be openly responding to Joseph Conrad’s
novel Heart of Darkness.
Heart
of Darkness
is
told through the perspective of a European colonizer and in many ways reads as a
criticism of imperialism. However, Conrad’s portrait of the native Africans is
incredibly dehumanizing, as Conrad doesn’t speak of them as human beings, but
instead as shadows and creatures:
"Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees leaning against the trunks,
clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in
all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. (Par. 40)
“They
were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now—nothing
but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish
gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time
contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they
sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest.”
(Par. 41).
Considering dehumanizing depictions such as these, in his essay, “An Image of
Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" Chinua states, “Heart
of Darkness projects the image of Africa as ‘the other world,’ the
antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man's vaunted
intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality.” In
reaction to the idea that Conrad’s portrait of Africa as a “dark place” is
“merely a setting,” Chinua replies, “Africa as setting and backdrop which
eliminates the African as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield
devoid of all recognizable humanity.” Therefore, in response to Conrad and as a
way of speaking back to the colonizers that dehumanized native Africans, Chinua
wrote Things Fall Apart, a tragic but
beautifully written novel that illustrates the traditions and humanity of
pre-colonial Africa. Chinua’s novel reads almost as an antithesis to Conrad’s
novel, as Chinua humanizes the native Africans by depicting them in a
coordinated, civilized, and colorful society, filled with interesting
characters, some of which are incredibly flawed, but profoundly human
nonetheless. Therefore, Things Fall Apart
is a very powerful representation of intertextuality taking place on an explicit
level, as Achebe aimed to disprove Conrad’s stereotypical portrayal of natives
as savage and inhuman, and to give voice to the colonized. Moreover, I’ve come
to understand that giving voice to the formerly colonized and examining the
consequences of colonization and decolonization is one of the primary intentions
of postcolonial literature, which is executed most effectively through novels.
During the course, we’ve also spent a significant amount of time theorizing the
novel as the defining genre of modernity, for both colonial and both colonial
cultures. In her 2013 midterm essay, “The Power of the Novel,” Marichia Wyatt
states, “The novel is the defining genre of modernity because of its ability to
use narrative and dialogue to reveal and/or create the circumstances of the
world at a particular point and time.
This is especially apparent in colonial and post-colonial literature.
By imitating the actual world, the novel perpetuates these stories
through different characters with narrative and dialogue in order to reveal the
societal issues through metaphor.” As Wyatt points out, “the novel combines
fundamental representational modes of narrative and dialogue,” and because
narrative can provide readers with personal experiences and histories while
dialogue provides humanizing encounters, the novel is the most effective vehicle
for delivering the imitation of life, or in a word, mimesis. Furthermore,
because of the novel’s “ability to represent internal states of mind or feeling”
of characters, it affords readers with an opportunity to readily sympathize with
the protagonist. And this is especially important for postcolonial writers. As
Emory’s Postcolonial Studies website states, “the representational power of the
novel, its ability to give voice to a people in the assertion of their identity
and their history, is of primary importance to postcolonial writers and
scholars.”
This
idea, the power of the novel as a means to giving voice to otherwise
marginalized people made me recall my undergraduate essay, “Teaching History
Through American Minority Literature,” wherein I state, “as we engage
wholeheartedly in readings such as the narratives, novels, and poetry of
American minorities, we create a relationship with these characters—a
relationship that calls for compassion and sympathy. By doing so, we are not
merely becoming acquainted with these terms and concepts, but as readers opening
our hearts to a work of art, we are somehow living the American minority
experience with them, and are therefore able to develop a much more in-depth
understanding of what these historical terms and concepts really mean.” I feel
that this statement also holds true in my experience of reading postcolonial
novels. I feel that by studying the literature of postcolonial writers, I
created a relationship with Lucy, Jasmine, and Okonkwo that called for sympathy,
and because of the nature of the novel, I have a much more in-depth
understanding of the experiences of formerly colonized people.
It’s
important to note too, since the focus of the course wasn’t only to consider the
voices of postcolonial literature but to put them in dialogue with colonial
texts, or to consider both sides of
the story, that my perspective on colonial writings has also shifted. Perhaps
because of the power of the novel, or perhaps because I so readily sympathized
with the protagonists in postcolonial texts, I also felt that colonial writers
deserved the same consideration, and after taking this course, I see the
position of the colonizers in a different light. For example, during class
discussion on Heart of Darkness, one
of the questions asked was, “is it possible to think of race or racism not as a
personal attack or betrayal and instead see it as a product of human history and
evolution?” After having written a research post on racist language in classic
literary texts, my answer to this question was yes, it is possible to see it as
a product of human history, and consequently, my view of colonizers has altered.
Whereas I once immediately labeled colonizers such as Crusoe and Marlow as
villains, I understand now that their positions as colonizers were certainly a
product of a bitter, human history that we’ve now gladly evolved from. Or, as
Dr. White said “humans aren’t inherently more virtuous now than they were
before,” so we have to understand that colonization, slavery, and other ghastly
happenings of our histories are products of the lack of moral consciousness that
we have now and has developed over time. Therefore, we should certainly
celebrate how far our society has evolved since times in which the
dehumanization of people was acceptable, or normal, but instead of shunning
texts such as Heart of Darkness
because of the racist content, or dehumanizing the protagonists by labeling them
as villains, we have to accept racism as one of the many failures of our
history, and examine the racism in classic texts not as a personal attack, but
as a product of a human history that lacked the moral consciousness that has now
evolved.
All things considered, I learned what an incredible and complex process
intertextuality really is, as our minds form connections between texts just as
our minds form associative bonds between words in the system of language.
Furthermore, I learned a significant amount about the effectiveness of reading
texts in dialogue, especially in terms of generating new and extended meanings,
and as a means to mediating the opposing narratives of colonial and postcolonial
worlds by considering the voices of both sides. And perhaps most importantly,
because of the power of the novel and because of the nature of this course, I am
far more aware of the psychology of the colonizers as a product of their
histories, and I am more informed on the experiences of formerly colonized
people and transmigrants living in a postcolonial world.
