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Sample Final Exam submissions 2015 (2015 final exam assignment) Essay 2 Sample |
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Assignment: Referring to Objectives 1 & 2, compose a dialogue between at least four texts (at least 3 since midterm) on a topic, theme, issue, or objective of your choice (Objectives in addition to 1 & 2 may be included.)
Jeanette Smith
8
December 2015
The Divided Vein: Identities in Colonial/Post-Colonial Literature
Derek Walcott’s poem, A Far Cry
from Africa, is a poem about the struggle for identity, about the division
that happens when someone is torn between the old and new, the homeland and the
new world. In the poem, he writes, “Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?”
(27) Since it is the vein that contains the very life blood of who we are,
Walcott brings up the image of the divided identity. His words express the
confusion and division of the self that appears in so much of colonial and
post-colonial literature. When
reading a colonial text such as
The Man Who Would Be King
together with post-colonial texts such as
Train to Pakistan and Jasmine, I
began to understand that these texts have shared meanings. This would not be
discovered if the texts were read in isolation. In each of the texts mentioned,
I found myself returning to Walcott’s poem where I discovered a connection
between its images of the fragmented self and the identities of some of the key
characters in these novels.
For instance, in The Man Who Would
be King, Walcott’s words came to mind as I thought of Dravot’s divided
identity: “Again brutish necessity wipes its hands/Upon the napkin of a dirty
cause” (22-3). In the novel, Dravot’s British identity is shattered. He is no
longer a soldier nor is he one of the many other occupations that he has tried,
so he attempts to create a new sense of self through the use of violence and
subversion of the people of Kafiristan. Because of his desire to establish his
identity as a person of power, he continues the “dirty cause” of colonization in
his dealings with the native people:
“Then we will subvert that King and
seize his Throne and establish a Dy-nasty"(1.47).
When he tries unsuccessfully to intermingle his British colonizer “blood”
with that of the natives, it is he, not the natives, who is seized and
destroyed.
Similarly, in Things Fall Apart,
we see the struggle of Okonkwo, a man who also has, according to Achebe, “lost
his place” in traditional society. When he realizes the irreversible impact that
colonization is making on his village, Walcott’s words seem to reflect Okonkwo’s
state of mind: “How can I turn from Africa and live?” (33). He knows that he
cannot turn from his traditional tribal ways because he sees the colonizers as
villains. Unlike Dravot, he does
not attempt to intermingle with the “other.” Okonkwo represents traditional
culture where elders hold the power, and he hates the encroaching
modernity where young people and new ideas are being accepted by many within his
society.
In the end, he refuses to be divided, for “he never did things in
halves.” With nowhere to turn, he chooses death instead.
The idea of a divided self appears again in
Train to Pakistan. In the novel which
finds itself on the precipice of post-colonialism, the entire country is
“divided by the vein,” embroiled in warfare where thousands have been killed
after the exit of the British colonizers. As Wolcott states: “Corpses are
scattered through a paradise” (4). Blame abounds as Indians of different
religious sects begin to see each other as “the other”: “Muslims said the Hindus
had planned and started the killing. According to the Hindus, the Muslims were
to blame” (Singh 1). Walcott’s
words come to mind as he writes that
“The
violence of beast on beast is read” (15).
While the battles rage outside their village, the people in Mano Majra
experience their own self-division as they are torn as to how to treat their
neighbors who they have lived peacefully alongside for generations. The visiting
stranger Iqbal’s identity is in a divided state as well as he is repulsed by
what he sees in his native India upon his return. He comments that Europeans “do
not tell lies like we [the Indians] do and they are not corrupt and dishonest as
so many of us are” (36). Feeling torn between two worlds, he states that “he had
come to the conclusion that he didn’t belong” (41). Also Jugga and Nooran are
divided between their differing religions and their forbidden love for each
other. Train to Pakistan is a text
where almost everyone is experiencing some sort of divided self.
At the end of the novel, the reader understands that Mano Majra will
never be the same. The reader knows that an uncertain change is coming like “a
wind is ruffling” (1).
When we examine the post-colonial novel,
Jasmine, we see a woman with a
divided identity, but the way she deals with it is a departure from the other
novels mentioned.
In
Keaton Patterson’s 2011 final exam essay “Other
Voices: A Dialogue of Identity in Four Parts—Projection, Revision, Division,
Hybridity,” he claims that
Jasmine
picks up after the events of Train to
Pakistan, addressing an anthropological concept affecting identity within
postcolonial studies that is highly controversial—hybridity.” Jasmine is
different because she attempts, as Walcott writes, to “betray them both” (31).
She refuses to be like Dravot or the people of Mano Majra by ascribing a “self”
and “other” identity to her world. Additionally, she does not rebel against
modernity like Okonkwo. Instead she appears to be in a state of limbo because
she “realized I didn’t know who were the assholes, the cowboys or the Indians”
(Mukherjee 27). She embraces both
cultures and likes the fact that:
“Pot roast and gobi aloo: sacrilegious smells fill my kitchen” (213). She
becomes a woman “suspended between worlds” (). It is interesting that when
Walcott speaks of “the English tongue I love” (30),
Jasmine agrees because she only wants a man that speaks English. On the other
hand, she trusts only Asian doctors.
I see her as one who, like Walcott, is “poisoned with the blood of both”
(26). Jasmine states, “In Baden, I
am Jane. Almost” (Mukherjee 26). But at the end of the novel, she leaves town
with Taylor to establish a modern “hybrid” identity, and the reader hopes her
bold choice helps her divided vein to heal.
When I first read Walcott’s poem “A Far Cry from Africa,” I saw only his
“divided vein” and his personal struggle against his divided loyalties between
his homeland of Africa and his new home in the United States.
It has been an interesting discovery to see what happens when a dialogue
takes place between a poem such as Walcott’s and so many of the other colonial
and post-colonial texts that I have read and how a common struggle for identity
unites these diverse texts.
