Frantz Fanon’s Black Skins, White Masks (1952; trans. 1967) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961; trans. 1963) offer an account of colonialism in which the psychology of the ‘native’ is determined by the Manichean dichotomy of the colonial project and, prior to the emergence of the more recent wave of post-colonial theory that focuses on hybridity, several creative writers portrayed a similar mentality. Thus Derek Walcott’s play Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967) dramatizes the split between a European and an African consciousness in its protagonist Makak’s vision of a White Goddess, who initiates him into an atavistic dream of African chieftainship. This Fanonian view of the double consciousness of the colonial psychology is underpinned by the epigraphs to the two parts of the play, which are taken from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Prologue to The Wretched of the Earth. In the second, Walcott quotes a passage from Sartre, in which he emphasizes the inescapability of such a double consciousness, with reference to the …show more content…
Madan Lal with his slippery morals and a general disregard for women denounces the very rubrics of nationalism constructed around the feminine. He openly flaunts his sexual prowess to seduce two women from the same family brazenly defying the codes of conduct befitting a nationalist. The death of Sabhrai in the end reinforces the image of the self-sacrificing mother (redeeming womanhood) which can save a nation/son in distress. Champak the transgressing wife shows the about face of the venerated woman who can forego her chastity to fulfill her carnal desires. The women amply project the double consciousness inveigling the colonized nation. The women as sole custodians of the so called immaculate nationalistic feelings are interrogated through characters like Beena and
“I like to repeat that I write neither in French nor in Creole. I write in Maryse Conde,”1 (“Liaison dangereuse,” 2007) is a statement that could not be less accurate for the Guadeloupean writer. Writing in French is especially problematic for post-colonialist Francophone authors; using the language of the colonizer while attempting to dismantle cultural and linguistic hierarchy seems to be an act of futility. To be sure, Conde, the author of Crossing the Mangrove, apparently writes in the French language but she capably deconstructs the notion that a language must be necessarily tied to the culture and history it traditionally represents. Through careful practice of intertextuality (the shaping of one text's meaning through reference or application of a previous text) and narrative experimentation in Crossing the Mangrove, Conde demonstrates that objectivity in every sense is impossible. Using the French language is not an act of capitulation to the colonizer and acceptance of all things “French” in the same way that one person's retelling of an event is not the ultimate truth. In Crossing the Mangrove, Conde presents the strange and dark history of Francis Sancher from multiple perspectives and simultaneously works in aspects of the Western literary canon (specifically, William Faulkner). This emphasis on literary and real-life incoherency is iterated by the symbolic motif of trees and their roots throughout the novel. In analyzing Crossing the Mangrove, it is evident that the amalgamation of intertextuality, shifting narrative perspectives, and the motif of trees and their roots contextualizes the fragmented nature of diasporic identity. Truly, it i...
...Conrad removes Marlow’s bias, but through the inclusion of careful details he is able to establish his themes. The cruelty of white man to the natives, appearances being deceiving, the nobility of the Africans – all are clear messages of this text that come across not from Marlow’s opinion, but rather the careful inclusion of details and symbolism. No bigger symbol helps Conrad reinforce his theme than the continuous battle of light and dark, and his use of the two is the cornerstone from which he builds meaning from symbolism.
Conrad begins his novel by confirming the stereotypical view of Africans, but then turning the public’s perception of them upside down. As Marlow travels down to the Congo in the French steamer, he sees a band of Africans rowing a boat along the shore of Africa. The men sang, shouted, and moved with a “wild vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true as the surf along their coast” (11). Marlow watches these men with comfort, confirming his own beliefs and the European’s beliefs that Africans were savage and strong. Afterwards, Marlow arrives at the Congo and sees six black men trudging like starved prisoners; “they were dying slowly… nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation” (14). The chain gang also supports the preconceptions of an African. Before Marlow leaves for the Congo, he visits his aunt who praises him as a worker who will help the poor, starving savages of Africa. The image of the blacks, who were all connected together with a ch...
In the present era of decolonization, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness presents one of fictions strongest accounts of British imperialism. Conrad’s attitude towards imperialism and race has been the subject of much literary and historical debate. Many literary critics view Conrad as accepting blindly the arrogant attitude of the white male European and condemn Conrad to be a racist and imperialists. The other side vehemently defends Conrad, perceiving the novel to be an attack on imperialism and the colonial experience. Understanding the two viewpoints side by side provides a unique understanding that leads to a commonality that both share; the novel simply presents a criticism of colonialists in Africa. The novel merely portrays a fictional account of British imperialism in the African jungle, where fiction offers maximum entertainment it lacks in focus. The novel is not a critique of European colonialism and imperialism, but rather a presentation of colonialism and the theme of darkness throughout the novel sheds a negative light on the selfishness of humanity and the system that was taking advantage of the native peoples. In Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, Conrad presents a criticism of British imperial colonization not for the purpose of taking sides, but with aims of bettering the system that was in place during Conrad’s experience in the African Congo. Conrad uses the character of Marlow and his original justification of imperialism so long as it was efficient and unselfish that was later transformed when the reality of colonialism displayed the selfishness of man, to show that colonialism throughout history displaces the needs of the mother country over the colonized peoples and is thus always selfish.
... turmoil of feelings that cannot co-exist in harmony. Marlow's inablity to create a distinction between colors “ so dark-green as to be almost black” is a manifestation of his consideration for the continent. Furthermore, the following sentence compares the deep blue of the sea as “blurred by a creeping mist”, again leaving Africa an uninteresting and characterless ground. According to his syntax, Conrad considers the continent a cluster of nothingness. With colors that all merge together to create “black” he gives it a weary feel. An entity which stands alone, and which will never be understood by Europen imperialists. With such a closely compacted prose, with such contradictory elements the reader has a hard time creating an idea of Africa. Marlows struggle to physically and mentally penetrate it is a demonstration of the unclarity the author posseses of Africa.
Elizabeth Ammon’s “The Myth of Imperial Whiteness” and Kenneth Bernard’s “Imagery and Symbolism in Ethan Frome” both have two vastly different perspectives on the same work of literature. Ammons goes into extensive detail to support the concept of racism that exists in Ethan Frome. Through the rich usage of symbolism, dynamic and static characters as well as imagery, Bormand offers his analysis on the characterization of Ethan Frome as well. Through the comparison of each critical work’s beginning, or introduction and conclusion, the variations in style and approach are quickly perceived.
In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Charles Marlow relates to his listeners aboard the Nellie the story of his service with a European company operating in the African Congo. Arriving in this European country to interview for employment, Marlow recalls, "I arrived in a city that always makes me think of a white sepulchre. Prejudice no doubt" (73). But whose prejudice is he speaking of: his or that of the citizens of that commercial center? Either way, his image is prophetic. The white sepulchre contains the remains of the countless Africans slaughtered by these colonizers--not in the form of corpses, but in the wealth that has been stolen from the African continent. The significance of the sepulchre's whiteness (and that of the longed-for ivory) lies in the contrasting images of a piece of white worsted and the starched white collars that Marlow comes upon in the jungles of the Congo. While the collars represent the violence, oppression, and hatred that dominate the European's treatment of the African, the white worsted is an attempt by ...
In Cry, the beloved country, Alan Paton tells the story of his journey across Africa, his experiences with the colonized Africa, and the destruction of the beautiful, pre-colonialism native land of Africa. Heart of Darkness also tells the story of a man and his experiences with colonialism, but a man who comes from a different time period and a very different background than Alan Paton’s Stephen Kumalo. Although, both Joseph Conrad and Alan Paton portray the colonized areas as very negative, death filled, and sinful places, it is when one analyzes the descriptions of the native lands of Africa that the authors reasons for their disapproval of colonialism are truly revealed. When comparing the writing styles of Alan Paton and Joseph Conrad, their descriptions of the land and the people in both works reveal their different attitudes and views towards colonialism. While Paton and Conrad ultimately oppose colonialism, Paton is concerned with the disappearance of African tribal tradition, whereas Conrad is concerned with the perceived corruption of the white colonists.
Acclaimed Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe’s 1958 novel, Things Fall Apart, is a story about Okonkwo, a man from the fictional village of Umuofia. Okonkwo’s attempt to form an idealized self-identity and the stress he experiences in living up to its image wears his life, and eventually destroys the very identity he so desperately sought. Okonkwo’s end is analogous to the end of his tribe and its culture—Achebe refers to the Igbo peoples’ culture as the Ibo culture in his book. Furthermore, Okonkwo’s end shows the pain experienced by the change in power balances as the rulers became the ruled, with the white man colonizing Africa. The Heart of Darkness hardly needs an introduction; Joseph Conrad, its writer, wrote the novella based on his experiences as a captain on the Congo. The protagonist is Charles Marlow, whose impression of the colonized Congo basins along with its tribal inhabitants and the raiding white men amidst the deep, dark, disease-infested forests of Congo form the basis of the story. Things Fall Apart and Heart of Darkness are both based around situations that instigate the awe-inspiring, and yet horrifying confluence of races and cultures. However, while the former tells the story from the colonized peoples’ perspective, the latter tells it from the colonizers’ perspective. This paper attempts to highlight the differences and similarities in these novels by exploring the underlying themes and unusual circumstances portrayed in them.
The White Savior Complex is a trope where an ordinary ethnically European character meets an underprivileged non-European character. Taking pity on the other characters situation, the White Savior ‘selflessly’ volunteers themselves as their tutor, mentor, or caretaker, to help them rise above their predisposition (White Mans Burden, 2004). The White Savior, at their core is the application of colonialized ideals, which casts people of colour as incompetent, and hopeless, until the White Savior comes to rescue them (White Mans Burden, 2004). A common destructive trait of this trope involves white people conquering non-white people, and eliminating their culture under the prefix of 4helping them (White Mans Burden, 2004). The conception of this trope took place in the 18th and 19th century in adventure fictions. During the period of European exploration, the trope has since modernized and has become problematically common (Kings...
Self awareness of a person’s identity can lead to a challenging scope of ascertaining moving forward: the moment he/she has an earth- shattering revelation comprehending, they of African descendant and they are a problem. The awakening of double-consciousness grew within the literary cannon sensing the pressure of duality in the works of Native Son and The Bluest Eye, Richard Wright and Toni Morrison respectively create two characters who deal with this struggle. It is illustrated through both text how society creates situations that impose the characters Bigger and Pecola encountering extreme measures in the mind frame of double consciousness in their pursuit of survival physically, the search for identity, the desire of self- expression and self-fulfillment.
The study of the (non-Western) “Other”, defined by Trouillot as the Savage Slot, commenced before Anthropology became a discipline. Thus, Anthropology did not fashion the concept of the “Savage” or “Other” (Trouillot 2003:28). Instead, it is initially associated with the accounts of travelers and explorers and literature of the sixteenth century and seventeenth centuries. In 1516, Thomas More composed a fictional account of the island Utopia, which became “the prototypical nowhere of the European imagination” (Trouillot 2003:14). The appeal of the “Elsewhere” to Europeans was fulfilled by travel accounts that portrayed the savage, such as those of Jean-Baptiste Du Tertr...
In order to develop her argument, Mould relies on the texts of three authors and their contributions to the postcolonial discourse: Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, Homi Bhabha’s foreword to the 1986 edition of this book, and Chilla Bulbeck’s, Re-Orientating
Darkness. It pervades every corner of this world, casting literal and metaphorical shadow over everything. Creeping in the hearts of humans, drifting across the night sky, under the bed, darkness is a terrifying, yet quintessential concept in our human mentality. And, as such, it presents itself in cultures and stories around the world to explain the unknown and the terrifying. Through the presentation of the struggle with internal and external “darkness,” both Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart draw upon contrasting viewpoints and cultures, as well as an ironic play of “darkness” between the Europeans and the Africans, to construe the tragedy unfolding in Colonial Africa.
The initial stanza introduces Africa from its very creation. Tagore describes the sea ‘[snatching]’ Africa ‘from the breast of Mother Asia’. The aggressive undertone of the verb, ‘snatched’ portrays the turmoil of the birthing process and it conjures an image of a child being seized from his or her nursing mother. The image, which cites one of the most primal human injustices, instantly discomforts readers. The line characterises Africa as an innocent child who is forced to be separated from her mother and whose nurturing has been stilted. This intensifies the effect of 'civilisation's barbarous greed' and exploitation by making it appear as a rape, thereby instigating a sense of outrage in readers. The personification of both the ‘angry sea’ who ‘snatched’ Africa and of ‘Mother Asia’, enlivens these elements of ...