20th Century civilization was torn apart repeatedly by ferocious wars which were fought with dangerous new weapons and ideologies. When Stephen Crane live through and reported on the Spanish American War, fought- among other things- to build up the nation's masculinity, he saw a war frenzied nation ready to prove itself with a complete disregard for the human cost. While during World War 2 there was a stronger case to be made for a clear and present danger, proponents of war still ignored the cost and destruction of war while fixating on the profit and power that war can bring. By comparing Stephen Crane's "War Is Kind" to George Oppen's "Survival: Infantry" it is possible to look at two very different wars and the difficulty which two poets had viewing a world of carnage and bloodshed.
Stephen Crane begins his poem "War Is Kind" with his usual biting irony and general cynicism for the world around him. When he writes, "Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind. / Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky / And the affrighted steed ran on alone, / Do not weep. / War is kind" (Crane ln 1-5) he is reacting against the contemporary political dialogue praising war as a masculine activity which would keep the men of the country in shape. While women were taught to be proud of their husbands' noble struggle, this sought to remove women's fears about their husbands safety. While people in high positions in the government and media were able to discuss abstract values of war, the rank and file of the country were forced into a meaningless conflict over colonial possessions.
Crane continues his cynicism by demonstrating the regard soldiers were actually held in. He writes, "These men were born to drill and die. / The unexplained glory flies above them, / Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom -- / A field where a thousand corpses lie" (Crane ln 8-11). To Crane, instead of these men moving to a place of glory through their time in combat, they are simply pawns to powerful men who see them as useful for no more than to "drill and die." While the casualty rate in the Spanish-American war was nowhere near as great as wars which would soon follow, soldiers were still being sent to their doom for dubious imperial gains while being told they would receive glory.
The poet George Oppen personally served in combat in World War 2, giving him the ability to accurately position his poetry within the trauma of the war. He opens his poem "Survival: Infantry" with the lines, "And the world changed. / There had been trees and people, / sidewalks and roads" (Oppen ln 1-3). Oppen is viewing the world as having been destroyed by the Second World War, and he would have seen all too much of this carnage up close in the 1940s. After this line there are many about how the world has been destroyed, and then he ends with a poignant call to those who lost loved ones, "And the letters came. People who addressed us thru our lives / They left us gasping. And in tears / In the same mud in the terrible ground" (Opper 10-12). By using the title "Survival: Infantry" but not using specific language relating to combat, Opper is able to bring out the readers existing ideas about the glory of combat and the excitement of survival, only to surprise the reader when there is no glory and nothing survives. This technique allows him to frame his poem without using language which explicitly shows (and thus would have a tendency to accidentally glorify) war.
While Stephen Crane and George Oppen may seem like somewhat strange poems to compare, their cynical take on two different wars lets the reader know something about portrayals of war in the 20th Century. While Crane uses relatively explicit irony within the words of his poem (which formally lacks a title) Oppen takes a different course and uses the irony to attach negative thoughts relating to war to a title which one would imagine glorified martial activities. Both of these men saw the world falling to pieces within a country that was enthusiastically endorsing the move into carnage and mayhem. Both men understood what so many are yet to learn: war is never kind.
Crane, Stephen. "War Is Kind." Poet's Corner. Web. 31 Mar. 2010.
Oppen, George. "Survival: IInfantry." The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Ed. Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O'Clair. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003. 835. Print.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The Modern Indian in Midnight's Children
Following the collapse of European empires there was no chance of returning to the pre-European status quo. Newly independent states had been transformed by European culture, technology, and government, leaving new states in a position to enter a modern world shaped by Europe instead of returning to pre-European traditions. While the betel-nut chewers, who represent a chorus in the novel, represent continuity in the Indian subcontinent, they are not representatives of the new India. The idea of creating a coherent Indian identity required an abandonment of traditional tribal culture and strict Muslim ethics. While these changes are welcomed by the European-educated, they represent an uncertain future for traditionalists.
From the very beginning of Midnight's Children the conflict between Aadam Aziz's European education and traditional Kashmiri culture is a central feature of the novel. His emotions are tied to the landscape even before he knows how society will react to his return, "He also felt--inexplicably--as though the old place resented this educated, stethoscoped return" (Rushdie 5). Where Aadam Azis is curious about his place as a modern man in a timeless and ancient valley, the ferryman Tai is hostile to everything representing modernity. The narrator describes that, "to the ferryman, the bag represents Abroad; it is the alien thing, the invader, progress" (16). To the traditional peasantry modernity represented in a threat because they lacked the skills or resources to take advantage of it. While paying someone to manually push a raft across a lake is not efficient in the modern world, it is the only skill which Tai has and he does not want to see that traditional culture leave.
Aadam's foreign notions also complicate his relationship with his very traditional Muslim wife. Aadam ponders the change that traveling abroad has created in many Indians, "the Indians have fought for the British; so many of them have seen the world by now, and been tained by Abroad. They will not easily go back to the old world" (32). This would become one of the defining features of newly independent states forced to make a decision between modernity and tradition. To Naseem these trips abroad create a serious moral problem in the men, "I know you Europe-returned men. You find terrible women and then you try to make us girls be like them" (32). However, her dramatics are put into context by the fact that a large part of her anger is directed at the fact that her husband simply requested her to move during sex. Aadam gives a directive to his wife when he can no longer stand her traditionalism, "Forget about being a good Kashmiri girl. Start thinking about being a modern Indian woman" (33). The problem is that Naseem does not desire to be a "modern Indian woman," were it even possible to define such a thing.
While these changes seem more like personal issues for the characters in the novel, the scale is greatly increased when they are applied to conditions of the entire nation. The very fabric of India was falling around them, such as "the untouchables being touched" (84). While this seems like an obvious step in favor of progress to the modern reader, to traditional Hindus this would have been shocking. Further, there were great difficulties apportioning land previously nationalized by the British, particularly in a society where there had traditionally been such a strong caste system and in a time when Socialism was very fashionable. Joseph D'Costa is skeptical of independence at all, stating, "This independence is for the rich only; the poor are being made to kill each other like flies" (120). It is difficult to know how the average Indian fared under British rule in India; the statistic has been given that in 1900 the life expectancy in India was 20, which is appallingly low. However, one has to imagine that given starvation, disease, and violence that Indians had never enjoyed a particularly long life expectancy.
Midnight's Children is full of characters traveling through an ambivalent new world free of British rule. The problems with this are shown repeatedly, such as illiteracy, ignorance, a resistance to change, and tribal loyalties. Have the characters in the novel advanced to such a point that home rule is desirable? Further, is it even desirable for an area as large as India, full of varying ethnicities and religion, to be a single state? While Indians by-and-large embraced independence it can be difficult to handle something one has nothing had before.
Rushdie, Salman. Midnight's Children. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin, 1991. Print.
From the very beginning of Midnight's Children the conflict between Aadam Aziz's European education and traditional Kashmiri culture is a central feature of the novel. His emotions are tied to the landscape even before he knows how society will react to his return, "He also felt--inexplicably--as though the old place resented this educated, stethoscoped return" (Rushdie 5). Where Aadam Azis is curious about his place as a modern man in a timeless and ancient valley, the ferryman Tai is hostile to everything representing modernity. The narrator describes that, "to the ferryman, the bag represents Abroad; it is the alien thing, the invader, progress" (16). To the traditional peasantry modernity represented in a threat because they lacked the skills or resources to take advantage of it. While paying someone to manually push a raft across a lake is not efficient in the modern world, it is the only skill which Tai has and he does not want to see that traditional culture leave.
Aadam's foreign notions also complicate his relationship with his very traditional Muslim wife. Aadam ponders the change that traveling abroad has created in many Indians, "the Indians have fought for the British; so many of them have seen the world by now, and been tained by Abroad. They will not easily go back to the old world" (32). This would become one of the defining features of newly independent states forced to make a decision between modernity and tradition. To Naseem these trips abroad create a serious moral problem in the men, "I know you Europe-returned men. You find terrible women and then you try to make us girls be like them" (32). However, her dramatics are put into context by the fact that a large part of her anger is directed at the fact that her husband simply requested her to move during sex. Aadam gives a directive to his wife when he can no longer stand her traditionalism, "Forget about being a good Kashmiri girl. Start thinking about being a modern Indian woman" (33). The problem is that Naseem does not desire to be a "modern Indian woman," were it even possible to define such a thing.
While these changes seem more like personal issues for the characters in the novel, the scale is greatly increased when they are applied to conditions of the entire nation. The very fabric of India was falling around them, such as "the untouchables being touched" (84). While this seems like an obvious step in favor of progress to the modern reader, to traditional Hindus this would have been shocking. Further, there were great difficulties apportioning land previously nationalized by the British, particularly in a society where there had traditionally been such a strong caste system and in a time when Socialism was very fashionable. Joseph D'Costa is skeptical of independence at all, stating, "This independence is for the rich only; the poor are being made to kill each other like flies" (120). It is difficult to know how the average Indian fared under British rule in India; the statistic has been given that in 1900 the life expectancy in India was 20, which is appallingly low. However, one has to imagine that given starvation, disease, and violence that Indians had never enjoyed a particularly long life expectancy.
Midnight's Children is full of characters traveling through an ambivalent new world free of British rule. The problems with this are shown repeatedly, such as illiteracy, ignorance, a resistance to change, and tribal loyalties. Have the characters in the novel advanced to such a point that home rule is desirable? Further, is it even desirable for an area as large as India, full of varying ethnicities and religion, to be a single state? While Indians by-and-large embraced independence it can be difficult to handle something one has nothing had before.
Rushdie, Salman. Midnight's Children. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin, 1991. Print.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Home in Wide Sargasso Sea
The house was burning, the yellow-red sky was like sunset and I knew that I would never see Coulibri again (Rhys 27).
While Post-Colonial literature frequently deals with issues of occupation, violence, and displacement, it is uncommon that the genre shows concerned for the displaced colonists who were no longer welcome in the lands of their birth and had never called Europe home. Jean Rhys fits this description, having came from a slave-owning family in Dominica who left due to social tension. Similarly, her character Antoinette Cosway is driven out of her home by violence from black Jamaicans due to circumstances wholly unrelated to Antoinette. Wide Sargasso Sea is a useful novel for discussing the sense of belonging which white Creoles were unable to find as the classic system of colonialism was being deconstructed.
The first section of the novel functions to give the character background of Antoinette's family before she meets Mr. Rochester. A defining feature of this background is the outcast place that white Creole's fill in West Indian society following the emancipation of the slaves. In the essay "Modernist Crosscurrents" the author Mary Emery mentions a line in one of Rhys' novels which has been used in collections of West Caribbean literature, the narrator in Good Morning, Midnight states, "I have no pride - no name, no face, no country. I don't belong anywhere" (qtd Emery 167). This lack of face and country is caused by the nature of the West Indies, being a society where the natives were decimated which was repopulated by European immigrants and African slaves. As such, these nations represented a full fledged fusion of African traditions and Europe laws and technology creating a brand new society. As Emery describes the situation, "Rhys' novels portray an absence rather than loss of identity and the homelessness of one who never had a home" (Emery 167). These quotations perfectly describe the situation of Antoinette, who grew up as a hated but powerful minority in a land still controlled by the English but primarily populated with former slaves.
The violent expulsion of the Cosways from their ancestral plantation is shown early in the novel as a traumatic event which marks the symbolic end of the Cosway family. Antoinette wakes up at night to find a mob of black West Indians outside of her family home yelling out the phrase "white nigger" and proceeding to set the house on fire. The trauma of this event is describe in detail, especially the death of her younger brother, "there was another smell, of burned hair, and I looked and my mother was in the room carrying Pierre...I thought, Pierre is dead. He looked dead" (Rhys 23). It is Mr. Mason's decision that it would be safe to stay in Coulibri, leading to the death of Pierre which ultimately led his wife to hate him. Antoinette tries to explain to Mr. Rochester the sheer cruelty which caused her mother to go insane, including the poisoning of her horse (79). Like her daughter, Mrs. Mason does not know what to do when expelled from her home which was previously a sort of island paradise.
The worst part of the trauma for Antoinette, apart from losing her home, is the realization that she will never be accepted in West Indian society. During the riot outside of her home Antoinette sees her best friend Tia, and imagines, "I will live with Tia and I will be like her" (27). As she is thinking this Tia throws a stone at her face, which causes her a serious injury. After waking up from this traumatic injury Antoinette is homeless literally and figuratively, with her house having been burnt down and herself being violently rejected by West Indian society.
European colonizers have recently been looked at as historical victimizers. In reality, many colonizers began poor and went to the New World seeking a fortune. By the time of decolonization, many of these families had been in the far reaches of European empires for generations, and many (such as Antoinette or Rhys before moving to England) had never been to Europe. Like Afro-Caribs, Creoles did not have a home besides the West Indies; unlike Afro-Caribs, society following decolonization was not a society which Creoles were welcome in. Instead, colonists in areas which were not primarily white ultimately fled their homelands and spent the rest of their lives in exile. Unfortunately for these exiles, there are not many places like the West Indies.
Emery, Mary L. "Modernist Crosscurrents." Wide Sargasso Sea. By Jean Rhys, Judith L.
Raiskin, and Charlotte Brontë. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. 161-73. Print.
Rhys, Jean, Judith L. Raiskin, and Charlotte Brontë. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. Print.
While Post-Colonial literature frequently deals with issues of occupation, violence, and displacement, it is uncommon that the genre shows concerned for the displaced colonists who were no longer welcome in the lands of their birth and had never called Europe home. Jean Rhys fits this description, having came from a slave-owning family in Dominica who left due to social tension. Similarly, her character Antoinette Cosway is driven out of her home by violence from black Jamaicans due to circumstances wholly unrelated to Antoinette. Wide Sargasso Sea is a useful novel for discussing the sense of belonging which white Creoles were unable to find as the classic system of colonialism was being deconstructed.
The first section of the novel functions to give the character background of Antoinette's family before she meets Mr. Rochester. A defining feature of this background is the outcast place that white Creole's fill in West Indian society following the emancipation of the slaves. In the essay "Modernist Crosscurrents" the author Mary Emery mentions a line in one of Rhys' novels which has been used in collections of West Caribbean literature, the narrator in Good Morning, Midnight states, "I have no pride - no name, no face, no country. I don't belong anywhere" (qtd Emery 167). This lack of face and country is caused by the nature of the West Indies, being a society where the natives were decimated which was repopulated by European immigrants and African slaves. As such, these nations represented a full fledged fusion of African traditions and Europe laws and technology creating a brand new society. As Emery describes the situation, "Rhys' novels portray an absence rather than loss of identity and the homelessness of one who never had a home" (Emery 167). These quotations perfectly describe the situation of Antoinette, who grew up as a hated but powerful minority in a land still controlled by the English but primarily populated with former slaves.
The violent expulsion of the Cosways from their ancestral plantation is shown early in the novel as a traumatic event which marks the symbolic end of the Cosway family. Antoinette wakes up at night to find a mob of black West Indians outside of her family home yelling out the phrase "white nigger" and proceeding to set the house on fire. The trauma of this event is describe in detail, especially the death of her younger brother, "there was another smell, of burned hair, and I looked and my mother was in the room carrying Pierre...I thought, Pierre is dead. He looked dead" (Rhys 23). It is Mr. Mason's decision that it would be safe to stay in Coulibri, leading to the death of Pierre which ultimately led his wife to hate him. Antoinette tries to explain to Mr. Rochester the sheer cruelty which caused her mother to go insane, including the poisoning of her horse (79). Like her daughter, Mrs. Mason does not know what to do when expelled from her home which was previously a sort of island paradise.
The worst part of the trauma for Antoinette, apart from losing her home, is the realization that she will never be accepted in West Indian society. During the riot outside of her home Antoinette sees her best friend Tia, and imagines, "I will live with Tia and I will be like her" (27). As she is thinking this Tia throws a stone at her face, which causes her a serious injury. After waking up from this traumatic injury Antoinette is homeless literally and figuratively, with her house having been burnt down and herself being violently rejected by West Indian society.
European colonizers have recently been looked at as historical victimizers. In reality, many colonizers began poor and went to the New World seeking a fortune. By the time of decolonization, many of these families had been in the far reaches of European empires for generations, and many (such as Antoinette or Rhys before moving to England) had never been to Europe. Like Afro-Caribs, Creoles did not have a home besides the West Indies; unlike Afro-Caribs, society following decolonization was not a society which Creoles were welcome in. Instead, colonists in areas which were not primarily white ultimately fled their homelands and spent the rest of their lives in exile. Unfortunately for these exiles, there are not many places like the West Indies.
Emery, Mary L. "Modernist Crosscurrents." Wide Sargasso Sea. By Jean Rhys, Judith L.
Raiskin, and Charlotte Brontë. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. 161-73. Print.
Rhys, Jean, Judith L. Raiskin, and Charlotte Brontë. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. Print.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Things Fall Apart as Landmark 20th Century Literature?
I'm finding it particularly difficult to think of an conceivable reason why Things Fall Apart should be considered one of the great novels of the 20th century. While it is entertaining, it is also simplistic and undeveloped. Indeed, other than providing a certain amount of cultural knowledge it does not do anything which separates it from the vast majority of popular or young adult literature published. Not only does Achebe fail to demonstrate a mastery of the English language (something which has been accomplished by many non-native authors) his novel is also completely devoid of developed characters. If he wanted Europeans to realize that Africans were not one-dimensional he should have created a main character who was less of a savage.
While Things Fall Apart is considered to be the beginning of the 20th Century African novel (or something of that nature) it is entirely unremarkable except for its chronologically early popularity; that is to say, other African fiction does not come from it but simply comes later. Were a similar novel written which did not take place in Africa, it may have fallen entirely out of print at this point. This novel quite simply does not meet any imaginable standard of great literature, nor does it create a discernible "African Voice." Instead, Achebe provides a simplistic narrative of the process of colonization which is only unique in that it is set in Africa.
However, beyond stylistic issues, this novel has several weaknesses when trying to make its intended points. Firstly, while Achebe's Africans are sympathetic characters and clearly intended to be wholly human, it is difficult for the reader to be particularly critical of the British, being as the Africans were mutilating the corpses of children and leaving twins to die of exposure. There is nothing nice to call these things but "savage customs." Certainly not a culture anyone thinks should be held onto. It is very easy to understand how this seemingly accurate experience in Africa would lead Europeans to civilize the continent- and civilize doesn't need to be in quotations when one is talking about ending the practice of leaving twins to die of exposure. More than anything, the novel shows the end of a culture which may have had a sort of quaint pastoral charm if one is a Romanticist or an egalitarian anarcho-Primitivist, but was savage and in great need of reform. While it is unfortunate that Africans were suddenly put under a foreign yoke, jobs were created, prices for agricultural goods increased drastically, and untouchables were allowed into the fold of decent society. And somewhere someone is crying because this happened.
A further weakness of this novel comes in Achebe's extraordinarily clumsy handling of European disinterest in African customs. This is akin to Upton Sinclair writing a book which was supposed to be entirely in favor of socialism then not showing enough faith in his readers (incidentally, the "huddled masses") to figure out the message on their own, and going on to destroy an otherwise reasonable narrative with explicit political proselytizing. Achebe falls into the same trap with the District Commissioner who is planning on writing a book about African customs. Specifically, his idea that Okonkwo's story could occupy a chapter, or "Perhaps not a whole chapter, but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate" (209). As the book closes with that, the ending message is that to Europeans African lives will never be more than a sidestory (whereas the reader nows that it is possible to write a novel about Okonkwo: they just read it.) However, this point is well made without this commentary. Instead of ending the book by saying that the body of a suicide will desecrate the soil, thus leaving the novel a tragedy whereby an admirable character is unable to adapt to a rapidly changing world, the reader is left with a patronizing effort to induce guilt about an insufficient breadth of cultural knowledge.
Things Fall Apart is a lot of things. It is interesting and entertaining. It is informative about African culture and customs. However, this novel does nothing to further the art of the novel, it instead just takes basic conventions of narration and sets them in Africa. The use of African religion is no different from a European work discussing God, and the things the Africans go through are no different than what progress did to disrupt the European social fabric. It is easy to understand why this book is read in schools, being as I would have been able to easily read and understand it in the third grade, but it seems this becoming one of the "Great Novels of the 20th Century" has far more to do with the ideology of literary scholars than with any real or imagined literary merit.
On one level I feel bad being so harsh, as I actually quite enjoyed reading this book and found the exposure of African culture to be very interesting, however the books weaknesses in plot, storytelling, and style wholly separate it from great world literature of the period. The issue with this book is that it is something you would give to a friend who doesn't like reading when they are about to fly somewhere, it is no sort of revolution for third world literature.
Further, it is extraordinarily ironic that Achebe wants to call Conrad racist for portraying Africans as savages, then rights a story about how leaving twin babies to die of exposure because they were cursed were normal. According to Achebe these people were practicing human sacrifice, and somehow the use of the term savage is unfair. Like so many other terms, savage has been attacked by cultural Marxists to the point of being profane in any context which is not criticizing someone for using it to describe a native. In reality, Conrad is showing the pieces of the society that Achebe says fell apart because of Europeans. Ironically, Heart of Darkness is in most ways a far more scathing critique of colonialism than Things Fall Apart, being as most of the actions that Europeans take in the latter are objectively positive whereas in the former the actions of Europeans are morally questionable at best.
While Things Fall Apart is considered to be the beginning of the 20th Century African novel (or something of that nature) it is entirely unremarkable except for its chronologically early popularity; that is to say, other African fiction does not come from it but simply comes later. Were a similar novel written which did not take place in Africa, it may have fallen entirely out of print at this point. This novel quite simply does not meet any imaginable standard of great literature, nor does it create a discernible "African Voice." Instead, Achebe provides a simplistic narrative of the process of colonization which is only unique in that it is set in Africa.
However, beyond stylistic issues, this novel has several weaknesses when trying to make its intended points. Firstly, while Achebe's Africans are sympathetic characters and clearly intended to be wholly human, it is difficult for the reader to be particularly critical of the British, being as the Africans were mutilating the corpses of children and leaving twins to die of exposure. There is nothing nice to call these things but "savage customs." Certainly not a culture anyone thinks should be held onto. It is very easy to understand how this seemingly accurate experience in Africa would lead Europeans to civilize the continent- and civilize doesn't need to be in quotations when one is talking about ending the practice of leaving twins to die of exposure. More than anything, the novel shows the end of a culture which may have had a sort of quaint pastoral charm if one is a Romanticist or an egalitarian anarcho-Primitivist, but was savage and in great need of reform. While it is unfortunate that Africans were suddenly put under a foreign yoke, jobs were created, prices for agricultural goods increased drastically, and untouchables were allowed into the fold of decent society. And somewhere someone is crying because this happened.
A further weakness of this novel comes in Achebe's extraordinarily clumsy handling of European disinterest in African customs. This is akin to Upton Sinclair writing a book which was supposed to be entirely in favor of socialism then not showing enough faith in his readers (incidentally, the "huddled masses") to figure out the message on their own, and going on to destroy an otherwise reasonable narrative with explicit political proselytizing. Achebe falls into the same trap with the District Commissioner who is planning on writing a book about African customs. Specifically, his idea that Okonkwo's story could occupy a chapter, or "Perhaps not a whole chapter, but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate" (209). As the book closes with that, the ending message is that to Europeans African lives will never be more than a sidestory (whereas the reader nows that it is possible to write a novel about Okonkwo: they just read it.) However, this point is well made without this commentary. Instead of ending the book by saying that the body of a suicide will desecrate the soil, thus leaving the novel a tragedy whereby an admirable character is unable to adapt to a rapidly changing world, the reader is left with a patronizing effort to induce guilt about an insufficient breadth of cultural knowledge.
Things Fall Apart is a lot of things. It is interesting and entertaining. It is informative about African culture and customs. However, this novel does nothing to further the art of the novel, it instead just takes basic conventions of narration and sets them in Africa. The use of African religion is no different from a European work discussing God, and the things the Africans go through are no different than what progress did to disrupt the European social fabric. It is easy to understand why this book is read in schools, being as I would have been able to easily read and understand it in the third grade, but it seems this becoming one of the "Great Novels of the 20th Century" has far more to do with the ideology of literary scholars than with any real or imagined literary merit.
On one level I feel bad being so harsh, as I actually quite enjoyed reading this book and found the exposure of African culture to be very interesting, however the books weaknesses in plot, storytelling, and style wholly separate it from great world literature of the period. The issue with this book is that it is something you would give to a friend who doesn't like reading when they are about to fly somewhere, it is no sort of revolution for third world literature.
Further, it is extraordinarily ironic that Achebe wants to call Conrad racist for portraying Africans as savages, then rights a story about how leaving twin babies to die of exposure because they were cursed were normal. According to Achebe these people were practicing human sacrifice, and somehow the use of the term savage is unfair. Like so many other terms, savage has been attacked by cultural Marxists to the point of being profane in any context which is not criticizing someone for using it to describe a native. In reality, Conrad is showing the pieces of the society that Achebe says fell apart because of Europeans. Ironically, Heart of Darkness is in most ways a far more scathing critique of colonialism than Things Fall Apart, being as most of the actions that Europeans take in the latter are objectively positive whereas in the former the actions of Europeans are morally questionable at best.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
The End of Jews in China
When Jesuit missionaries first discovered Chinese Jews in the 19th Century they were shocked to find out that Jewish communities had existed in China for over a millennium- the largest and longest lasting community being the Kaifeng Jews. Known as the "Seven Surnames and Eight Families," or simply foreigners, Jews had entered Kaifeng fleeing persecution and asked for protection from the governor of the province, at which point they were given Chinese surnames (Buck 3). From this point on, the Jews had no reason to fear persecution in polytheistic China, where their religion was not offensive or even understood by the Chinese. Instead, the Jews of Kaifeng were at risk of disappearing through assimilation, a possibility basically non-existent in Europe and the Near East.
The story of Peony deals with the end of the Kaifeng Jewish community- the point at which they stopped being a separate people and become fully Chinese. Indeed, by the end of the novel the last Rabbi had died, no one in the community is able to read Hebrew, the the synagogue is falling into disrepair, with the holy stones being sold to foreigners. The Jews of China simultaneously achieve what European Jews were hoping for and avoiding: a lack of discrimination and complete assimilation.
In the novel the character David is trying to understand why his people faced persecution in other lands. An old trader of Jewish origin, who regularly took caravan journeys West tried to answer this question by explaining a story from his childhood, "They were hated because they seperated themselves from the rest of mankind. They called themselves chosen of God...I come of a large family, and there was one among us, my third brother, who declared himself the favorite of my parents. He boasted of it to the rest of us--'I am the chosen one,'...And we hated him...I hate him to this day. I would gladly see him dead...I kill nothing. But if he died I would not mourn" (Buck 163). For a people who have undergone seemingly inexplicably oppression for all of history. This would also explain why this did not create a issue in China, where the people thought of the Jews as having their own god, not being the chosen people of the one true God. To Kao Lien, the Jewish trader, this has not been worth it, and he sees the time for this separation as being over. "Are we to forget all that we are? No...But we are to forget the past and separate ourselves no more. We are to live now, wherever we are, and we are to pour the strength of our souls into the peoples of the world" (Buck 164). The Chinese Jews ultimately followed this strategy, though they had little choice as their culture faded. By the time of the Revolution the Chinese Jews suffered like everyone else in China, but no differently.
It is easy to understand why the Jews would want to maintain their culture. It is also easy to understand why their success at business and trade would make them feel like they had a separate society worth holding onto. However, it is difficult to determine if maintaining a separate culture has really been worth it given the horrific oppression that Jews have faced. Peony creates a very interesting social structure by looking at an unoppressed minority trying to determine if there is any reason to not be Chinese.
The story of Peony deals with the end of the Kaifeng Jewish community- the point at which they stopped being a separate people and become fully Chinese. Indeed, by the end of the novel the last Rabbi had died, no one in the community is able to read Hebrew, the the synagogue is falling into disrepair, with the holy stones being sold to foreigners. The Jews of China simultaneously achieve what European Jews were hoping for and avoiding: a lack of discrimination and complete assimilation.
In the novel the character David is trying to understand why his people faced persecution in other lands. An old trader of Jewish origin, who regularly took caravan journeys West tried to answer this question by explaining a story from his childhood, "They were hated because they seperated themselves from the rest of mankind. They called themselves chosen of God...I come of a large family, and there was one among us, my third brother, who declared himself the favorite of my parents. He boasted of it to the rest of us--'I am the chosen one,'...And we hated him...I hate him to this day. I would gladly see him dead...I kill nothing. But if he died I would not mourn" (Buck 163). For a people who have undergone seemingly inexplicably oppression for all of history. This would also explain why this did not create a issue in China, where the people thought of the Jews as having their own god, not being the chosen people of the one true God. To Kao Lien, the Jewish trader, this has not been worth it, and he sees the time for this separation as being over. "Are we to forget all that we are? No...But we are to forget the past and separate ourselves no more. We are to live now, wherever we are, and we are to pour the strength of our souls into the peoples of the world" (Buck 164). The Chinese Jews ultimately followed this strategy, though they had little choice as their culture faded. By the time of the Revolution the Chinese Jews suffered like everyone else in China, but no differently.
It is easy to understand why the Jews would want to maintain their culture. It is also easy to understand why their success at business and trade would make them feel like they had a separate society worth holding onto. However, it is difficult to determine if maintaining a separate culture has really been worth it given the horrific oppression that Jews have faced. Peony creates a very interesting social structure by looking at an unoppressed minority trying to determine if there is any reason to not be Chinese.
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