Postcolonial Writing

1. Postcolonial Writing LL synoptic Topic for the oral exam

2. What is postcolonial writing? • During colonisation (A Passage to India, Heart of Darkness, Translations) • After colonisation (The God of Small things, Mr Pip) • Interaction: the possibility or impossibility of connecting between Coloniser and colonised • Hegemony and violence. • Revisiting colonial history and imperialism. • Representation of race, culture, ethnicity. Hybridity. • Use of language as a form of oppression or rebellion. • Reasserting identity of indigenous culture. • Intertextuality • Redefining relationships • Fragmentation and hybridity. Structure and languages used. Reflecting the new identity. • Orientalism and mobility • Homecoming • Magic realism

3. Themes History and Time ViolenceEnvironment and Nature Climate and WeatherReligion and Beliefs FoodTransport and Travel Women and Gender issuesClothes and social markers EducationUrban and Rural Life LanguageArt and art forms BetrayalMoney and poverty Love and sexualityJustice and injustice Narration and stylePolitics IntertextualitySocial Class Change and preservation

4. Themes continued HybridityIdentityHegemony and PowerRelationshipsSettingFact and fictionPrejudiceHomecomingMuddles and misunderstandingsCoercion

5. The texts studied A Passage To India, E.M.Forster The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad Translations, Brian Friel Mr Pip, LLoyd Jones

6. India ,The Congo, Ireland, A Pacific Island

7. First person narrator of Matilda, a black 13 year-old living alone with her mother since her father departed for Australia. Set on the island of Bougainville, in the midst of a civil war, when only one white man has decided to stay: Mr Watts, married to Grace, a black woman from the island he met in New Zealand. In the absence of a teacher, Mr Watts reads the children of the island Great Expectations STYLE: Fragmented narrative (intertextuality, the book is an adult Matilda glueing her life together, returns home at the end as she realises that’s where she can be whole); Use of evocative island imagery; Creates a ‘Pacific Great Expectations’ Mr Pip Hot themes:intertextuality of Great Expectations and Mister Pip, mothers and the absence of fathers, imposed white culture/ideas, rebellion, heritage and history, rewriting, education, past traumas, religion

8. Interesting moments • p. 43 ‘In our village there were those who supported the rebels [...] Everyone wished the fighting would go away, and for the white man to come back and re-open the mine. These people missed things [...] We were back to eating what our grandparents had” • Mr Watts invites the parents into his classroom, p. 53, ‘We learned about remedies, such as placing the leaves of white lilies on sores…’ • The Great Expectations book they have been reading from goes missing, and they try to rewrite, p. 109, ‘’When we have gathered all the fragments we will put together the story. It will be good as new.’ But they have trouble remembering it exactly, p. 113, ‘Gist examples were to be a matter of last resort [...] Mr Watts wanted actual words [...] The day world kep intruding and mocking my attempts at remembering’.

9. Interesting moments II • His wife, Grace, black or white? p. 124/125, ‘We were proud because Grace was going to show the world how smart a black kid could be [...] She used her scholarship to hook a white man. [...] we did not know how sick Grace was. We did not know anymore if she was black or white.’ • After Grace dies, the villagers share collective memories, p. 122, ‘They gave their bits of memory to Mr Watts. They filled in a picture of his dead wife.’ • Matilda's father morphing into an Australian, p. 129, ‘... my father was trying to be like them [the Australians], the way he stuck is tummy out. He, too, placed his hands on his hips to turn himself into a teapot. But it was when I saw him smile a sly smile, a white man’s sly smile, that I knew.’

10. Interesting moments III • Characters given names from the white world. Matilda, Dolores, Daniel, Mabel. Yet, characters retain their family names: Liamo, Masoi – names which resist subordination. ”A white man had given us the name of our Island. White men had given me my name. By now it was also clear that the white world had forgotten us.” • The spare room of Grace and Mr Watts presents a hybrid world. A world where they could create a new world for their child Sarah where she could forge her own hybrid identity: “ They agreed to gather their worlds side by side, and leave it to their daughter to pick and choose what she wanted.” This room and child present a utopian view of hybridity; the child dies in infancy showing the impossibility of this hybrid world (p. 153). • Christian faith divides Mrs Watts from Dolores. Yet in the end, it’s what unifies them- Dolores’ faith allows her to stand up against the Redskins, “I am God’s witness”. We see that they both seek the same values.

11. A rural hedge-school, where classes are conducted in Irish, is to be replaced by a national education system in which English is the official language. At the same time, British soldiers are engaged in an ordnance survey involving the anglicisation of Irish place names. STYLE: Play, first performed in Derry, 1980 (The Troubles) ‘post-colonial’, yet set during colonisation (1833), Conceit, performed in English but Irish characters are speaking Irish Translations Hot themes:Language, communication, borders, loyalty, family, roots, subverting categories or stereotypes, change

12. Interesting Moments Act 1 • p. 24/25 ‘Maire: We should all be learning to speak English… I want to be able to speak English because I’m going to America as soon as the harvest’s all saved.’ • p. 23 ‘Hugh: Captain Lancey [...] he speaks - on his own admission- only English [...] he voiced some surprise that we did not speak his language. I explained that a few of us did, on occasion - outside the parish of course- and then usually for the purposes of commerce [...] I went on to propose that our own culture and the classical tongues made a happier conjugation’ • p. 33/34 ‘Lancey: This enormous task has been embarked on so that the military authorities will be equipped with up-to-date and accurate information on every corner of this part of the empire. Owen: The job is being done by soldiers because they are skilled in this work. [...] Manus: What sort of a translation was that, Owen?’

13. Interesting Moments Act 2 • p. 48 ‘Yolland: [...] Even if I did speak Irish I’d always be an outsider here, wouldn’t I? I may learn the password but the language of the tribe will always elude me, won’t it?’ • p. 51 ‘Hugh: Yes, it [Irish] is a rich language, Lieutenant, full of the mythologies of fantasy and hope and self-deception- a syntax opulent with tomorrows. It is our response to mud cabins and a diet of potatoes; our only method of replying to … inevitabilities’ • p. 53 ‘Owen: [...] why do we call it Tobair Vree? [...] Tobair means a well. But what does Vree mean? It’s a corruption of Brian (Gaelic pronunciation) Brian- an erosion of Tobair Bhriain. Because a hundred and fifty years ago there used to be a well there [...] and one morning Brian was found drowned in that well [...] I know the story because my grandfather told it to me. But ask [anyone else] I know they don’t know. [...] do we keep piety with a man long dead, long forgotten, his name ‘eroded’ beyond recognition?

14. Interesting Moments Act 3 • Owen: I know where I live.Hugh: James thinks he knows, too. I look at James and three thoughts occur to me: A – that it is not the literal past, the ‘acts’ of history that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language. James has ceased to make that discrimination. Friel’s Diaries May 1979: The people from Ballybeg would have been Irish-speaking in 1833. So a theatrical conceit will have to be devised by which- even though the charactersspeak English- the audience will assume or accept that they are speaking Irish. Could that work? The title What is being translated, apart from the title? Culture, relationships, boundaries between peoples...

15. The God of Small Things Narrative technique: Two time lines 1969 and 1993 intertwined. The twins Estha and Rahel are 7 years old in ‘69 and 31 in 93. Rahel’s point of view. A child’s and an adult’s viewpoint. The narrative is a patchwork, the story is pieced together in a spiral effect with no warning of changes in time. The reader knows at the start that Sophie Mol has died, that the love laws have been broken (Ammu has a relationship with an untouchable Velutha). The story is to discover what and how.Intertextuality is an important element and reflects this new postcolonial identity. It reflects the struggle to find identity in the postcolonial world. It reflects on whether the characters can or can’t find a harmony between modernity, western influences and Indian cultural and religious laws and identity.

16. Main themes • Political influences: Communism in Kerala, the rise of the Naxalites. The ambiguity and hypocrisy of characters (Chacko, Comrade Pillai) • Religion and social structure/ Syrian christians (IPE family) Caste laws (Velutha and Velya Paapen) • Patriarchal power and violence against women: Papaachi beating Mammachi, Chacko beating Ammu, Ammu’s husband pimping her, The Policeman prodding Ammu’s breasts calling her a Veshya (whore). • History: The History house “but we can’t go in”, Chacko explained,” because we’ve been locked out”p.53 “ “We are a family of Anglophiles..trapped outside our own history”. • Nature: Kerala is luxuriant and vibrant. Nature reflects many elements: the protection for Velutha (the god of small things), danger for Sophie Mol, change as it becomes polluted with modernity. • Change and preservation: the Pickle factory shows both..”things can change in a day”

17. Children: victims of adult mistreatment: the OrangeDrinkLemonDrink man • Use of language.. reading and speaking backwards, making up compound nouns, magic realism, intertextuality. The children reinvent the world around them through language to survive. The twins use telepathy. The line between reality and fiction is blurred. Humour is another technique. • Western and Indian influences.. How harmonious? how incongruous? Clothes: Estha has an “Elvis puff and pointy shoes” Baby Kochamma has bright green gloves, a sari and wellington boots.. Her ornamental garden is an incongruous mixture: exotic flowers and a cherub peeing into Japanese flowers.. An inability to reconcile Indian and Western influences. • Roy’s comment on postcolonial India: The characters are all struggling to find their place but it is a refusal to modernise traditional laws (caste, women) that has destroyed them.

18. A Passage to India Narrative: set in the early 1920’s in India during the British Raj. Written in three volumes Mosque, Caves and Temple. (Muslim, Christianity or the muddle of India, Hindu) The volumes follow the seasons and the plot development: the peak point is in the middle at the hottest season. Omniscient point of view with some Indian terms. (the readership would have had little experience of travel and needed descriptive elements to set the scene. Descriptive passages of nature illustrate the rift between the Indian and the British (Anglo Indian communities)

19. Main themes • Hegemony: the disdain of the British to the Indians: Mrs Callendar:” Why, the kindest thing one can do to a native is let him die”, “they give me the creeps”. • Mutual dislike and distrust: the Indians consider them to turn into ‘little gods’ and to become “venal and aloof”. • Attempts at connecting: various events: The Bridge Party, the trip to the Marabar caves are a failure. The meeting of dr Aziz and Mrs Moore at the Mosque, The tea party at Fielding’s, Aziz and the Sergeant play polo show it is possible. • Herd instinct: The British rally together when Aziz is accused of rape. The Indian communities unite against one common enemy (the British)

20. The muddle of India: symbolised by the effect of the Marabar Caves where the echo is an “Eboum” that confounds all sounds and makes them unintelligible. The Indians and the British have a different relationship with the world (Godbole’s Hindu theory of the Oneness of all things). There is no dividing line between spirituality and nature. The British will try to label and define (The name of the green bird) whereas the Indians will not care: (The Nawab Bahadur’s car accident: a hyena or a ghost? ) • Time: The novel follows the seasons. The Indians have an elastic, fluid vision of Time. appointments are missed, Aziz arrives late.. • Nature: Symbolises colonial issues: Hierarchy and hegemony (Chandrapore), An ancient Indian Raj (the caves), Renewal of identity and relationships (Mau, The Monsoon, The river). Instinctive vs calculated behaviour (Mrs Moore and Godbole’s understanding of the wasp, the moon, the river “pretty little dear”, “what a wonderful river, what a terrible river”) • Religion/spirituality: muslim (Aziz) and hindu (Godbole) christian (Mrs Moore). Joining religions “Then you are an Oriental” Aziz to Mrs Moore, “Esmiss Esmoor!” chanted: mrs Moore is turned into a goddess.

21. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad 1899 Narrative: Novella. Marlow narrates the story in a frame story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames. Setting: Voyage up the Congo River into the Belgian Congo in the so-called heart of Africa.The Imperial rule in Brussels (the white marble building of purity!!)commissions Marlow to fetch back Kurtz who has rebelled against the rule and has “gone native”. Imperialism: Destructive aspects of European colonisation. Hypocritical intentions “to bring enlightenment, culture, education and civilisation through christianity to the native savage”. The abominable treatment of the Africans, slavery and brutality.Using these arguments as a means to exploit the people and resources, stripping it of ivory.The damage to the souls of the white colonisers through Kurtz. (Film Apocalyse Now: transposed to the Vietnam war) Oppression, abuse, objectification: The Helmsman (a piece of machinery) the Intended (Kutz’s mistress and his wife in Brussels: status symbols only), the Africans: abjects.

22. Absurdity and madness: In the Outer Station, the natives are blasting away at the mountainside for no apparent reason. Violence and ill treatment is meaningless. The Colonial Bureaucracy is just as corrupt as Kurtz who is openly malevolent. This makes it difficult for Marlow to side with one. It raises the question of what makes a monster? The open murder and ill treatment of men (Kurzt has heads on poles on his station) or the hypocritical murder under camouflaged Imperialistic reasons. Good and evil: Marlow’s journey down the Congo is one of self discovery. He reaches Kurtz his alter ego (symbolised by his physical fight : Kurtz is white as a ghost and becomes a surreal figure). His journey home leaves him undecided as to his opinion on whether Kurtz is to be an object of disgust and horror or to be pitied. It raises the question of man’s instinct (as in The Lord of the Flies) when civilisation ‘s pillars are no longer there to check behaviour. Responsibility:

23. Checking Out Me History, John Agard A Far Cry From Africa, Derek Walcott Things Fall Apart, Jackie Kay Colonial Girls School, Olive Senior A Different History, Sujata Bhatt The Immigrants, Margaret Atwood The Poems “Show how the poem sheds light on the synoptic topic, as you have studied it” http://www.asiba.fr/the_wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Postcolonial-Writing-Six-Poems-corrected.pdf

24. The Poet: Nigerian father, Scottish mother, adopted at birth by Scottish parents. Returns to Nigeria to meet her birth father. Main themes: Identity, Religion, hegemony Form: couplets, binary, could mirror the persona’s attempt to discover her identity. Her father embodies: erasing of African identity by Western influence, christianity, westernisation. The effects of colonisation and a difficulty to retrieve the traditions and culture of the African man. Things Fall Apart, Jackie Kay https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/things-fall-apart Insight into Kay’s meeting with her birth father: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/apr/08/featuresreviews.guardianreview2

25. The Poet: From British Guiana emigrated to England .Afro-Guyanese origin Style: Performs his poems in a theatrical way. Uses Caribbean pronunciation and graphism to place his identity. Use of refrain, layout, different print to contrast the indigenous history with the colonisers’ imposed education. content: The British education: HG that is meaningless to them. Use of nursery rhymes: humour, absurdity. Caribbean historical figures: heroic women and men who rebelled against oppression. Shift from passive to active role by the end - “I carving out me identity” Checking out Me History, John Agard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o60RW2a2m5w

26. Themes: Language, identity, coercion, hegemony, violence, repression. A critique of the education during colonisation. An erasing of identity, denial of native, indigenous identity, imposing a new physical aspect, new codes of behaviour, and learning only about British education. Denunciation: refrain shows oppression “Nothing about us at all” The last stanzas point towards a brighter future where local gods from folktale“ANANSI” are let free again and the “Northern eyes” of the repressive coloniser grow “Pale”. A vision of a return to native identity in a postcolonial world. Colonial Girls School Olive Senior https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/colonial-girls-school

27. The Poet: born and raised in St Lucia. Both grandparents were of mixed race marriages (English/Dutch/African). content: on the background of the British colonisation of Kenya, East Africa Walcott questions his mixed identity “divided to the vein”. Both African and colonisers from Europe were equally brutal and violent. He questions the nature of violence. In the animal world, in tribal warfare and during colonisation “the gorilla wrestles with the superman”. The final lines are rhetorical questions: which should he choose? Which language? “How choose between this Africa and the English tongue I love?” A Far Cry From Africa, Derek Walcott https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/far-cry-africa

28. Poet: born India moved to US when 12. Themes: Loss of identity, language, culture, history, colonisation. It is the internal struggle of the persona between her own heritage and how she adopted the language of her enemy. Two stanzas: 1. Indian culture. The importance of gods. “Great Pan is not dead” Pan only god to die.. emigrated to India where Pantheism and Nature is linked with spirituality. Strict rules are also rather restrictive seen with the Anaphora “It is a sin”. 2. More critical, aggressive tone. Questioning identity and colonisation. Evokes the whole debate about postcolonial identity A Different History, Sujata Bhatt https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/different-history

29. Atwood questions identity and evokes the idea that we are all immigrants. The world is a diaspora. Immigrants: scenes evoking The Pilgrims arriving on the Mayflower or the boat people today. Hardship and difficulty to fit into and be accepted in a new country. Orientalism “carpet bags”. Romanticism of the old country. Forgetting the mother tongue, never fitting in anywhere. Loss of identity. The Immigrants Margaret Atwood https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/immigrants

30. How do the writers explore the power and potential of language? GOST: Twins’ English, Estha’s silence, intertextual influences, Pappachi’s moth on Rahel’s heart after Ammu’s ‘When you hurt people, they begin to love you less’. Mister Pip: Matilda as a translator for the Rambos as Mr Watts only speaks English, language creates a new world for Matilda, a ‘spare room’: “I already knew that words could take me into a new world, but I didn’t know that on the strength of one word [...] I could find myself in a room that no one else knew about.” Yet language also creates a boundary between her world with Mr Watts and her world with her mother. Translations: Theatrical conceit, renaming, Owen returning to Irish at the end, dangers of both linguistic change AND resistance to change, language for story-telling (Greek/Latin)

31. How and in what ways is displacement or rootlessness a central concern for the characters in the stories you studied? GOST: Ammu and Rahel wander to then return to the village Translations: The roots of language, discussions of etymology. Mister Pip: Link of personal history and identity- character of Grace. Dolores- a postcolonial warrior who is loyal to the island and suspicious of Mr Watts’ literature- dresses like the Rambo warriors- but herself is loyal to the bible, brought by German colonisers. Hybrid?

32. Talk about the beast/savage versus the superman (the idea of superior and inferior) Mister Pip: The contrast of the brutality of the soldiers and humanity of villagers, seen through Matilda’s honest description of her mother’s rape and murder. Local cultural identity fighting white cultural imposition. Translations: English vs. Irish, yet the Irish language is more suited to poetry whereas English is for ‘commerce’. The power of the soldiers at the end compared to the ‘pranks’ of Doalty. GOST: Past ruling the present, both colonial past and caste system being the superman. big dreams vs. little dreams (ch 3. ‘Big Man the Laltain, Small Man the Mombatti’.)

33. Can you talk about the use of make believe and escapism in these works? Mister Pip: The island as a form of escapism? Matilda tells the reader that although they no longer have power, the island provides all they need. “We had fish. We had our chickens. We had our fruits. We had what we had always had. Translations: Jimmy Jack living in the past, refusing to face the present. GOST: Magical realism, childlike perspective. Innocence is brutalised. The terrible irony of the children escaping to the history house.