Personal struggles for identity and nationalism:
The treatment of education in the early Anglophone Caribbean novels.
This paper explores oral and written methods of education in the early Caribbean novel with particular focus on conflicts between cultural norms and scholarly texts of instruction, differences among the uneducated-educated-educator and the parent-at-home-educator, the attitudes of children towards education and the inclusion of substitutions, the lack of positive role models, the absence of the legitimate father-figures, the burden placed on the female caregiver, the fragmented family structure, and an overall analysis of the failures in the education system as it relates to everyday life-and-death struggles and where recovery might have been possible, with some prognosis for the future.
The failure to develop a positive national consciousness is a theme which is explored in many of the early Anglophone Caribbean novels, and is in a sense directly related to the lack of preparedness of the natives, both at the home and at the institutional educational level. Many of the early writers go to great length to illustrate aspects of this theme. However, and throughout the years, responses from most
Indeed, these writers do go on to acknowledge, and illustrate in their works, that for nurturing traditions to develop and take root is not without struggle against the stifling historical, political and economic conditions that were in existence for five centuries and more. The very fact that these writers were able to successfully command the intricacies of the English language and develop narrative prose structures from orality has been a tremendously positive accomplishment. In addition, it cannot be ignored that to seek publication they went overseas, and especially to the “mother country” that might have in itself created this initial frustration; the outside then has been turned in towards the center. Indeed, these writers were able to bring to light national consciousness at two significant and important levels: how to take command of the language and how to produce compelling yet instructive narrative; thus bringing the stories out in international publications for not only local readership but also for a much larger community. More so, these writers were the ones who paved the way for other writers to explore not only national consciousness themes but to develop fiction that looked at other diaspora events.
At the forefront of this, there is a significant factor which cannot be ignored: that of territorial diversity, leading to issues of race, economic and political differences and varying social structures, all of which play dominant roles in the treatment of education as a theme. This in itself has led to the diversity of
It must be pointed out – and acknowledged -- that the root off this problem lies in historical precedence, which is a compelling factor in the understanding of this apparent lack of preparedness. One might have expected that a sound command of English language might be a given; as John J. Figueroa points out there are several commonalities that might have initially led to a direct relationship on the education of the colonized with that of the English colonizer, the foremost of which is “a history of close association with the United Kingdom, its social, spiritual, and literary traditions, its economic policies, its educational practices, traditions, and policies” (p. 6). However, the results were contrary to expectations; formal education was non-existent -- the trust was purely economic; thus political and economic policies did little to uplift the plight and condition of the natives. Indeed, the perfunctory effects of this deliberate withholding of formal education left, after the abolition of slavery and the conclusion of emancipation, vast territories inhabited by individuals struggling to come together as a united body under one national identity: the creation of home and country, yet lacking a common language, and a distinct separation from verbal and written methods of communication between citizen and politician. The early
The irony here, as pointed out by these early Caribbean writers, lies in the fact that those who were fortunate to take over and develop this hap-hazard and incomplete system of education – and sometimes non-existent in the rural areas -- only parroted those of the British colonizer by becoming “little mimics,” and as might have expected this did little to uplift the plight of their fellow countrymen. Many of the early published writers then took these situations to task in their novels although they did not exclusive explore “education” as a central theme in their works, but wrote of their own personal experiences against the backdrop of an incomplete and profoundly contradictory web of existence. Coming to grips then with one’s own identity and cultivating a form of expression which might be understood and acknowledged by fellow countrymen is indeed a daunting task.
As these writers go on to show, the focus from the very beginning by the colonizers was on wide-scale plantation production rather than on social integration, and one in which life was controlled by a rigorous class system. Formal education was non-existent before emancipation in 1838; educating the natives then was seen primarily as “dangerous to the social order…hence religious and moral instruction without literacy was the lot of the slave population, and often this instruction was given in a perfunctory manner” (Campbell, pp. 7-8). It then must be concluded that those who initially received some form of rudimentary education were those who performed duties in the “great houses” or those who were is a situation to give directives to other slaves or occupied some sort of “supervisory” role. It was not uncommon for house slaves to be involved in the education of the master’s children, and in this way spread acquired knowledge of reading and writing to other slaves. This state of affairs then existed for at least three centuries. Oral traditions, and the art of story-telling, no doubt fired the minds of these early
Another compelling factor has to do with habitat. The early plantation-like community structures are relics, which have changed little from its previous colonial creations, and represent an acute situation picked up by the early
The traditional plantation is a total economic institution. It binds every one in its embrace to the one task of executing the will of the owner or owners. And because it is omnipotent and omnipresent in the lives of those living within its confines, it is also a total social institution…the social structure and distribution of political power in the country as a whole would merely be a larger reproduction of that existing on the individual plantations. (Quoted in Figueroa and Persaud, p. 31)
Then, the natives do feel trapped and empowered by a system that confines their very physical being, and constraints their mental abilities to think not beyond what is contained within that community. Yet it is these early writers who have broken free from its confines, both at the physical level and at the education and creative level.
Indeed, and as apparent in the works under consideration, after abolition there was little change in social structure except that the freed slaves did not want to work but sought other forms of employment where some sort of rudimentary education might be required, and with some encouragement from the colonials; yet it was “neither sufficiently extensive nor deep enough to create a public able to read and write – even by the least demanding criteria” (Ramchand The West Indian Novel and its Background, p. 19). In addition, it cannot be denied that this problem was further compounded by the economics of the situation where the newly-arrived indentured East Indians (brought in to replace the emancipated blacks) were concerned because “sending their children to school, rather than having them earning an income by working on the sugar estates or assisting with domestic chores while the parents went out to work, ran counter to their primary objective in coming to the Caribbean” (Bacchus, p. 67). Yet, in a sense, the arrival of the indentured workers – particularly those from
What helped the situation somewhat towards some improvement was public outcry from Englishmen residing in England for free and just treatment, compounded by the failure of sugar with its dwindling revenues, and the departure of mid-level supporting staff, left the British with little choice but to diversify, which led to the political and social opportunities for those with rudimentary educational skills such as the ability to read and write and to converse in a recognizable and acceptable form of English. As might be expected then, gradually inroads were made and eventually education in traditional schools was made compulsory and written into law.
Hence there emerged from this chaos, the very few early Caribbean writers. Over the years substantial improvements were made, and one of the first novels to appear, in 1903, is Tom Redcam’s Becka’s Buckra Baby. Caribbean Critic and scholar Gilkes writes of attempts at creating a national consciousness: “The foreword spoke of an attempt to present, to a Jamaican public, a literary collection of poetry, fiction, history and essays, all written by Jamaicans and ‘dealing directly with Jamaica and Jamaicans.’” (p.11). Poetry in dialect was the first to arrive.
This literacy advertised itself in a large number of ephemeral publications including…in the late 1930s and early 1940s of the influential Bim (
With these starts, it was not long before aspiring writers began to head for the mother country as they sought publication. Therefore, those who wanted to be writers must first go through a system created under chaos and frustrations in which to learn to read and write in the English language, and then, it seems under some series of “miraculous circumstances” be able to compose, draft and execute formal narrative discourse in order to gain universal readership, as opposed to writing in dialect. Ramchand’s exhaustive study details early literary achievements: “Between 1903 and June 1967, at least 162 works of prose fiction have been produced by fifty-six writers from six West Indian territories” (p. 3). These later early writers were able to draw from a small source of narrative discourse as they perfected their writing.
Indeed, it was not until 1953 that the first novel to reach literary success did appear. Lamming’s acclaimed In the Castle of My Skin deals with the social implications of education, and touches sincerely on aspects of traditional education (school based) and conflict with cultural education (home based) in a rural section in the island of Barbados. Purposefully, Lamming states his theme outright; one of the parents in the early stages of the novel remarks “The children bring too much botheration to parents nowadays,” which directly summaries the entire mood, style and tone of this complex work of fiction, and has thematic significance to the works of other notable writers of the period. As such, Lamming’s work must be acknowledged as pivotal in generating concern for social and educational progress of young
Critics hail Lamming’s novel as a skilful work of compelling narratologic development, and an unusual work originating from the
Lamming astutely remarks of West Indian Writers that “the substance of their books, the general motives and directions, are peasant” (Baugh, p. 24). In a sense, the word “peasant” is an offensive term for somebody considered to be an ill-mannered or uneducated, which is an echo of the label given to the natives by the ruling class both during slavery and after emancipation and a product of the plantation mode of existence; a sort of “off-the-cuff” dismissal. What Lamming does is to turn these statements face-forward: he compels the writers to address these issues, and gives them credit for doing so. Indeed, by direct illustration, Lamming goes on to prove these statements in the course of the novel through the eyes of his central character G, where he discusses lack of positive parental control and nurturing, the absence of positive role models (especially male figures), and the shortfalls in the education system.
One of the early critics and scholar to emerge soon after the early writers appeared is Kenneth Ramchand, who astutely points out: “Lamming’s intention is to suggest the essential outlines of typical boyhood in a West Indian community that is growing painfully – like the four boys in the novel – into political self-awareness; and his concern to suggest the complex shifting in the community at large, at times, take precedent over any notion of fidelity to the boy’s consciousness” (p. 207). Indeed, as the novel opens, Lamming writes of his central character G in a very dismissive manner: “My birth began with an almost total absence of family relations.” (p. 12); and “Since it made no difference whether it was noon or night, I went to the backhouse to play with my pigeons. (p. 13). As can be observed then, the lack of focus and the absence of inspirational models in nurturing a positive focus in providing a sense of personal worth and ambition leads to abject detachment. Later, the boy is humiliated by his mother in a public bathing session, and gets a trashing for simply following orders, and upon which his mother remarks “The children bring too much botheration to parents nowadays.” (p. 19). It seems that this “botheration” echoes the thoughts of all the adults in the novel, and at another level it echoes the colonials’ attitude that the native themselves can be nothing more than a botheration after the exercise of colonialism is over. Everyday activities, then, becomes drudgery, and routine physical hygiene activities are conducted out in the open for public scrutiny. Another boy Bob echoes the same sentiments when he is beaten at home:
“And she don’t hit me for purpose,” Bob said, “She don’t do it for purpose. She does it ‘cause she’s God-fearing. She always say the Bible say ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.’ And ‘tis only that she don’t want to spoil me” (p. 21).
Here then one sees a certain “disconnect” between written modes of instruction (in this case the Bible) and the practicality of exercising some kind of immediate control; mothers feel obligated to revert back to what the “authorities” have dictated (through the Bible as handed down by the missionaries) without any consideration for its social implications.
In the same token one does get an acute sense of the futility experienced by the boys, who nevertheless, are forced upon to accept their fate as dictated by the women in their lives: “Miss Foster. My mother. Bob’s mother. It seemed that they were three pieces in a pattern which remained constant” (p. 24). Nothing then changes, and towards this, G remark’s makes the connection between the home-education and school instruction, as one and the same:
Even the better educated who had one way or another gone to the island’s best schools and later held responsible posts in the Government service, even these were effected by this image of the enemy which had its origin in a layer from which many had sprung and through accidents of time and experience forgotten. The image of the enemy, and the enemy was My People” (pp. 26-27).
Compelling enough, G is alert and sensible to see the complexity of the situation. Indeed, a pattern of control has infiltrated the ranks. What is obvious here then is the application of substitutions: the parents see the educators as part of the ruling class of the pre-emancipation period, while the boys see the parents as belonging to the dreaded educators group; no one is able to correctly identify that there should be no group separation, that parents are parents and educators are educators, and nothing less, with equal responsibility to instruct, educate and develop sound sense of values. Justifiably so, this state of divided-loyalties leads into and compounds to the confusion; the boys then conduct their daily activities under some notion of a “hybrid” mode of existence, which in itself is neither healthy nor of practical value.
As can be readily observed, this absence of positive role models is the boys’ life is a recurring theme. Each boy abandon’s the confines and drudgery of the home and in a playful moment at the public bath -- “One boy held his penis up like a main spring” p. 29) -- they are chased away, the man in charge remarks, “That’s what they have come here for. To get me into trouble. That’s what they’re like. You can never take chances, never, never, never. The image of the enemy. My people” (p. 30); the man in charge assumes a role, and with a distinct purpose: “Accept me as an honorary white man and I will commit new and unspeakable treacheries against my own” (Carew, pp. 463-64). Here then is an obvious depiction of the plantation scenario; the local man in authority automatically reasons that there is always someone out there to contradict his authority and usurp his powers. His sole purpose then is to hold on to his authority in any manner he feels fit. This then is one of the controlling reasons for the hampering of progress. Distrust then lies rampant in ever man’s thoughts.
Without a doubt everyone hates themselves and everybody else. This hatred is clearly visible in the depiction of the school and the education system. If the home situation (and lack or absence of positive male role models) has failed the boys, the education system appears far worse. With great vindictiveness, the inspector hates the headmaster, and vice versa; the headmaster hates his teachers, and vice versa; and the teachers hate the students, and vice versa, and this is all brought out for public scrutiny. No one wants to be the first to acknowledge deficiencies in the system. Rightly so, there is no separation in thought and actions between the headmaster and the man in charge of the public baths.
As notable educational sociologists have pointed out, there is an inherent conflict between the teacher’s role and the student’s role:
Willis (1978) refers to the relationship as one between potential contenders for supremacy. The students, teachers represent the adult group which enforces rules and regulations. At times the teacher has to make students work against their will. Dominance and control therefore becomes part of the teacher/student relationship; and as we have seen, the formal authority of the teacher legitimizes this dominance and control. (Evans. P. 53)
Lamming adequately illustrates this way of thinking; one of the boys is badly beaten, and once outside, a discussion follows of the events, and of the matter of reporting it to the boy’s father, to which the boy replies:
“Cause yuh father’ll say that the teacher had a cause….An’ qhwn you tell him you don’t know the reason why the teacher do what he do…he’ll tell you the teacher didn’t lash you properly and he’ll do it all over again” (p. 45).
At another level, and keeping with the notions of the “plantation syndrome” the teacher (traditional educator) and the parent (at-home educator) both mimic the dreaded colonial power, and at the same time agree in the principles and methods of operation; should the boys complain of punishment at school, they are sure to feel a repeat. It should be remembered that at least on one occasion G describes his mother as an “overseer.” There then exists a vicious cycle.
This undermining of authority (which falls short of open rebellion) is well-illustrated in a later incident, where -- and after the public school flogging -- one of the teachers, Mr. Slime, in a note to another teacher, accompanied by photographs -- which are intercepted by one of the boys --- boasts of an affair with the headmaster’s wife. The headmaster commandeers the note and pictures, and before the entire school, his authoritative world collapses. The headmaster meditates:
Could he really trust the teacher? Could he really hope that the matter would end there? Was it safe to trust one who was so emotionally unstable. It might happen again. A similar difficulty might occur with another teacher. What would he do then? He would have to act in the light of the present decision. What was good for one must be good for all. And he had to think of himself above everything else. His power in the village. His authority in the school. What would he do? His mind had become more undisciplined now. (p. 69)
The headmaster is more concerned with his public image. As with the colonials the mimicked-subject is at the brink of collapse, yet reluctantly he holds on to the reigns and is dragged to oblivion in the process. This is all counter-productive to the education process.
Indeed, Lamming has taken the education in
Obviously, as parents cling to impractical traditions, the formal educators cling to impractical methods of academic instructions; it takes a tremendous effort on everyone’s part to “hold together” various impractical elements within the fabric and framework of a society ripe with confusion and indecisions. Parents and educators begin to question the validity of their actions but only as to how it might erode their own personal ambition of dominance and control.
Lamming skillfully goes on to expand on his theme of the educator who now takes control of the plantation community. What happens in the plantation situation gets expanded out into the community at large. Mr. Slime subsequently leaves the teaching profession and becomes a union leader. In a later incident, where the population of the district is paralyzed by fear of riots, Mr. Slime appears and saves the landlord’s life thus saving the village from destruction by the political authorities. The villagers had not the faintest idea the purpose and intent of the men who invade the town under the cloak of darkness. The villagers’ purpose is to save the white landlord, and to a great extent their fear of retribution brings them back to where they were from the very beginning. The old man in the book remarks of Mr. Slime’s departure in a conversation with the headmaster towards the end of the book, “P’raps he wus sayin’ you could leave the children till they grow up a little when the education would mean more, but ‘twus the big ones he want to teach a lesson” (p. 254). It seems that only Mr. Slime has grown up and now represents the new order. In a sense Mr. Slime is able to transcend traditional barriers. However, his upward mobility is not in the field of education, but one of economics, where he takes up the plight of the underrepresented “peasant” but for his own personal gains. Slime, the local subject who has moved into the ranks of the town and city, is admired by the villagers for all the wrong reasons. Slime’s actions and reduced to that of a colonial directive. Baugh is correct in his observations, with regards to the thinking process of the villagers:
For instance they know little about the details of the strike in town and in the village, but it is enough that Mr. Slime had spoken with the shipping authorities and had made it clear that they were not to return till he had judged the conditions satisfactory” (p. 53).
As Lamming suggests, heroes are far between and infrequent, and when they do appear, they have self-serving interests.
Besides Slime, then, who else might be a fitting role model? Lamming justly focuses on alternatives, which should have been a given in an boy’s immediate social and cultural upbringing. The boys turn to the lone fisherman who is described as a “man.” He is greatly admired by the boys. However, in a later incident one boy is saved from drowning, and the fisherman remarks that he didn’t know why he did it and that the boy should have drowned. This represents confusion for the boys: Is it right that one of them should have drowned? In a sense, the fisherman as “father figure” might not be a protector, which parallels the mothers in the story as having divided loyalties (“The children bring too much botheration to parents nowadays”). In yet another incident the boys trespass on the landlord’s property and are chastised and wrongfully accused of trying to spy on the landlord’s daughter. Their visit was more of curiosity than anything else. Thus, they are always expected to “keep their place in society” – yet they get a sense that this “place” is one of confusion and turmoil and certainly is not a safe haven.
Lamming then goes on to show how only the very few are capable of self-realization, and are thus able to realize some kind of self-discovery. It doesn’t go unnoticed that gradually G begins to drift apart from his friends as his academic educations reaches upwards and where he enters the high school (and the only one to enter high school). It is ironical that Trumper gets his “education in life” overseas where he learns of the difficulties of African Americans and wishes that he had never ventured overseas; he challenges G when he says, “You got a lot to learn” (p. 292). In the end G, ironically enough, gets a teaching post in another colony, and as he prepares to leave the island, has the first meaningful conversation with his mother. It is his education that gives him this perspective. Towards the end, G laments:
“When I review these relationships they seem so odd. I have always been here on this side and the other person there on that side, and we have both tried to make the sides appear similar in needs, desires and ambitions. But it wasn’t true. It was never true.”
In a sense, the great divide could not be easily bridged, as Lamming projects. Folk traditions come into direct conflict European-based educational systems. The dialogue between ma and pa certainly allude to the African griot tradition which in the context of Lamming’s book seems to exist in isolation and a sort of abject comment on the society around. Both traditional education and education at home then has failed; it would take a G with lots of determination, ambition, drive and perseverance to survive. Yet, in the end, he does, for his mother has played a significant part in his acquiring an education, and has instilled in him the ability to realize, learn and manage the items needed for his social mobility. It is unfortunate, though, that he is the only one slated for the academic profession -- and with much regret, leaves for another colony. What then is the solution? As Lamming suggests, it is but a start, yet a start that happens elsewhere, similar to Lamming’s own personal experiences. Paquet observes
The novel’s ending is open. The conclusion suggests that the disintegration of the village is a beginning and not an end. G’s impending departure from
On another level, it is a novel of realization, and subsequent abandonment of the folk tradition, which one must eventually leave, yet it is this folk tradition that sparks the creative imagination in many of these early writers. Gilkes writes:
It is a self-protective measure in a society that apparently can no longer contain or nourish the individual mind. Near the end of the book, G, a high school product by now, cannot find acceptance with the villagers, nor can he relate meaningfully to his new status. (p. 86)
Nevertheless, options have been provided by Lamming by direct illustration. The people in his novel have feelings and emotions, they seek betterment, they drive and determination, but are trapped in a plantation-like society that still holds fact to colonial directives. But Lamming is not in isolation, or incorrect, for his work has great validity; another early writer who picks up and supports Lamming on these themes is Trinidadian author V.S. Naipaul.
Indeed, this plantation-like mode of existence developed by Lamming is explored at great lengths by Naipaul, but in a more positive light. Naipaul is more concerned with the “social aspects of education” where we see little of a school system; that the boys attend school, is a casual remark. Indeed, under the nostalgic atmosphere of “plantation life” characters either grow or stagnate, yet there is more than one that grows into full-rounded individuals who actively set and accomplishes goals. One of the characters in
Indeed, V.S. Naipaul’s three books Miguel Street (1959), The Mystic Masseur (1957) and A House For Mr. Biswas (1961) again touches on the role of traditional and non-traditional education. In Miguel Street the education process is treated in a much more favorable light than in In the Castle of My Skin, but from a racially mixed point of view; an Indian family (mother and son) lives in a predominantly black district in
Picking up on the theme of the importance of education at an early age, like most of the boys in Lamming’s novel, Naipaul’s adolescent character is central to the novel and lives with his mother. The absence of feathers is a prevalent theme in several of the novels, and most definitely is a compelling reason for the boys’ loss of purpose and direction in several of these novels. White’s keen observations are of significant important on this point; he writes:
Naipaul gives the narrator a mother who, of all the characters in the book, seems best adapted to life on
In addition, White touches on the “beating” aspect in Miguel Street which has echoes of the school floggings and the beatings at home in In The Castle of My Skin. It must be pointed out that we do not get much of a sense of the boys at play in Naipaul’s novel, and there is no “collective” analysis of the situations from the boys’ point of view.
However, Naipaul’s young narrator, unlike the boys in In The Castle of My Skin gets his life experience from both the cultural and academic aspects; he attends school, seems to like it and is doing well, while the men in the neighborhood provides varied and diversified aspects of cultural instruction. Contrasting this with the boys’ experience in Lamming’s work, we find that there sole role model is a lone fisherman they admire at a distance. Confronting the world is important, and being able to sort through a muddle of situations and come up with options is part of the cultural education process. Naipaul’s young hero does this admirably. John Thieme puts it in good perspective with his comments:
All the characters, including the central figure Hat, have constructed persona which enable them to confront the world, but which involve ‘evading truth about self’. Nevertheless it is possible to find in
As well-illustrated in
To the fatherless boy narrator, Hat is very much a surrogate father figure. His is the voice of experience which frequently acts as a foil to the boy’s ingenuous reaction to events. Of all the male residents of
In comparison, there is little evidence of any male character with nurturing support in In The Castle of My Skin whereas in Miguel Street the boy, unlike G, has an opportunity to observe the behaviors of not only a host of self-educated ambitious men but a number of females who receive the blunt of some of the men’s frustrations. This mixture of attitudes and beliefs allows the boy to judge for himself what might be acceptable, and it is strong guiding force of his mother that prevents him from straying too far. Then, there does exist opportunities for education at the social level in the “plantation-like” situation; the boy gets lost out of the district a few times, and when he does revisit these “other places,” many things have changed.
Titus Hoyt stands out as an educator, and makes great sense in what he says to the boys:
“You see, you people don’t care about your country. How many of you know about
This is the kind of worthwhile advice that never comes the boy’s way in Lamming’s In The
However, in Naipaul’s work, there are acute situations in which the boy senses the shame and frustration of his comrades. He feels the pain of the females who receive the blunt of angry frustrated males, and sees the influence of corrupt foreigners on to the inhabitants, where calypso is used as a form of protest. Yet he is able to hold his own, and like G in the end, he learns from his experiences, and departs in a nostalgic frame of mind for distant shores. What both novels have in common is the quest for self-identity; it is the boys, the central characters in the novel, who depart, leaving behind a sense of abandonment, of regret and in a sense a sense of shame. Indeed, these activities do parallel the writers’ own departure for distant shores.
Significantly enough, Naipaul departs noticeable in his next two books The Mystic Masseur and A House For Mr. Biswas where he focuses entirely on the mobility of the East Indian population. Indeed, a sense of national pride begins to surface; Naipaul has picked up admirably and developed many of the themes explored by Lamming. Bruce King writes of these books that “they focus on the struggle of Trinidadian Asian Indians to advance themselves in life, become independent and find a place in the wider world beyond their ethnic community” (p. 209). The scope of the plantation situation has been broadened; we see entire towns and villages in motion, and we get a sense of the panorama of things developing, some at a snail’s place, others as if mushrooming out overnight. More so, we get a sense of a collective identity, of growth and a great sense of developing personalities towards creative efforts. Kenneth Ramchand’s comments carry great relevance to this; he writes,
it is in the nineteenth century that we can begin to see the foundations of two characteristic attitudes to reading, literature and education in general. On the one hand there was the antipathy that grew up in reaction to the joyless and abortive school experience. At the same time there was the awe of the illiterate at the written word, and the mathematical approach to learning are turned to great comic effect in V.S. Naipaul’s The Mystic Masseur (p. 25).
Indeed, matters take a different turn when one is able to have a “vision” of what one might want to be. It is not uncommon then for an individual to harness creativity, as Naipaul brilliantly suggests. Uncle Bacchus in
“This provides a perspective on such themes in the novel as the need for education, civilization, achievement, rationality and charity (love of others; helping others). The family drama is also universalized. History becomes a story of blind, self-destructive, angry fathers, misguided children, the need for love, for emotional as well as material protection” (p. 39).
In The Mystic Masseur (Recently filmed) the central character Ganesh Ramsumair rose from the ranks of a school teacher, abandons the profession against the stern advice of others, and moved on to writer of a number of books; eventually he becomes a Member of the British Empire. One cannot help but notice the somewhat mechanical industriousness of teacher turned writer who struggles with perfecting his craft. However, lacking instructional support, Ganesh does his best. However, he regulates education is a mechanized venture, and perhaps a kind of “educational industrial revolution” that he sprinkles upon the individuals in this novel. Perhaps this might be a “front” or a means of self-preparedness against things which might corrupt and jeopardize the movement. Drawing an important comparison, we find that the man at the public bath in Lamming’s novel holds on to his powers; Ganesh in Naipaul’s work begins to “test the waters” as he perfects his craft:
He kept on reading. He kept on making notes. He kept on masking note-books. And he began to acquire some sensitivity to type-faces. Although hr owned nearly every Penguin that had been issued he disliked them as books because they were mostly printed in Times (p.77).
But persistence pays off, and later on,
And he did write the book. He worked hard at it for more than five weeks, sticking to the time-table Beharry had drawn up for him (p. 83).
In fact Ganesh Ramsumair musters the entire village to his writing stint, and gets everyone involved. In a sense it becomes the creator of “community epics.” He rises to fame, but unlike Lamming’s Mr. Slime, he works for the good of his community. He provides reading for those unschooled in the art of reading. A book that was once a “thing” becomes in the hands of the villagers literary works of art ripe with sayings and beliefs they could identify with. An exploration of myths and beliefs is one of the themes in Naipaul’s next book.
Indeed, A House for Mr. Biswas, considered a masterpiece in English literature, is broad in theme and scope, and in the same vein as Naipaul’s previous works, depicts one man’s struggling through seemingly insurmountable odds. Unlike Lamming, Naipaul goes beyond the “plantation scenario”: Naipaul is not a afraid of voicing his opinion and ideas, and to throw challenges out into the open where they can de discussed and analyzed. Mr. Biswas succeeds in owning his own home and taking pride in reaching into the ranks of a newspaper reporter. His struggle within his wife’s controlling family he relinquishes, and sees to it that his children are educated. The symbol of the sign-painter permeates the three volumes, instilling in the central characters the need to find expression. Young Biswas wanders aimlessly in the early sections of the novel, from relative to relative until he finds initial solace in the Tulsi household; an orphan, who was prophesized by the pundit to have a hand in the death of his father, it seems, in search of a father, and one whom he finds in the likings of Seth. Here it is one writer who successfully bridges the gap between the social and educational aspects of education. Bruce King comments are of great importance towards a clearer understanding of these developments:
This provides a perspective on such themes in the novel as the need for education, civilization, achievement, rationality and charity (love of others; helping others). The family drama is also universalized. History becomes a story of blind, self-destructive, angry fathers, misguided children, the need for love, for emotional as well as material protection” (p. 39).
In the end Biswas accomplishes his goals; he has been a good father to his children, and provides them with a sound sense of values, and with a modest education as a start. In Naipaul creativity is challenged and it becomes part of personal goals and growth and community involvement. But what happens when opportunities are lacking?
Like Lamming and Naipaul, Lovelace picks up the theme of frustration felt by the villagers in Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin, which also echoes some of the feelings of the men in Naipaul’s Miguel Street. The boys cry out, “Make no peace with slavery. Make no peace, for you have survived.” Earl Lovelace in The Dragon Can’t Dance picks up the theme of the natives after material possessions against the backdrop of steelband which had once been rejected in early post-colonial movements. Sede William R. Aho provides important information with regards to the analysis of this cultural transformation: “Even after emancipation in 1834, white and coloured leaders held African cultural practices, particularly steel drum, in contempt. They felt it their duty to rid the country of what they considered barbaric customs” (p.29-30). National issues then rise to the surface. However, the stigma of the plantation-like mode of existence again holds everyone in check; not much has changes since Lamming’s work. One quickly observes how one of the central characters Mr. Guy, like the man at the public bath in Lamming’s work, holds everyone in tow. Marjorie Thorpe aptly comments: “A somewhat unlikely roué, Mr. Guy owes his authority in the yard to his position as a rent-collector. And for Mr. Guy the yard becomes his plantation, creating those conditions of material independence that facilitate the impulse to harness and despoil” (Quoted in Smilowitz and Knowles, p. 93). To a great extent, everyone who resides there must adhere to the “code” of the plantation. Symbolically, Pariag, the East Indian moves into the “negro plantation” with a new bicycle hoping to win admiration and a host of friends, but someone smashes it as soon as his back is turned; in the same token Shama destroys the dollhouse Mr. Biswas brings for his daughter; materiality, it seems, cannot brings friends, but envy and destruction: hence the sense of destruction; hence, the intense feelings of paranoiac jealousy. On a more universal level the significance of the steel band as the main driving force in the novel is without question.
Earl Lovelace remarks are of great significance in understanding the historical framework in which the boys operate:
So, instead of blotting the idea of Emancipation from the calendar of the country’s consciousness, the colonial administration, by tacking Emancipation into carnival, provided Emancipation the opportunity to penetrate the official carnival and transform it into a stage for the affirmation of freedom and the expression of the triumphing human spirit in a street theatre of song, dance, speech, sound and movement” (p. 54).
Indeed, frustration in repetition, always preparing for the same thing, the same event, year after year, while languishing their lives away the rest of the year, leads the boys to stir-up trouble and revolt by proclaiming:
“Make no peace with slavery. Make no peace, for you have survived. You are here filling up the shanty towns, prisons, slums, street corners, mental asylums, brothels, hospitals. Make no peace with shanty towns, dog shit, piss. We have to live as people, people. We have to rise up. Rise up” (p. 179).
The boy’s affirmation to rebel against this steelband and carnival as enactment of emancipation leads to not what they expect. Max Harris sheds great light on his comments of the boy’s rebellion,
“It is perhaps a noble gesture, but the authorities’ response belittles it, refusing to take it seriously. The police simply close the gas stations en route, block the exits to the city, and wait for the rebels to grow tired and hungry, and, both literally and metaphorically , to run out of gas. The authorities, a lawyer remarks, “trusted” that the rebels “would be unable to make of their frustrations anything better than a dragon dance, a threatening gesture” (1970: 183).
It is this exercise in futility brought about by a greater sense of frustration, similar to that felt by the men in Naipaul’s
Initially, the advocates emphasized the external manifestations of empowerment and the need to destroy the state altogether with all institutions, electoral processes, bureaucracy, the private sector, and so on. It was important that Black Power disassociate itself from
Therefore, these stirrings would have led to greater movements, but within the scope of the novel, as Simon Gikandi points out, “It is true that Caribbean male writers such as Earl Lovelace and Michael Thelwell have written trenchant critiques of what Fannon once called “the pitfalls of national consciousness” (p. 198). Inherently, the boys’ revolt in The Dragon Can’t Dance parody the behavior of the men from the town in Lamming’s In The Castle of My Skin who wait for the arrival of the landlord; similarly as the people of the town ignore the boys as they cry revolt, do the men of the village in the presence of the men from the town in the landlord incident. Everyone obviously have their own take on matters, yet all unwilling to come to a consensus; the clash, then, of culture and education, and the lack of education.
In the end, the boys proclaim, “We have to rise up. Rise up” (p. 179), is just the lyrics to a steel-band during off-season. Therefore, Lovelace’s novel peters out in a shameless exercise in futility where we see disenchanted males with no sense of purpose.
The longing is there, but the creativity has been stifled. Against this grain, the feminine point of view is explored at great length by Jamaica Kincaid, who in her two books
The contradictory interpellations of the British colonial curriculum that indoctrinated children throughout the Empire with a sense of inferiority and alienation – while simultaneously inculcating a love/hate relationship with Englishness and English Literature – is a frequent trope in the fiction of postcolonial Caribbean writers from Cesaire, Naipaul, Lamming and Walcott to Rhys, Cliff and Kincaid herself. The psychic displacement that existed between the embodied experiences of the colonized and the imposed phantasmic economy of the plays, poems and fiction of such luminaries as Shakespeare, Milton, Keats and Wordsworth has been termed the ‘daffodil gap’ in contemporary postcolonial theory. (p. 72-73)
Indeed, Kincaid digs deep into the historical framework of colonialism and analyzes these conditions against the backdrop of post-emancipation development in the
The emphasis on
But greatly so, Kincaid stresses on orality then, where English has been regulated across the board as a criminal language. However, from an entirely feminine point of view one gets a troubled look at Caribbean culture, where again there is the absence of the father, and in this case the mother-daughter relationship is not without its turmoil. In the first book A Small Place Jamaica Kincaid takes on the persona of a tourist guide who correctly rewrites her island history.
Poon’s comments with regards to Kincaid’s treatment of tourism puts the issue in good perspective:
The tourist is figured in Kincaid’s text as the most superficial kind of observer and learner of another culture. In this sense, he is not unlike the colonial traveler of old who could produce lengthy travelogues on whole countries based on short periods of stay and minimal interaction with the local population.
To a great extent Kincaid has reduced the financial rewards of tourism as an affront to
Kincaid is also addressing her native Antiguans, and echoes the words of Lamming; where the natives have not truly grasped the concept of emancipation.
“People cannot see a relationship between their obsession with slavery and emancipation and the fact that they are governed by corrupt men, or that these corrupt men have given their country away to corrupt foreigners” (p. 55).
One needs to realize and recognize from the past, to learn from it, and then to let it go. Kincaid’s suggestion that her people have not understood their history is well-taken and is further complicated when there is substitution of another history and literature to take its place; until this recognition has not taken place, then there is no moving forward. Indeed, it is the same as in Lamming’s work when Mr. Slime takes the reigns; nobody has the faintest idea as to why it happens or what it means. In the same sense “the corrupt men” have taken over. Here then are echoes of Mr. Slime’s rise to power in Lamming’s In The Castle of My Skin. However, one needs to realize and recognize from the past, to learn from it, and then to let it go, and move one; until this recognition has not taken place, then there is no moving forward. It is the same as in Lamming’s work when Mr. Slime takes the reigns; nobody has the faintest idea as to why it happens or what it means. In the same sense “the corrupt men” have taken over. Also one needs to take into consideration that slavery was in existence for over a hundred years in the
However, in Lucy one sees the inherent conflict in the situation. And one where Kincaid is at her best. The colonial rule is condemned for creating the hardships and cultural fragmentation that subsequently occurs yet it is the natives themselves who perpetuate this state. Further it can be noticed that there is “conflict” within the individual. Kincaid herself says, in an interview with Selwyn R. Cudjoe, when asked about why she refused to stand up at the refrain of “God Save Our King,” replies:
“No, no one ever told me that. In those days – well, my mother used to be an Anglophile, but I realize now that it was just a phase of my mother’s life. She was really a stylish person; it must have been a phase in her development.
Anyway I went to
Here, one notices the love-hate relationship of the natives towards the education system. Is there something to be learnt from the experience? What Edyta Oczkowicz notes is of great importance as an initial answer to this question:
I look at Kincaid’s novel as a form of retracing Lucy’s identity to its post-colonial beginnings and opening for her the possibilities of creating a new self through actual exploitation of her post-colonial experience. (p. 144)
More so, the boys in Lamming’s In The Castle of My Skin never develop to the state of consciousness Lucy has; they are unable to analyze or understand what the colonial situation means. The boy narrator in Naipaul’s
It must be pointed out that Lucy’s strength comes from her mother, whom she hates from the very start, and does not admit to this until at the end of the book. She is courageous for having found strength in her inner fears. Her father had passed away very early and left them a pauper, and her mother openly dismisses Lucy as an unwanted child. The same pattern follows when the boys in Lamming’s In The Castle of My Skin are dismissed by the mothers. Biswas himself is blamed for having a hand in the death of his father. In Dabydeen’s The Counting House Rohini has come to despise her mother’s attitudes, and flees to
The closing chapter of the novel again presents Lucy ‘making a new beginning’ (133), exactly a year after her arrival in
The early writers then seem to suggest that a “sense of perspective” is required. People who are “locked in” to a plantation-like settlement are unable to broaden their perspectives; they are afraid to “test the waters” so to speak, primarily from the fear of being ridiculed or the acute sense of offending someone else.
What is readily apparent in these novels is that marginalized peoples have been unable to properly grasp the precariousness of their situation. Many lack the foresight to address issues which might influence and have an impact on future generations. Instability, frustration and turmoil, if left unchecked, breed nothing but the same. Then again, those who are in a position to offer help and assistance take person advantage of others. The writers in these varied novels discussed here have made considerable inroads since 1953 to bring such conditions to light. The breath and scope of these novels are considerable and a lesson in morals and manners for the present generation. What is significant here, is that these Early writers have paved the way for other
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