Comparison of the Form and Style in Things Fall Apart and A Far Cry from Africa - Essay Example

?RUNNING HEAD: THINGS FALL APART AND A FAR CRY FROM AFRICA Comparison of the Form and Style in Things Fall Apart and A Far Cry from Africa Note Name, Department, University, Correspondence address. THINGS FALL APART AND A FAR CRY FROM AFRICA 2 Things Fall Apart and A Far Cry From Africa There is a theme of a consciousness of belonging to a race and the violence that is associated with it in Chinua Achebe’s path-breaking novel, Things Fall Apart and in Derek Walcott’s moving poem, A Far Cry From Africa. Both these works of literature talk of the experience of being a part of a race that is marginalized. In both cases, it is the black races of Africa that is talked about. Both these works, like Eudora Welty’s A Worn Path, talk of racial differences, being articulated by members of groups that lie in between the white races and the blacks in terms of their sensibilities. While talking of race differences in their works, they are critical of the western colonizers for their economic policies, but occupy a space that is not entirely divorced from the western education that they have received. As a result their discussion of racial differences is extremely nuanced and complex. They however, have various differences in their tone and style, something that can be attributed to the differences in the historical and geographical context in which these writers produced their work. This paper shall attempt not only a historicist and new historicist mode of analysis, but shall seek to combine it with an analysis of the forms that the writers in question employ in their works of art. Things Fall Apart was one of the first few novels that explored the role of the colonizers in the changes that came in African society. There have been many works of art that have followed this work in the tradition of post-colonial works of art that critique the role of the coloniser. However, Things Fall Apart remains a seminal work which critiqued not only the ways of the coloniser, but also that of African society. The life of Okonkwo is what forms the subject of the novel. Achebe uses this character as a form of the African hero who is at the same time, a warrior. The novel is therefore the biography of its protagonist and at the same time is the history of an African village that meets its colonizers for the first time. Since the story is that of a warrior, Achebe uses a tone that is martial. At the same time, the tone is also that of a historian who faithfully chronicles the events that happen in a society. The events of this society are shown through a pre-colonial and colonial perspective. The tone of Walcott’s poem, A Far Cry From Africa is different. This is because Walcott writes during a period when there is a consensus on the debates that surround pluralism and nativism, in favor of a pluralistic culture that seeks the integration of a pre-colonial and colonial culture. The agony that Walcott expresses regarding the conflict between his African belonging and the English language in which he is proficient and in which he expresses himself as a writer can be seen in the tone that he adopts in his poem which is that of a lament. These works tilt towards the pluralist cultures that the writers who were a part of the Negritude movement opposed (Ashcroft, 2010). As a result, their tone, even though they lament the loss of a culture with the advent of colonization, they express the hope of an integration of African and western cultures. This mixed culture may be said to be a reflection of the identities of these writers, an identity that had been molded through a consciousness of their own racial identity along with western education. Their tone enables them to make clear the racial differences that they aim to highlight through their works. These differences are made clear by talking of the conflict in the value systems that form the societies that Okonkwo lives in, in Things Fall Apart and the duality of the identity of the poet in A Far Cry From Africa. The narrator in Walcott’s poem is unapologetic about this identity while experiencing a conflict, unlike Achebe, who has to offer excuses to both a predominantly western readership and to his own countrymen, parrying accusations of being an anglophile and a traitor (Ngugi, 2005). The tone that Achebe employs is that of a storyteller who narrates the story of a hero. By using elements of the hero as a character from Greek tragedies and epics, and also African methods of storytelling, Achebe is able to fuse western and African concepts to offer a pluralistic perspective. Things Fall Apart is thus an assertion of an African identity on the part of Achebe. At the same time, he does not disown the identity of the western educated African that he is. The novel can be seen as Achebe’s expression of his own duality that finds expression in the title of the novel. The title, Things Fall Apart, is taken from a modernist poem by William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming. The poem talks of hopelessness and the lack of any result in modern life, symbolized by the wait for the second coming of Christ. When he arrives, it is a distorted form of the original Christ. The changes that have been wrought upon the people of the twentieth century that has led to a situation where their ways of living “fall apart” is what Yeats attempts to convey (Yeats). The falling apart of the social structure that held together the lives of Okonkwo and the other villagers is what Achebe seeks to portray in his novel. The perspective that alternates between that of a western educated African and an African storyteller, with both overlapping with each other, is what helps one locate Achebe’s work in the history of post-colonial literature that seeks to critique colonial and pre-colonial cultures. The fusion of the two is what Achebe endorses, much to the chagrin of nativists like Ngugi wa Thiongo. Another important feature of the Achebe’s work is the fact that the tone that the narrator adopts while discussing the plight of the African women characters in the novel. They are portrayed as women who are strong-willed but live essentially, under the subjection of the powerful men in their family and their tribes. Achebe’s perspective is that of the critical insider, somebody who is able to see the follies of a community that operates on the basis of machismo and gender stereotypes that are similar to the patriarchal stereotypes of the western world. Achebe seems to thus be likening the two civilizations and criticizing the treatment that is meted out to the women of both civilizations. Achebe’s critique is informed by the western movements of Marxism and feminism that seek to provide equality to people irrespective of their birth. The gender stereotype that Okonkwo had to abide by is also something that Achebe explores through his novel. He is unable to accept the feminine side of a person’s personality and constantly compares his son to his father, thinking of him as a feminine wastrel. Okonkwo is unable to conceptualize of any constructive endeavor that is not driven by traditional male aggression. As far as these stereotypes are concerned, racial differences do not seem to apply in the world of Things Fall Apart and this forms an important part of Achebe’s critique of both African and Western civilizations. The conflict that both these writers (Achebe and Walcott) face is one that is faced by people, who are, according to Frantz Fanon, of mixed identities (Fanon, 2009). Such people cannot turn to either side for support and thus end up feeling like outsiders in their own community. While this enables Achebe to provide his work with the perspective of an outsider, imbuing his work with the tone of a historian, it enables an effective articulation of Walcott’s identity crisis that results from not only a biologically mixed parentage but also a metaphorical one. The perspective, in both these works, like in Eudora Welty’s work, A Worn Path, is that of an outsider. Welty, however, is easily able to maintain this perspective, since she did not belong to a race that was marginalized. This makes her situation different from that of both Achebe and Walcott, both of whom do not have the luxury of being complete outsiders themselves. They therefore do not stray into the Edenic and pastoral setting that Welty places her story in. The story of Phoenix Jackson, while it is able to point out the significant racial differences between the whites and the blacks in the society that Welty lived in, is unable to bring out the nuances of an identity that goes beyond the realms of watertight compartments of black and white. Both Achebe and Walcott aim to explore the gray areas that Welty leaves unexplored through the use of a tone that seeks to engage the reader as a part of the experience of storytelling in an African way, through the incorporation of African methods of storytelling like the incorporation of songs and forms of oral storytelling in the narrative that again strengthen the themes of racial differences that are a part of both Achebe’s and Walcott’s works. While Welty places great emphasis on these differences, Achebe and Walcott discuss the methods of a metaphoric unification of these races while recognizing their differences at the same time. It is the existence of this duality that inspires their works. The presence of the gray area is also represented by the perspective that both these writers adopt in their works. Achebe narrates his story in English through a third person narrator who frequently slips into songs and other devices that are characteristic of oral storytelling practices of Africa. Walcott’s narrator, however, is the person who experiences the conflict that Achebe projects onto the society that he sees. The personalized tone and perspective that Walcott adopts in A Far Cry From Africa helps the reader of the poem to gain a better understanding of the differences between the races that the narrator shares the characteristics of. The violence of the colonizers and the stereotyping of the Africans is something that Walcott’s poem speaks out against. A Saint Lucian by birth, the cry that Walcott hears from Africa is the call of the violence that had been committed on and by his ancestors of both races. Unable to belong to one side of the racial divide, biologically and otherwise, Walcott’s narrator embodies the guilt and anger that the colonizers and the colonized display. Like the characters in T.S. Eliot’s poems, which Walcott admired intensely, Walcott’s narrator is unable to choose and knows that the choice cannot be made. The tone of lament that the poem adopts also ensures that the two planes of existence that the narrator lives on are effectively conveyed to the reader of the poem. Walcott is not uncritical of the members of the black races either. His poem points out the atrocities that were committed by the black races upon the colonizers and the brutalities that were enforced. Walcott however, does point out that these were committed as part of a program of retaliation. The tone of lament makes this clear to the readers, who are able to empathize with the plight of neither the blacks nor the whites but that of the poet who is part of neither group but is yet, part of both. This paradoxical position is what Walcott seeks to convey through the tone of the lament that he adopts throughout the poem. Walcott’s position highlights the differences between the histories of the two races and the problems that arise, as a result. The position that the writer adopts is thus, that of somebody in between the black and the white areas- the gray areas that have already been discussed in this paper. This is the position that the narrator of the poem seeks to adopt. The presence of a gray area presupposes the presence of a black and a white area. Walcott’s poem, thus, effectively manages to portray the differences that existed between races, something that has diminished. What exists in the post-modern age and literature is the gray area, where identities merge into each other and enable the existence of a pluralistic society. The two works of literature that have been discussed in this essay are similar in theme. However, the differences in tone and perspective make these different in the effect that they have on the reader. Both of them emphasize the racial differences that are a part of the societies that their writers are a part of. By the time Walcott started writing, the gray areas had widened and had started to be seen in the same person, as in the case of the narrator of A Far Cry From Africa and the poet himself of whom the narrator is considered to be but a reflection. These works are classified as post-colonial literature precisely because of the predicament of racial differences in a world that has been decolonized that it portrays as its subject. They depict the predicament not only of individuals but also of societies that have been decolonized politically, but not mentally; the language in which the works discussed having been written in the language of the coloniser. Other remnants of the culture of the colonizer create a world that is constantly in between two worlds, much like the characters of Eliot’s poems, who recognize their painful condition. By the time Achebe and Walcott start writing, the influences of post-modernism are evident and this duality is accepted as an inevitable fact of life that has to be dealt with. Movements like the Negritude Movement fell by the wayside in their attempts to create an Africa where the people would be totally freed from the effects of decolonization. These movements not only failed to see the positive effects of colonization, but also the negative aspects of pre-colonial Africa. Their movements were based on a romanticization of the past, something that Achebe and Walcott are able to steer clear of. Achebe’s and Walcott’s works, through the use of literary devices that have been talked of in this paper, are able to create a discussion that explores the nuances of the relations between the different races that are a part of their societies. They are able to bring out the differences that exist between the two races; at the same time, they are also able to provide a framework within which the two races can interact and live together with relatively less conflicts between themselves. An acceptance of a pluralistic society and the inculcation of an ability to look at one’s own culture in a critical manner is what both these writers seem to be recommending as a way of reconciling oneself to the issue of race. It is not a perfect world that these writers talk about. However, what they stress is the possibility of one that can be created through striving for one. This theory is one that has been adopted by many multiracial countries and has enabled societies where people of different races live together amicably. The prophetic nature of the writings of Achebe and Walcott is thus seen in these works of theirs. Works Cited Achebe, Chinua. (2011). Things Fall Apart. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Print. Walcott, Derek. A Far Cry From Africa. Web. . Accessed on 16th July, 2011 Welty, Eudora. (1994). Thirteen Stories. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Print. Thiongo, Ngugi wa. (2005). Decolonizing the mind: the politics of language in African literature. Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House. Print. Fanon, Frantz. (2009). The Wretched of the Earth. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Print. Ashcroft, Bill; Griffiths, Gareth; Tiffin, Helen. (2010). New Delhi: Routledge. Print. Yeats, William Butler. (2007). Selected Poems of William Butler Yeats. New Delhi: Doaba Publications. Print. Read More