Language as Power

"Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter." –- African proverb

World Literature and Composition Honors Packet

Created by WCPHS English dept. H (Kavanagh, 2011)

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Unit Assessment SWBAT: •Ensure that all subjects and verbs agree in number and tense •Correctly use the perfect tense with “have” and not “of” •Ensure that he/she does not have any fragments •Use decent sentence sentence variety •Have some precise word choice including little or no use of generic 2nd person you •Have few or no grammatical errors •Locate important details in more challenging passages •Locate and interpret minor or subtly stated details in uncomplicated passages •Discern which details, though they may appear in different sections throughout a passage, support important details in more challenging passages •Order sequence of events in uncomplicated passages •Understand relationships between characters, ideas, and so on in more challenging literary narratives •Understand implied or subtly stated cause-effect relationships in more challenging passages •Provide specific reasons, examples and supporting details •Demonstrate some complex analysis of the issue through connections and links to the overall thesis/purpose

Prompting Question:

From the title through to the end of the novel, Achebe integrates and appropriates a mixture of traditional African and modern Western cultural and literary elements. Achebe writes in English, the language of the colonizer, but incorporates idioms, proverbs, and imagery that invoke the Igbo tradition and culture into his prose in order to convey the experience of African society under colonization and to force the reader to accept the story he tells on his own terms. Achebe writes in a 1974 essay, "Chi in Igbo Cosmology": "Since Igbo people did not construct a rigid and closely argued system of thought to explain the universe and the place of man in it, preferring the metaphor of myth and poetry, anyone seeking an insight into their world must seek it along their own way. Some of these ways are folk tales, proverbs, proper names, rituals, and festivals" ("Chi in Igbo Cosmology" 161). How does this passage relate to Achebe's choice of form and narrative structures within the novel?

Paper Requirements: •Should include a minimum of three sources from this reading packet •Should reference something learned in AP World History (the text, lecture, visual aid) •Follow the ACTS, MEL-Con (M, EL, EL, EL, Con), and STAC writing formulas •Should be submitted via Criterion twice prior to final submission in order to eliminate grammar and mechanical issues as identified in the rubric •Should contain no fewer than two (2) A.W.E. per body paragraph •Should contain a title page •Should contain a Works Cited page in proper MLA format

Grading:

See attached rubric. Created by WCPHS English dept. H (Kavanagh, 2011)

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Connecting to the Concept: from "Discovering Columbus: Rereading the Past" by Bill Bigelow Most of my students have trouble with the idea that a book - especially a textbook - can lie. That's why I start my U.S. history class by stealing a student's purse. As the year opens, my students may not know when the Civil war was fought or what James Madison or Frederick Douglass did; but they know that a brave fellow named Christopher Columbus discovered America. Indeed, this bit of historical lore may be the only knowledge class members have in common. What students don't know is that their textbooks have, by omission or otherwise, lied to them. They don't know, for example, that on the island of Hispaniola, an entire race of people was wiped out in only Forty years of Spanish administration. Finders, Keepers So I begin class by stealing a student's purse. I announce that the purse is mine, obviously, because look who has it. Most students are fair-minded. They saw me take the purse off the desk so they protest: "That's not yours, it's Nikki's. You took it. We saw you." I brush these objections aside and reiterate that it is, too, mine and to prove it, I'll show all the things I have inside. I unzip the bag and remove a brush or a comb, maybe a pair of dark glasses. A tube of lipstick works best: "This is my lipstick," I say. "There, that proves it is my purse." They don't buy it and, in fact, are mildly outraged that I would pry into someone's possessions with such utter disregard for her privacy. (I've alerted the student to the demonstration before the class, but no one else knows that. ) It's time to move on: "OK, if it's Nikki's purse, how do you know? Why are you all so positive it's not my purse?" Different answers: We saw you take it; that's her lipstick, we know you don't wear lipstick; there is stuff in there with her name on it. To get the point across, I even offer to help in their effort to prove Nikki's possession: "If we had a test on the contents of the purse, who would do better, Nikki or I?" "Whose labor earned the money that bought the things in the purse, mine or Nikki's?" Obvious questions, obvious answers. I make one last try to keep Nikki's purse: "What if I said I discovered this purse, then would it be mine?" A little laughter is my reward, but, don't get any takers; they still think the purse is rightfully Nikki's. "So," I ask, "Why do we say that Columbus discovered America?"

Stop and Think: SWBAT: •Understand relationships between characters, ideas, and so on in more challenging literary narratives •Understand implied or subtly stated cause-effect relationships in more challenging passages •Provide specific reasons, examples and supporting details •Demonstrate some complex analysis of the issue through connections and links to the overall thesis/purpose

What's your theory? Why DO “we say that Columbus discovered America?”

Created by WCPHS English dept. H (Kavanagh, 2011)

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Building Background SWBAT: •Locate important details in more challenging passages •Locate and interpret minor or subtly stated details in uncomplicated passages •Discern which details, though they may appear in different sections throughout a passage, support important details in more challenging passages •Understand relationships between characters, ideas, and so on in more challenging literary narratives •Understand implied or subtly stated cause-effect relationships in more challenging passages

Passage A: Excerpt from “An African Voice: An Interview with Chinua Achebe”

You have been called the progenitor of the modern African novel, and Things Fall Apart has maintained its resonance in the decades since it was written. Have you been surprised by the effect the book has had?

Was I surprised? Yes, at the beginning. There was no African literature as we know it today. And so I had no idea when I was writing Things Fall Apart whether it would even be accepted or published. All of this was new -- there was nothing by which I could gauge how it was going to be received. But, of course, something doesn't continue to surprise you every day. After a while I began to understand why the book had resonance. I began to understand my history even better. It wasn't as if when I wrote it I was an expert in the history of the world. I was a very young man. I knew I had a story, but how it fit into the story of the world -- I really had no sense of that. Its meaning for my Igbo people was clear to me, but I didn't know how other people elsewhere would respond to it. Did it have any meaning or resonance for them? I realized that it did when, to give you just one example, the whole class of a girls' college in South Korea wrote to me, and each one expressed an opinion about the book. And then I learned something, which was that they had a history that was similar to the story of Things Fall Apart -- the history of colonization. This I didn't know before. Their colonizer was Japan. So these people across the waters were able to relate to the story of dispossession in Africa. People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story, if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience.

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It seems that people from places that haven't experienced colonization in the same way have also responded to the story. There are different forms of dispossession, many, many ways in which people are deprived or subjected to all kinds of victimization -- it doesn't have to be colonization. Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation. This is what I try to tell my students: this is one great thing that literature can do -- it can make us identify with situations and people far away. If it does that, it's a miracle. I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.

A character in Things Fall Apart remarks that the white man "has put a knife on the things that held us together, and we have fallen apart." Are those things still severed, or have the wounds begun to heal? What I was referring to there, or what the speaker in the novel was thinking about, was the upsetting of a society, the disturbing of a social order. The society of Umuofia, the village in Things Fall Apart, was totally disrupted by the coming of the European government, missionary Christianity, and so on. That was not a temporary disturbance; it was a once and for all alteration of their society. To give you the example of Nigeria, where the novel is set, the Igbo people had organized themselves in small units, in small towns and villages, each self-governed. With the coming of the British, Igbo land as a whole was incorporated into a totally different polity, to be called Nigeria, with a whole lot of other people with whom the Igbo people had not had direct contact before. The result of that was not something from which you could recover, really. You had to learn a totally new reality, and accommodate yourself to the demands of this new reality, which is the state called Nigeria. Various nationalities, each of which had its own independent life, were forced by the British to live with people of different customs and habits and priorities and religions. And then at independence, fifty years later, they were suddenly on their own again. They began all over again to learn the rules of independence. The problems that Nigeria is having today could be seen as resulting from this effort that was initiated by colonial rule to create a new nation. There's nothing to indicate whether it will fail or succeed. It all depends. One might hear someone say, How long will it take these people to get their act together? It's going to take a very, very long time, because it's really been a whole series of interruptions and disturbances, one step forward and two or three back. It has not been easy. One always wishes it had been easier. We've compounded things by our own mistakes, but it doesn't really help to pretend that Created by WCPHS English dept. H (Kavanagh, 2011)

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we've had an easy task.

In Home and Exile, you talk about the negative ways in which British authors such as Joseph Conrad and Joyce Cary portrayed Africans over the centuries. What purpose did that portrayal serve? It was really a straightforward case of setting us up, as it were. The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery. The cruelties of this trade gradually began to trouble many people in Europe. Some people began to question it. But it was a profitable business, and so those who were engaged in it began to defend it -- a lobby of people supporting it, justifying it, and excusing it. It was difficult to excuse and justify, and so the steps that were taken to justify it were rather extreme. You had people saying, for instance, that these people weren't really human, they're not like us. Or, that the slave trade was in fact a good thing for them, because the alternative to it was more brutal by far. And therefore, describing this fate that the Africans would have had back home became the motive for the literature that was created about Africa. Even after the slave trade was abolished, in the nineteenth century, something like this literature continued, to serve the new imperialistic needs of Europe in relation to Africa. This continued until the Africans themselves, in the middle of the twentieth century, took into their own hands the telling of their story. You write in Home and Exile, "After a short period of dormancy and a little self-doubt about its erstwhile imperial mission, the West may be ready to resume its old domineering monologue in the world." Are some Western writers backpedaling and trying to tell their own version of African stories again? This tradition that I'm talking about has been in force for hundreds of years, and many generations have been brought up on it. What was preached in the churches by the missionaries and their agents at home all supported a certain view of Africa. When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don't just turn it off one day. When the African response began, I think there was an immediate pause on the European side, as if they were saying, Okay, we'll stop telling this story, because we see there's another story. But after a while there's a certain beginning again, not quite a return but something like a reaction to the African story that cannot, of course, ever go as far as the original tradition that the Africans are responding to. There's a reaction to a reaction, and there will be a further reaction to that. And I think that's the way it will go, until what I call a balance of stories is secured. And this is really what I personally wish this century Created by WCPHS English dept. H (Kavanagh, 2011)

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to see -- a balance of stories where every people will be able to contribute to a definition of themselves, where we are not victims of other people's accounts. This is not to say that nobody should write about anybody else -- I think they should, but those that have been written about should also participate in the making of these stories.

And that's what started with Things Fall Apart and other books written by Africans around the 1950s. Yes, that's what it turned out to be. It was not actually clear to us at the time what we were doing. We were simply writing our story. But the bigger story of how these various accounts tie in, one with the other, is only now becoming clear. We realize and recognize that it's not just colonized people whose stories have been suppressed, but a whole range of people across the globe who have not spoken. It's not because they don't have something to say, it simply has to do with the division of power, because storytelling has to do with power. Those who win tell the story; those who are defeated are not heard. But that has to change. It's in the interest of everybody, including the winners, to know that there's another story. If you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all.

You're talking about a shift in power, so there would be more of a balance of power between cultures than there is now? Well, not a shift in the structure of power. I'm not thinking simply of political power. The shift in power will create stories, but also stories will create a shift in power. So one feeds the other. And the world will be a richer place for that.

Do you see this balance of stories as likely to emerge in this era of globalization and the exporting of American culture? That's a real problem. The mindless absorption of American ideas, culture, and behavior around the world is not going to help this balance of stories, and it's not going to help the world, either. People are limiting themselves to one view of the world that comes from somewhere else. That's something that we have to battle with as we go along, both as writers and as citizens, because it's not just in the literary or artistic arena that this is going to show itself. I think one can say this limiting isn't going to be very healthy for the societies that abandon themselves.

In Anthills of the Savannah the poet Ikem says, "The prime failure of our government is the ... failure of our rulers to reestablish vital inner links with the poor and dispossessed of this country, with the bruised heart that throbs painfully at the core of the nation's being." Does this hold true for Nigeria today? Created by WCPHS English dept. H (Kavanagh, 2011)

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Yes, this is very much the Nigerian situation. The British handed over the reins of government to a small group of educated people who then became the new rulers. What Ikem is talking about is the distance between this new class of rulers and the other Nigerian people. What needs to be done is to link the two together again, so that those who control power will see the direct relationship to the people in whose name this power is wielded. This connection does not happen automatically, and has not happened in many instances. In the case of Nigeria, the government of the military dictator General Abacha is a good example. The story coming out of his rule is of an enormous transfer of the country's wealth into private bank accounts, a wholesale theft of the national resources needed for all kinds of things -- for health, for education, for roads. That's not the action of someone who sees himself as the servant of the Nigerian people. The nation's infrastructure was left to disintegrate, because of one man's selfish need to have billions. Or take what is happening today, now that we have gotten rid of this military dictator and are beginning to practice again the system of democratic rule. You have leaders who see nothing wrong in inciting religious conflict between Christians and Muslims. It's all simply to retain power. So you find now a different kind of alienation. The leadership does not really care for the welfare of the country and its people.

In an Atlantic Unbound interview this past winter Nadine Gordimer said, "English is used by my fellow writers, blacks, who have been the most extreme victims of colonialism. They use it even though they have African languages to choose from. I think that once you've mastered a language it's your own. It can be used against you, but you can free yourself and use it as black writers do -- you can claim it and use it." Do you agree with her? Yes, I definitely do. English is something you spend your lifetime acquiring, so it would be foolish not to use it. Also, in the logic of colonization and decolonization it is actually a very powerful weapon in the fight to regain what was yours. English was the language of colonization itself. It is not simply something you use because you have it anyway; it is something which you can actively claim to use as an effective weapon, as a counterargument to colonization.

You write that the Ghanaian author Ama Ata Aidoo is on the "right side, on behalf of the poor and afflicted, the kind of 'nothing people' V. S. Naipaul would love to hammer into the ground with his well-crafted mallet of deadly prose." Do you think a writer from a country like Nigeria has a moral obligation to write about his homeland in a certain way? No, there's no moral obligation to write in any particular way. But there is a moral Created by WCPHS English dept. H (Kavanagh, 2011)

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obligation, I think, not to ally yourself with power against the powerless. I think an artist, in my definition of that word, would not be someone who takes sides with the emperor against his powerless subjects. That's different from prescribing a way in which a writer should write. But I do think decency and civilization would insist that you take sides with the powerless.

There are those who say that media coverage of Africa is one-sided -that it focuses on the famines, social unrest, and political violence, and leaves out coverage of the organizations and countries that are working. Do you agree? If so, what effect does this skewed coverage have? Is it a continuation of the anti-Africa British literature you talk about in Home and Exile? Yes, I do agree. I think the result has been to create a fatigue, whether it's charity fatigue or fatigue toward being good to people who are less fortunate. I think that's a pity. The reason for this concentration on the failings of Africans is the same as what we've been talking about -- this tradition of bad news, or portraying Africa as a place that is different from the rest of the world, a place where humanity is really not recognizable. When people hear the word Africa, they have come to expect certain images to follow. If you see a good house in Lagos, Nigeria, it doesn't quite fit the picture you have in your head, because you are looking for the slum -- that is what the world expects journalists covering a city in Africa to come back with. Now, if you are covering America, you are not focusing on slums every day of your life. You see a slum once in a while, maybe you talk about it, but the rest of the time you are talking about other things. It is that ability to see the complexity of a place that the world doesn't seem to be able to take to Africa, because of this baggage of centuries of reporting about Africa. The result is the world doesn't really know Africa. If you are an African or you live in Africa, this stands out very clearly to you, you are constantly being bombarded with bad news, and you know that there is good news in many places. This doesn't mean that the bad news doesn't exist, that's not what I'm saying. But it exists alongside other things. Africa is not simple -- people want to simplify it. Africa is very complex. Very bad things go on -- they should be covered -- but there are also some good things. This is something that comes with this imbalance of power that we've been talking about. The people who consume the news that comes back from the rest of the world are probably not really interested in hearing about something that is working. Those who have the ability to send crews out to bring back the news are in a position to determine what the image of the various places should be, because they have the resources to do it. Now, an African country doesn't have a television crew coming to America, for instance, and picking up the disastrous news. So America sends out wonderful images of its success, power, energy, and Created by WCPHS English dept. H (Kavanagh, 2011)

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politics, and the world is bombarded in a very partial way by good news about the powerful and bad news about the less powerful. Writing Application: SWBAT: •Understand relationships between characters, ideas, and so on in more challenging literary narratives •Understand implied or subtly stated cause-effect relationships in more challenging passages •Provide specific reasons, examples and supporting details •Demonstrate some complex analysis of the issue through connections and links to the overall thesis/purpose

Write a MEL-Con paragraph in which you analyze Achebe's reasons for using both Igbo and/or the English translation? How might the novel been received had Achebe NOT included foreign words and unexplained cultural concepts affect your reading of the novel and your understanding of the Igbo culture being presented?

_________

Passage B: Born in British India in 1865, Rudyard Kipling was educated in England before returning to India in 1882, where his father was a museum director and authority on Indian arts and crafts. Thus Kipling was thoroughly immersed in Indian culture: by 1890 he had published in English about 80 stories and ballads previously unknown outside India. As a result of financial misfortune, from 1892-96 he and his wife, the daughter of an American publisher, lived in Vermont, where he wrote the two Jungle Books. After returning to England, he published "The White Man's Burden" in 1899, an appeal to the United States to assume the task of developing the Philippines, recently won in the Spanish-American War.

The White Man's Burden (1899) Rudyard Kipling Take up the White Man's burden-Send forth the best ye breed-Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need; To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild--

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Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child. Take up the White Man's burden-In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain To seek another's profit, And work another's gain. Take up the White Man's burden-The savage wars of peace-Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought, Watch sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought. Take up the White Man's burden-No tawdry rule of kings, But toil of serf and sweeper-The tale of common things. The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread, Go mark them with your living, And mark them with your dead. Take up the White Man's burden-Created by WCPHS English dept. H (Kavanagh, 2011)

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And reap his old reward: The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard-The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:-"Why brought he us from bondage, Our loved Egyptian night?" Take up the White Man's burden-Ye dare not stoop to less-Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloke (1) your weariness; By all ye cry or whisper, By all ye leave or do, The silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your gods and you. Take up the White Man's burden-Have done with childish days-The lightly proferred laurel, (2) The easy, ungrudged praise. Comes now, to search your manhood Through all the thankless years Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment of your peers! Source: Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 1, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 015-567425-0 or Paul Brians, et al. Reading About the World, Vol. 2, 3rd edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishing: ISBN 0-15-512826-4.

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SOAPSTone with Kipling Subject

Occasion

Audience

Purpose

Speaker

Tone

Stop and Think: From this reading, how might Kipling define “imperialism”?

From this reading, how likely is it that Kipling would say it is acceptable for one culture to infiltrate another? Use A.W.E. To support your findings.

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Passage C:

THE SECOND COMING William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? Source: http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/chinua-achebe%E2%80%99s-things-fall-apart-oral-andliterary-strategies-0#section-20789 Notes: (1) gyre is a spiral, making the figure of a cone. (2) Second Coming refers to the promised return of Christ on Doomsday, the end of the world; but in Revelation 13 Doomsday is also marked by the appearance of a monstrous beast. (3) Spiritus Mundi: spirit of the World. (4) That twenty centuries: 2,000 years; the creature has been held back since the birth of Christ. Yeats imagines that the great heritage of Western European civilization is collapsing, and that the world will be swept by a tide of savagery from the "uncivilized" portions of the globe. As you read this novel, try to understand how Achebe's work is in

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part an answer to this poem. (from Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart Study Guide, by Paul Brians, Department of English, Washington State University, Pullman 99164-5020.)

Questions to Consider: What is the meaning of the phrase "Things Fall Apart" within Yeats' poem?

What does the Second Coming refer to in general? What does the Second Coming refer to in Yeats' poem? As you read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, note how the novel both takes up and changes Yeats' version of the Second Coming. Who or what in the novel represents a "rough beast" that "slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

______________ Source D: Directions: Complete a set of Cornell Notes on the missionaries during the nineteenth century.

The Role of Missionaries in Conquest There is an oft repeated comment (a favorite with Archbishop Tutu), “When the white man arrived, he had the Bible and we had the land; now, we have the Bible and he has the land.” Missionaries were not a uniform group, especially in regard to ideas and opinions; thus, making generalizations is difficult because there are usually lots of exceptions and contrary examples. It is far too common for scholars to adopt a rather simplistic stereotype and caricature of the missionary as heroic, saint-like characters; some of the negative stereotype is just a reaction against excessively fulsome adulation of the missionaries. Without a doubt, the missionaries (and Christianity) tended to be divisive in traditional society....Most missionaries for a long time pursued the idea of separation of converts from traditional society and encouraged their converts not

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to participate in many national customs and rites. This problem was exacerbated when the missionaries urged their converts to remain neutral in the wars. The majority of missionaries were British (but not all—French and Swiss in Lesotho, as well as Germans, Americans and Scandinavians in other areas); some were unable and unwilling to put aside their nationalism and national loyalties. However, many others urged their converts not participate in wars, not because of nationalism, but because they felt certain that Africans would lose; they often refused—even in face of taunts by white settlers—to condemn those who did join the African military resistance by pointing out that everyone expected citizens in Europe to support their governments and to fight for their country (white settlers usually wanted to treat them as traitors—at least to confiscate all their land and cattle, but often even harsher punishments). Without question, missionaries were an important factor in promoting economic change. They introduced and encouraged the use of foreign products (clothing, tea, etc.) which undermined the former self-sufficiency of the subsistence economy. This brought Africans more and more into a market economy. To pay for these goods, Africans would have to produce surpluses of agricultural products to sell or find other ways to get money; for many this meant going to work for wages—what some call ‘proletarianization’. Many missionaries adopted a theory that linked Christianity and trade. It was argued that commerce and Christianity reinforced each other; that participation in one predisposed people to become involved with the other. As a result, they could advocate trade as a means of furthering the spread and success of the gospel and vice versa. By no means did all missionaries agree that commerce and Christianity were mutually reinforcing (in fact Livingstone was fired by the LMS for engaging in trade, contrary to its rules). As John Smith Moffat (he was 3rd generation in the famous missionary family) stated it in 1903: “I do not believe in missionaries or societies putting themselves under obligation to the rich men in South Africa. The time is coming when there will be a life-and-death struggle on the native question. The capitalists are worse than the Boers, and we who stand by the native will have to fight to the death over the question.” Also, economic change and innovation was by no means all induced by the missionaries. Some non-Christian Africans saw the potential and began to innovate; the wealthy in traditional society were often in the best position to take advantage. Thus, economic change was coming and being induced by other factors than missionary actions. Source: Wallace G. Mills. Hist. 316 17. Christian Missions http://stmarys.ca/~wmills/course316/17missions.html

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Source E: Subversion versus Rejection: Can Postcolonial Writers Subvert the Codified Using the Language of the Empire? Brandon Brown, English 27, 1997 Language is power, the "power to name" and therefore to construct the lens through which understanding takes place. As the "most potent instrument of culture control," the language of the colonial power therefore played an essential role in the process of colonization. Because the literature of former imperial colonies decentralizes language control, to a certain extent it decolonizes by its very nature. The "bilingual intelligentsia" of postcolonial writers must negotiate the power dynamics regarding such tensions as colonized-colonizer and indigenousalien. postcolonial literature itself is a battle ground in which the active pursuit of decolonization continues to be played out. Armed with their pens, the said authors address "the dominance of imperial language" as it relates to educational systems, to economic structures, and perhaps more importantly to the medium through which anti-imperial ideas are cast (Ashcroft 283). The postcolonial voice can decide to resist imperial lionguistic domination in two ways -- by rejecting the language of the colonizer or by subverting the empire by writing back in a European language. Frantz Fanon describes the dialectic of language between the colonized and the colonizer bleakly. According to him, "the colonized is raised above jungle status [in the eyes of the colonizer] in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards." Fanon, who rejects the codified colonizer-colonized relationship, advocates total rejection of the standards of the colonizing culture including its language. Fanon believs that "a man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language" (qtd. in Rusell, postcolonial Web). Fanon reasons that he who has taken up the language of the colonizer has accepted the world of the colonizer and therefore the standards of the colonizer. Following Fanon, Ngugi Wa Thiongo also proposes a program of radical decolonization in his collection of essays Decolonising the Mind, which points out specific ways that the language of African literature manifests the dominance of the empire. He builds an powerful argument for African writers to write in traditional languages of Africa rather than in the European languages. Writing in the language of the colonizer, he claims, means that many of one's own people -meaning those people with whom a postcolonial writer identifies by nativity -- are not able to read one's original work. About African literature written in European language Ngugi writes, "its greatest weakness still lay where it has always been, in the audience -- the petty-bourgeoisie readership automatically assumed by the very choice of language" (22). According to him, literature written in a European language cannot claim to be African literature, and therefore he classifies the works by Soyinka, Achebe, and Okara as Afro-European literature.

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Source: http://www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/brandon1.html Source F:

Biography of Chinua Achebe Chinua Achebe was born on November 15, 1930, in Ogidi in Eastern Nigeria. His family belonged to the Igbo tribe, and he was the fifth of six children. Representatives of the British government that controlled Nigeria convinced his parents, Isaiah Okafor Achebe and Janet Ileogbunam, to abandon their traditional religion and follow Christianity. Achebe was brought up as a Christian, but he remained curious about the more traditional Nigerian faiths. He was educated at a government college in Umuahia, Nigeria, and graduated from the University College at Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1954. Achebe was unhappy with books about Africa written by British authors such as Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) and John Buchan (1875–1940), because he felt the descriptions of African people were inaccurate and insulting. While working for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation he composed his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1959), the story of a traditional warrior hero who is unable to adapt to changing conditions in the early days of British rule. The book won immediate international recognition and also became the basis for a play by Biyi Bandele. Years later, in 1997, the Performance Studio Workshop of Nigeria put on a production of the play, which was then presented in the United States as part of the Kennedy Center's African Odyssey series in 1999. Achebe's next two novels, No Longer At Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964), were set in the past as well. Chinua Achebe is one of Nigeria's greatest novelists. His novels are written mainly for an African audience, but having been translated into more than forty languages, they have found worldwide readership. Source: http://www.notablebiographies.com/A-An/Achebe-Chinua.html

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Igbo Vocabulary SWBAT: •Locate important details in more challenging passages •Locate and interpret minor or subtly stated details in uncomplicated passages •Discern which details, though they may appear in different sections throughout a passage, support important details in more challenging passages •Understand relationships between characters, ideas, and so on in more challenging literary narratives •Understand implied or subtly stated cause-effect relationships in more challenging passages

Directions: Keep this chart while reading the novel. Record Igbo vocabulary words, cultural concepts and traditions within the narrative. Have students use the textual clues to provide definitions for the vocabulary words and explanations of the concepts and ceremonies. In the last column, have them suggest a purpose of the vocabulary word or concept as it functions within the novel.

Page #

Vocabulary Word or Concept

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Definition/ Meaning

Purposes Within the Novel

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Drawing Conclusions: • Which African words and concepts does he translate into English, and which are left for the reader to understand through their use and context in the text?

• Why do you think Achebe chose to keep these words in their original language?

Writing Application: SWBAT: •Understand relationships between characters, ideas, and so on in more challenging literary narratives •Understand implied or subtly stated cause-effect relationships in more challenging passages •Provide specific reasons, examples and supporting details •Demonstrate some complex analysis of the issue through connections and links to the overall thesis/purpose

Write a MEL-Con paragraph in which you analyze the effects of having these words in their original language as opposed to the English translation? How does the inclusion of untranslated foreign words and unexplained cultural concepts affect your reading of the novel and your understanding of the Igbo culture being presented?

Writing Application: SWBAT: •Understand relationships between characters, ideas, and so on in more challenging literary narratives •Understand implied or subtly stated cause-effect relationships in more challenging passages •Provide specific reasons, examples and supporting details •Demonstrate some complex analysis of the issue through connections and links to the overall thesis/purpose

How would you respond to criticism that by writing in English, “The language of the Empire” Chinua Achebe has rejected Igbo culture? Write a MEL-Con paragraph in which you respond and provide evidence to support your argument.

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Oral Elements in Things Fall Apart

Directions: In conjunction with Igbo words and expressions, Achebe includes African oral traditions such as the genres of proverb, riddle, myth, clan and family histories, and epic within the narrative. Find as many oral elements as possible in the text, for example: myths, folktales, poetry, proverbs, poems, riddles, and songs. Identify the type of element and describe its relation to the novel's story and message. Try to collect at least one example every time you read.

Page # Example

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Type of Element Relevance to Narrative or Author's Purpose

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SOAPSTone with Things Fall Apart Subject

Occasion

Audience

Purpose

Speaker

Tone

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Questions for Demonstrating Understanding SWBAT: •Locate important details in more challenging passages •Locate and interpret minor or subtly stated details in uncomplicated passages •Discern which details, though they may appear in different sections throughout a passage, support important details in more challenging passages •Understand relationships between characters, ideas, and so on in more challenging literary narratives •Understand implied or subtly stated cause-effect relationships in more challenging passages

Chapter One: 1. Note how Achebe immediately establishes his perspective from inside Umuofia (which is Ibo for "people of the forest") in the first sentence. The wider world consists of the group of nine related villages which comprise Umuofia and certain other villages like Mbaino. What are Okonkwo's main characteristics as he is depicted in the first few chapters? List as many as you can, being as specific as possible. What were the characteristics of his father which affect him so powerfully? 2.

Kola is a stimulant, comparable to very strong tea or coffee, which is served on most social occasions in this culture. It is also one ingredient after which Coca Cola is named. Note how the ritual for sharing kola is described without being explained. Why do you think Achebe does this? He will continue to introduce Ibo customs in this fashion throughout the novel.

3. One becomes influential in this culture by earning titles. As with the Potlatch Indians of our region and many other peoples, this is an expensive proposition which involves the dispersing most of one's painfully accumulated wealth. What do you think are the social functions of such a system? 4. One of the most famous lines in the novel is "proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten." What does this mean? Palm oil is a rich yellow oil pressed from the fruit of certain palm trees and used both for fuel and cooking. Look for other proverbs as you read. Cowry shells threaded on strings were traditionally used as a means of exchange by many African cultures. The villages' distance from the sea makes them sufficiently rare to serve as money. Cowries from as far away as Southeast Asia have been found in sub-Saharan Africa. Chapter Two 1. What effect does night have on the people? What do they fear? How do they deal with their fear of snakes at night? Palm-wine is a naturally fermented product of the palm-wine tree, a sort of natural beer. What is the cause and nature of the conflict with Mbaino? Beginning with this chapter, trace how women are related to the religious beliefs of the people. What is the purpose of the taking of Ikemefuna? Note how Achebe foreshadows the boy's doom even as he introduces him. 2. In what ways does Okonkwo overcompensate for his father's weaknesses? In what ways is he presented as unusual for his culture? What is his attitude toward women? Why does he dislike his son Nwoye so much? 3. In this polygamous culture each household is enclosed in a compound. Each wife lives in a hut with her children, and the husband visits each wife in turn, though he has his own hut as well. Children are often cared for more or less communally. What do you think the advantages and disadvantages of this form of social structure are? Created by WCPHS English dept. H (Kavanagh, 2011)

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4. What seems to be Achebe's attitude toward this culture so far? Is his depicting it as an ideal one? Can you cite any passages which imply a critical attitude? Chapter Three

1. The priestess of Agbala is introduced at the beginning of this chapter. She is a very

significant figure in this book. What effect does her status have on your judgment of the roles played by women in the culture? The chi or personal spirit (rather like the daemon of Socrates) is a recurring theme in the book. The term "second burial" is a delayed funeral ceremony given after the family has had time to prepare.

2. How is awareness of rank observed in the drinking of the palm wine? Note that this chapter contains another proverb about proverbs. How does share-cropping work? What is the relationship of women to agriculture? Note that a customary way of committing suicide in this culture is hanging. How does Okonkwo react to "the worst year in living memory?" Chapter Four

1. What are Okonkwo's virtues? What are his faults? What does this proverb mean,

"When a man says yes his chi says yes also"? What is Okonkwo's relationship with Ikemefuna like? What is the crime that causes Okonkwo's to be reprimanded? What does it tell you about the values of the culture? Achebe portrays this aspect of traditional Nigerian life in a very different fashion from Buchi Emecheta, who we will read later. What evidence is there in this chapter that customs have changed over time? That customs differ among contemporary cultures? What are the limits of the power of the village rain-maker? Note Nwoye's affection for Ikemefuna. It will be significant later.

Chapter Five 1. What is Okonkwo's attitude toward feasts? Note that it is women who are chiefly responsible for decorating the houses. In many African cultures they are also the chief domestic architects, and the mud walls are shaped by them into pleasing patterns. Guns were brought into Sub-Saharan Africa early on by Muslim merchants, but would have been fairly unusual. Briefly summarize the story of Ikwefi. What kind of a woman is she? What do you think is the significance of women having to sit with their legs together? Chapter Six 1. This chapter introduces a much-discussed aspect of Ibo belief. As in most premodern cultures, the majority of children died in early childhood. If a series of such deaths took place in a family it was believed that the same wicked spirit was being born and dying over and over again, spitefully grieving its parents. They tended to be apprehensive about new children until they seemed to be likely to survive, thus proving themselves not to be feared ogbanje. What roles does Chielo play in the village? Chapter Seven

1. How has Nwoye begun to "act like a man"? What values does Okonkwo associate with manliness? How does Nwoye relate to these values? "Foo-foo" is pounded yam, the traditional staple of the Ibo diet. How does the village react to the coming of the locusts? Achebe is doubtless stressing the contrast with other cultures here, familiar to African readers from the Bible, in which locusts are invariably a terrible plague. Why is Okonkwo asked not to take part in the killing of Ikemefuna? Why do you suppose they have decided to kill the boy? Why do you think Achebe does not Created by WCPHS English dept. H (Kavanagh, 2011)

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translate the song that Ikemefuna remembers as he walks along? A matchet is a large knife (Spanish machete). Why does Okonkwo act as he does? 2. Most traditional cultures have considered twins magical or cursed. Twins are in fact unusually common among the Ibo, and some subgroups value them highly. However, the people of Umuofia do not. Note how the introduction of this bit of knowledge is introduced on the heels of Ikemefuna's death. Nwoye serves as a point of view character to criticize some of the more negative aspects of Umuofia culture. This incident will have a powerful influence on his reaction to changes in the culture later. Chapter Eight 1. What is Okonkwo's attitude toward his daughter Ezinma?" Bride-price is the converse of dowry. Common in many African cultures, it involves the bridegroom's family paying substantial wealth in cash or goods for the privilege of marrying a young woman. Do you think such a custom would tend to make women more valuable than a dowry system where the woman's family must offer the gifts to the bridegroom's family? How do you think such a system would affect the women themselves? Note again the emphasis on differing customs, this time as it applies to palm-wine tapping. 2. Young women were considered marriageable in their mid-teens. Why do you think this attitude arose? It is worth noting that European women commonly married between 15 and 18 in earlier times. There is nothing uniquely African about these attitudes. 3. Note the continued treatment of the theme of the variability of values. How is the notion of white men first introduced into the story? Why might Africans suppose that they have no toes? What sorts of attitudes are associated with white men in this passage? Chapter Nine 1. The story of the mosquito is one of several West African tales which explain why these insects buzz irritatingly in people's ears. Why does Ekwefi prize her daughter Ezinma so highly? In this chapter the notion of the ogbanje is treated at length. What attitudes toward children does it reflect? Note how it balances against the "throwing away" of twins. Does Achebe seem to validate the belief in ogbanje?

Chapter Ten

1. The egwugwu ceremony of the Ibo has been much studied. The women clearly know on some level that these mysterious beings are their men folk in disguise, yet they are terrified of them. What do you think their attitude toward the egwugwu is? What seem to be the main functions of the ceremony? How does Evil Forest refute the argument of Uzowulu that he beat his wife because she was unfaithful to him? How are problems like this affected by the fact that whole families are involved in marriage, unlike in American culture where a man and woman may wed quite independently of their families and even against their families' wishes? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each system? Chapter Eleven 1. What is the moral of the fable of the tortoise? What values does it reflect? What does the incident involving the priestess of Agbala reflect about the values of the culture? Chapter Twelve Created by WCPHS English dept. H (Kavanagh, 2011)

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1. Notice the traditional attitudes of all small villagers toward large marketplaces like

Umuike. How is the importance of family emphasized in the uri ceremony? Notice that the song sung at the end of the chapter is a new one. Achebe often reminds us that this is not a frozen, timeless culture, but a constantly changing one.

Chapter Thirteen 1. Having shown us an engagement ceremony, Achebe now depicts a funeral. We are being systematically introduced to the major rituals of Ibo life. How does the onehanded egwugwu praise the dead man? Okonkwo has killed people before this. What makes this incident so serious, though it would be treated as a mere accident under our law? Chapter Fourteen 1. In Part One we were introduced to an intact and functioning culture. It may have had its faults, and it accommodated deviants like Okonkwo with some difficulty, but it still worked as an organic whole. It is in Part Two that things begin to fall apart. Okonkwo's exile in Mbanta is not only a personal disaster, but it removes him from his home village at a crucial time so that he returns to a changed world which can no longer adapt to him. 2. What is the significance of comparing Okonkwo to a fish out of water? Note the value placed on premarital chastity in the engagement ceremony. In many African cultures virginity is not an absolute requirement for marriage but it is highly desirable and normally greatly enhances the value of the bride-price that may be paid. Thus families are prone to assert a good deal of authority over their unmarried daughters to prevent early love affairs. How does Okonkwo's lack of understanding of the importance of women reflect on him? Chapter Fifteen 1. How does the story of the destruction of Abame summarize the experience of colonization? Movie Indians call a train engine an "iron horse," but the term here refers to a bicycle. Note that although the people of Abame acted rashly, they had a good deal of insight into the significance of the arrival of the whites. Note how the Africans treat the white man's language as mere noise; a mirror of how white colonizers treated African languages. What sorts of stories had Okonkwo heard about white men before? In the final exchange with Okonkwo Obierika is good-naturedly refusing to accept Okonkwo's thanks by joking with him. Chapter Sixteen 1. The British followed a policy in their colonizing efforts of designating local "leaders" to administer the lower levels of their empire. In Africa these were known as "warrant chiefs." But the men they chose were often not the real leaders, and the British often assumed the existence of an centralized chieftainship where none existed. Thus the new power structures meshed badly with the old. Similarly the missionaries have designated as their contact man an individual who lacks the status to make him respected by his people. 2. Why do you think Nwoye has become a Christian? Note how Achebe inverts the traditional dialect humor of Europeans which satirizes the inability of natives to speak proper English by having the missionary mangle Ibo. What is the first act of the missionaries which evokes a positive response in some of the Ibo? Achebe focuses on the doctrine of the Trinity, the notoriously least logical and most paradoxical basic belief in Christianity. How does this belief undermine the

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missionaries' attempts to discredit the traditional religion? Why does the new religion appeal to Nwoye? Chapter Seventeen 1. What mutual misunderstandings are evident in this chapter between the missionaries and the people of the village? How does the granting to the missionaries of a plot in the Evil Forest backfire? What does the metaphor in the next to the last sentence of the chapter mean? Chapter Eighteen

1. The outcaste osu are introduced in this chapter. Why do you suppose Achebe has not mentioned them earlier? Their plight was indeed a difficult one, and is treated by Achebe elsewhere. In India the lowest castes were among the first to convert to faiths which challenged traditional Hinduism; and something similar seems to happen here. Chapter Nineteen 1. Note how traditional Umuofian custom can welcome back an erring member once he has paid for his crime. In many cultures Okonkwo would be treated as a pariah, but this culture has ways of accommodating such a person without destroying him, and in fact encouraging him to give of his best. What does the final speaker say is the main threat posed by Christianity? Chapter Twenty 1. Okonkwo's relationship to the newcomers is exacerbated by the fact that he has a very great deal at stake in maintaining the old ways. All his hopes and dreams are rooted in the continuance of the traditional culture. The fact that he has not been able gradually to accustom himself to the new ways helps to explain his extreme reaction. The missionaries have brought British colonial government with them. Missionaries were often viewed as agents of imperialism. There is a saying common to Native Americans and Africans alike which goes like this: "Before the white man came, we had the land and they had the Bible. Now we have the Bible and they have the land." 2. What clashes in values are created by the functioning of the British courts? Note the final phrase of Obierika's last speech, alluding to the title of the novel. Chapter Twenty-One 1. Why do some of the villagers--even those who are not converts to Christianity-welcome the British? The missionaries try to refute what they consider idolatry with the simplistic argument that the animist gods are only wooden idols; however the villagers are perfectly aware that the idol is not the god in a literal sense, any more than the sculpture of Christ on the cross in a Christian church is God. This sort of oversimplification was a constant theme of Christian arguments against traditional faiths throughout the world as the British assumed that the natives were fools pursuing childish beliefs who needed only a little enlightenment to be converted. Mr. Brown here learns better. It is worth noting that Achebe, like his fellow Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, was raised a Christian; but both rejected the faith and have preferred to affirm certain aspects of traditional beliefs in their own lives. Note how Akunna shrewdly senses that the head of the Church is in England rather than in heaven. Note the recurrence of the phrase "falling apart" in the last sentence of the chapter." Chapter Twenty-Two Created by WCPHS English dept. H (Kavanagh, 2011)

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1. How is Rev. Smith different from Brown? What is the result of his black and white thinking? Chapter Twenty-Three 1. What does the District Commissioner say is the motive of the British in colonizing the Africans? Chapter Twenty-Four 1. Once again Okonkwo uses his matchet rashly, bringing disaster on his head. But he could be viewed as a defiant hero defending his people's way of life. What do you think of his act? Chapter Twenty-Five 1. Why do you think Okonkwo kills himself? What is your reaction to the final paragraph of the book? Analyze it.

Source: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/anglophone/achebe.html

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