Love and Death in a Hot Country

"Societies could not be created on sheets of parchment. They could not, even with the most golden of fountain pens, be signed into existence. Inevitably, men will succumb to their own reality. They will sink to the level of being where they feel most at ease with themselves. They would always act in conformity with their own natures and remake the world in their own image. The abandonment of the Constitution could be likened to a house settling into its foundations. That, more or less, was what was happening to them. They were falling prey to their own reality, settling into their foundations. (63)"

Shiva Naipaul's final novel, Love and Death in a Hot Country, reflects the darkness of his visiting Guyana after the Jonestown Massacre. In tone and style, this novel bears a much closer resemblance to his brother's novels, beginning with The Mimic Men. Like that great novel, Shiva sets the story in a fictionalized version of a Caribbean country (Cuyama, a thinly-veiled Guyana with aspects of Suriname's demographics thrown in) and ruminates on what both brothers likely see as the chaos and nothingness of Guyana. For those accustomed to Shiva Naipaul's humor, this is a radical departure with the same tone and message of his older brother on postcolonial politics, black radicalism, and the well-intentioned whites who think they're making a difference. Thus, this novel is far too similar to Vidia's Mimic Men or Guerrillas for my taste (there is even a character descended from French Creoles who fled Haiti in the early 19th century, just as in Mimic Men), but still worthwhile for a haunting read on Guyana as the dictatorship unveiled itself. Again, like Vidia, Cuyama/Guyana, or the Caribbean at large, is a region of chaos, no civilization to speak of, no meaning. Cuyama's streets are in decay, everything is in a state of decay or reverting to jungle. This nihilistic theme pervades the character of Dina, a "mixed-race" Indian-Portuguese, whose husband, Aubrey St. Pierre, clings to grandiose ideas of revolution, social equality, and a Cuyamese nation that, to Dina (or, by extension, Shiva Naipaul), will never be. For someone trapped in his older brother's shadow, this final novel only serves to confirm it.

Age of Iron

I read Coetzee's Age of Iron while traveling a few weeks ago, so my memory of the novel is fleeting. Nonetheless, I will share a few thoughts that lingered these past weeks. Like the last novel by Coetzee reviewed on this blog, this one is set in Cape Town during the last days of apartheid, and structured as a letter by a dying white woman to her daughter in the States, so written in second person. Stylistically and in terms of setting, it is reminiscent of Life & Times of Michael K in that the reader is treated to lengthy prose, similarly themed inner thoughts of the protagonists, and the landscape of Cape Town and its environs.  The narrator, Mrs. Curren, is a former professor who begins to befriend a homeless man whose race is not specified, Verceuil.

The title of the text refers to the 'iron generation' of black youth who are resisting apartheid while losing out on education, the innocence of childhood, and the decline of 'traditional' family life. This seemingly callous generation that is capable of great violence, shocks and disturbs the dying Curren, who sees the disillusionment, inequality, and hypocrisy of her own liberalism. Still, white South Africans have walked on the iron graves of the ancestors of black South Africans for generations, thereby causing this current generation of South African youth to lose their innocence to struggle for social equality in their country. Other themes of the novel include motherhood (Curren's relationship with her daughter, the use of motherhood to express the burdens of privilege and race white South Africans inherited long before apartheid), humanity, race, retaining humanity in the face of apartheid, death, animal rights (the graphic description of Florence's husband job of killing chickens for a living in an animal factory is quite chilling, or the power of animals as companions in the relationship between Verceuil and his likely stolen dog), as well as companionship.

Through Florence's son and his friend, children from Guguletu who are skipping their substandard schools and out in the streets resisting apartheid, Mrs. Curren is forced to examine her own relationship with white supremacy, her own complicity in the status quo. She experiences the death of Florence's son's friend at the hands of the police, witnesses the violence, roadblocks, and anger in the townships, befriends the homeless Verceuil for companionship and a friend to mail her letter to her daughter. Verceuil's race is never stated, perhaps because his ultimate role in the novel is to show the universality of the human experience and how companionship can transcend racial divisions in conditions of apartheid (although throughout the novel it is quite unclear what Verceuil's motivations are or if he will ever mail Curren's confessing letters).

I must say, some of the same themes of whiteness in South Africa and disillusionment recur in Coetzee's Disgrace, even in the similarities between the two protagonists (aged white academics). Coetzee seems to suggest that in Age of Iron, however, that there is more optimism and hope for a post-apartheid South Africa, even though Curren does not make it. Moreover, it is fascinating to see Coetzee tackle an older, female protagonist as a younger male writer. Just as thought provoking or troubling, is the disagreement Curren has with Florence's cousin, Mr. Thabane, a former teacher in support of the youth embracing anti-apartheid activism, a disagreement that symbolizes the seemingly unbridgeable gap between black South Africans and sympathetic white liberals who see black South Africans as going too far. One cannot help but think of the US Civil Rights Movement and how white moderates and liberals at various times endeavored to curtail or limit black mobilizing and activism.

Perhaps one day I will return to this novel, which clearly has much more to say on the state of affairs of South Africa (and the rest of humanity) below the surface. Likewise, Curren's relationship with Verceuil continues to fascinate me, perhaps suggesting what one New York Times critic suggests is the need for white South Africans to love the 'unlovable' to find redemption. The question of white South African liberalism also remains relevant to post-apartheid South Africa, just as the plight of the homeless and urban poor like Verceuil retains relevance to the social inequities, lack of love, and maintenance of an 'iron age' impedes actual reconciliation. Check out this for a well-written essay exploring Age of Iron, too.

An A Essay on Things Fall Apart

Mr. Costa loved my essays in his World Literature Class. Personally, I think he's an incredibly easy grader but whatevs. Enjoy!

Okonkwo: The Nigerian Tragic Hero

In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Achebe brilliantly portrays precolonial Ibo society. Moreover, Achebe does not present Ibo culture as superior to Western cultures and values, but wants the reader to understand the loss of one world and the creation of another. To express that destruction of the old, precolonial Nigeria, Okonkwo becomes the tragic hero. Like all tragic heroes, Okonkwo is doomed because of his flaws, which include irrational anger, violence, an insatiable ambition, hubris, and events beyond his control.

Throughout the novel, Achebe provides several examples of Okonkwo’s heroic and masculine feats. These include wrestling, which Achebe reveals when the narrator states, "At an early age he had achieved fame as the greatest wrestler in all of the land."(Achebe 27) Achieving masculine feats such as wrestling increases one’s status in Ibo society. In addition, Okonkwo also excels in war, another masculine and heroic accomplishment, which is why he sends the message of war to the enemies of Umuofia.

Furthermore, Okonkwo rises in social class because of his own hard work and determination, another admirable and heroic virtue. His idle father left nothing for Okonkwo, but he gains his own yam farm and eventually becomes wealthy by owning many yam farms and wives. Indeed, an older man of the village astutely observes, “Looking at a king’s mouth, one would never think he sucked his mother’s breast” (26). Okonkwo’s rise from poverty further illustrates his heroic virtues because all Aristotelian tragic heroes must undergo peripeteia, or a reversal of fortune caused by one of their flaws, or hamartia. In this case, his flaw is his ambition. His fear of being a powerless, worthless man like his father motivates him to work relentlessly to appear a man of worth. Perhaps the ultimate expression of Okonkwo’s ambition is his murder of Ikemefuna, the captive from another village that he sees as his own son because “he was afraid of being thought weak” (61).

Irrational rage is another significant flaw. Okonkwo mistreats his wives, beats his children, especially Nwoye, the oldest son, and even strikes his wife during the Week of Peace for not cooking his meal. He does not use his anger wisely and beats Nwoye when he sees signs of laziness (or characteristics of his father) in him (13).

Besides, he does not show any emotion because he perceives it as unmanly, meaning Okonkwo is not balanced. Before Ikemefuna’s death, Okonkwo treats him “as he treated everyone else – with a heavy hand” (28). He could not even show affection to the people he loves, including his daughter Ezinma. By ignoring his unconscious feminine mind, Okonkwo murders Ikemefuna in front of the other men and shows no remorse, even after his friend Obierika says “What you have done will not please the Earth. It is the kind of action for which the goddess wipes out whole families” (67). His callous murder of the boy who calls him father (28) and the manner in which he replies to Obierika’s warning reveals his apathy.

Indubitably, the classic flaw of hubris also plays a role in Okonkwo’s downfall. An endemic fault in tragic heroes from Odysseus to Oedipus, Okonkwo is another arrogant hero. When Osugo, a man with no title comes to the kindred meeting, Okonkwo states, “This meeting is for men” (26). The oldest man present who reminds him of his humble origins later rebukes him. After achieving success despite early disadvantages, he became exceedingly arrogant, which is one of his reasons for abusing Nwoye when he detects laziness in the boy.

In addition, Okonkwo faces forces beyond his control. The European colonizers and Christian missionaries inevitably triumph and initially place Iboland under indirect British rule. Therefore, Okonkwo’s conflict with the European colonizers is rather reminiscent of the battle between fate and free will in that he and Oedipus fight losing battles. When Okonkwo returns to Umuofia after seven years of exile, he hopes for another reversal of fortune, which can be assumed from the text because he hopes to use his beautiful daughters to arrange marriages that benefit him. However, Okonkwo finds the white European missionaries and the District Commissioner who show no respect for traditional Ibo religion and force Christianity on them, which strengthens divisions in Ibo society as outcasts and the youth begin to convert. Comparable to Okonkwo’s struggle against European imperialism, Oedipus’ attempt to evade the prophecy demonstrates the fallacy of opposing the unavoidable. Both tragic heroes attempt in vain to aspire to great things in a new world. The old Umuofia no longer exists and nothing can bring it back, even Okonkwo’s valiant attempts. When Okonkwo endeavors to obtain support for a possible rebellion by killing the court messenger who came to stop their meeting, the crowd asks, “Why did he do it” (205)? It is at that moment Okonkwo realizes there is no way to restore the past and walks away from the crowd.

Naturally, Okonkwo could not live in colonial Umuofia and commits suicide. The irony in his suicide is great because the only people who can bury his corpse are the British and their Christian servants, the same people he resists. He also knows suicide is an abomination, which suggests Okonkwo did not even want his fellow villagers to touch his corpse. This appalling death brings about catharsis or a release of emotion and sympathy for the tragic hero, which concurs with the Aristotelian tragedy. Thus, Okonkwo displays all of the characteristics of a tragic hero according to Aristotle and his flaws cause his downfall.

Works Cited
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart: A Novel. New York: Anchor Books, 1994.