Postcolonial literature in English - Appunti

Letteratura inglese postcoloniale

Indice

• Introduzione alla letteratura inglese postcoloniale, pag. 1
• Othello, W. Shakespeare, pag. 8
• King Solomon’s Mines, R. Haggard, pag. 23
• Things Fall Apart, C. Achebe, pag. 35

Introduzione alla letteratura inglese postcoloniale

The Lonely Londoners is something which is more contemporary. Things Fall Apart is contemporary and belongs to the same period, but the kind of topics and novel concern a different way of sharing the same climax. We are going to read things that move from the decolonization and the idea that world changes after World Word II, since the war had an impact on decolonization.

The British Empire and the decolonization

The impact of the holocaust

After the war, first there was a movement against colonialism from the point of view of the mindset that followed the war. The impact of the holocaust made everybody think of inferiority of race: this was something that really changed in the world because all of a sudden it seemed unfair. There was a worldwide idea that there was the right of all people to choose the form of government in which to live, also the US condemned colonialism.

Colonialism was not actually going to stop all of a sudden, not only because many of the colonies needed many years to gain independence, but also because new forms of colonialism were going to replace what was colonial possession. Some colonies achieved independence not too late after the end of the war, but this was not the end of all differences in exploiting resources and in achieving some welfare. Very often new colonialism replaced the old forms of colonialism. Something that contributed to the end of the British Empire was the cost that the empire implied: it was necessary to have crowds of people that worked as civil servants, armies to tame the uprising, which were becoming more prominent and frequent after the war because it was impossible to keep the same order. People who also have contributed to the victory of European nations now wanted to claim their rights.

Decolonization

Many people in the army have come from the colonies and, after the war, they went back after having seen Europe: they realized that their countries didn’t offer them good opportunities and lifestyle. This arose national movements because people were looking for their own independence. From an ideological point of view, the idea that people have self-determination contributed.

This provoked what is called decolonization. One of the very first countries to achieve independence was the Indian Subcontinent, and later other colonies in other areas little by little struggled to achieve their independence. People like Gandhi offered great support in the achievement of independence. This didn’t mean peace and welfare, since India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh were divided and a war against India caused a number of questions which still remain, even in the contemporary world.

The decolonization feelings also appeared in literature: the Commonwealth Literature was a way in which these new countries could try to have their own literature expression as a way to find identity and internal cohesion. It is also called Literature in English or Postcolonial Literature.

The reconstruction of Britain

In Britain, the end of the war had provided a way to find some common intent within a country which was divided into classes in a very sharp way. But the war had demonstrated in a way that everybody was involved and could contribute to the country. In Great Britain, we had a king and a royal family who decided to remain in London when it was bombed: this was a symbol of strong cohesion.

People died, people lost their houses, so at the end of the war it was necessary to have rationing for food and clothes. People suffered together and after the war they felt it was necessary to reconstruct the country. The fact that so many people have suffered because of the war implied that, after it, it was necessary to change something, and this change was included in the idea of welfare: a good state, a good way to be and to live.

There was the idea that was necessary to spread well living, to encourage a better life for people. It was something which was studied before the war but was put in place after the war. British society knew what kind of problem they would have to face, but it is only after the war that it is possible to make a better Britain facing the five giants (such as want, ignorance, disease).

The Welfare State

These were the solutions that were put in place to fight these giants within the country:

• In order to fight ignorance, it was necessary to improve the education system and to enlarge the number of people who could go, not only to school, but also to high school and university as well. This meant to challenge the class division: if you have few universities only people from high classes could afford to send their children to university. Now it is necessary to change the country, so there is a system to improve education. Education is one of the basic features of this reform. Before the Welfare State, education was available only to those who could pay to have scholarships. Before this, most children left school, while now it was decided that they could get secondary education without paying taxes.
• Housing was a bit of a problem since the previous century urban environment was very poor quality and the war made the problem even clearer with bombing. This implied that it was necessary to build areas where houses were cheaper for the working class.
• Also, public involvement, improvement of salary, the question of health (this was the moment when public health policy started, and it meant jobs and deciding that a system of assistance would be available and free for everybody). People will also have enough means to live when they stop working because there was a pension. These are the bilateralism that granted the economic and social well-being of citizens, providing security from the beginning to the end of life, so having a system of social security that accompanies you if you have problems or if you need things.
• Government nationalized industries of public interest: the bank of England became property of the nation, the railway also, also gold mines were nationalized. This offered the chance to many people to work for the state, and, in case you didn’t have any job, to get an unemployment salary.
• Health was the crucial point of NHS (national health service): medical service was free; people could have a medical doctor. There were nurses, doctors, and hospitals that were to be for everybody and for free.

Great Britain had great problems of costs for school, salaries, everything and only in the 1980s with the government of Thatcher that it changed, and some of the benefits were reduced. Even nowadays we still discuss pension. This is something that World War II had left to Europe. This is really much part of all the politics of European countries and identity, of which we should be proud because it corresponds to an idea of how to spend the life. These cornerstones really changed British society.

Literature and decolonization

The phenomenon of immigration

There was the idea that literature was also part of the new chapter in the history of Great Britain because, along with these changes in the British society, there was another change which was quite important: a change in the composition of the population. Soon after the war, immigration started and changed deeply the British society in a radical way that had no possibility of going back to. It is well known the arrival of a ship which carried for the first time only few tens of people coming from the Caribbean. The phenomenon of immigration started soon after the war and never stopped.

It started soon after the war due to the fact that a number of young men have served as soldiers during the war and they wanted to come back because they knew that their countries didn’t give them a lot of opportunities. Many of these people were colonial subjects coming from Caribbean, India, Pakistan, Kenya, and African colonies.

• They have served in the war.
• Their countries are not very rich countries, with little opportunity for young people shortage of jobs.
• The education, since they had to go to school where they had learned about Europe.

Great Britain as a mother country

Colonial education was not devoted to exploring the history and what is typical of a single country, but it imposed geography and history of England, English values, literature, and poetry. It was something that gave a number of people the idea that they had their mother country somewhere in a smaller island: education was full of this idea that Britain was the origin of values, and they should be resembling that model. They think to England not as an enemy but as a mother country. This went together with the idea to go to the mother country and enjoy the different kind of life there.

Another feature they had in common is that most of them spoke some English: English was almost always the official language of these countries. They spoke probably some English, they were taught English at school, and they had a reasonable knowledge of the language, not often the standard English, but some English. This also was a feature that fed the idea that if they went to Great Britain they were home, a place that they had been described as the mother country, the model that everybody should look at.

They also were considered citizens of the British Empire. As citizens, they could move, provided they could buy a ticket. It is a situation that, somehow, we may compare to what happens now to great movements of people either from Africa and Asia, still coming to Europe. The difference is that these people in the late 1940s and onwards had passports and all rights to go and be there.

This provoked a radical change in the composition of population: there were cities that all of a sudden changed their color, meaning that the people who were living there moved to being Caucasic people to a mixed group from a number of countries, in different moments and ways. They moved all together with the idea that there they could find a job, and something has been promised to them by colonialism. They had the idea of a mother country that they had served and from which having something back.

These people found not a land of opportunities as they had dreamt, but a place in which everything was difficult, from finding a house to finding a job, and life was hard and different from what they had imagined, from the idea of a rich land. However, England was not really rich at that time: the country had to be reconstructed. Life in Britain was quite hard for these people, who were considered invaders. The 1950s and the following decades described these people coming to England as enemies, invaders; the same lexicon which has been used to describe the Nazi Germans is now against citizens of the empire or the commonwealth. These movements of population were relatively concentrated in time and brought together people who had different cultures.

Sam Selvon

This is what we find in novels like The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon, which is one of many novels that describe the life of immigrants, Caribbean people, in London in the 50s. There are a lot of novels, texts, poetry written which does not really consider these people. It was authors, people who had come to these countries, who were interested in describing the life of other people with the same background, complexion, accent in the country.

Sam Selvon came from Trinidad, a Caribbean Island. He was of Indian origin: in Caribbean people immigrated from India. When he came to London in the 50s he was not really comparable to the character he describes because he was an educated person, a person who worked as a journalist, as a reporter, for the Indian embassy and who ended his life teaching creating writing. He is a privileged one, like Chinua Achebe.

At the same time, he was aware of what was happening in London, and he was interested in describing this part of society who had a destiny which was different from his own: they were people who had simple jobs and had to face all the difficulties of an immigrant in another state. For example, qualifications were not recognized, so they were not well paid and accepted work late at night. They had to accept those works because it was the only option for them.

The Lonely Londoners

He speaks about lonely Londoners because he describes a number of characters who are living in London, who arrive in London mostly coming from the Caribbean and they end up being lonely, not because they are alone in a way. They share houses, but they do it because they cannot afford houses in London which were extremely expensive and lived in the areas of London which were still degraded. The people who accept to live in degraded houses with poor services are the people who can pay less. They were living a bit hidden in the city, in the only areas of the city where they can afford a house.

They share houses, but their friendship and social life are restricted to people of their own kind. They are isolated from Londoners, they keep together, they are friends, but in the novel, relationships are difficult. Mostly difficult because it is very hard and rare that English girls have real relations with immigrants, partly because they do not have jobs that may be long-lasting, since their economic life is unstable, and also because there is an idea that mixing up is not the best that one go to.

Actually, there were no racial laws, the racial difference is not authorized in a way, it is not written and so it should not be there. However, discrimination was everyday life: it takes place although officially there shouldn’t be discrimination. When looking for a house and for a job, there is a process of discrimination.

They are Londoners since they live in London, they are fully happy with it since they are in the center of the world. People tend to stay together because it is a sort of self-defense, they had the same accent, the same family dishes. They went there because they thought to have opportunities and because sometimes the government offered jobs that could not be taken by the local population, for example, jobs in the national health service, or in the public transports. They came to London because it was possible to come, but life was harder than they thought. The competition was especially with the lower working classes. Even people who might have had a good reason to show solidarity and to understand people with poor means, actually thought that they were invaders and that they were competing with them for the benefits of the state. Enjoying the employment salary, houses, services, which according to a part of a country, were not exactly thought for them. So, people felt they were competing for them.

Language of the novel

The experimental language

Sam Selvon makes a very interesting experiment with the language. He really uses the Caribbean dialect but modifies it. He has neither written in standard English. He would be unrealistic imagining characters who came from different parts and spoke standard English, since they were not much educated.

He does a sort of experiment: something between, something that would keep the sound the flavor and also the grammatical mistakes but, at the same time, something that could be understood. A comparison could be Verga: when characters speak, he doesn’t let them speak Sicilian dialect because it would be difficult to understand them, but neither standard Italian.

He writes in a sort of artificial language. It may be difficult to read in a way because sentences often do not have a proper punctuation, just go on, just to give the idea of oral spoken words. Often the third person singular doesn’t show the -s. This is because the rhythm of an oral communication is less structured than a standard writing would it be. Selvon is recognizing that there is a minority in London, which has his own interest, who is hidden in the city, but who wouldn’t like to be.

The narrator

Moses is not the title of the chapter or any other title in the novel in particular, but it is a reference to the person who in the novel appears as the main character. Language is not the only specific and peculiar feature of this novel. The very first lines of the novel are the way to access this point of view, seen from the perspectives of immigrants, secluded in an anonymous way. It is very much a marginal gaze.

The language is not the usual language we are accustomed to. The feature that strikes more is that we find single words which are a bit strange, for example, fellar instead of fellow, and verbs, for example, when it had a kin kind of unrealness; as if it was no London at all. Another thing that may sound strange is that these sentences are very long, with no subordination, which just one comma in the whole period. This gives the effect of something oral, as if someone is actually speaking and telling.

Usually, we are accustomed to a beginning in which we find a third person narrator, who here speaks as a Caribbean, a person who is not actually writing but speaking of somebody. This is one of the features that we are going to recognize in the novel. There is a strange way of organizing the text. In the following sentences, there is no -s for the third person of the verb.

It is the talking of a person who is also quite informal, who is talking as if he were talking to his own community. It is a third-person narrator, but we are imagining a Caribbean talking to a community of Caribbean, to tell about each other stories, about their lives and their everyday life to who can understand not only the people but also the situation.

The phenomenon of immigration

Moses

We have one main character, Moses, who is not really the protagonist, and what he is doing is going by night to Waterloo station to meet a person who he does not know. We will know later on the passage that his name is Henry Oliver and Moses doesn’t know him. Why is he going to get someone although he doesn’t know him?

It is a literary description of the phenomenon typical of immigrants coming from Caribbean in Waterloo, where ships arrive and people from there get a train and arrive in London. They have no specific place where to go: the only thing they can do is relying on someone on their first days. Moses is one of those men who has more experience, and he is the right person to go and meet them, to put up them for the night or address them to someone else. Moses acts as a sort of go-between for their community.