The Trial( Reviewed by Naveen Tanwar)

The Trial 

by Franz Kafka

Reviewed by - Naveen Tanwar

This classic book by Franz Kafka, which could have gone unpublished had there not been a man named Max Brod who made the scribblings of a disturbed man public, is certainly not a bed-time read. Kafka, who died at 41 is said to have left one of the chapters unfinished. Kafka’s bone-dry wit and flair for surreal humor make this dark and depressing novel at times funny.
The book, set in a gloomy European city, is about Joseph K. , a man who has been unfortunately been arrested by the oppressive government without ever letting him know what he had supposedly done wrong. Joseph, throughout the book, keeps encountering events he can not understand and at times he can not suspect.
Franz Kafka is frequently identified with 20th century expressionism which brings in subjectivity which varies with different characters rather than cold objective reality.
The colours of reality perceived by Joseph are tinted by the lens of his mind because of which what appears depressing and gloomy might be very normal for others.Expressionist writers often present the real world as bizarre and fantastic as such is the type of reality perceived by their characters.
In the book, government is the all-pervasive force which is unaffected by random individualistic happenings and determines the destinies of its men, justly or unjustly.In a way The Trial is a visionary novel which warns mankind of the adverse implications of the then upcoming totalitarian governments in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. With the construction of the Death Chamber in 1998 which encompasses all the tyrannies envisaged by Kafka, to carry out sentences against men who are unaware of the specific charges against them and unable to take part in the proceedings, there is no other suitable time to read the book. It is not that Kafka has glorified popular democracy by doing this. He attacks all forms of governments including democratic ones which take the help of clumsy bureaucracies to run the state.
The trial is a book of self realization. Rated as one of the top existentialist novelists of all time, Kafka has created a character who is isolated by the faceless government and is left lonely and friendless. The only “first sin” of Joseph K. is to believe in what he was being told by the government and to actually believe that he was guilty. Being an unmarried man despised by his father and who was a jew at the time when anti-Semitism was gaining popularity in Eurpe, Franz Kafka was all primed to write a novel on isolation. The similarities in Joseph and Kafka himself make this book arguably by many a fictional account of his own life.

Chronicles of a Death Foretold

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In one of his interviews, Garcia Marquez was asked which aspect of journalism he liked the best and he answered reporting [1]. Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a perfect example of his love for journalism blended with his astute literary skills. He has even started the novel like a report - ‘The day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five thirty..’.[2] Everything in the novel is written as a collection of records of witnesses’ statements which are then combined with symbolism, magical realism, characters, irony and other literary devices dexterously to create a masterpiece.

The story is set in 20^th century Latin America where honor, rituals, family and morals have huge influence on the culture. Santiago Nasar is a wealthy Arab who is murdered the day Bishop is supposed to visit the town and bless the marriage of Angela Vicario and Bayardo Son Roman. Angela Vicario is the sister of Pedro and Pablo Vicario who is sent back to her parents’ home on the night of her wedding by her husband Bayardo as she wasn’t a virgin. Her brothers then decide to avenge the honor of their sister by murdering Santiago who is accused of disgracing her. Even though they repeatedly announce their intention to kill Santiago, the police officer, the Colonel and the butcher believe that they are largely bluffing. After the murder, the Vicario brothers are sentenced to three years of prison. Though Angela never loved Bayardo before their marriage, she falls in love with him after he leaves her and she starts writing him weekly letter professing her love for him. After 17 years, Bayardo returns to her, even though he has never opened any one of her letters. In the final chapter, the author describes how Santiago Nasar was killed by Vicario brothers [2].

The narrative style is non-linear. By the end of the first chapter we know about Santiago and that he is to be killed by the Vicario brothers. In the subsequent chapter, through various witnesses the reader is told why Santiago is to be killed. In the last paragraph, the act of murder is explained. The author tells you about the death of Santiago in bits and pieces, keeping the mystery alive till the very end. Unlike other stories where there is a clear plot, scenes move in chronology and there is an ultimate climax, this novel is written in non-chronological order. The journalistic style of writing has been used where through witnesses (mainly seven) the story unfolds without delving out too many details and letting the reader draw conclusions. This is one of the characteristics of modernist writing. This is a pleasing change from the traditional way of story writing.  It helps the novel to transgress from fiction to a text more factual and real. Though the plot is revealed in the first few pages, the enigma around the story is upheld till the end.

Even though the work is journalistic and factual in nature, there are many symbols used by Garcia Marquez in the text to signify the death of Santiago Nasar. Santiago’s mother Placida, who can interpret dreams and read symbols, misinterprets her son’s dream. The weather on the day Santiago dies is described as funereal, cloudy, rainy and gloomy. One of the characters Clotilde Armenta says in the text that Santiago already looked like a ghost when she saw him on the day of his death. The wedding party floral decorations reminded Santiago of the funeral and he confided in his friend that the smell of closed-in flowers had an immediate relation to death for him [2].

There are many things that are ambiguous and uncertain in this twisted plot. First, it’s never made clear to the reader if Santiago is the actual culprit who dishonored Angela. When Santiago is first told that Vicario brothers were looking for him to kill him, he was more perplexed than afraid. When Angela is asked by her brothers the name of the person who had offended her, the text says –

‘she looked for it in the shadows, she found it at first sight among the many, many easily confused names in this world and the other and she nailed it to the wall with her well aimed dart, like a butterfly with no will whose sentence has always been written’[2]

Santiago’s character has the image of a seducer, womanizer who is a symbol of machismo [4] and therefore, no one ever really probes into the authenticity of the claim made. However his fate was joined to that of Angela Vicario the instant she blurted out his name. The reader is presented with a surreal version of what Angela thought, but never finds out if what she said was true [1]

                                            

Garcia Marquez has used magical realism as a tool to present social realities in a refreshing way in this novel. He describes the house of a prostitute, Maria Alejandrina Cervantes like some sort of paradise with colored lamps. She is not depicted as a shameful women but a beautiful one who taught other men about sex. The mundane setting which is considered degraded is described by almost fantastical imagery which makes it a very apt example of magical realism [4]. In another instance, Divina Flor says that she had the vision of Santiago inside the house with something that looked like a bouquet of roses before his death. This is interesting before Santiago dies, he carries in his blood soaked clothes roots of his entrails to his house, which is similar to the vision Divina had. However, knowing that Divina never liked Santiago and dreaded his motives of wanting to make her his mistress, there is a possibility that she might have lied about this vision to Placida to keep Santiago outside.

There are also instances where the author says something only to contradict it later. In the initial part one is told how Santiago Nasar is an open-hearted, peaceful and merry person. His death might look as a tragedy to the reader however in the very next moment the author describes him as a philanderer like his father who wanted to make his servant’s young daughter his mistress. As a reader you are fooled into thinking that he wasn’t a good person and probably did the offense. However after reading Angela’s part and his reaction to the news, it’s clear that he might not have done it.  Due to the limitations imposed by the journalistic type of writing, the author doesn’t do any kind of psychoanalytic analysis of any of his characters and maintains a distance from the characters in the text.

In the text, Garcia Marquez has given a very subtle hint to indicate the time period around which these events occur in Santiago’s life –

‘When Ibrahim Nasar came with the last Arabs at the end of the civl war…’[2]

The story is most probably set in the Latin American country of Colombia. With the Colombian civil war ending in 1902 [8], Santiago’s father must have settled in the town somewhere around the beginning of the 20^th century. And with Santiago being 21 years old [2], the readers are given the luxury to conclude that the story occurs sometimes around the early or middle part of the 19^th century.

Rituals and honor code are an essential part of Latin culture and can be seen in abundance in the text.  “My son never went down the back door when he was dressed up” [2] says Placida in one of the scenes. As soon as the Vicario brothers knew it was Santiago, they knew that they had to kill him and follow the unwritten moral code. Angela routinely sends letters to Bayardo and expresses that the only thing that concerns her is he was receiving them.  Even Bayardo never opened them, the fact that Angela was writing letters to him was enough for him and he decided to return to her when he was sure that she is in love with him. It also shows that the concept of love was firmly rooted in their actions, as opposed to understanding between them [6]. The novel itself is a ritual repletion of the events surrounding a crime. It can be seen as a ritual of investigation with no results or discoveries in the end. Also during these rituals there is a general disinterest in the knowledge of the content. Angela never cared about what she was writing and Bayardo never cared about what is written in the letter yet they kept sending letters, contrary to the very purpose of sending letters (to exchange information). The narrator too in general was uninterested in finding out the truth about the event, contrary to the essence of journalistic writing but an important part of Latin culture.

                                                

The best illustration of the importance of honor in Hispanic culture is the statement by Prudencia Cotes, fiancé of Pablo Vicario, that she wouldn’t have married him had he not killed Santiago Nasar [2]. She marries him after he returns from jail, imprisoned for only three years for killing a man. Everyone in the town knew about it the murder but the moral code was so strong that nobody found the punishment of death for sleeping with a woman too much. Deep in their hearts, they agreed and knew it was just for the Vicario brothers to take such an extreme step to restore their sister’s honor. Also evident in the text is the very strong gender roles for both man and woman in Latin America. “The brothers were brought up to be men. The girls were brought up to be married” [2]. The worth of a woman was by her beauty and her ability to do household works. Angela’s mother has brought her and her sisters up to be the perfect wives teaching them every household work. Men were the supreme authority in the house. They also shoulder the responsibility of protecting their women and fighting for their honor. The Vicario brothers had to kill Santiago to restore their sister’s honor. Baraydo had to return Angela to her house to save his honor.  On a serious note the novel in a way questions the honor code and dark side of Hispanic culture

One of the critiques, Mr. Anthony Burgess believes that the fact that the novel is written in Spanish originally makes it difficult to critique.  He says “Mr Rabassa’s (who translated it from Spanish) renderings is smooth and strong with an inevitable North American flavor, but it is English, and Garcia Marquez writes in a very pungent and individual Spanish”[3]. It is believed that that are scenes in the novel which certain Latin American traditions can’t be translated for English readers and therefore those accustomed to Hispanic culture and traditions can appreciate the text better [4]. The Indian culture is however similar to Latin Americans in terms of conservativeness and importance to family, religion, honor and moral code in achieving social respect. In general, the book is one of the best works of Garcia Marquez and a great read.

References:

1)    Rabassa, Gregory; “Garcia Marquez’s New Book: Literature or Journalism?”; World Literature Today, Vol. 56, No. 1, Varia Issue; 1982

2)    Garcia Marquez, Gabriel; “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”; 1981

3)    Burgess, Anthony; “Macho in Minor Key”; New Republic; 1983

4)    Méndez , Aldo; “Thematic Analysis of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’”

5)    Williams, Raymond L; “Chapter 7: ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’ (1981) and Journalism.”; Gabriel García Márquez (Twayne's World Authors, No. 749); 1984

6)    Ritual in Chronicle of a Death Foretold: Its Function in the Death of Santiago Nassar. In Bookrags. Retrieved from http://www.bookrags.com/essay-2004/10/25/183625/15

7)    Chronicle of a Death Foretold. In Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronicle_of_a_Death_Foretold

8)    The Thousand Days' War. Retrieved from http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/historyofsouthamerica/p/1000dayswar.htm

Tut write-up:Modernism        

Modernism describes the modernist movement in the arts, its set of cultural tendencies and associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.The development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by the horror of world war I, were among the factors that shaped Modernism.Modernism also rejects the lingering certainty of enlightenment thinking, as well as the idea of a compassionate, all-powerful Creator. In general, the term modernism encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social, and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world.A salient characteristic of modernism is self-consciousness. This self-consciousness often led to experiments with form and work that draws attention to the processes and materials used.

 Modernism in literature:It is an European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterised by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms.It represents the radical shift in cultural sensibilities surrounding world war I, modernist literature struggled with the new realm of subject matter brought about by an increasingly industrialised and globalised world.In its earliest incarnations, modernism fostered a utopian spirit, stimulated by innovations happening in the fields of anthropology,phsycology,philosophy,political theory, and phsycoanalysis. Writers such as Ezra pound and other poets of the Imagist movement characterised this exuberant spirit, rejecting the sentiment and discursiveness typical of Romanticism and Victorian literature for poetry that instead favoured precision of imagery and clear, sharp language.This new idealism ended, however, with the outbreak of war, when writers began to generate more cynical postwar works that reflected a prevailing sense of disillusionment and fragmented thought. Many modernist writers shared a mistrust of institutions of power such as government and religion, and rejected the notion of absolute truths. Like T.S.Eliot’s masterpiece,The waste land, later modernist works were increasingly self-aware, introspective, and often embraced the unconscious fears of a darker humanity

Modernism in architecture: It is an overarching movement .It is characterized by simplification of form and creation of ornament from the structure and theme of the building.It began at the turn of the 20th century with efforts to reconcile the principles underlying architectural design with rapid technological advancement and the modernisation of society.It would take the form of numerous movements, schools of design, and architectural styles, some in tension with one another, and often equally defying such classification.Gaining popularity after the second world war, architectural modernism was adopted by many influential architects and architectural educators, and continues as a dominant architectural style for institutional and corporate buildings into the 21st century.

Modernism in art:Modern art denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during the period 1860s to the 1970s.it includes artistic works produced in that period.The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation.Modern artists experimented with new ways of seeing and with fresh ideas about the nature of materials and functions of art. A tendency toward abstraction is characteristic of much modern art.Modern art begins with the heritage of painters like Vincent van gogh,paul gauguin,paul cezanne,georges seurat and henri de Toulouse lautrec all of whom were essential for the development of modern art. At the beginning of the 20th century henri matisse and several other young artists including the pre-cubist georges braque,andre derain, Raoul dufy and Maurice de vlaminck revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called Fauvism.Henri Matisse 's two versions of The Dance signified a key point in his career and in the development of modern painting.It reflected Matisse's incipient fascination with primitive art: the intense warm color of the figures against the cool blue-green background and the rhythmical succession of the dancing nudes convey the feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism.With the painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907),Picasso dramatically created a new and radical picture depicting a raw and primitive brothel scene with five prostitutes, violently painted women, reminiscent of African tribal masks and his own new Cubist inventions.Analytic cubism was jointly developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, exemplified by Violin and Candlestick, Paris, from about 1908 to 1912. Analytic cubism, the first clear manifestation of cubism, was followed by synthetic cubism, practised by Braque, Picasso,Fernand Leger,juan Gris,Albert Gleizes,Marcel Duchamp and several other artists into the 1920s.Synthetic cubism is characterized by the introduction of different textures, surfaces,collage elements,papier colle and a large variety of merged subject matter

Modernism in music:  It refers to the significant departures in musical language that occurred in the start of the 20th century, creating new understandings of harmonic, melodic, sonic, and rhythmic aspects of music. The operative word most associated with it is "innovation". Its leading feature is a "linguistic plurality", which is to say that no one musical language ever assumed a dominant position.Musicologist Carl Dahlhaus restricted his definition of musical modernism to progressive music in the period 1890–1910:The year 1890 lends itself as an obvious point of historical discontinuity.The "breakthrough" Mahler,Strauss and Debussy implying a profound historical transformation.If we were to search for a name to convey the breakaway mood of the 1890s (a mood symbolized musically by the opening bars of Strauss's Don Juan) but without imposing a fictitious unity of style on the age, we could do worse than revert to [the] term "modernism" extending (with some latitude) from the 1890 to the beginnings of our own twentieth-century modern music in 1910 The label "late romanticism" is a terminological blunder of the first order and ought to be abandoned forthwith. It is absurd to yoke Strauss, Mahler, and the young Schoenberg, composers who represent modernism in the minds of their turn-of-the-century contemporaries, with the self-proclaimed anti-modernist Pfitzner, calling them all "late romantics " in order to supply a veneer of internal unity to an age fraught with stylistic contradictions and conflicts.Leon Botstein, on the other hand, asserts that musical modernism is characterized by "a conception of modernity dominated by the progress of science, technology and industry, and by positivism, mechanization, urbanization, mass culture and nationalism", an aesthetic reaction to which "reflected not only enthusiasm but ambivalence and anxiety".Other writers regard musical modernism as an historical period extending from about 1890 to 1930, and apply the term "post modernism" to the period after that year.Still other writers assert that modernism is not attached to any historical period, but rather is "an attitude of the composer; a living construct that can evolve with the times".

Tut - Outside The Whale by Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie's "Outside the Whale" is apparently a reaction to George Orwell's essay "Inside the Whale" which advocates the independence of politics and literature, and the attitude of defeatism.In this reading the whale is a metaphor for an escape route or a hiding place.

Living inside the whale means accepting anything and everything that is happening in one's surroundings.It's about comfort, sitting quietly and most people adhere to such a stance.But Rushdie is the one who chooses to mix politics and literature.He argues about the need for literature to be analyzed from a political perspective.According to him "it always matters to label rubbish as rubbish, and to do otherwise is to legitimate it.It is the responsibility of the artists  and writers to make a noise and represent the truth, the reality.For art and literature cannot come into being in a social and a political vacuum, and cannot be separated from politics and history.

Rushdie starts the essay by quoting books,television series,documentaries etc. that has created a popular public perception about the Asian people.Through these examples he is trying to show us the stereotypical western approach towards the asian countries particularly India.He gives an example of a documentary about Subhash Chandra Bose in which he, according to him is represented as a clown.The point Rushdie is trying to put through is that through popular modes of entertainment such as films and literature, the West tries to undermine or even degrade the potentials of the 'other countries'.To further elaborate this point Rushdie also quotes a statement from Edward Said's book called Orientalism in which said argues and i quote "The purpose of such false portraits was to provide moral,cultural and artistic justification for imperialism and the underpinning ideology,that of the racial superiority of the Caucasian over the Asiatic".

Rushdie examines the stand that Orwell takes  on the importance of literature in society.Orwell advocates quietism.He created a so called 'whale' mechanism with the intention of allowing authors to keep out of politics.This approach is one that Rushdie disdains, he argues that there is no whale in which an author can hide.

After 'Inside the Whale' , Orwell wrote an essay called 'Politics and the English Language'.Rushdie quotes a statement from that essay and i quote "In our age there is no such thing as keeping out of politics.All issues are political issues and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia." Rushdie gives a reason of Orwell"s such an attitude towards his political surroundings.Orwell lived in a period where Hitler and Stalin also existed and this basically impacted his political understandings.He turned his talents to the business of constructing and also of justifying an escape route.Hence his notion of the ordinary man as victim, and therefore of passivity a the literary stance closest to that of ordinary man.He is using this type of logic as a means of building a path back to the womb, into the whale and away from the thunder of the war.

The attitude of defeatism and despair is a conservative stance according to Rushdie.He says that passivity always serves the interests of the status quo, of the people already at the top of the heap.If books and films could be made and consumed in the belly of the whale, it might be possible to consider them merely as entertainment or on occasion as art.But in our whale-less world, in this without quiet corners, there can be no easy escape from history, from terrible, unquiet fuss.

As Rushdie says, there is no whale in which an author can hide.He argues that there shouldn't be any whale because staying quiet, accepting everything is not an option in our violent, scary world.There is a need to analyze works of art,entertainment from a political perspective.Those who have been given the responsibility to shape a nation's identity, the nation's writers must not allow politicians to be the sole shaper of world views.His judgement 

is sharply clear - "If writers leave the business of making pictures of the world to politicians, it will be one of history's great and most abject abdications."

Tut write-up: Outside the Whale by Salman Rushdie

Outside the Whale: An essay by Salman Rushdie

In 1981, Salman Rushdie had released Midnight’s Children to worldwide acclaim – a book which immediately put him among the world’s foremost thinkers and is, even today, referred to with critical admiration. Rushdie had written about India in a way that had never been seen before. A way that reflected his own “Indianness” and the subaltern take on India’s history. In this essay, written in 1984, Rushdie goes a step beyond. He invokes the context in which Midnight’s Children becomes relevant – when the relationship between the East and the West is muddled, misrepresented and glorifies one party while denigrating or marginalizing the other. He confronts the wider socio-political context which has led to this blurred direction that “mass art” has taken and finally, calls out for a role that literature can play in bringing accuracy back into the picture. A role, and a space, in which civil, academic, intellectual or plain truthful discussion and argument can take place. By invoking and criticizing an essay (Inside the Whale) by THE giant of British literature that is George Orwell, Rushdie does what he does best – that is, to express himself in a way that cannot be ignored.

This write up proceeds in the following order: First, there is a brief overview of the cultural conditions in Britain in which this piece was written, followed by a brief introduction to the academic foundations on which Rushdie’s arguments rely. Then, I briefly summarize the essay; ending with some personal thoughts on what I feel are Rushdie’s key points.

Britain in the 1980s

During the 1980s, Britain, particularly England was marked by a nostalgic return to the days of Imperialism which showed itself in the form of Raj-centric TV Shows, movies, books and other forms of mass culture. During 1979, Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party had been elected to power, and Britain had won the Falkland Islands in a war with Argentina. Propaganda was definitely aimed at putting the “great” back into Great Britain. However the reality was that the British Empire was a thing of the distant past, and Britain’s position as the world’s foremost power had long been taken over by the USA. But when Britain’s contemporary generation overlapped with the generation which had experienced the British Empire in its heyday, had memories of the “good old days” and “glamorous years”, given the situation in the 1980s, one could observe a sort of cultural escapism to the glory of the past. This went hand in hand with the prevalent conservatism in the political sphere.  

However, another phenomenon was taking place – the influx of the Pakistanis, Indians, Polish, Bangladeshis, Iranians and others in Britain had led to culture shocks and racial tensions between “natives” and “immigrants”. Tensions which spilled out in the form of riots in Brixton, Southall, Leeds and so on during the early 80s. Whether the “white” British defined and defended their self-perceived “cultural superiority” through the depiction of non-whites as “inferiors” in mass productions is certainly arguable. However, one cannot deny that increasingly, popular British opinion, in panic perhaps, began to resemble the Imperialist mindset more closely than one would like.

Orientalism: The Elephant in the room

Given this cultural background, perhaps it is not surprising that Edward Saïd’s seminal work Orientalism (1978) gained prominence around the same time. It invited much academic and public commentary (bolstered by Saïd’s own very public personality) and much unwarranted criticism – reflecting some of the bigoted opinions based in the racial politics of the era. In this work, Saïd makes the contention that Western thought and scientific study of “Eastern” cultures is very much coloured by the standard tropes and stereotypes that are products of an older, more ignorant Western culture. He contests that this tendency of the West derives from the need to define itself by first defining the “other” and that “other” is conveniently, the East. What does this lead to? Saïd and others have explored this issue in great detail and refer to a “flattening” of all “Oriental” cultures into common tropes – effeminate men, uncouth masses, uneducated and outmoded philosophies, inferior cultural and scientific traditions and so on. This was the moral logic behind Colonialism – an attempt at bringing civilization to the East (Saïd, a huge appreciator of Joseph Conrad, uses his masterful novels to illustrate this point and to provide an insight into the all-encircling colonial mindset that was prevalent in Victorian times and evolved as a part of Orientalist thought later). This flattening is what has prevented sophisticated thought and exploration of Eastern cultures and effectively prevented the experience of the colonized nations to be translated into a form that could be understood widely by Europeans. All of this changed when English became a language of the colonized – as writers like Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul, Wole Soyinka etc.

Rushdie’s contention in this essay is that this Orientalist thought process exists even today. What is sad is that no one acknowledges its presence in the “TV trash” that the masses consume. It is, essentially, the proverbial Elephant in the Room.

There is no Whale

Rushdie’s essay, essentially works in 3 sections. In the first, he introduces the reader to poor reproductions of the British Raj in India such as The Far Pavilions, Jewel in the Crown, The Raj Quartet etc. and in typical Rushdie-like fashion, humorously and acidly takes them apart exposing their lack of accuracy and quality. In the second section, he refers to George Orwell’s essay Inside the Whale (1940). What Rushdie does here is what, possibly, cannot fail to grab English attention – he points out to the inconsistency between George Orwell’s own firmly political works such as Animal Farm and Orwell’s espousal of the “quietist” philosophy. He proceeds to lambast Orwell’s usage of Henry Miller as an example of the supreme expression of the common man’s sentiment. Rushdie, here in essence, argues that there is no writing or literature that is political. Rushdie asserts that what Orwell asks for – a return to the stomach of the proverbial “Whale”, an insular acceptance of the world as it is in literature, and literature as a lofty field which should not be sullied by politics – is impossible. He asserts that in today’s world, there is no whale. One cannot hide from politics. No writing is apolitical. What he instead calls for is open speech and a space for literature to be political and unashamed in being political. Rushdie says that literature’s firmest role is acknowledging the truth – in ensuring that Elephants such as Orientalism are at least brought out into the discussion and acknowledged, he asks for people to take a stance – whatever it may be. Because argument, even inertial, non-progressing argument establishes that there IS a case.

In the third section, he ties this up to the original idea presented in his essay – that of dishonest representations of life in Imperial India, where Indians were marginalized characters in their own lives. For Rushdie, this is not how things were and should be. Where writers such as Forster were honest and open, M.M. Kaye has distorted their truth. For Rushdie, there must be more work such as Midnight’s Children where the colonized come out and SAY that this is wrong, there must be more scholarship like Edward Saïd’s brand to acknowledge the issue and that literature cannot be apolitical, precisely because of this need to show the truth. That is, one must be Outside the Whale to write literature that has meaning.

Food for Thought

Given this essay and the background in which it has occurred and knowledge of the texts studied in class (namely, Midnight’s Children, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and A Hundred Years of Solitude), I leave the reader to think about questions that, I feel, help in comprehending what Rushdie means to say. Firstly, English as a language was what historically kept Indians and other colonized nationalities from contending with the West on their own grounds regarding representations of culture. However, owing to the growing stream of Indian (and African and Caribbean and Pakistani and so on….) writing in English, which is markedly different from older English accounts of India, one can argue that the colonized are increasingly contributing to better understanding of their experience. Is this true? If yes, to what extent?

Secondly, if this is true, why is it that Europeans often find it difficult to acknowledge the shortcomings in their own body of literature and culture regarding these episodes in their past? As proved by the criticism that Edward Saïd faced, this is in fact, the case.

Thirdly, is there truly a political space in which one can freely express their opinions? If yes, is it literature?

I believe that by thinking about these questions, Rushdie’s arguments become clear and informative whether or not they achieve the effect they intended to.

Magical Realism in Midnight’s Children

“Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.”

                                                           

- Neil Gaiman, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“I told you the truth,” I say yet again, “Memory’s truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent versions of event; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more that his own.”

-  Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

These lines most emphatically describe the idea around which Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children dwells. The author asserts that there never is a single, true reality but a multitude purported by an equal number of narrators. Every human being has his own version of truth, and an absolute, universal reality is non-existent.

Magical Realism as a Post-Colonization Device

Unlike the west, where everything is defined, and where exist clear distinctions between reality and fantasy, the post-colonial countries have been left bereft of this definiteness. The demarcation between reality and fantasy, that is implicit in the west and which forms the very basis of all the Occidental literature, is a nebulous concept in the post-colonial nations. This rational and skeptic perspective of the colonial nations has failed to acknowledge the everyday beliefs of the colonial people as real and hence considered these as eccentricities. While the whole gamut of the western literature could be reduced to the two ramifications reality and fantasy, post-colonial writings have resorted abundantly to employing magical realism to portray their native conditions most correctly.

Post-colonial writing, per se, encompasses a wide range of discursive practices, which resist colonialism and colonial ideologies, since the colonized were forced to occupy two conflicting worlds or cultures, introducing the duality of reality in their lives. As the “reason” and “logic” of the colonial intellectual tradition collided with “mysterious” and “mythic” perspective of the colonial people, a new ‘reality’ emerged altogether, in with the otherwise unacceptable elements found admission as real in conjunction with the conventionally realist ones. Thus, any attempt to describe these lands could be manifested in one and one way only, which does not differentiate between fantastic and real.

Magical realism hence originated in one of the loci of colonization, Latin America and was carried forward with the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabelle Allende etc., and is subsequently a domain of a majority of post-colonial literature. It raises questions on the very definition of reality and magic, uniting the two in the process.

In Midnight’s Children

Midnight’s Children depicts the story of post-colonial India employing magical realism as the main theme. The 1001 midnight’s children with the multitude of abilities and shortcomings are intended to represent India as an emerging nation in the aftermath of the post-colonial. India, itself being a British colony for about three centuries, was profoundly influenced by the idiosyncrasies of foreign rule. Hence, Midnight’s Children aptly invokes the theme of magical realism to depict its struggle for identity after independence, which are mirrored in the life of the protagonist, Saleem Sinai. Rushdie uses a careful blend of magical realism and acute symbolization to gracefully delineate the story of the birth of a nation after centuries of repression. As the country faces wars, political vicissitudes, and inner tumult, Saleem’s life also undergoes similar experiences – at the exact time and to a proportional magnitude. This personification of the fortunes and losses of the country in Saleem renders a sublime quality to the story, inspiring the admiration of the reader.

In all, two inter-related complimentary themes span the text, the primary being the striking similarity between India and Saleem. Many instances in the novel reinforce the nexus between Saleem and India, which as such is established at the birth of Saleem, who is born at the exact time as India gains independence. Saleem is an illegitimate child of an Indian mother(Vanita) and a British father (William Methwold), a genealogy that embodies the lineage of India as a post-colonial country. As he grows up, Saleem has a large cucumber like nose, which resembles the shape of the India subcontinent. Moving further we find many other instances, which re-assert the entwinement of the destinies of the protagonist and his country. For ex. The desertion of Saleem by the midnight’s children during the Sino-Indian war of 1962, the massacre of the Saleem’s family and friends in the Indo-Pak wars of 1965 and 1971, the birth of Saleem’s ‘son’ on the night that emergency is declared and finally, the disintegration of Saleem into 630 milllion speckles of dust – a number equal to the Indian population at that time, all recursively complement Saleem’s relation with India.

Besides this ‘surreal’ correspondence, there are many other entities/episodes, which go beyond the realm of ordinary to make the text further appealing and harmonize with the above-mentioned theme. For ex.  Saleem’s remarkable ability to read other people’s minds and later, his ability to sense emotions through his nose; all the 1001 midnight’s children and their extraordinary abilities; the corrosive humming of Mian Abdullah when attacked by assassins; the black guilt of fog surrounding Amina upon indulging in a liaison with Nadir Khan etc. All these incidents further fortify the magical nature of the story and its appeal.

Parallels with Arabian Nights

The magical nature of Midnight’s Children draws huge influence from the stories of Arabian Nights, which form an inseparable part of the Indian culture. Saleem to Padma recounts his tale in the same way that Scheherazade recites the stories to her husband, King Shahryar in Arabian Nights in self-referential narrative. Also, many events from the novel, like the levitation of Ramram Seth, the basket of invisibility etc. have corresponding counterparts in Arabian Nights. Thus, this analogy was deliberately employed by Rushdie to lend an air of occult to the novel, and serves as a prelude to the nature of the upcoming events as well.

Conclusion

Rushdie, through Saleem, describes the continued struggle for identity in the polarities of the post-colonial. The children are seen as a hope of freedom for the whole nation, who, through their tremendous abilities will take the nation forward. This freedom, in the end of the text is defined as ‘being now forever extinguished’ as most of the midnight’s children are now killed or sterilized. However, Rushdie points out that such a hope exists in every generation of midnight’s children, who are the children of each successive era. Hence, he gives an open-ended conclusion to the novel

“Yes, they will trample me underfoot…. they will trample my son who is not my son, and his son who is not his…”

Thus, every generation of midnight’s children represents a new hope for a nation to free itself from the chains of inability and create a unique identity – only by ensuring freedom to its new rays of hope.

“….it is the privilege of midnight’s children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and be unable to live or die in peace.”

Note: All references made to the west are meant to infer the colonial countries of Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal etc.

                                               Midnight’s children : an indian narrative                      

 Introduction-

The book is about Saleem,who is nararator and protogonist but it’s also about India because for some magical reason, Saleem and India’s destiny are related with each other.Saleem's birth coincided with a aparticular day of indian history. They both suffer the battering and bruising that comes with being newly independent.

  Alongside the turmoil of this incredible family, is the brutal yet ever hopeful history of India during those times – from the Independence struggle, to Nehru’s early hopeful rule, the wars with China and Pakistan, the creation of Bangladesh, and the Emergency of 1975. Rushdie manages to pack all these events of a long duration quite well in the book.

Why an Indian narrative-

In Midnight's Children, the narrative comprises and compresses Indian cultural history.

Midnight’s Children is a text that recreates the postcolonial history of India.
In the pages of Midnight’s Children, we are able to see the psychological effects of colonial domination on a nation and its people.
Instead of mirroring the colonial ideologies of India’s past to retell the story of her Independence, Rushdie recreates the history of his homeland from the subjective and fragmented memory of his narrator.
       By paralleling  Saleem’s life with the events following India’s           independence, Rushdie ties the identity of the postcolonial country directly to the individuals that are products of it. The result is a text that vividly represents the plural identities of a country and its people who are seeking to define themselves in the wake of colonialism

Intertwining the Indian history in the life of characters -

Born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the day of India’s independence from British rule, Saleem’s life is a microcosm of post-Independent India.
The multiplicity and plurality of India is a dominant theme within Midnight’s Children and is what Saleem refers to when he says that “[t]here are as many versions of India as Indians” (323). This plural national identity mirrors itself in Saleem’s life; his story becomes the story of a new nation.
 His attempt to reconcile his various multiple identities reflects India’s struggle to reunite its multiple nationhoods  after colonial rule.

Postcolonial discourse in the novel-

Western colonial empires during the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
PostPostcolonial discourse was born in response to the imperial expansion of colonial writers like Rushdie, therefore, emerged out of the experience of colonization and asserted themselves by writing in response to the authority wielded by the imperial powers.
The desire to reclaim the India of his past was the driving force behind Rushdie’s decision to write Midnight’s Children and the use of this writing technique.
The novel was born when Rushdie realized how much he wanted to restore his past identity to himself.

Use of language to make the book an Indian novel-

The English of Rushdie is decidedly postcolonial and postmodern. It gives us glimpses into his conscious craftsmanship, which aims at decentring and hybridity.Rushdie very innovatively makes the use of English as a language to represent the past and the history of India.
The innovativeness of Rushdie’s English is prompted by a desire to capture the spirit of Indian culture with all its multiplicity and diversity.
The most inviting feature of Salman Rushdie’s language is the sprinkling of English with Hindi and Urdu words throughout Midnight’s Children, and this provides a certain amount of oriental flavour to the novel.
Such words, phrases and expressions form a long list, including ‘ekdum’ (at once), ‘angrez’ (Englishman), ‘phut-aphut’ (in no time), ‘nasbandi’ (sterlization), ‘dhoban’ (washerwoman), ‘feringee’ (the same as ‘angrez’), ‘baba’ (grandfather), ‘garam masala’ (hot spices), ‘rakshasas’ (demons), ‘fauz’ (army), ‘badmaas’ (badmen), ‘jailkhana’ (prison),.
Reasons for the use of such phrases and expressions-
This is probably done for two specific reasons: firstly, to situate the novel in its geographical location in the various cities of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; and secondly, to subvert a language associated with colonial powers.
The use of such expressions provides an amount of authenticity and credibility to the novel. It also enhances the quantum of reality which is so much needed in an historical novel like Midnight’s Children.

References-

1.    Linguistic Experiments in Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children
       O.P. Dwivedi
2.     Cathy C. Miller“Salman Rushdie’s ‘Stereoscopic Vision     postcolonial Environments in Midnight’s Children

Midnight’s Children: An Indian Story

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is the story of Saleem Sinai, who was born at the exact moment when India became independent and as we follow his personal experiences, the story of India also unfolds.

The book was written in 1981 and it introduces us to Salman’s unique writing style which Linda Hutcheon also refers to as the “narcissistic narrative”. Through Saleem, Rushdie has not only offered a different perspective of India but also given his readers an insight into the making of the novel. Saleem’s influences, his relationship with Padma and how it shapes the story, his mistakes…

“Re-reading my work, I have discovered an error in chronology. The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi occurs, in these pages, on the wrong date. But I cannot say, now, what the actual sequence of events might have been; in my India, Gandhi will continue to die at the wrong time.”

His prolific use of words with their pace almost make it seem like he is talking to his readers. Some have pointed out that use of such a narrative and magical realism are found in post-modern and post-colonial literature and they complement such a story, based in and on India, which brings us to how this novel is distinctly Indian.

The novel starts in 1915, 32 years before the birth of Saleem Sinai and ends when he is about to be 31 and it traces the story of a Muslim Indian family up to 1977. It looks back at India’s past and gives accounts of the important historical events, such as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Quit India movement, the partition and independence, State of Emergency, through the eyes of a local citizen.

It gives us a deep insight into the Indian society, the variety of cultures, family values and relationships here. For instance,

“.. it was a mass fantasy shared in varying degrees by Bengali and Punjabi, Madrasi and Jat and would periodically need the sanctification and renewal which can only be provided by rituals of blood.”

“.. children were born who were only partially the offspring of their parents- the children of midnight were also the children of the time: fathered, you understand by history. It can happen especially in a country which itself is a sort of dream”

The narrative comprises and compresses Indian cultural history.

'Once upon a time,' Saleem muses, 'there were Radha and Krishna, and Rama and Sita, and Laila and Majnun; also (because we are not unaffected by the West) Romeo and Juliet, and Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn,"

Several Indian phrases and words have been used in the text. Like,

“Eat na, the food is spoiling”, “writing-shiting” or “who cares two pice” etc.

The range and shades of the text try to capture India’s complex history full of a variety of influences and how it is constantly changing and evolving.

The style of writing, with Saleem’s blatant interferences and interjections into his own work, gives us an idea of how history is relayed, with the help of memory and that each person can have his own version of it.  In a discussion between Gunter Grass and Salman Rushdie, Grass observes that “We have many realities.  Our problem is that we don’t accept that there are many realities”. The novel strongly questions our beliefs in history and presents the history of India with a different perspective, through Saleem’s memory which is not entirely uninfluenced.

What makes the novel brilliant is that despite its many many digressions into the past, politics, fantasy, myths, stories and incidents, it has one central theme. And however much arbitrary the different things seem, they unify and proceed in a direction. Such writing gives a sense of an oral narrative, which is the oldest, most popular form of narrative in India, thus making it essentially Indian.

The book received worldwide appreciation. It is obviously a very well researched book and heavily detailed and dense, which makes it a tough read.  

References:

http://www.gradnet.de/papers/pomo01.paper/Santos01.pdf

http://www.ugr.es/~revpaz/resenas/Midnights_Children.html

Isabel Allende LIona - The House of Spirits(Book Review)

Introduction: The novel the house of spirits is written by Isabel Allende LIona.Allende works sometimes contain “magical realist” tradition.she has been called the world’s most widely read Spanish-language author in 2004.her novels are often based upon her personal experience and pay homage to the lives of women,while weaving together elements of myth and realism.

Review:The story mainly revolves around clara who is a clairvoyant and the youngest in the family of severo and niveadel valle.their family consists of 11 children ,eldest daughter is rosa who is beautiful and nana who looks after them .Esteban trueba a youngman from an old upper class family that lost all of its money,falls in love with Rosa .their family agrees to marriage .but then she dies later.after that trueba goes back to their home in which his sister ferula and his mother Dona ester trueba live.hw promises them that they will never lack anything as long as he lives.he decides to go to their estate (Tresmarias) on her sister’s advice to make it into money making estate.Pedro Segundo Garcia is the who looks after the estate in trueba’s absence.trueba rapes every girl he likes in that place .he rapes a girl named pancha.she becomes pregnant and so he losesinterest in her then leaves her.Esteban becomes involved in politics with other landowners.he even meets a prostitute named Transito soto in Christopher Columbus(brothel) and asks her whether she likes any present ,she says I need 50 pesos ,he gives her the money .mean while he receives a call fromhis sister saying that their mother is about to die.he decides to marry to fulfil his mother’s wish before she dies.he goes to valle’s family again and asks If there are anyone of his age to marry.then they tell him that clara Is of his age.they marry finally.clara sees her destiny before this itself that she is going to marry him.before their marriage itself his mother dies. Firstly a daughter was born for them ,they named her as blanca.when their family goes to tres marias during summer blanca falls in love with pedro tercero gracia.there clara gets again pregnancy ,so to have good treatment to come back to the city during which she goes silent .she gives birth to twins named Jaime and Nicolas.A few days later severo and nivea die in a car accident in which nivea’s head is severed from her body.thaey keep this as secret as she is in pregnancy,however she comes to know this through her dreams.they were anable to find her head but clara along with ferula recovers the head and they hide it in a hatbox.when they tell esteban about it,he moves it to the basement.On the other side pancha dies,leaving behing the son she and Esteban had together,as well as her grandson ,also named Esteban Garcia.

Blanca and pedro tercero love deepens.ferula dies,the family learns her death when ferula’sspirit comes to bid clara farewell on her way out of this world.clara is the only one who realizes what has happened .she was kicked out of the house and so she lived in the poorest parts of the city.Clara washes Ferula’s body herself and has her buried.after that incident earthquake rocks the entire country.every building at tres mariasis decimated,Esteban is crushed under the house.He lives but everybone in his body as broken and he is confined for months to a bed and then to a wheelchair .Nana in the city dies of fright.The children are send back to school in the capital,but after a few months Blanca convinces the nuns at her school that she is coming down with tuberculosis and she returns to Tresmarias.actual reason for blanca’s return is to meet pedro tercero.Count jean de satigny arrives in the neighbourhood.he ttries to convince him to undertake a chinchilla farmhim,while pursuing blanca’s hand in marriage.Blanca refuses him point blank.not long after ,blanca begins to show signs of being pregnant.jean is the only person who can understand.he is the only person besides clara who has been aware of her nightime meetings with pedro tercero.jean doesn’t mind blanca’s having lover ,he still tries to win blanca’s handhe follows blanca one night to her meeting with pedro tercero.he decides to tell this to esteban and knowing this he promises to kill tercero.he tries to find him,but couldn’t find him.then oneday esteban Garcia comes forward and offers to show him(tercero) in return for the reward.Esteban misses killing him and only manages to chop off three of his fingers.when Garcia asks him for his reward esteban slaps him and calls him a traitor.

When esteban comes to know that blanca is pregnant he calls jean and informs him that he must marry blanca now.blanca first refuses to accept but she accepts in the end when esteban tells her that he has killed tercero.they marry.After that clara tells blanca that she is ure that pedro tercero is alive.they move to the north after their marriage.

Esteban gets involved in politics.nicolas learns Flamenco and begins offering classes.his gf Amanda and her 5yr old brother Miguel also become patrt time residents of trueba house.jaime is quite diff from his twin brother.he lives an austere life,devoted to studies.With the help of father jose dulce maria ,pedro heals and moves to the city.he continues his revolutionary activities and maintains his friendship with Jaime.

Nicolas realizes that Amanda is pregnant and they poor orphans.she does not want to marry himand asks him to help her have an abortion.jaime performs abortion.Amanda and Miguel are still living with the trueba’s when blanca’s daughter Alba is born.

Jean brings mummies into the houseone night,she sneaks out when she thinks she hears the haunting and traces thae activity to jean’s photography laboratory.the next day ,blaca manages to get everyone out of the housebefore knowing that the nocturnal noises came came not from mummies but fromjean and the Indians he employs.Blanca does not want her daughter exposed to this sort of thing and so ,9months pregnant she packs a bag and sneaks out to catch a train to the city.blanca gives birth to alba .she tells her that her real father is jean and he died in the desert.Nicolas teches alba alternative religion and medicine.calra teches her to read and commune with spirits.jaime allows her into his private library.she is the only person whom esteban expresses his love to.On 17^th birthday of alba clara realizes that she about to die and tries to explain to their family that death is also part of the life and she dies .esteban arranges an elaborate funeral and erects a mausoleum to hold clara,rosa and himself ,so that they all can united in death.

Pedro tercero continues to meet with blanca regularly and often with alba as well.Alba loves him but never realizes that he is her father.pedro tercero continues to ask blanca to come live with him.During 18 yr alba enrols in the university and falls in love with Miguel.miguel is a student and revolutionary.out of love for Miguel,alba becomes involved in revolutionary politics.Esteban Garcia reveals to Miguel that alba is senator trueba’s granddaughter.jaime is the only person alba tells of her relationship with Miguel.he keeps alba’s relationship a secret.

To almost everyone’s surprise,the socialists win the election.the majority of the people are overjoyed.the upheavel in the country and Esteban’s prolonged absence set the stage for the peasants at tresmarias to take over the estate.when esteban finds out,he takes a gun and goes to tres marias himself.the peasants take esteban hostage,and even the national guard is unable to free him.pedro tercero helps alba and blanca to free esteban trueba.

Pedro tercero comes to the house in secret and asks for blanca’s help.she hides him in one of the back rooms of the house,telling no one.she tells Esteban and alba that she has been hiding pedro tercero in the house .esteban himself leads pedro tercero out of his hiding and the two men reconcile.blanca finally decides to live with pedro tercero.the two of them enter the embassy of the Vatican together,and flee to Canada.

The political police have alba undersurveillance.one night ,they break in,ransack the house,and take alba away.Esteban protests,but is anable to stop them.The political police deliver Alba to the colonel who now heads the military dictatorship,Esteban Garcia.she is physically,sexually and emotionally tortured by guards as well as by Esteban Garcia.he and the guards demand that Alba tell them where Miguel is.she steadfastly refuses.she comes to know that he is torturing her not only to find out where Miguel is.but also to avenge himself for injuries that had been inflicted on him from birth.

Meanwhile trueba uses every connection he has to try to locate alba.after a month of fruitless searching ,esteban asks transito to help him locate alba,who is the only person left in his family who he loves.atlast they transito finds alba.

Joseph Conrad - Heart Of Darkness (Book Review)

An interospective English sailor, Marlow, Joseph Conrad's alter ego, sets a voyage up the river congo to meet Kurtz, a rouge ivory trader, a man whom he idealizes by his description from others before actually meeting him. Throughout his search Marlow encounters the brutality of the dark continent, the filth and evil it and its people are encompassed in and in the end an greatly ironical fact that makes us question the darkness that lies within ourselves.


Heart Of Darkness is yet another novella which keeps the imperial enterprise of Europe at the centre of the world and treats others as squalor devoid of any good, lost in inpenetrable darkness. Marlow quotes, “The biggest, the most blank, so to speak - that I had a hankering after.”

Conrad through Marlow's account completely dehumanizes native Africans and treats them as objects and treats them with bitter cruelty, which is justified as benevolent project of "civilization" though ironically heavily curtained in racism. This immorailty acts as a background for sympathy towards the white men for having to live in wilderness surrounded by unearthly devil and darkness.

As Marlow moves up the river, in search of Mr. Kurtz whose reputation precedes him, he comes across the savegery and corruption of his own IDEALISTIC men whom he represents and as he gets closer to Kurtz he starts sympathizing with him and blaming the company for his misfortune, while at the same time their is a growing suspicion that Kurtz himself has descended to savagery and corruption.

Finally when he meets Kurtz on his deathbed, not much left of a description he was vaguely projected to. A man so idealistic, strong, ambitious seemed to have been engulfed by the darkness and ends up being a bitter part of it and it was the case. The dying Kurtz finally gives up on his way back exclaiming "The Horror! The Horror!". The horror of having underwent a change so profound in those savage surroundings.

The novella interprets it self as a tale of human nature questioning its instability when subjected to the adverse conditions which might leave even the most inflentail and dynamic beings lost in the ever existing darkness. The theme of DRAKNESS simply disconnects each being and modifies them to what their dark insides demands of. This parable offers us a glimpse into the horrific human consequences and does ironiaclly question the Imperial Boundaries of Sanity.

This compelling work of Joseph Conrad is a poetically woven story which makes it more beautiful where we behold everything from the narraators perspective. This novella might not be a particularly "easy read" but once read leaves a deep impression and a question for the readers, Are we Stable Enough??

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

“The horror! The horror!” – these famous words capture succinctly the entire idea behind Joseph Conrad’s seminal piece of fiction Heart of Darkness. This classic story, now an inextricable part of the Western Canon has inspired giants of literature such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf and Albert Camus, and at its core is a chilling, yet poignant tale of the horrors of Imperial Colonialism. Indeed, Conrad was there to witness these horrors first hand - like his mouthpiece Charlie Marlow in the book, in 1889, Joseph Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski became the captain of a steamboat and went sailing up the Congo River. The journey would scar and change his life forever. A deeply introverted, philosophical man whose family was stripped of its aristocratic rank, Conrad was no stranger to tragedy. Perhaps the depth of his feeling is what we can see in the nearly “lyrical” prose of Heart of Darkness. This style, the markedly complex narrative framework (which is what makes this book one of the first books of the Modernist style) and the first hand depiction of cruelty and the conflict between the West and the “savage” world is what makes this book a thoroughly satisfying read. Yes, Conrad has his criticisms, but for me, that only makes the man and his ideas much more endearing. And his unique style of writing and description, which drew much praise (rightly so, in my humble opinion) from his eminent contemporaries (such as Ford Madox Ford) makes the book a pleasure to read. 

In the story, Conrad uses an English sailor named Charles Marlow as his mouthpiece to narrate his experiences. Yet, the person through whose eyes we view the story is not Marlow but an unnamed friend listening to his tale. Through this interesting framework Conrad creates a distance for the reader, an objectivity towards the character with whom one might identify the most.

This character, Marlow, displays all the prejudices and condescending behavior expected of a 19^th Century Englishman – calling Africans “brutes” and savages, yet he is open minded enough to accept the intelligence shown by cannibals in the story. Citing evidence in this book, Conrad has often (unfairly in my opinion) been criticized through this depiction as being a racist himself (see works by Chinua Achebe for example). I feel that perhaps it is a hasty judgment, as an examination of his other texts might prove (or as scholars such as C.P Sarvan have argued). However, this is the very problem - Conrad’s nascent stream-of-consciousness style and peculiar framework cause some haziness about his own views. For example, Marlow calls an African woman “gorgeous”, “beautiful” and at the same time openly admires the man who sticks African heads on pikes. This is ambiguity keeps me coming back for more and has been intriguing to say the least. And through these controversial viewpoints, one can witness the horror that Conrad witnessed in Africa and at the same time, understand the Western European lens and mindset through which we are being shown all this. 

Perhaps, the greatest evidence of the perceived “inferiority”, "wildness" of the continent and the gap between Africa and the colonizer is the way that it is always a suffused background – there, present, dangerous, feared, unknown and yet never fully grasped or confronted. The river is the great separator between the dark forest representing the wilderness of Africa and the Europeans who will eventually reach home through the river to the sea. Never in the story do characters venture into the jungle. Never in the story are we given any insight into the heart and mind of an African – Marlow himself never truly “converses” with one (except once, albeit shortly, with the Cannibal chieftain whom he clearly respects). Are Africans even human? Marlow clearly regards them as primitive versions of Europeans, too far back in time and in terms of progress, never as equals. Yet, there is sympathy for the African race and scorn for the brutality of Europeans. 

In a similar vein, if there is another criticism of Conrad, it must be his depiction of his female characters. There is no direct involvement of women in the story. However, they are extremely important in indirectly driving the story. Perhaps this is a reflection on Victorian ideals and traditional roles for women. The “perfect”, civilized woman is passive, virtuous, subjugated to her lover’s ego; fidelity, perseverance and faith are valued highly. But in Conrad, these women are also slightly derided – as Marlow says, women live in their own worlds, and must not be disturbed. Indeed, Marlow’s aunt, benevolent and generous, believes that the profit making pilfering that Europeans practice in Africa is actually a grand attempt at bringing civilization to brutes. Again, the questions are interesting – is Conrad making a statement? Or is he simply showing the Victorian mindset again? Or is the feminine – which is equated to that which is homely - very distant to his horrific experience? Yet, there seems to be a certain fear for the feminine – as can be seen through the depiction of Kurtz’s African mistress and the whispers of power and influence wielded by Marlow’s aunt.

Perhaps most fascinating is the fall of the character who drives the story like the mythical Holy Grail – Mr. Kurtz, a brilliant individual, the most successful ivory merchant of the Belgian company who falls from grace, living a life without rules and constraints, taking an African mistress and behaving like a savage “dictator” himself. His story is the most interesting question that Conrad asks – what happens when societal constraints that keep us in check are removed? What happens when the only way outward is through introspection? For Kurtz, what he finds within him is too much to take – he dies with the horror of his knowledge, the fact that it is perfectly capable for a man to commit cruel and barbarous acts. For all his rhetoric, his great artistic talent, his cultured and refined background, he is at the end, a common and dishonest ivory merchant who cares little for scruples. In the end, he is drunk with power. Is Conrad here, highlighting the hypocrisy of Imperialist Europe? Is the darkness within each of us, no matter how "civilized" ? This is the central question.

There is something of an absurdist quality to Heart of Darkness – the civilized Europeans are cruel and kill natives for fun while the backward, cannibalistic natives are the most reliable crew members. Ivory and wealth are  the true motives behind the idealistic claim of “civilizing” the savage land of Africa. In Africa, Marlow distrusts and abhors his European manager, yet forms a bond with his untutored, wild, black helmsman, the fascinating legend that is Mr. Kurtz is revealed to be, in reality, to be a hollow shell of a man. All this is through the pained experience of a world-weary sailor. Perhaps Conrad truly was weary of the pointless brutality that he had witnessed.

In totality, Heart of Darkness is a book that left me extremely satisfied emotionally. As an Indian especially, this book was a walk through history, both in terms of the author’s writing as an evolution from previous forms as well as the content of the story. Again, an example of the subaltern historic view, albeit in a one-sided sense, this book is a masterpiece of fiction that I would recommend to anyone.