More Than Meets The Eye

Have you ever read something and just instantly connected to a character? This is the case with “Minutes of Glory” by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and the character Beatrice. I must say that ultimately Beatrice and I have little in common, but for me there was an understanding. Despite Thiong'o's blatant belief in patriarchy, he manages to capture the way I, as a woman, feel sometimes.

Growing up my aunt was my version of Nyagūthū, although in my case I adored and looked up to her rather than resented her, to me and to a lot of mean (made obvious by their catcalls) my aunt resembled a goddess. And not just any goddess, but may have given Aphrodite a run for her money. The older I got the more I realized I wasn't going to look like her. Her hair was dark where mine was light, her skin was a beautiful caramel where mine may be compared to a vampire's, and her eyes were a clear blue where mine were a murky green gray to the point that no two people can ever agree on the color of my eyes, in fact, I honestly think my license should say 'other' rather than 'gray'. Especially when guys didn't approach or pay attention to me the way they did her, I felt...invisible, and, if I'm being honest, I still do.

Just like in “Glory” there are these expectations put on women and girls in society. We have to be innocent and virginal but experienced and sensual and thin but with a large chest. This is what Beatrice is experiencing. She doesn't have the dresses, the heels and the look to enrapture men' hearts. Even though I believe this particular part of the story was meant to reflect the ideas of colonization of the mind. To me, when I read it, he was making a statement about the expectations that are put on women and criticizing them in a sense. Thiong'o's ending pretty much ruins any hope of female empowerment in this story. However, in “Wedding at the Cross”, he allows Miriamu to decide that she doesn't want to be with Dodge W. Livingstone, Jr. because he isn't her husband anymore – Wariuki. Although once against he makes women look foolish with her running away with the circus at the end, but Thiong'o can't be completely blamed for his conclusions because these are the ideas given to him from his culture and society, and, not to mention, he is most certainly not the only person out there with this opinion. The worth of a woman shouldn't be based on her physical appearance as the cliché “there is more than meets the eye” tells us.

My Reader Response to Gordimer

            Nadine Gordimer presents her stories from a first person narrator that she doesn't give a name. Now I don't know if that goes for all of her stories, but in "Good Climate, Friendly Inhabitants", "Amnesty", and "Six Feet of the Country" this is the case. I found this unbelievably frustrating because no first person narrator is a reliable narrator, which means that the story isn't completely what it seems and is only showing the events from the "bad" guy's point of view in "Good Climate" and "Six Feet" or from an alternative, uncommon point of view like in "Amnesty".

           

            "Amnesty", in particular, was the story that I really was able to connect to this week. The female narrator gave the African women the credit they truly deserve as this contribution is usually looked over in history. For instance, it is not only women at home that are mostly overlooked in history. I'm sure that most Americans don't know that women acted as spies and not only as nurses during the Civil War and most definitely can't name them, while most of them can name a few generals – Lee, Grant, and a few others. For me it is unreal to think that people, mostly men, some women, believe that women should be confined to their houses and babies because that is all they have to contribute to society.

            In "Amnesty", when the male character practically calls her stupid and insignificant, it really made me want to somehow enter the story and slap him across the face. First, because here she is raising children that are not only hers, but HIS, without any support from him at all and that alone should earn her his respect, and second, the fact that she understands that his is something that the father of her children has to do and doesn't complain. Yet he still has the audacity to tell her that she isn't doing enough? Having had some experience with ungrateful men myself really made this hit home. As a child I had good grades, I behaved well, I did what I was told, and I was even writing a book by the time I was eight while also playing soccer. My father – who I haven't seen in four years – pointed out, instead of being proud of me for what I was already accomplishing, that I was too pale, that I needed to be a cheerleader, that my grammar wasn't perfect, and that I just wasn't a good enough daughter. When I saw this sort of treatment of the narrator it made me think: I don't care who you are or if you are bring peace on earth, there is no excuse to treat any one, especially the mother of your children, in this fashion. End of story.

            The aspects about apartheid found in the other two stories are interesting because she's also showing its influence on the oppressors and not the oppressed. These two other stories really portray the way that a system like this warps your mind in not only how you treat other people and the way you believe that you should be treated, but how you think of yourself relative to others. This is especially a problem when you look at "Good Climate" and how the female narrator is almost a good person, and could have been if it weren't for her ideas about black Africans that were given to her by her society. It really shows the sheer amount of influence that society has on us as human beings, and that doing what society says isn't always the best choice.

What Achebe Has To Say

If there is one thing I know for certain, it's that when someone tells you something over and over, you begin to believe it slowly but surely. In The Madman by Chinua Achebe, a man goes crazy simply because he's told he's insane. This shows the amount of influence and power that others have on our lives can be rather scary, and shows the terrible side-effects of emotional abuse. If you tell someone enough times that they are worthless, ugly, fat and other horrible things enough times they will believe it, and it creates this inner battle that the abused person has to fight every day. This is what the colonizers did to the African people. The colonizers told the African people that they were nothing more than stupid animals, and as the African people began to believe it they became easier and easier to take over. Then this mind set gets passed down to their children and generations of people believe they are worthless. This is the problem that Achebe is addressing in The Madman.

Achebe also loves irony as a way to criticize society. It appears in Girls At War and The Madman. In Girls At War, Achebe kills off Gladys who gives selflessly to others while he allows Nwankwo to live even though he is selfish. This instance of irony portrays the phrases the good die young and it's the survival of the fittest. Even though this is what he's showing, he's actually telling us what should not happen. In this aspect, I agree with Achebe, the world shouldn't punish people for being kind because ignorant people take advantage.

In Achebe's scathing article An Image of Africa, I didn't know what to think and I still don't. Since I haven't read Heart of Darkness by Joeseph Conrad, I neither had been allowed to form my own opinion, nor had the opportunity to see if I noticed the apparent blatant racism in the novel for myself. I know that Achebe had something to prove, but was it so necessary to be so blatantly mean? Since I hadn't read the book myself I could only sympathize with Achebe and could not join in on his passionate hatred of the book. I have to say, however, that he was successful in convincing me not to read the book unless completely necessary.

Why Is Mnthali Picking on Austen?

My first impulse about “The Stranglehold of English Lit.” by Felix Mnthali was how dare he take Jane Austen's name in such a terrible way; however, after some understanding about the environment that Jane Austen's words had been received in, I began to understand his issue with not only Jane Austen but all of English Literature. As is said in “Creating Space for a Hundred Flowers to Bloom” by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o “...if people were really to depend on European literature, even at its best, they would get a very distorted picture of the modern world, its evolution and contemporary being.” (Thiong'o 153) In context with the poem, this means that the students in Africa, the dispossessed, are not learning about their own culture's perspective on the world, but is rather learning the way that the English view the world. This is Felix Mnthali's main issue with Jane Austen in this particular poem. Instead of teaching them about the world that they are actually living in, her novels provide a female view on society in England. In Africa a woman's problem isn't only how well she needs to marry, but how she is going to deal with the racism surrounding her and other questions about Africa, not England.

I can relate to this with the novel Catcher in The Rye. Even though every teenager in the world is supposed to find a way to relate to Holden Caulfield, I couldn't find any of the questions that I have in my life in the novel. It was interesting to read and brings a new perspective to my mind as a writer, but otherwise, I couldn't find a way to relate to him. Holden wanted children to remain young forever, and I never wanted to be a child. In fact, I hated being a child. The urge to grow up, to be someone has been there my entire life and can probably explain why I skipped my senior year of high school and why no one thinks I'm actually the age that I am. Through Holden I was only learning about Holden and his world where every one should be a child, I was not learning anymore about myself because it wasn't bringing up questions that applied to me. How is Africa supposed to fix itself, when the questions that need to be asked and answered are not being addressed in school? This is the very issue that Mnthali is putting before his audience, and the very question that he so desperately needs answered. How does that involve Jane Austen? It doesn't.