Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, and Home and Exile (Part 2)

In this entry, I will focus on Things Fall Apart, the novel that we will be reading from after we finish Heart of Darkness. 

By the way, here is an advertisement for the 1987 TV miniseries version of the novel.  I found the image at www.africanmoviesdirect.com.  Here is a link to the You Tube channel where you may watch scenes from this miniseries.  It looks like the screenwriters have made changes!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7FS95IcRNU

Hmmm ....the "irrepressible" Okonkwo. 

As you read Things Fall Apart, how would you describe Okonkwo?  In your opinion, how does the third-person narrator seem to feel about him?

If you've read Ed Pilkington's Guardian article (see part 1), you may know that Achebe originally conceived of Things Fall Apart as a multigenerational novel.  Instead, in his final version, the novel focuses on Okonkwo, a seemingly prosperous and powerful Igbo farmer.  He is not at odds with his society....or is he?  His violent temper concerns the other men in his village, and the novel takes place at the end of the 19th century as the British consolidate their rule over what is now known as Nigeria and Protestant missionaries convert the villagers to Christianity.

Here is a current map of Africa to give you an idea of where Nigeria is.

Below is a close-up map of Nigeria, fyi.

Here is a link to the BBC's profile of Nigeria:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/country_profiles/1064557.stm

This timeline from the BBC will come in handy as well.  As we can see, Things Fall Apart takes place as the British are consolidating their rule.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/country_profiles/1067695.stm

This Wikipedia page contains specific information about the ethnic makeup of Nigeria:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Nigeria

Because of the tensions that I mention below, the information is specific but not necessarily accurate.

Here is an article about the tribal tensions that still exist in Nigeria:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/census-stirs-old-rivalries-between-nigerias-tribes-470671.html

In fact, in the 1960s, shortly after the country became independent, members of the Igbo seceded and formed the nation of Biafra.  Civil war broke out, and by 1970, Biafra was rejoined to Nigeria.

I would also like to post information about the Igbo, the ethnicity to which Achebe and the African characters in his novel belong:

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/oldworld/africa/igbo.html

http://www.uiowa.edu/~africart/toc/people/Igbo.html

http://www.geocities.com/athens/acropolis/3629/igbo.html

http://www.umunne.org/

And here is a link to a page on food in Nigeria!

http://www.foodbycountry.com/Kazakhstan-to-South-Africa/Nigeria.html

This site is by someone from the Yoruba group:

http://motherlandnigeria.com/food.html

I'd also like to post a link to the "virtual village" of Umuofia that I mentioned in part 1:

http://homepages.wmich.edu/~acareywe/umuofia/umuofiateachers.html

Finally, I will close with a few pictures.  First is a picture from Maine!  The curator of an African museum in Portland, Oscar Mokeme is teaching his son how to perform a song from the Igbo tradition.  (My husband and I have been to Mr. Mokeme's museum.)

Below is a picture that tells us what the egwugwu in Things Fall Apart may have looked like.  The picture is from a class site at Augusta State University.

Here is a reconstruction of an Igbo family compound.  It is part of an exhibit at Liverpool's International Slavery Museum.

I wanted to post this picture from www.everyculture.com as well to give you a picture of someone living in the huts. 

 

However, most Nigerians live in the city, so I thought I would end with this picture of a market in Lagos, the former capital.

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, and Home and Exile (part 1)

While I am champing at the bit for the semester to begin, I thought that I'd add an entry on the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, his first novel Things Fall Apart, and his 2000 book, Home and Exile, a trio of essays that began as the author's lectures at Harvard.  In fact, I feel a little guilty with all the Conrad entries I've posted so far. 

The first picture above is of Achebe and from the Guardian's blogs.  The second is one of the many editions of Things Fall Apart.  It appears to be an older edition and is from a Chinese web site.  As I've done with  Heart of Darkness, I could probably devote an entire entry to covers of Things Fall Apart.  So much has changed since 1958 when that novel was first published.  In fact, Achebe's homeland, Nigeria, would still be ruled by the British for another two years. 

Also, Multiply is a good place to repost some links that I have up at WebCT.  The first is to Achebe's "An Image of Africa," an essay that began as a lecture given at the University of Massachusetts in 1975:

http://kirbyk.net/hod/image.of.africa.html

In this essay, the author fiercely criticizes Conrad for relying on racist stereotypes of Africa and Africans as well as working to perpetuate these stereotypes in his Heart of Darkness.  Furthermore, Achebe maintains that, for the most part, Conrad refuses to let Africans speak in his novella.  Then, he notes that when they are allowed to, their few words confirm European prejudice.

Indeed, the picture below is an 17th-century engraving of a procession through Benin City, the capital of the Edo kingdom in what is now Nigeria.

Below is a picture of a bronze bowl dating from the ninth or tenth century CE.  (The bowl is from the Igbo, another group or, as Achebe states, "nation," in Nigeria.)

British author Caryl Phillips interviewed Achebe in 2003.  Here, in this article from the Guardian, Achebe expands on his criticism of Conrad.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/feb/22/classics.chinuaachebe

More recently, Ed Pilkington interviewed Achebe.  In this article also published in the guardian, the author recalls his original plan for Things Fall Apart.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/jul/10/chinuaachebe

Pilkington's article also gives you a better sense of Achebe's life.  For a more organized outline, see the BBC's biography:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/profile/chinua-achebe.shtml

This website's biography is more detailed and more recent:

http://chinua-achebe.com/index.htm

I know I am going to have to add another entry or two, so I will conclude with some pictures from Nigeria:

First is a picture of Achebe's birthplace, Ogidi:

Below is a picture from an Igbo woman's wedding.  The bride is wearing orange!

 

I am not sure when this picture dates from, but it is from a "virtual village" built to help American students understand Things Fall Apart a little better.

Also, if you go to Staunton, VA, you'll be able to see a replica of an Igbo village:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/05/igbo-village-re-created-for-museum/

Almayer's Folly

I think I know what one of my summer projects will be....to read (and reread) more of Conrad's novels.  This week I read his first novel, Almayer's Folly.  I wish that I had been able to find a picture of one of the covers, but I couldn't find one that was the right size.  The picture above is from the Earth Hope Action Network's site and shows one of the rivers that run through the island of Borneo.  Below is a map as well to show you where it is.

Here is a map of the island itself from Orangutantrop, another conservation site.

I think that I have probably included enough about the setting of Almayer's Folly. 

This novel is the story of Almayer, a Dutchman who has lived all of his life in the colonies.  (He was born in Java, a part of Indonesia, which was then a Dutch colony.)  At the time the story begins, he is a middle-aged merchant whose ambitions have always gone astray.  In fact, he had married his wife in the hope that he would inherit her foster father's considerable wealth.  (He does not.)  He is waiting for a younger man, the son of the sultan from Bali, to return from an expedition.  This expedition, he hopes, will give him enough money to leave Borneo for the Netherlands.  He fantasizes that he and his beautiful daughter, Nina, will enjoy Europe...and that he can leave his wife behind in the colonies.  Dain Maroola, the younger man he is waiting for, on the other hand, has fallen in love with Nina and wants to bring her with him to Bali.  Nina loves him madly, and her mother is more than happy to spoil Almayer's schemes.

Below is a blogger's photograph of a Balinese wedding:

In some ways, Almayer's Folly is a very modern novel, especially if you are used to reading 19th century British novels like Jane Eyre or Pride & Prejudice or David Copperfield.  Almayer has failed at life, and the narrator makes it clear that his neighbors laugh at him, take advantage of him, or both.  His wife, a Filipino, is clearly contemptous of him even as he looks down at her in a passive aggressive way.  Nina is much more sympathetic towards her father, but she has chosen to align herself with her mother, in part because of the way she was treated as a young girl by Europeans.  Nina is also very resilient, and I really like the way that Conrad depicts her as skillfully rowing here and there as she needs to. 

In 2004, there were plans for a film version of Almayer's Folly.  It hasn't made it to imdb.com, but here are some links to stories about this production:

http://www.balifilm.com/almayer.htm

http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Saturday/Columns/2454977/index.pda

http://www.lebrocquyfraser.com/index/film.php?id=8&status=4

Apparently it is still in development!

The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad (part two)

I don't like writing super long Multiply entries, so here is part two of my entry on the lives and works of Joseph Conrad. 

The picture above is of Conrad with his wife and younger son.  I think that it fits John Batchelor's bio nicely since this biographer does a better job of putting Conrad in context than Stape did.  Also, I suspect that Stape might have lost patience with Conrad.  Unsurprisingly, this can be an occupational hazard with biographers, and if one shies away from Conrad's work and hones in on his letters, it is easier to lose patience with him.

Since Stape, however, does a better job of writing about Conrad's earlier life (in Poland, France, and the merchant marines), this entry will focus on his later life as a writer. 

I wonder how an ESL teacher or theorist would look at Conrad's work.  After all, he was writing in a language that he did not learn until he was an adult.  (English was his third or fourth language, perhaps even his fifth.  I suspect that living in an area that Russia occupied, he had to know some Russian.)  An ESL teacher or theorist would shed interesting light on Conrad's struggles with writer's block and his collaboration with native writer Ford Madox Ford during the 1900s. 

Also, of course, a large part of Conrad's life in England was his attempt to establish and sustain an identity.  I imagine that this added to his tension.  Early on, Polish writer Eliza Orzeszkowa criticized him for writing in English even though he had not lived in Poland since he was a teenager.  Later, English natives such as Lady Ottoline Morrell & Bertrand Russell and would-be natives such as Henry James patronized him as an exotic foreigner.  When Conrad and his agent Pinker were quarrelling in 1909 & 1910, the agent struck back at him by claiming that he did not speak or understand English well enough.  Conrad, of course, responded with a stinging retort.  He also changed agents for a time.  Moreover, when Conrad did go to Poland in 1914, as Batchelor notes, his customary depression and anxiety lifted, only to return once he was in England again. 

Here is a quick outline of some of Conrad's work.  Although Heart of Darkness is perhaps his most celebrated and read work, he wrote many other novels, novellas (short novels), and short stories.  In fact, Marlow (the chief narrator in Heart of Darkness) narrates several other of Conrad's works: Youth, Lord Jim, and a later novel, Chance.  Some critics speculate that Marlow may have been Conrad's English-self or the Englishman he would have liked to have been.

In part 1 of this entry, I mentioned Almayer's Folly (1894), Conrad's first novel.  It is set in Borneo, quickly establishing Conrad's identity as an author who set his stories in exotic places.  At this point, Conrad had been a British citizen for 14 years, but he had spent most of this time at sea in the merchant marine.

Here is a picture from Borneo, a place known for its rainforests and wildlife.

As with Marlow, Conrad would continue to revisit one character from Almayer's Folly, Lingard, in "An Outcast of the Islands" (1895) and The Rescue (published 1920 but begun in the mid-1890s). 

Both Batchelor and Stape discuss Conrad's habit of beginning novels only to drop them and begin a short story that would ultimately become a novel or novella.  Heart of Darkness (1902) began this way, as a short story called "An Outpost of Progress."  Similarly, his novel Lord Jim (1900) began as "Jim: A Sketch."  However, as I have mentioned above, Conrad struggled with writer's block, and moving from project to project seemed to be his best way of dealing with it...even though this strategy was annoying to his agent and his publishers.

Below is a picture of the cover of Lord Jim, a novel about a young man who attempts to redeem himself after he jumps ship.  Batchelor compares the novel's protagonist, Jim, to Hamlet.

 

  Nostromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907), and Under Western Eyes (1911) are Conrad's most overtly political novels.  The first is set in South America; the other two are set in England and Europe.  In each of these novels, Conrad views political radicalism and intrigue with extreme skepticism. 

 

With Chance (1914), Conrad had his first popular success.  This novel, like several of his earlier works, is set at sea, and it concerns a captain's attempt to ship explosives safely.  (The story that became Chance was titled "Explosives.")  However, unlike his earlier works, Chance includes a love story between an Englishman and an Englishwoman that ends happily.  Prior to this, women did appear in Conrad's work, but as you may notice from "Heart of Darkness," they are often vehicles for the author's social criticism or, as with Winnie Verloc of the Secret Agent or Emilia Gould in Nostromo, voices for this criticism.  In Victory (1915), Conrad's next novel and another success, he places a love story between Heyst, the son of a cynical philosopher, and Lena, a prostitute, at the center of his work; however, she is killed, in part because her relationship with Heyst probably could not exist outside their island.

Conrad continued to write during and after World War I.  His works received much acclaim and respect, perhaps more than their share.  He also tried his hand at adapting several of his works for the stage.  Probably his most successful adaptation was of his late novel Victory, which "ran for eighty-two performances" in 1919.  In 1923, he traveled to the United States.  When he died in 1924, Conrad was working on a novel set during the Napoleonic era in the early 1800s.   

     

Tartuffe!

 The picture above is from a recent production of Tartuffe at SMU in Dallas.  Yes, yes, yes, it's a modern-dress production, but this picture above gives you a good idea of what this satirical play will be about: a conman passes himself off as a spiritual advisor in order to bilk a wealthy man and his wife. 

See this site for a summary from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival:

http://www.osfashland.org/browse/production.aspx?prod=60

See this site for a biography of the playwright Moliere (1622-1673):

http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Theatre/Moliere/moliere.shtml

The picture below is from a French bio pic of Moliere:

As I look around, I see a number of (more or less) modern-day productions, but I'd like to show you some pictures of more historically accurate versions.  Tartuffe was written and first performed in 1664, so I want to emphasize the historical aspects of this play.  It is timeless, but I want you to realize that this play is a 17th century satire and was performed at the French court (which probably explains the ending!).

Here the maid Dorine confronts Tartuffe in a production at the East Carolina Playhouse in Greenville.

 

In the picture below, Orgon hides under the table and hears Tartuffe propositioning his wife.  The production pictured is from Hampton-Sydney College in Virginia:

 

These actors from the University of South Carolina played this scene even more farcically:

 

I guess this must be the most celebrated scene in the play as when I looked for other interpretations of this play I saw this print from 1892:

 

This woodcut (of the same scene) appears to be from the 17th or 18th century.

 

 

 

The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad (part one)

Once again I thought that I'd blow the dust off of this blog before it's too late.  This time, though, I am going to post a little about the life of Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness, the first work that we will be reading.

On my way back from Maine, I read John Stape's recent biography of Conrad, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad.  Mr. Stape often refers to Conrad as a man who was caught between two centuries: the nineteenth and the twentieth.  We will be especially conscious of this as we read Heart of Darkness, a work that literally straddles the turn of the century in its writing and publication.

Although Conrad has written one of the greatest English-language novels and is known as a stylist, he did not grow up speaking English.  Although his family was Polish, his birthplace is now in what is the Ukraine.  Throughout almost the whole of Conrad's life (1857-1924), though, Russia controlled much of Poland and all of the Ukraine.  Conrad's parents protested against Russian rule and were sent into exile because of their activism.  Their young son often accompanied them.  However, perhaps unsurprisingly, Conrad himself was not politically active and refused to be involved in various causes.  He ultimately became a British citizen, and his most notable political writing was on behalf of his adopted country's involvement in World War I. 

Here is a photo from Warsaw, one of the places where Conrad lived as a child:

 

Shortly before his father's death, Conrad moved with him to Krakow and therefore outside of Russia.  Here is a picture of that historic city:

 

After the death of both of his parents, Conrad was raised by his grandmother who lived in the part of Poland not under Russia's control but that of the more tolerant Austria-Hungarian Empire.  His uncle soon took responsibility for him, guiding him into a profession and helping him out as need be. Conrad chose to go to sea, as part of what we would now call the merchant marines.  He ultimately became a captain although, as Stapes notes, he rarely had the kind of job he was qualified for.  In part, this happened because technology was advancing and ships needed fewer men. 

Below is a picture of the Joseph Conrad, a ship built in 1882 and later renamed after him.  It is now docked at Conneticut's Mystic Seaport:

 

At first, Conrad worked on French ships, sailing to the Carribbean and South America.  He may have run guns in Colombia.  He later worked on English ships, sailing to Africa, Malaysia, and, ultimately, Australian.  Towards the end of his career, he was employed by the Societe du Commerce du Haut-Congo, a Belgian concern.  This job would take him to the Congo, and his experience in what is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo would be the basis for Heart of Darkness.    Below is a picture of the Congo River:

Here is a picture from 1918, almost thirty years after Conrad's time in Africa.  However, I think that it will give you a better idea of what Conrad saw there.

After working in the Congo, Conrad became very ill.  He did recover, but as it turned out, his health was permanently affected and he would not work on such a long voyage again.  He sailed on short runs off England's coast, and by 1895, he had left the merchant marine to become a full-time writer. 

A year earlier (1894) he had published his first novel, Almayer's Folly, a story set in Borneo, an island near Malaysia and the Phillippines.  This novel was written in English.

A year later (1896) Conrad would marry Jessie George, a young woman from London.  He was 39, and she was 23.   At first their lives were quite difficult.  Both were not in good health, and Conrad's novels were critical successes but not popular ones.  It also appears that writing could be very difficult and painful for Conrad. 

Here is a picture of Conrad with his older son, Borys.  The white-bearded man in the picture is their landlord.

 Joseph and Jessie Conrad had another son, John.  These are both sons as young men.  The picture was probably taken after Borys had served in WWI.

 

Joseph Conrad did not achieve financial success as an author until right before WWI.  As I had mentioned, he had achieved critical success long before then.   

Interestingly, Conrad and his family did not return to Poland until 1914.  The outbreak of war stranded them in Zakopane, a resort town in the part of Poland ruled by Austria-Hungary.  The Conrads fortunately managed to return to England in the late fall of 1914 although their journey back was perilous and uncertain.  Here is a picture of Zakopane:

 

Argh!  I didn't mean for this picture to be so big.

Here is a picture of one of Conrad's homes in England. 

 

Today I received another biography of Conrad from Amazon.  This biography by John Batchelor emphasizes the writing more, so I'm looking forward to starting it.  The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad is interesting at first, but once Conrad turns to writing, it is less so.

Bettina Judd's Reading 9/17 at MC

 I thought I'd blow off some of this blog's dust today and write about Bettina Judd's reading at MC.  It's been good to read poems from other times and places ("The Ballad of Mulan" and so on), but I've always liked going to readings to hear what other people are writing NOW.

Bettina Judd's poetry fits in nicely with last week's readings...Robert Hayden's "Middle Passage," Muriel Ruykeser's "Absolom," and even Seamus Heaney's "The Tollund Man" and "The Bog Queen."  Research is a significant part of Ms. Judd's writing process since many of her poems are about historical figures or individuals who are in the news.  The first few poems that she read were from a project that she is doing on gynecological experimentation and its impact on Black women's bodies.  Several were from the point of view of Joyce Heth, a slave whom P.T. Barnum had bought and exhibited as George Washington's nurse in 1835 and 1836.  Barnum claimed that she was 160; Ms. Heth was actually in her 70s.  (Below is a picture from a play, "The Exploitation of Joyce Heth," that was performed in New York.)

Another picture is one of Barnum's advertisements:

For more about Ms. Heth's story, see this link from George Mason University:

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/jackson/5pts/museum/heth.html

Bettina Judd also read poems about more contemporary women.  One was the girl, Latasha Harlins, who was shot in the back of the head by a Korean-American store owner in 1991.  The relatively light sentence that the store owner received was one of the causes of the L.A. riots in 1992.  Having grown up in L.A. and its suburbs, Ms. Judd recalled the impact of Harlins' murder.  She added that at the time she had seen tapes of the shooting on TV.  Another startling poem was about a woman who was tortured and killed by her ex-lover.  A third was about a woman who lay dying and ignored in a NYC emergency ward.

As you can see, Ms. Judd's work is about the violence of history, especially as it affects Black women.  These poems are not for everyone.  Curiously, she read her poems in a soft, quiet voice, swallowing her words.  However, these were not poems for shouting and declaiming.  I would be interested in hearing her read in a different venue...but I was glad to see how packed the room was.

Oh yes...and Ms. Judd talked about *her* approach to writing poetry.  She discussed the projects that she works on.  The poems about gynecological experimentation actually came out of a series of watercolors that she had been working on.  She tries to write a poem a day, not worrying about whether that poem is good or bad.  It is "just" a draft, and she will continue to work on it.  This appears to be an approach that she has taken from the Cave Canem Poets.  Here is a link to their site!  (Caution:  This link has been broken some of the time, so...beware!)

http://cavecanempoets.org/

Here are some links to poems by Bettina Judd.  The first is "A Conversation After Teeth." 

http://penzitspronouncedpants.blogspot.com/2008/08/guest-pnz-conversation-after-teeth.html

Another is her poem, "Sankofa: Gender Bend."

http://www.torchpoetry.org/Fall%2007/bettinajudd.htm

Here is her MySpace page where you may listen to her read some poems, including "Sankofa."

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=199530233

And here is a link to her blog:

http://www.ablackgirl.com/wordpress/


Next up...the Poetry at Noon for World Peace Day on 9/22!