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(PS) 135053 - 1 Introduction to Postcolonial Literature and Theory
(WiSe 2020/2021)
Lektorin: Dr. Dobrota Pucherova
Name: Margherita de Gregorio
Matrikelnummer: 12025710
Essay Topic:
Compare the representation of colonialism in Doris Lessing and George Orwell. How do the two characters develop and what do they learn about the colonial order? How are the colonized constructed as inferior by colonial discourse? How does the child narrator function in the telling of the story (what does her point of view reveal)? Analyse these texts in the context of Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (Chapter 1) and McLeod, Ch. 2
In his introduction to “ Beginning Postcolonialism” McLeod writes: “Any new beginning poses several important questions. Exactly what am I beginning, and what am I about to encounter? How shall I best proceed? Where might be the most appropriate position to start from? Beginnings are exciting things […]; but they also expose us to the unfamiliarity and inevitable disorientation of doing something new.” (1). I like to imagine that these were the exact same questions that the protagonists of the two short stories, here, under consideration might have asked themselves throughout their “new beginning”. There is no doubt that we are dealing with a fictional beginning, for their story is only a small part in a much larger and more complex puzzle, begun years earlier, and most importantly, by others before them. What, however, represents an utterly new beginning for these two characters is, indeed, an idea, a thought that will eventually expose them to an inevitable sense of disorientation. As a matter of fact, starting from the colonialist ideology, according to which the possession and occupation of other peoples’ land was grounded on the superiority of the white race, the two unnamed protagonists in “ Shooting an Elephant ” (1936) by George Orwell and “ The Old Chief Mshlanga ” (1951) by Doris Lessing, will have to come to terms with their set of beliefs. Almost every story is a reflection or a past experience of its author’s life, and although Orwell's short story takes place in Burma, and Lessing's in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, the authors borrow from their past experiences to paint a chilling picture of the British colonial society and its terrible effects. In fact, both Orwell and Lessing, had the opportunity to experience the colonial environment first-hand: while Orwell was actually employed as police officer in the imperial force from 1922 to 1928, Lessing lived for the first thirty years of her life in Africa.
Lessing develops the young girl’s traits by conveying them in the third- person narrator, for her experience regarding the environment in which she lives, is nothing but the result of the colonialist education/ideology imposed by third parties: “It was this instilled consciousness of danger, of something unpleasant, that made it easy to laugh out loud, crudely, if a servant made a mistake in his English or if failed to understand an order.” ( 14 ). Though the girl begins to question her behaviour and attitude towards Natives, she prefers to ignore these difficult thoughts which “were silenced by an even greater arrogance of manner” ( 14 ). It will only be with the coming of age, that those intrusive thoughts will recur, most likely, stronger than before. To emphasize this inner growth, Lessing conveys the protagonist’s traits in the first-person narrator: the teenage protagonist views things differently from her younger self. With utmost elegance, the author is suggesting that the narrator's voice is no longer the mere result of an uncritically acquired culture; rather, it is a new voice, one that is about to face the current reality with a new spirit, free of preconceived notions. As far as our second narrator is concerned, the police officer in lower Burma, an inner characterization is certainly more challenging. Not only because he is on an advanced age and therefore already long exposed to colonialist canons, but also (and above all) because of the nature of his feelings towards those same canons. “All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job an got out of it the better. Theoretically- and secretly, of course- I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters.” (1).
It is already abundantly clear that the years of innocence, are long gone. The narrating voice guiding us in this new story belongs to someone who, unlike the little Chieftainess, knows perhaps too much about the world in which he lives. Due to his own active role in the colonialism ranks, the narrator has a thorough idea of its effects on the Natives. Not only he has seen them take concrete form on the lives of the colonized people (he describes the whipped and tortured bodies of the people in filthy, stinking prison cells), but he also endures them as a member of the British Empire: “In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people- the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. […] As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so.” (1). The officer is, consequently, deeply troubled by this atmosphere of hostility. Therefore, all he has left, rather, all he knows, is: “that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible” (1). As already mentioned, the protagonists and narrators in these stories are extremely different from each other. Their very approach to the surrounding world diverges not only in age, but also in their role within the colonial system. The young girl's role as a mere bystander leads her to have (at least in the very first phase of the story) a stereotyped vision of the natives. A vision, that perfectly reflects the concept of Orientalism introduced by Said, according to which the West occupies a superior rank while the Orient is its counterpart, in a subservient position. On the other hand, the policeman’s active role gives him the opportunity to recount from the very beginning a story that is certainly more detailed and complex. A story of
But, as she grows older, she feels like “the farm grew too small to hold her curiosity” ( 14 ), therefore, intrigued by that stranger land, she begins to explore it, however always with a gun and two dogs: “[…] the dogs and the gun were an Armor against fear. Because of them she never felt fear.” ( 14 ). Although the girl is driven by her curiosity to break out of the borders imposed by her father's farm, the only way she feels safe in her explorations is with this “Armor” that provides not only physical but also psychological support. Orwell on the other hand, does not report extended passages dedicated to the descriptions of the natural landscape. Most likely, because his character does not have the time to get lost in long naturalistic contemplations: the brutality he has witnessed (and fallen victim as well) also leaves no room for naive outer space wanderings: everything he needs to know, he has already learned in the “stinky cages” (1). What remains are therefore few, but still deeply, explanatory images. The entire mood of the story is set when Orwell illustrates the setting to be a “cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginnings of the rains.” (2). Orwell’s speech is weak and discomforting. We have left the wild and wide-open African landscapes, only to land in “a very poor quarter, a labyrinth of squalid bamboo huts, thatched with palm leaf, winding all over a steep hillside.” (2). The police officer here is not surrounded by an unfamiliar nature, it is, indeed, a crowd: the Burmese society. Orwell employs a recurring motif to explain his character’s situation: the crowd reflects the eyes of Burmese society, closely observing their colonizers, waiting for a wrong move. The crowd does not reflect a physical threat, however, so much as the threat of delegitimization and humiliation. The two narratives thus proceed in a linear pattern, featuring not only the two protagonists and their idiosyncrasies, but also the spatial circumstances with which they interact. The rising action in these two literary productions is for both represented by an encounter, which in one case will lead to a new awareness, while in the other, to its confirmation.
As for as the girl, it will be the encounter with a different kind of group, natives who “had an air of dignity, of quietly following their own purpose.” (15), that will eventually force her to reconsider what she has been taught. “In front walked an old man, stooping his weight on a stick, his hair grizzled white, a dark red blanket slung over his shoulders like a cloak. […] These had an air of dignity […] A Chief! I thought, understanding the pride that made the old man stand before me like an equal-more than an equal, for he showed courtesy, and I showed none. The old man spoke again, wearing dignity like an inherited garment, […] not looking at me (that would have been rude) but directing his eyes somewhere over my head at the trees.” (15) Through the person of the chief, Lessing shows the dignity of the black natives which the girl had not previously understood, to the extent that being polite to them is “difficult, from lack of use.” (16) After this encounter, the previously silenced questions start “slowly fermenting” in the girl's head, particularly after reading that the place in which they live is Chief Mshlanga's country. After this change in perspective, the narrator says, “that other landscape in my mind faded, and my feet struck directly on the African soil.” (17) Having properly met African people, the narrator is now able to see Africa for what it really is, seeing “the shapes of tree and hill clearly.” (17). At this juncture, she still feels that “this is my heritage too; I was bred here; it is my country as well as the black man’s country; there is plenty of room for all of us.” (17). But this is a naive interpretation, as the girl learns after she has made a pilgrimage to find the chief in his own village. She finds the village “indifferent,” and it instils in her a sense of a “queer hostility in the landscape.” (22). The narrator, despite her hopes of living alongside the natives, still at heart wishes she could “call country to heel like a dog.” (22). This underlines the colonial arrogance still inherent in any
narrator feels this power as an unyielding force pressuring him to shoot the elephant. As he mulls over the critical decision, he comes upon the realization that the “white man” must display strength and authority when the people demand it. Ironically, Orwell juxtaposes the role of the ever-powerful “white man” against an “absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of [the] yellow faces” (3). Although, he the man with the “magical gun” is technically the one with the power, the police officer feels degraded and oppressed by the natives and their will. As a puppet, Orwell equates his character to the helpless figurine that moves at the whim of the puppeteer, or in this case, the natives. Orwell utilizes this comical paradox to express the disgusting irony of the “white man’s dominion in the East” (3). At this point, George Orwell leads to the irony and hollow reality of imperialism. Orwell compares the police officer to the “conventionalized figure of a sahib” (3) and shows how the greed of a nation does not impose oppression on only the imperialized people, but also on the oppressors themselves. The comparison to the sahib , a term used to name aristocratic Indian rulers or lords, describes how Orwell feels that he is merely the image of a hollow ruler, standing for the symbol of false authority and nothing more. In the end, Orwell caves into the unrelenting pressure of the natives and the imposing responsibility of upholding the white man’s honour, and he decides to shoot the elephant. “He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed him without knocking him down. […] His mouth was wide open – I could see far down into caverns of pale pink throat. I waited a long time for him to die, but his breathing did not weaken. Finally, I fired my two remaining shots into the spot where I thought his heart must be. The thick blood welled out of him like red velvet, but still he did not die. His body did not even jerk when the shots hit him, the tortured breathing continued without a pause. He was dying, very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from where not even a bullet could damage him further. I felt that I had got to put an end to that dreadful noise. It seemed dreadful to see the great beast lying there, powerless to
move and yet powerless to die, and not even to be able to finish him. I sent back for my small rifle and poured shot after shot into his heart and down his throat. They seemed to make no impression. The tortured gasps continued as steadily as the ticking of a clock.” ( 5 ) The description of the dying elephant is no accident. In imprinting his argument into the minds of audience, Orwell imprints the violent image of the dying elephant. Emphasizing the pitiful, sad, and perhaps even disgusting reality of the situation, Orwell chooses to describe the elephant with words like “thick blood,” “tortured breathing,” and “great agony.” The audience is then forced to associate such gruesome images to the tragedies of imperialism. The vivid description may also allude to the process of one country killing another. The audience receives this image of a British policeman shooting down a poor beast. Such an image could be comparable to Britain’s imperialistic destruction of its colonies. The descriptions of the elephant’s tortured gasps seem to reflect the tortured groans of the imperialized countries who are struggling to break free of Britain’s painful grasp. Through such use of imagery, Orwell is able to plant a powerful political message in the minds of the audience. As the narration ends, the police officer wonders “whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool”. (5) His humiliation and sense of defeat are conveyed through this compelling words. The whole short story, with its appeals of ethos, pathos and uses of imagery, boils down to the irony between the outward and inward appearances of a British authority figure in Burma, or any other state within the British sphere of influence. This irony shows how imperialism ruins everyone involved starting from the inner core. In conclusion, what for the two characters represents a new (fictional) beginning is indeed the idea of the utter hollowness of the colonial system of values and beliefs.
Bibliography:
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 2005. Lessing, Doris. “The Old Chief Mshlanga”. This was the Old Chief’s Country. Granada: Triad/Granada Books, 1979. McLeod, John. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. Orwell, George. “Shooting an Elephant”. Shooting an Elephant: And Other Essays. London: Penguin Classics, 2003. Wa Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ. Re–membering Africa. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers,
