Perverse Comforts

“...It was extraordinary to me that some of the newspapers could have found good words for the butchery on the coast. But people are like that about places in which they aren't really interested and where they don't have to live...People who had grown feeble had been physically destroyed. That in Africa, was not new; it was oldest law of the land” (29). There are ways to be banal, dismissive, and trite about human tragedies, and the distance that empowers us to say, with cheerful ease, “dead” over “passed away” is that which allows imperialism to dominate and mold a national ideology. Furthermore, from my own distinctly American perspective, it is logical that I should find works such as Grass’ The Tin Drum, or Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude more gripping, of greater literary merit, and more masterfully told than Naipaul’s A Bend in the River, or Pamuk’s My Name is Red; the “Western” strains -- the World War II backdrop of Drum, the nihilist metaphysic of Solitude -- are the touchstones of contemporary American and European thought, and our education within what in many ways is still an Orientalist system conditions us to treat Naipaul’s, Mahfouz’s, and Pamuk’s masterpieces as material designed to keep Sparknotes afloat.

Of River’s many flat, devastatingly aphoristic lines, the declaration that “in Africa...[tragedy] was the oldest law of the land” only adds to our American feeling of alienation from the text, especially in regards to how the Western presence which normally acts as our safeguard and sense of security within an “Eastern” Western narrative (see Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians), is ghostlike in Naipaul’s work. How are we to feel about our own culture if our security in reading a non-European-American’s novel is derived from the fact that we are represented as the imperialist, cruel, conquering people history has shown us to be?

Answers to the 5 Questions

Laura asked “Why is the empire called, the "Empire," instead of given a specific name?”

It seems to me that generic names for locations in novels make it easier for the reader to apply their own experience to the novel and relate more to the story. It also gives the effect of the Empire being so pervasive that this is the only name that the residents of the Empire require, or could conceive for it. Additionally, it sounds authoritarian and ominous.

Sarah asked, “Why do the Magistrate’s views on the barbarians differ so greatly from the rest of the officials of the Empire?”

The magistrate lives with the daily reality of the barbarians. At this frontier town, the barbarians are a fact of life, an entity that directly affects the Magistrate. To the officials of the Empire, they are some far-off, nebulous, dangerous group that must be handled firmly. The Magistrate views them much more humanely, which he must do because they are a concrete part of his world. The officials of the Empire need only address their notions of what the barbarians represent.

John asked, “Does the C.P. Cavafy poem (also titled "Waiting for the Barbarians") suggest why their absence is more powerful than their attack?”

I just read this poem right now, but I’m going to take a shot at answering this question anyway. The poem tells a story about an empire in which the lawmakers emperor, distinguished people, and citizens all pause their lives and wait for the barbarians to arrive so they can greet them civilly, with all the trappings of life in this grand empire. Perhaps in order for an empire to be important, it needs an adversary, someone to fight or impress. In their absence, the empire serves no purpose. This could explain why the Empire goes out to find the barbarians- the officials need a purpose, and the barbarians’ absence removes the purpose.

Nicki asked, “Why does the magistrate find it necessary to risk everything in order to bring the girl back to "her people"?  What is he proving, and to who is he proving it?”

It seems that the Magistrate makes the risky choice to bring her back to her people as an act of liberty. He frees her from her life in his home and also frees himself from the strange relationship he has with her. Furthermore, it is an act of penance for allowing the old man to die under his watch. To return the woman is his way of making up for that death.

Andrew asked, “What is the purpose of failing to name most characters or places, or even the time period, in this novel?”

This question is similar to Laura’s, but reading it reminded me of another point I hadn’t considered, so I wanted to include this question as well. Not naming characters, places, time periods, and other identifiers is a hallmark of dystopian literature. Remember The Giver, for example, which many students read around the age of 9 or 10. This technique is powerful because it lets readers project whatever they need to project in order to absorb the story in a way that meshes with their notions of the world. The ambiguity that is inherent to this technique means that the story could be about anything- it could be a situation that has already occurred in our world, is occurring now, or could occur in the future. All of these are equally anxiety-producing possibilities. 

Cultural Perceptions in A Bend in the River

The themes of cultural relevance, the self versus the “other”, and the effect of sociolinguistics and social chameleonism on culture are all topics in A Bend in the River.    

In Naipaul’s novel, the perception of history is warped by the books—what’s written by European imperialists is what Salim knows of his past. European culture permeates Salim’s life and is evident throughout the novel—most obviously, in the use of colloquial French language, such as « marchande » (merchant) 5, « boucané » (smoked, as in meat) 6, « patron » (same in English) 33, « cités » (towns) 87, « lycée » (high school equivalent) 35, and « malin » (malicious) 50.

Salim, though ethnically Indian, has lived in Africa all his life. He explains the dilemma of both places’ influence on his family: “True Africa was at our back…but we could no longer say we were Arabians or Indians or Persians; when we compared ourselves with these people, we felt like the people of Africa.” 10-11. And it was not only complex for his family, as he explains “The people in our servant houses were no longer pure African…the blood of Asia had been added to those people.” 14.

Because Salim’s an English-speaker he is forever seen as an outsider and utilized as such. He notes of his best customer’s son, “because I was a foreigner, and English-speaking as well, [I was] someone from whom Ferdinand could learn manners and the ways of the outside world.” 36

General knowledge of the “outside world” came down to the ideal divide of exotic and logical—the West’s scientific background is eccentuated as “Other”ness: “Ferdinand said, ‘Who are they?’…I didn’t give the answer I thought he was expecting. I didn’t say, ‘The white men.’…I said instead, ‘The scientists.’…I meant people far away from us in every sense…When we wanted to speak of the doers and makers and the inventors, we all—whatever our race—said ‘they’…The ‘they’ we spoke of in this way were very far away, so far away as to hardly be white. They were impartial, up in the clouds, like good gods.” 44-5

Similarly, Salim comments: “it seemed to me natural that someone like Zabeth, living such a hard life, should want something better for her son. This better life lay outside the timeless ways of village and river. It lay in the education and the acquiring of new skills; and for Zabeth, as for many Africans of her generation, education was something only foreigners could give.” 36 .

Interspersed with Salim’s cultural background are his assumptions of other culture; he makes judgments of many diverse groups: Europeans (“the Europeans could do one thing and say something quite different; and they could act in this way because they had an idea of what they owed to their civilization.” 17), Arabs (“They knew only that they were Muslims; and in the Muslim way they needed wives and more wives.” 14; “The authority of the Arabs…was only a matter of custom. It could be blown away at any time.”; “[Metty] threw himself into my arms, converting the Muslim embrace into a child’s clinging.” 31), Indians (“The bush of Africa was outside their yard; but they spoke no French, no African language, and from the way they behaved you would have thought that the river just down the road was the Ganges, with temples and holy men and bathing steps.” 28), and Africans (“The fishermen’s boats on that beach were still painted with large eyes on the bows for good luck” 12; “No one used the new names [of streets], because no one particularly cared about them. the wish had only been to get rid of the old, to wipe out the memory of the intruder. It was unnerving, the depth of that African rage, the wish to destroy.” 26).

The inclusion of several Latin phrases is an equally interesting element in the novel. The inscription on the ruins near the dock reads: “Miscerique probat populos et foedera jungi” 26 which is, roughly, “He approves of the mingling of the peoples and their bonds of union”and comes from Virgil’s Aeneid— the "he" referring to the great Roman god, who approved of the settlement of Romans in Africa. According to Wikipedia, it is also an old motto of Trinidad and Tobago. Another example is the school’s slogan “[Africa] semper aliquid novi” 35 literally translates to “From Africa always something new”. “In his lycee blazer, Ferdinand saw himself as evolved and important…he had reduced Africa to himself; and the future of Africa was nothing more than a job he might do later on.” 48

Ferdinand is a notorious utilizer of social chameleonism, which is to change the manner of speaking, dress, humor, etc to fit the social group which one finds oneself in. Linguistics calls this practiced changing of social code “style-switching”. Because “he was a stranger in the land.” 35, Ferdinand “didn’t know what was expected of him. He wanted to find out, and he needed me to practise on…Whereas before he had waited for me to ask questions, now it was he who put up the little ideas, little debating points, as though he wanted to get a discussion going. It was part of the new lycée character he was working on, and he was practising, treating me almost as a language teacher.” 47

His chameleonism is highlighted when switching codes from Salim to Metty; Salim notices that “after [Ferdinand’s] stiff conversation in English or French with me…[he’d] switch to the local patois…And Metty could match him; Metty had absorbed many of the intonations of the local language, and the mannerisms that went with the language.”

A Bend In The River

Similar to what Liam was saying in his post, I believe another reason from the distant reporting and style of narrative is to convey a message about the main character. While the book walks the line between meditation and narrative, it is the quality and lens with which the main character sees the world the dictates the mood of the novel, mixed of course with the subject.
Of course the story deals with the results of decolonization, and the struggle of an emerging society that is a developing, third world. Naipaul approaches this subject in a realistic, dark, yet unwavering way. He is committed from the beginning-when describing the African bush and its jungley likeness-to portraying an accurate picture of the land that was after Europeans left it in shambles; the many separate, hostile tribes and borders, run down towns etc. He even mentions the anxiety with which the slaves went forward that is in a way echoed by the current generation that are trying to figure it out.
The narrator isn't the brightest character, but has some complex ideas to pass on in order to describe the state of affairs in Africa. We see a dictator too, in the story, and it all points to a convoluted idea, which represents the actual feeling towards identity-the struggle-in Africa.

The Mingling of People

"Miscerique probat populos et foedera jungi," is the Latin phrase that remains on a monument in Salim's new town. The phrase comes from Virgil's Aeneid and means, "He approves of the mingling of the peoples and their bonds of union. This is also the former motto of Trinidad and Tobago, where V.S. Naipaul was born and raised. After reading Naipaul's Nobel Lecture, I began to understand more about the novel. Salim consistently describes a life without a past, a life lived in darkness, and of groups of people who live together and intertwine their fates. Naipaul, in his lecture titled "Two World," speaks about his blindness about his Indian heritage because history was just not passed along as the immigrants attempted to fit into the new society to give their families better opportunities.
In the novel, Naipaul speaks of people without histories; this is a theme we keep seeing in our Nobel Prize novels. In relating some of his heritage, Salim says, "if I say these things it is because I have got them from European boos. They formed no part of our knowledge or pride. Without Europeans, I feel, all our past would have been washed away." Naipaul's lecture illuminates the reality of this situation: while he was trying to learn about his town, Chaguanas, which was named after a tribe of 1,000 that just disappeared, he finds a one letter from Spain to Trinidad, asking about this tribe in 1652. This group of people, Naipaul says, just vanished because they failed to leave anything behind, and no one else had cared to document them, so all that remains is one letter in a British museum. The novel addresses the importance of preserving history, and explains the importance of who is doing the writing. While it's good that at least the Europeans have kept histories of Salim's ancestors, the Orientalist views that he is left with are damaging. He lives in a world created by the West, with a history that makes him and his people the Others.
While the mingling of people has its benefits in a cultural exchange and sharing of ideas, it is important that each group retains its roots and takes care to guard its dignity in history.

Responses

Response to Bibi Lewis' 5 questions

1. Obviously the establishment of Empire vs. Barbarian suggests something to the portrayal of White vs. Blacks in South Africa, and to the horrors of their mistreatment. One of the feelings that emerges in Coetzee's writing is that this is inescapable. There does not seem to be a world outside the Empire that would be aware of the Empire's horrific treatment of others. Perhaps this is also Coetzee's point--that there was no outside world that saw, or listened to the atrocities of apartheid. It's unclear to me whether or not this is divergent, but missing those outside the empire and outside of South Africa seems an interesting direction to examine this divergence.

2. The narrator's two relationships early in the novel reflect a conflict of desire, it seems, as well as a lack of empathy. The narrator is both fascinated and disgusted by the 'barbarian' woman. But there is also an element of humility in the way that he washes her feet. It is both an act of servitude, but also one of selfishness. For in the rhythm he loses himself and finds something cathartic. Leaving her bed for the the woman who, he knows, lies to him about being happy to see him and enjoying having sex with him, also seems to show a difference between the two women: one honest, raw, real, one an escape. 

3. Coetzee is extremely attentive to the treatment of the horses as they ride them, to death, effectively. He is descriptive of their behavior, their hunger. Coetzee's own animal rights activism suggests that he considers humans and animals to be on an equal level. This is part of the reason why people are constantly described or move with animalistic qualities--Joll's insect-like eyes, the way the tortured narrator is described like a scrounging dog, etc.

4. Coetzee's prisoner scene manifests a blending that occurs throughout the novel. What is barbaric? What is civilized? Do we think of them in terms of technological dominance and perceived superiority? The barbarous mistreatment and complete lack of empathy to other human suffering, the blood-thirst of the empire shows how Coetzee suggests that barbaric and civilized are meaningless, relative terms, as the Empire uses them. The only acts of violence ever seen committed in the novel are by the Empire's soldiers and most of them are torturous and horrific in nature. 

5. The narrator strikes me as a very mixed individual through the first half of the novel. He is self-interested much of the time, but sometimes compassionate--washing the woman's feet, trying to find food and shelter for the first two prisoners that Joll brings in. Whether his treatment and humiliation makes up for anything I think becomes kind of meaningless. What is done to him is awful, regardless of who he is. He is certainly not a martyr figure, by any means. Coetzee does this consciously I think, showing the reader that human beings are not wholly kind or good, and nor are the 'barbarians' when the narrator meets with them in the mountains, but regardless there are certain levels of mistreatment that Coetzee suggests we inexcusably inflict on other human beings. Regardless of how morally good or bad they are, Coetzee seems to view this treatment as inherently wrong.

Time and Ferdinand

This book is concerned with the idea of time passing, the future and the past, in relation to the small village in Africa at the bend in the river.  Time seems to not exist for some people, and to be working against others.  On page 65 it is said that Father Huisman “saw himself at the end of it all, the last, lucky witness” (Naipaul).  He is then killed a little while later, and his love for Africa is mocked.  He believed that he was a master of time since he was able to travel to the bush and collect “primitive artwork” as the American who eventually takes it refers to it. 

            The motto for the school translates to “always something new” which is interesting because for all of the tribal traditions, this book is proving that the people of Africa are living in a constantly changing world.  They do not know who to fear or what to be.  Ferdinand is an excellent example of this since he does not really belong in this town.  He is separated from his mother’s village and his father’s so he puts on different acts trying to fit in.  Salim comments that his brain is jumbled, describing it as something quite similar to how he described his shop where he sells many different things in a chaotic manner, yet he always knows where everything is.  Ferdinand is learning how to organize his jumbled identity.  Ferdinand also becomes confused when it comes to time and “ideas of the past were confused with ideas of the present” (Naipaul 48).  This boy, the son of Zabeth who lives outside of time as Salim thinks of it, cannot become his own person until he stops trying to act as someone else.