Language Matters

Ha Jin's stories are riddled with themes and examples that deal with communism and oppressive government, relating to his life spent in China. For this reason he was forced to make the decision to write in English as he points out in his article. He is correct that if he wrote in Chinese these stories would have never made it past the censorship to be read by the people.

In his first story, Saboteur, Ha Jin takes on the theme of oppressive government and the abuse of power with the Chinese Police. The story covers the police provoking Mr. Chiu and his wife to give them reason to arrest him. They then abuse their power further by fabricating a whole file of evidence and other problems that they accuse Mr. Chiu of having in the past. The police then proceed to tie up Fenjin out in the scorching heat as punishment for no reason other than speaking his mind to them. Stories like this as well as his others that deal with communism vs. capitalism could never make it past Chinese censorship. The government officials in the Chinese Communist Party get to take their power and essentially mold the people into the perfect citizens that they want, by choosing exactly what the public has access to and how they should behave.

Ha Jin mentions Conrad in his article, and he brings up a good point that Conrad made a tough decision to write in English versus Polish. To write about colonialism to a Polish audience wouldn't make much sense. Poland was not a colonialist nation, so many of the readers there would not have understood the depth of the story and many of the themes of Heart of Darkness. By moving to England and writing the story in English he was able to establish himself as the go-to writer for post-colonialism, a position he never would have imagined if he wrote in Polish. Without Conrad as a base for post-colonial writing, the genre would have drastically changed, and authors like Achebe wouldn't have likely written anything.

Eyeballing Imperialism

I couldn't help but think about the words at the beginning of Spivak's essay. I never really thought about how novels of the same time period as Jane Eyre could have been influenced by imperialism and allowed it to affect the story. As Spivak says, "the role of literature in the production of cultural representation should not be ignored" (WSS, 240).

How does society affect how people are portrayed in stories like Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre. Spivak's argument seems to be that you must take into account where a novel is written before you can really analyze it. A novel written in England for readers there is going to portray England in a good light, and often could end up leaving out the ugly details of what really might have happened.

If we look at novels more closely like this we could see how a story like Jane Eyre could leave out enough that Jean Rhys could create an entire story based on the Bertha character. Wide Sargasso Sea shows the racial struggles that occurred on the island of Dominica and how many whites were discriminated against after the abolishment of slavery. You would most likely not have read about the events of the burning of Antoinette's house and the acting out of the blacks on the island if it were a novel written by someone who was born and lived in England. I can understand why British readers would not want to see whites put down by other races, they are used to novels that show the positive aspects of imperialism and colonialism, that Europeans are superior and are going to Caribbean islands to bring prosperity and salvation to the natives. After all, authors want to sell their novels, so they want to appeal to their audience.

I know now that I will really look at the perspective given by a novel and who wrote it before I read it. You cannot take one story as an entire account as to what happened in an area at the time, you must look at both sides before you can truly understand.

Wait, who is that person related to again!?

So thanks to the explanations in class today I think I finally got it straight on who is who in Wide Sargasso Sea. I must admit I was a little confused when the author introduces almost a dozen characters in the stretch of 25 pages.

I took a history class last year that covered Central and South America so I have already learned about Creoles and some of the racial tensions in the area, so to read this short novel was a quick refresher on the area and what happened in the 1800's. Ultimately I was surprised to see how the whites are being portrayed as the lower class now unlike in other novels. I'm so used to seeing racism go from whites to blacks in these novels of the time period that to see it go the other way caught me offguard. If you think about it, it just proves that racism tends to go towards minorities, no matter what race they are. The race that is in the majority almost always is the one that tries to push their superiority on the other races.

I look forward to reading the rest of Wide Sargasso Sea to see how these situations pan out with race in the storyline. I think I will like some of these novels in the Carribean since I have some knowledge of the area from my history class I took.