Culminating Project Abstract

Micro-Macro Bind

Dilating 19^th and 20^th Century Colonialistic Portrayals

Beyond Ethnocentric, Generalized Bounds Toward 21^st Century Globalization  

by Kelly Collier Rauh

This mixed-media map banner demonstrates dichotomies between micro- and macro- global perspectives.  Some 19^th and 20^th century literature portrayed stereotypical views of postcolonial dominance.  Other novels focussed on micro-societies, showing atypical lives populating all regions.  This pastiche lures passersby to an unexpected global map to absorb tiny, intriguing narrative elements, and reflects their own image in the mix. The intended impression is how powerful our choices of words are in building negative boundaries that divide and in encouraging positive blends of unique individuals into boundless, interconnected global societies.

Beginning with Buckminster Fuller’s projection map sectioning the globe into triangles, this work uses solar pool cover for the base and translucent ocean background.  Fuller’s map is turned to center North America, as literature studied was written in English, and many Americans maintain ethnocentricity.  This view sets European colonial superpowers to one side--upside-down to our conditioned thinking--and no larger than Madagascar.  Land masses are cloth and plastics illustrating stereotypical generalizations.

Spaces unused by Fuller’s flat map form blocks of regions covered in readings.  Each contains remixed representations of props, events, and themes: Laminated photos, drawings, and maps cut into words or shapes; ornaments; greeting card sections; buttons; coins; and other miniature found objects.  Each includes two tidbits to find:  a mirror square showing the observer’s inclusion in that view, and the name of a different culture’s author.

The inner border contains each story’s title.   Pieced cloth forms the surrounding band of muted, abstract patterns representing the future’s blended races and cultures, overlaid with Diamond Age “gems”. Castles symbolize the internet uniting our global society; and Fuller’s map remains a true cornerstone. 

Diamond Starts Rough, Ends Well-Polished

I found Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age to be a laborious read in the opening chapters, as terms he coined in this futuristic society cannot be defined in our current dictionaries.  It was a struggle to comprehend his precise meaning from the fragments of context initially provided.  It was similar to watching Google Earth’s aerial map come slowly into focus with many sections in complete darkness, others blurred and evolving into better pixelation, while a few are sharp and familiar.  I did not appreciate this bizarre cultural landscape until I let go and read quickly, trusting that the black and sparsely sketched details would become clear later.

I was intrigued by two particular connections between this, our last text, and our first text, Heart of Darkness.  At the opening of Part The Second, Stephenson introduces the society of the Drummers (255-58).  Conrad’s description of the primitive Africans shares much with these scenes.  They are both mysterious, rite-centered, corporate and accompanied by the incessant pulsing of drums.  Both people groups are portrayed as godlessly immoral, degraded, overtly sexual and menacingly dangerous.  On page 321, Stephenson pens, 

Now, there was a time when we believed that what a human mind could accomplish was determined by genetic factors.  Piffle, of course, but it looked convincing for many years, because distinctions between tribes were so evident.  Now we understand that it’s all cultural.  That, after all, is what a culture is--a group of people who share in common certain acquired traits.

There was a time--Conrad’s time, and that of his critics whose essays we studied--when African drumming races were thought to be inferior from birth.  Stephenson’s society grown beyond that simplistic reasoning, and has come round to the view, expressed in this quote, that certain “tribes” are still inferior from birth--not through their inherited DNA, but through their inherited “traits”.  Many long essays could be argued on both sides of the this conclusion, beginning with various definitions of traits within a culture.  In The Diamond Age, these tribes are still based loosely on race and geographical ties, but more connected through their technological status.

I was also delighted to see Stephenson’s representation of the Internet information exchange thought the castle image (389) and Nell’s struggle to decode the encryption (390) as it directly relates to topics we’ve explored in several other courses in the DTC program.  By the end, it was an interesting voyage to pass rapidly through the short chapters, vicariously experience Nell’s development through her private interaction with the primer, and appreciate the incredible creativity Stephenson brings to this novel built from his vast storehouse of technical expertise.

Final Project Banner Progress #1

Here's a link to my first progress report on my final project banner:

files.me.com/kelly_rauh/cju402

Blood, Curtains, and Forgiveness

In Bernard MacLaverty’s Cal three themes intertwine to convey the intense guilt and shame Cal battles:  blood, curtains, and forgiveness.  Biblical concepts, shared by both Catholics and Protestants, tie the trio together.  As Cal recognizes, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness (143).  At Christ’s crucifixion, the curtain separating man from God in the temple is torn in two, showing God’s acceptance of Jesus’ blood in payment for man’s sins, His forgiveness, and the new direct access into God’s presence for all men who believe.

MacLaverty makes multiple references to blood beyond those involved in the brutality of peers and police, the fallen drunk he encounters, and in Crilly’s bathroom beating of the older schoolboy.  Blood is presented in the remedy the preacher drinks (a strange twist on communion); in black puddings offered to his father; as he sucked his own skin when missing his mother; as he notices a knot in wood shaped like a comet with a blood-red tail; on both Lucy’s and Marcella’s pricked fingers; in his nightmare of the Roman train station; and even the cow that is sacrificed as part of the sins of others.  Cal desperately wants to be forgiven for his sins, yet is unable to atone through the insufficient shedding of his own blood.

Cal surrounds himself with curtains separating him from others.  His father comes out from a curtain of hanging cattle carcasses, Cal’s long hair forms a curtain over his face, curtains are mentioned in his own house in his room, his “Da’s” room, the kitchen, the landing, and inside the front door.  He hides from his enemies, and from light that would expose his crime, peering out at the world through impotent attempts to find safety.  More curtains appear, separating him from what he should not do--places of temptation where sin lies within:  drawn at Marcella’s house; twitching before the door is opened the night of Robert’s killing; drawn in Marcella’s bathroom before her shower; brought to his cottage in making it decent; in his dream; and at Crilly’s place.  Cal longs to “come out in the open” with his guilty secret sin, yet he denies himself the cleansing of the confessional with a Catholic father, never prays in repentance to his Heavenly Father, and rejects the offered confidence of his earthly father.

Typical of many criminals’ behavior, Cal is drawn magnetically back to the scene of his crime at Marcella’s home.  He yearns to confess to her and fantasizes about receiving her forgiveness, but also craves the more realistic result he recognizes would follow:  the punishment he deserves and is only postponing.  Cal aches to make restitution for the murder to the living victims.  He is repulsed by and has nothing to offer Robert’s dying dad; he hasn’t a clue what to do for Lucy.  The only offering he can present to Marcella is himself, in the form of the physical intimacy she was deprived at her husband’s death, and which Cal has never given to anyone else.  Of course, this attempt to reconcile his sins also fails miserably, only making his past offense more piercingly painful to the innocent, suffering Marcella.  In the end, Cal is “nailed,” and led away, to his great relief.  As in the book he checked out, both aspects are torture--one past and one future--Crime and Punishment.

Banner Proposal

My final project will be a banner made from cloth and a number of other mixed media.  I’ll argue that our world has progressed beyond the Eurocentric, distorted generalizations depicted through colonialist attitudes, and that disparate peoples are merging through globalization into blended races and cultures defying classification.  I want to do this type of creative physical artwork because I was inspired by multiple intriguing experiences on two campuses. 

Here at WSU, the Wordle site introduced in our class fascinated me with displays of common themes from each text individually, as well as collectively.  I decided to use those, either solely for research, or also included as word clouds in the final product.  As I thought of how our stories showed colonialism as Eurocentric and unreasonably biased against the far-flung geographical areas they exploited, I contemplated the deception of traditional, distorted Mercator maps we learned of in DTC 375, and decided to have my banner be an abstracted global map more accurately following the  proportions of Goode/Gall-Peters projection.  It will be centered on the Pacific Ocean, so Britain is literally “put in her place” at the edge, away from the center, and sized closer to reality (smaller) compared with other parts of the world.  I might even turn it upside down, which is an alternative, legitimate scientific view, but one that greatly disturbs us.  In Digital Diversity, we tried to classify people into races from photos of their faces, and realized how diverse parentage and broad variety within heritage boundaries breaks stereotypes we’ve acquired.  In this project, I want to break away from the expected, accepted colors and patterns we’ve grown up pairing with Africa, China, India, the Caribbean, and the United Kingdom, and replace them with unexpected pigments and prints we’ve explored in our global tour of literature.

While on campus at Spokane’s Whitworth University for Parents’ Weekend last month, I collected more ideas:  I was delighted by a triptych using printed maps cut with a craft knife into non-geographical shapes in the art gallery.  I’d like to stitch that treatment into my piece using country maps showing city names we’ve studied.  I also rediscovered the joys of Craypas at Whitworth’s gallery, and imagined the different colors the authors painted the regions in our novels--through the foliage, the fabrics, the foods.  Our sons’ fiances’ created new apartment decor using pages from novels, shawls, and beads, inspiring me to remix similar “found objects” into this design--maybe rosary beads from Cal, and bits of pages from the texts (using St. Vincent de Paul versions, rather than Norton critical editions).  Whitworth also has wonderful gigantic glass, cloth, nylon, and ribbon banners cascading down two stories in open foyers and dining areas that cemented the banner concept in my plans.  A white ribbon might delineate Europe from “the other,” and a red ribbon in China could fray into threads as communism falls apart at the seams. 

This hanging will need to be seen with light behind it, rather than flat up against a wall.  Sections of a blue bubbled swimming pool solar cover I have on hand will make up the oceans, with Easter grass or shredded green plastic for seaweed in the Sargasso Sea, projecting from underneath the “water” out onto the surface.  I’ll incorporate translucent and transparent sections of clear bubble wrap, glass or plexiglass, and sheer fabrics, tucking surprise symbolic elements behind them.  Small segments of mirror will reflect our own images into the collage of cultures and draw us into the diverse narratives.  I want this to be a memory piece for those of us in class--like a literary “I Spy.”  I’ll hide each author’s name, and attempt to create “ah ha!” moments as viewers get the connections. 

Bold, vibrant cloth patterns and colors sewn into the continental areas on which we focussed will be tied to themes from each story--not to typical cultural generalizations; maybe some tiger stripes and cowboy print in China, for example.  Pastels, muted colors, and smaller patterns unrecognizable as distinctly from one culture or race will border the edges where the present meets the future.  On these margins of our imagination, increasing intermarriage will break the familiar high-contrasts, bold colors and large prints into blended, subdued hues with more complex, less identifiable shapes.  On these horizons where the continents on the banner meet the spaces outside the scope of the current work, continued globalization will merge existing differences into abstract forms and swirling tints.

Sources I intend to use will include:

Brada-Williams, Noelle.  “Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies as a Short Story Cycle.”
Brada-Williams offers shared themes from Lahiri’s cycle of stories that can be depicted visually, such as Indian foods and marriage.  These will influence the fabric patterns I select for India, and provide ideas for “found objects” to incorporate.    

Carson, Rachel L. “The Sargasso Sea.”  Wide Sargasso Sea.  Ed. Judith L. Raiskin.  New York:  Norton, 1999.

“The Fuller Projection Map.” Buckminster Fuller Institute. Buckminster Fuller Institute.  2007.  Web. 18 Nov. 2009.  .
Fuller’s Projection Map shows the world divided into triangles which can be separated multiple ways to display the oceans and land masses in accurate proportions on a flat plane, but oriented sideways or upside down from the traditional Eurocentric view.  This will support both my argument and my art, since it shows “new” ways to witness the world with Europe out of the middle, and off to the edge, with whatever the viewer chooses placed at the center or the top--both literally and figuratively.

Harley, Brian J.  “Maps, Knowledge, and Power.”  Geographic Thought:  A Praxis Perspective.  Ed. George Henderson and Marvin Waterstone.  New York: Routledge,  2008.  Print.
Harley argues that mapmakers hold the power to influence their users’ scope of knowledge, to limit what is perceived as factual, and to shape their ideologies.  I will implement his interpretations of imperialist nations’ distortion of continents, the symbolic colors they chose for colonized countries, the labels and features they used for natives’ territories and uncharted heartlands, and their use of foreign images as decorative art surrounding map borders.

Loxton, John.  “The Peters Phenomenon.”  The Cartographic Journal 22.2 (1985) 106-08.  Print/Web.

“Maps Are Territories.”  Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization 28.2 (1991) 73-80. Print/Web.

Shohat, Ella and Robert Stam.  Unthinking Eurocentrism:  Multiculturalism and the Media.  New York:  Routledge, 1994.  Web.
Shohat and Stam demonstrate how “Others” are depicted off-handedly in our culture in generalized, stereotypical ways through a European colonialist lens.  Their ideas will steer my project away from accepted, distorted, and inaccurate ways of representing the world’s cultures.

Vanity and Anguish

The four short stories we read in James Joyce’s Dubliners are collectively bound between covers of vanity and anguish.  His characters are tormented by their failings, and tortured by their longings for that love they go without.

Individually, these tragic tales hold subtle gems I found to be intriguing.  Page citations are in parentheses.

“Araby”’s Anthropomorphism and Alliteration:

(20)    Blind street
(20)    Houses gazed with brown, imperturbable faces
(21)    Houses grew sombre
(21)    Lamps lifted lanterns
(22)    Praises and prayers; pressed my palms
(26)    Driven and derided by vanity
(26)    Eyes burned with anguish and anger

“Eveline”’s Similarities to Wide Sargasso Sea:

(31)    This man would save her, give her life and love
(31)    “Come” he beckoned
(31)    He was drawing her into the sea and would drown her

“A Painful Case” of Vanity, Ridicule, and  Irony:

Mr Duffy won’t stoop to associate with lesser beings--

(91)    No friends, no church
(91)    Visits relations annually, escorts them to cemetery
(93)    He’s an art snob, egotistical, patronizing
(93)    Listens to his own voice
(93)    States he cannot give himself as he is his own
(93)    Exalted himself to angelic stature

He ridicules the only one who cared for him as--

(97)    Revolting; vulgar; fallen to vice
(97)    Degraded herself and him
(97)    A squalid, miserable and malodorous wretch
(97)    Unfit to live; no strength of purpose
(97)    A wreck; sunk so low

Ironically, he lived overlooking an empty distillery while she emptied bottles of distilled spirits

“The Dead” Decor and Conroy’s Condescension:

Keeping with tragic deaths in memory, music, stage, and song--

(161)    Wall decor features Romeo and Juliet, two murdered princes

Conroy behaves condescendingly to everyone--

(154)    Lily
(155)    All invited guests
(157)    Blacks
(161)    His niece
(167)    His aunts

He’s most agitated and speechless when condescended to by Miss Ivors (163-65)

Response to Bloomsbury Court Group

I’m delighted every one of you completed your blog on Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies.  Your group is doing a great job managing time to stay on schedule.  It makes for rich interaction when we, as students, participate as expected, enabling each other to learn from different insights and to debate viewpoints.  It’s also exciting in class when three or four hands are in the air, signaling several who are eager to express diverse opinions.  

Brad pointed out the Indian culture in “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar” seemed to convey that an unmarried person was not living life to the fullest.  I agree.  In fact, in this short story, the single Bibi felt disabled, not just because of her seizures, but also because of her lack of prospects for finding a husband.  However, don’t Americans also generally echo this sentiment to some extent?  Unmarried friends and relatives over a certain age are commonly the target of match-making, blind dates, set-ups at group functions, and frequent inquiries as to their dating status.  Don’t paired adults typically find it awkward when the numbers don’t come out “even” if couples are mixed with one or three single people?

Greg expressed the same conclusion our class came to today in considering what Bibi needed most:  someone to love her and someone whom she could love.  She finally found that in the unconditional love of her child.  I have to disagree with two other observations Greg made, though.  Bibi was already obsessed with finding a husband before the final doctor gave her that advice for a cure (160-61), so I don’t believe the physician made her worse.  Also, Bibi did have a long history of seizures while her father was alive, so her medical problems did not begin after his death (166).  Greg referred to the elderly woman in “The Third and Final Continent” as Mrs. Foster, but I'm sure he meant Mrs. Croft.

Maggie had a bright idea seeing the light as a barrier to communication between Shoba and Shukumar in “A Temporary Matter.”  I shared her strong reaction against Shoba’s confessions.  I judged her secrets to all be selfish, and the last three to be emotionally damaging to her husband.  However, this mean streak did not just show up since the stillbirth; most--if not all--occurred prior to her pregnancy.  Maggie expressed frustration with the outcome of the plot, yet we don’t know that Shoba actually left Shukumar.  As Maggie pointed out, the darkness encouraged open dialog between them, and Shoba turned off the lights in the final paragraph (22), re-opening discussion.  Shukumar came “back to the table”--an idiom for showing willingness to negotiate toward a mutual agreement.  He sat down and they both cried--together.  Maybe that was the end of a temporary matter and the beginning of a more honest, permanent relationship.

Katie wondered if Mrs. Das would send the photo to Mr. Kapasi in “Interpreter of Maladies.”  Although she may still want to, we know she won’t, since his address has blown away up into the trees (69).

I’ll bet you all have more to say--details we’d benefit from if your comments were fleshed out further.  I challenge each of you to rise to a higher level of professionalism in your blogs.  We’re constantly being reminded that whatever we put on the Net stays there indefinitely and is available for our future employers, graduate schools, etc.  In addition to not posting data that casts negative light on us, we need to post items that showcase our best work.  

I’ve found I produce higher quality posts when I compose them in a word processor, using the spelling and grammar checks, then re-read them before copying to paste into the blog space.  If I haven’t said anything substantial or original enough for a classmate to argue or nod and say, “I never thought of it that way,” or “That makes this viewpoint clearer,” then I still have content to add.  

Although blogs are informal, we need to include the name of the text we’re citing, and use the conventions of putting quotation marks around short story titles, italicizing book titles, and adding page numbers in parentheses when referring to passages from the texts.  This literally puts all our readers on the same page, even if they aren’t in our course, or found our blog when researching comments on that narrative.  That wider potential audience is another reason we ought to check our facts in the book to avoid misquoting the author and to name characters accurately.

Another helpful practice is to note how we each tend to overuse certain pet words, such as “good,” “really,” “like,” and “story,” that can be replaced by more specific, varied terms--using a thesaurus online or within our word processors.  These small improvements can boost our credibility and add variety, interest, and richness to each piece we write.  If it's important enough to publish on the Web, it deserves a few extra minutes of our time.

Interwoven Threads

As I re-read the four assigned short stories in Ha Jin’s The Bridegroom, I noticed a series of repeated elements within each tale, as well as linking some of the narratives together.  These appear to be intentional details not needed to describe the scenes, but included deliberately to enhance the depth and complexity of the writing.  The numbers beside each reference below indicate the page on which it is found.

“Saboteur”

Tying germs, hands, foods, and illness together, Jin gives us abundant clues before exposing the final sickness of the plan.

Food and eating references:

3 Bride & groom eating

4 Tea thrown on feet

6 Kitchen sounds in jail; “Egg of a tortoise” name-calling

9 Dinner in jail;Thou ghts of tea back home

10 Crops harvested; Flesh tasted non-human to insects; 
         Bites of pests

11 Eatery nearby; Metaphor “ordered more than they 
         could eat”

12     Eating again

15 Drinking tea; eating soups

There are mentions of hands, fingers, thumbs, and palms too numerous to mention.

Germs as “bugs,” methods of spreading disease, and illness references:

6 Burped on palm in jail meeting

8 Metaphor “tremble when you sneeze”

9 Accordion coughing in the background

10 Listed fleas, ticks, mosquitos, cockroaches, bedbugs 
         (all carry diseases)

11 Caterpillars, ladybugs; Hospitalized friend gets letter
         from Mao

13 Fenjin sneezed

“Alive”

Water often symbolizes birth and rebirth.  Living water is moving, flowing, as from a spring, rather than stagnant, while death is often shown a skeletons or bones.

Water references:

19 Watering plants; Rain water; Thunder shower; 
         Trolley bus compared to boat sailing            
         through harbor; Ice-cabinets; 
         Soaked with dew

22 Well; Rain; Well spouting

23 Ditch of yellow water

24 Room swaying like boat in storm; Puddle

25 Jets of muddy water; Sinking deep into sea; 
         Water from canteen

26 Brook; flooded crater

27 Bathhouses

29 Wash basins

30 Waterworks

32 Washing her face; Wet towel; Tears

33 Chili water

34 Waterworks; Hot water bottle

35     Icicle; Torpedo boat toy

36 Snow; Water to boil

37 Tropical fish in tank; Tears

38 Tears; Snow

39 River; Sun flooded in

Skeletal references:  (see also “Cowboy Chicken” for a link between these two)

22 Skeletons of cranes

23 Can’t squeeze fat out of a skeleton

27 No longer a skeletal man

“A Tiger-Fighter is Hard to Find”

Hands commonly represent a pledge of faith, sincerity, support, justice, and/or strength.  In this episode, these qualities are shams--just the opposite of reality.

Hand references:

54 Single-handedly; Task on your hands; Punched

55 Handsome; Letter in hand

56 Handsome; With his bare hands

57 Both hands; Left palm; Right fist

58 Fist

59 Punching (twice); Fists

60 Bare-handed

61 Punch

62 Wiggled fingers at hero

66 Bare-handed; Fingers

67 Hand; Fist; Punching; Slapping

69 Scarred hands

“After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town”

A capitalist US protein-food chain restaurant comes to socialist protein-poor China where comrades are so thin they are skeletal.  C.C. (Cowboy Chicken) vs. C.C. (Communist China).

Animal references beyond chicken (* = Animal represented in Chinese Zodiac Years):

186 “Dogs*” as perjorative (twice)

188 Milk; Beef

190 Lizard; Fox

193 Camel; Horse*; Ox*

195 Dogskin; Catlike; Wolves; Bulldog

197 Alligators

199 Owlish; Bunny lanterns; Year of rabbit*

200 Crocodile’s mouth

202 Ass

204 Ant

207 Monkey*-like man

208 Cock* (as in rooster)

210 Dogs*

211 Birds; Fish; Clouds like turtles

215 Ducks; Loon; Waterfowl

216 Cats; Dogs*

          (Sheep--in the form of mutton fed to the caged animal
          --and tiger, two other Chinese zodiac animals, 

          are featured in “Tiger-Fighter)

References to skeletons, bones, or the opposite--gaining weight:

186 Bones; Rib

188 Came back from US robust; “Over 50 pounds of 
          American flesh”

189 Gains weight; Chinese are too thin--skeletal

198 High-protein food

213 Bone of contention

Other Common Threads Between Stories

Muji City is setting for all four tales.

White, as representing non-Oriental others, specifically Americans, is referenced in:

“Tiger-Fighter”

55 Tiger is from Ever White Mountain

57 Hero drinks White Flame liquor for courage

60 Frost and snow would change landscape (also 61)

62 Red blood on white sock

66 Grasshopper with white wings

69 Grimy white towel

70 Yard is white; Snowman 
         (wearing orange scarf may symbolize changing season,
  setting sun, energy, health, warmth, vibrancy)

“Cowboy Chicken”

187 White Devil nickname for Shapiro

193 Snow fell on buffet day

205 White feast dinner after funeral

Number Four is frequently used as imagery for four points of the compass, four elements of nature, or Revelation’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who wreak destruction on humanity.  More specific to China, four is considered unlucky since the pronunciation of the number and the word for death are similar.  It is also widely known that Buddism is based on Four Noble Truths:  

Suffering (including sickness, death, and   
          unpleasantness)

Origin of Suffering (sin and mental states leading 
          to evil actions, such as desire, hatred, ignorance and 
          misconception of the nature of things)

Cessation of Suffering (“Nirvana”)

Path to Cessation of Suffering (how to achieve a 
          state of Nirvana)

“Saboteur”

15 Ate at four other restaurants to spread disease

“Alive”

18 Son has been engaged four years

22 Four brick houses at the mine

31 Four-year-old boy

34 Four dishes from half-pound of pork

“Tiger-Fighter”

56 Four thugs attacked hero; four miles outside the 
         city to film

57 Four long canine teeth on the tiger

66 Four Seas Garden is prize meal

“Cowboy Chicken”

185 Four pieces of chicken customer wants refund for

187 Four tourbillions (whirlwind marks) on Peter’s head

190     Four girls working at Cowboy Chicken Shapiro dates

191 Four Seas Garden restaurant site of date

195 Four o’clock when Peter discovers buffet results

199 Four years ago bride moved away from China

207 Four students came with professor

210 Four brothers were menacing; Peter built house 
           four miles out of town

216 Four mile commute to work for Peter

Apples

Apples are often symbols of temptation from the fall of man in the Garden of Eden (even though the fruit is not named in Genesis), as well as the epitome of American culture.

Can you think of places where apples are mentioned in these four stories?  Here are some hints:

Apple tree shaking

Apple-faced girl

Adam’s apple

Red Jade apples

Apple pie

English in Postcolonial Literature of Conrad and Jin

Ha Jin would have encountered tremendous conflict, censorship, political pressure, lack of readership and revenue, and possibly more severe consequences had he written his short stories in Chinese for a Chinese audience.

Passages that would raise controversy in “The Saboteur” over civil rights include the railroad policemen’s unprovoked tea-tossing, unwarranted arrest, and rough handling of Mr. Chiu (5), as well as the torture of Fenjin outside the jail (11-13).  Disrespectful terms for government officials such as “hooligan” (4), “egg of a tortoise” (6), “donkey-face” (6), “savages” (15), and “saboteurs of our social order” (7) would likely be unacceptable for publication.   Coercion to sign the confession as a condition for release (14) would be taboo.  

“A Tiger-Fighter is Hard to Find” contains wrongdoing in falsified government paperwork and approvals for obtaining the protected tiger (55), physically abusing it (57-58, 62), and finally killing it (64).  The paragraph on the sale of the carcass to a “state-owned...Pharmacy Factory” (64) would be problematic, as would all the symbolic references to the communist regime, and direct mention of Chairman Mao when the driver arrives on a bicycle (68).      

If Joseph Conrad had written Heart of Darkness in his native Polish rather than in English, postcolonial literature would most certainly have been changed.  

Conrad’s audience would have been, of course, limited to those capable of reading Polish.  The issues of colonialism and empire building did not apply to Poland where most readers of Polish reside, but did pertain totally to Britain.  Since Conrad reached the English audience in the UK at that time, plus English readers in India, Australia, South Africa, the West Indies, America, Canada, and other colonized areas, his message was spread world-wide.  It entered the minds, imaginations, and consciences of both the dominators and the dominated.  With the adoption of English as the common language of business and higher education in many nations, Conrad’s narrative has gained a broader readership with the passage of time.  

Heart of Darkness has served as a springboard for many other authors to write in English about all facets of the controversial topics he broached.  Conrad is referenced in Naipaul’s The Mimic Men (165), and discussed at length in interviews of and essays by Chinua Achebe, the author of Things Fall Apart.  Had Conrad’s contribution been in Polish, the genre probably would have been delayed, possibly shorter-lived, and likely would have had shallower repercussions.

Mimic Men Time Line

I had difficulty following the modernistic fractured narrative of our current novel's rewinds and fast forwards.  I really appreciated Julie Meloni’s helpful construction of a time line for Wide Sargasso Sea, so I put this one together for V.S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men from various dates, ages, and time spans I found in the text:

1926 Isabella:  Birth, Primary & Secondary Ed 

STUDENT

~18 years? to 1944?

birth to ~age 18?

1944? London:  College, Sandra, Wedding

STUDENT

~ 5 years? to 1950?

age~19 to 23?

1950? Isabella:  Marriage, Wealth, Politics

Real Estate Business

HOUSEHOLDER, MAN OF AFFAIRS

~12 years? to 1962?

(Occasional short trips to London)

age~24 to 35?

1962? London:  Political Trek, Stella

MAN OF AFFAIRS (pun intended!)

~ 5 weeks in 1962? 

~age 36?

1962? Isabella:  Exile in Roman House

RECLUSE

months? in 1962?

~age 36?

1963 London:  Exile in Hotel, Book Writing

RECLUSE

~ 32 months to 1966

age 37 to 40