Dreams are an obvious device in literature to both foreshadow events and deepen symbolism. Often the dream comes true in some form later on in the story, and the reader then already has an idea of what this is supposed to mean in context of the dream. In Shalimar the Clown, Margaret's dream about her "Ratetta" is realized in Max's affair with Boonyi, and the birth of Kashmiri/India.
Margaret dreams "on the night before she left with her husband for New Delhi" that she would finally get a child, "a girl baby," "a black rattess," "Ratetta." Even though this rat baby would horrify her friends, Margaret wouldn't care, because "she had once been a rat herself but she had turned into a human being eventually... and no doubt it would be the same with her baby girl, her Ratetta" (175).

Since we are reading this dream already pretty much knowing what it is alluding to (we have already met the real life manifestation of the dream "Ratetta," Max's American daughter India), we are forced to consider what the imagery of the dream means in the larger story of Shalimar (since this book is really about him). When Margaret has a dream predicting Max's bastard daughter with Boonyi, she doesn't imagine a normal baby girl. Instead the child is "beautiful and furry with a long, curling tail but she was unable to love it." The fact that she is unable to love it is not because it is a rat baby, but because (we know) it is not her own child and is a constant reminder of Max's infidelities.

But the fact that she dreams of a rat baby does have meaning, and not just as a connection to her past identity as the Grey Rat. If we consider "the body as text," the physical body of the black rattess (instead of what it should be- a normal baby girl) tells us a lot about her place in the story and what she can represent. In western culture, rats carry with them a negative connotation when using them as metaphors for humans. That the child of Max and Boonyi is seen as a rattess could be a reminder of the nature of her conception, that she is a bastard child born out of the infidelity of Max and the laziness of Boonyi. To quote wikipedia, "Rats are seen as vicious, unclean, parasitic animals that steal food and spread disease." Kashmiri/India is literally the result of the union between Max (who is "viscous" to Boonyi who gave her life away for him and "unclean" because he is constantly unfaithful) and Boonyi (who is "parasitic" off of Max and "steals food" by being gluttonous). The "disease spread" by the rattess baby affects more than just Boonyi and Max; we already know that Shalimar becomes a murderer and the whole Pachigam village is upset over Boonyi's betrayal.

As western-minded readers, this is the kind of thing we would associate with the body of the rat as a text, when reading Margaret's dream. But from wikipedia I also found out that the rat as a body, and thus as a text, would carry a different reading for Indians and for Hindus. To completely quote the section on Rats in Culture:

In India in the northwestern city of Deshnoke, the Karni Mata Temple, the rats are held to be destined for reincarnation as Sadhus, Hindu holy men. The attending priests feed milk and grain, of which the pilgrims also partake, to the animals. Eating food that has been touched by the animals is considered a blessing from god. In Hindu mythology, a rat is the vehicle of Ganesha.

Here is a picture they provide of Ganesha (the Lord of Good Fortune and the Destroyer of Obstacles) riding a mouse:

The fact that both Indians and Hindus would read the text of the body of a rat child being born as something symbolizing a positive thing only further complicates Margaret's dream and what it could mean for the larger story. I've been thinking a lot about Rushdie's style as a post-colonial novelist, and I think for my paper I'd like to explore some the images and allusions he uses that could have different or contradictory meanings in the colonized vs. colonizer's worlds.

After establishing that our last book wasn't post-colonial literature, I've spent some time considering how Shalimar the Clown fits in the standard post-colonial realm, and more importantly, what it has to say about it.

In the post-colonial context, Shalimar the Clown demonstrates the widespread and continual effects colonization has, even half-a-century or so later. First we have the character of India, a young woman very much affected by a post-colonial world that she has been named after but never been too. According to the intial snapshot Rushdie gives us, her main feature is her hypersexuality (something we learn she has inherited from her mother and grandmother).
While we've discussed the symbolic role sex can have in a post-colonial work, what I find more interesting about the character of India is that she doesn't seem to have any real identity. In trying to describe her, I could give some biographical information and mention her sexual habits, but not much more. While it is true that most people around her age are still trying to figure things out, her identity confusion holds particular resonance in terms of post-coloniality.

When the British gave independence to India, as when any colonial power gives independence to its colony, they left a nation full of people with a complicated identity.
India (the character) literally doesn't know her mother, and thus was raised in the Western world by a Western father, but her identity is hardly exclusively Western. Her father has obviously been affected by the world of the "colonized," and despite not knowing her mother, India still feels some vague of a connection to her and her world (more than just her name.)

We saw something like this in Camara Laye, with the presence of the French, Indigeneous and Muslim influences, but by the end of The Dark Child it's apparant in Laye's disrespect for the workers he once respected that he was unable to completely reconcile his French-colonized mind with his native identity. This is what keeps the book from truly being a post-colonial narrative.

In Shalimar the Clown, however, we get to see the after-effects colonization can have on the colonized, and even generations removed from the colonization (as with India who is also physically removed). By setting the book in Kashmir, Rushdie is further highlighting the complications of a post-colonial identity, sinch Kashmir is a place co-habitated by Muslims and Hindus, and a place the British left with many problems to resolve.

I have a feeling that as we see Shalimar develop into an assasin and India learn the truth of her origins, the problems of post-colonial identity will only be further complicated.

In response to my last posting, after our discussion in class today, I realize that I was expecting a post-colonial type of literature, which this (The Dark Child) was obviously not.

But I still stand by my opinion that Camara had a lot of potential to at least hint at or foreshadow the kind of problems colonization could bring, and he really didn't. Which will disappoint me some no matter what subgenre or subclass The Dark Child is placed in.

After Betsy's wonderful presentation on Wednesday, I've thought a lot about the question she posed towards the start, "Do the colonized problematize the displacement caused by the colonizer?"

The initial instinct or reaction to that question would seem to be "yes." You only need to look at the current mess in Iraq to see evidence of resentment from a society that has been invaded and displaced by a force acting out of self-interest and ignorance.

But thinking about this question just looking at Camara Laye's book, the answer is instead "no."

Except for that one part I mentioned in my last blog posting, Camara doesn't problematize or even really question the colonizers at all. In fact, The Dark Child casts the colonizer in a positive light, and could serve as an argument in support of the West's colonization.

For some reason this upsets me. I guess I kind of hoped for an account that would shed some light on the blatant injustice and cultural destruction that colonization brings. But The Dark Child doesn't do this. Camara's story, instead, provides the perfect anecdote for the good that colonization can bring.

From the beginning of the story, Camara is set apart from his community (the colonized holding on to their indigenous culture), as something greater, something he can only be because of the French presence. Camara is constantly pushed away from the indigenous culture, until he finally goes to Conakry and then France itself to get educated.

Except for making him promise that he will come back, Camara's family and community (a community that still lives, for the most part, as tradition dictates), don't once see anything wrong with turning Camara over to the colonizer. Instead they encourage it. There is no resentment, no attempt to keep their culture alive through Camara. As a result, Camara begins to no longer respect the people he comes from (as we briefly discussed in class).

As an autobiography, obviously Camara is limited into telling the story as someone who did leave and go to France to be educated, because that is what really happened. If he tried to write a different story, one that criticizes the colonizer, he would come off as a hypocrite.

What bothers me most, then, is not that Camara portrays himself as he does, but that he portrays everyone else in his (home) community as being perfectly okay with the situation. Perhaps that is true; perhaps they were okay with everything; perhaps colonization hadn't adversely affected them enough to get truly angry. Or perhaps Camara was just trying to be subtle.

I realize that I don't necessarily have the right to tell other people how they should feel. But as a reader, I would have liked to have seen some substantial problematizing of the colonizer and the displacement colonization brings.

Just something I noticed while reading....

At the end of chapter seven, the chapter about Kondén Diara, Camara asks:

But at the moment of writing this, does any part of the rite still survive? The secret.... Do we still have secrets?

This struck me as the only time in the book that Camara actually questions colonialization and the negative impact "outside" forces may have on the indigenous African culture. I've since finished the book, and have found that the sentiment that comes out in those two questions is not repeated. In fact, by the end, he can't wait to go to France to continue his education.

I don't know if he's just trying to tell his story and then let the reader decide for her/himself what to think about colonization (and thus he is not trying to "colonize" our minds), or if this sentiment was later silenced by his growing ambition (and the expectations of everyone around him) to make something of himself when presented with such a great opportunity (studying in France).

First Impressions of The Dark Child.

In the introduction to The Dark Child, Philippe Thoby-Marcelin addresses the expectation of some readers who approach a book about African life hoping to escape "for a moment from the enervating condition of 'civilized' man," by claiming that they "will be left unappeased." He goes on to argue that despite the presence of animistic beliefs and practices, "the basis of the story is not to be found here" (8).

His point forces me, as a western-minded reader, to consider the expectations I have when beginning to read a story about someone who would traditionally be considered "the other." Especially after reading and discussing the first three chapters, which are filled with the animistic beliefs and practices Thoby-Marcelin refers to, it is too easy to take the repeated stance of the colonizer that this is a group of people who are "less civilized" than the western world.

But what struck me when reading the first two paragraphs of page 8 of Thoby-Marcelin's introduction is how much this expectation of western readers speaks more of our ignorance than it does about the people we are quick to stereotype. The fact that we would consider what Thoby-Marcelin calls "an old civilization" of Guinea to become more civilized with French colonization is beyond presumptuous to the point of ridiculousness.

Obviously Western intervention would seem appropriate (when rightly executed) in helping to alleviate the suffering in countries rife with disease and poverty, but as soon as we qualify our culture or way of life or religion as being somehow better than theirs we have a problem (and not just with the us/them rhetoric.)

Unfortunately, this kind of thinking is prevalent, and not just in relation to the west vs. the rest, but also within countries or societies, in context of urban vs. rural. Some citizens of any larger city of the US often express their ignorance, and feelings of superiority, in relation to more rural or middle America. Camara addresses and directly argues against these kind of assumptions in the excerpt Thoby-Marcelin quotes in the introduction on pg 12. Camara actually provides a succinct and convincing argument for the superiority of rural life over city life.

... But the point I am trying to get to is the same one that Thoby-Marcelin reaches when he says "It is primarily universal man, man unqualified, with whom we are concerned" (8). While reading the first three chapters, it may be easy to identify the particular objects or symbols or actions that are associated with the three main "presences" in the story and in Camara's life- Islam, France, Indigenous Africa- but it is equally important to realize that all three are readily and simultaneously present. This speaks to the universal, and shows that in a modern-ish world man cannot be boiled down or simplified or characterized into one neat box. Man is truly "unqualified."

Having only read the first three chapters at this point, I am not sure where Camara is going to end up as far as reconciling the three "presences." (although I have some idea from his biography). I'm not sure there is necessarily much need for reconciliation, except perhaps where any real contradictions occur. But if the whole world can truly be considered in a post-colonial context (as we briefly touched on in class), then purist-type distinction and labeling seems pointless.