“A Far Cry from Africa” by Derek Walcott Essay

A Far Cry from Africa Derek Walcott Summary and Critical Analysis A Far Cry from Africa by Derek Walcott deals with the theme of fracture identity and anxiety caused by it in the face of the struggle in which the poet could side with neither party. It is, in hapless, about the poets ambivalent feelings towards the Kenyan terrorists and the counter-terrorist duster colonial government, both of which were inhuman, during the independence struggle of the country in the 1950s. The persona, probably the poet himself, can take favor of nvirtuoso of them since both bloods circulate along his veins.Derek WalcottHe has been given an English tongue which he loves on the adept hand, and on the early(a), he can non tolerate the brutal slaughter of Africans with whom he shargons blood and most traditions. His conscience forbids him to favour in salutaryice. He is in the state of indecisiveness, troubled, wishing to see peace and harmony in the region. Beginning with a dramatic descendting , the poesy A Far Cry from Africa opens a horrible scene of bloodshed in African territory. Bloodstreams, scattered corpses, worm show ghastly sight of battle. Native blacks are being exterminated like Jews in holocaust following the killing of a white child in its bed by blacks. The title of the poetry involves an idiom a far emit means an impossible thing. But the poet seems to use the words in other senses also the title suggests in one sense that the poet is writing about an African subject from a distance. Writing from the island of St. Lucia, he feels that he is at a vast distance- both literally and metaphorically from Africa.A Far Cry may also project another meaning that the real state of the African paradise is a far cry from the Africa that we have read about in descriptions of gorgeous fauna and flora and interesting village customs. And a third level of meaning to the title is the brain of Walcott hearing the poem as a far cry coming all the way across thousands o f miles of ocean. He hears the cry coming to him on the plagiarise. The wolf imagery is another important f wipe outure of the poem. Walcott regards as acceptable violence the nature or infixed law of animals killing each other to eat and survive scarcely human beings have been turned even the unseemly animal behavior into worse and meaningless violence. Beasts come out better than safe man since animals do whatthey must do, any do not seek divinity through inflicting pain. Walcott believes that human, unlike animals, have no excuse, no real rationale, for murdering non-combatants in the Kenyan conflict. Violence among them has turned into a nightmare of unacceptable atrocity based on color. So, we have the Kikuyu and violence in Kenya, violence in a paradise, and we have statistics that dont mean anything and scholar, who tends to throw their weight behind the colonial policy Walcotts outrage is very just by the standards of the late 1960s, even restrained. More striking than the animal imagery is the image of the poet himself at the end of the poem. He is divided, and doesnt have any escape.I who am poisoned with the blood of both, where shall I turn, divided to the vein? This sad ending illustrates a consequence of shift and isolation. Walcott feels foreign in both cultures due to his manifold blood. An individual sense of identity arises from cultural influences, which define ones character according to a particular familiaritys standards the poets cross heritage prevents him from identifying directly with one culture. Thus creates a feeling of isolation. Walcott depicts Africa and Britain in the standard roles of the vanquished and the conqueror, although he portrays the cruel imperialistic exploits of the British without creating sympathy for the African tribesmen. This objectively allows Walcott to contemplate the faults of each culture without reverting to the bias created by attention to moral considerations. However, Walcott contradicts the savior image of the British through an unfavorable description in the ensuring lines. Only the worm, colonel of carrion cries/ waste no compassion on their separated dead. The word colonel is a punning on colonial also.The Africans associated with a primitive natural strength and the British portrayed as an artificially enhanced power remain equal in the contest for control over Africa and its race. Walcotts divided loyalties engender a sense of guilt as he wants to adopt the civilized culture of the British but cannot excuse their immoral treatment of the Africans. The poem reveals the extent of Walcotts consternation through the poets inability to resolve the paradox of his hybrid inheritance The introduction to Yasmine Gooneratnes first collection of short stories begins with a 9th century poem translated from Gaelic and is littered with references to the authors colonial education, post-colonial experience of exile and emigration (Sri Lanka toAustralia) and a revelation of a fervent dedication to the British literary canon (viva Ben Jonson, Alexander Pope, Jane Austen). If you are left, at this drive, with a feeling that you are about to be force-fed traditional between the lines, secondary South Asian diaspora narrative that will turn your brain into PoCo foie gras, dont worry-you are not alone. You will first be greeted by a blizzard of kurakkhan, karipincha leaves and other italicised delicacies, but if you hold on for just a bit longer, you will find How Barry Changed His Image and will forgive all the 46 pages that preceded it.In this story, Bharat and Navaranjini Wickramsingha swap Sri Lanka for Australia and insist on setting themselves apart from Australias large Vietnamese population whom they refer to as those Ching-Chongs slit-eyed slopeheads. As Wickramsingha glows toxic in his emerging racial self-hatred, his wife listens to talk-back radio, happily absorbing some top Australian argot, and before long Bharat and Wickramsingha have effaced their opulent Otherness to become Barry and dungaree Wicks true blue fair dinkum Aussies. Good Onya Barry. Top 10 bestsellersClick here to EnlargeWritten between 1970 and 2001, many of the 17 stories are sopping with a deliciously acid zest, especially the ones set in Australia that are free of all the annoying echoes explanations that often accompany stories of a linguistically hybrid reality for a Hesperian audience. Thematically disparate, the best stories are the ones like A Post Colonial Love Story, His Neighbors Wife and a few others that are both dark and funny and also lucid in their disclosure of the (mis)conceptions of identity and race and provide interesting cross-cultural commentary.The few stories that are set in Sri Lanka do not satisfyingly evoke the country, its people or its troubles and most distressing of all almost all the stories are burdened with prescriptive twists in the tale, which can leave you feeling that youre eight, in moral science class and ha ve just been slapped on the wrist with Ms Austens Sri Lankan silkwood ruler.To provide interpretations of imperialism and the struggle for decolonisation from it requires a constant and self-conscious shedding ofthe old, especially when it is clear that relics of the Raj reside so deep in our rhetoric that sometimes it is impossible to be certain theyre even there. There are always new stories of new ways in which post-colonial repression, impotence, diaspora and displacement raise their head, but if youre coming to this collection looking for that kind of revelation, you might have to take it under the knife. Chances are youll find nothing that hasnt been previously diagnosed its all quite benign, and in the end, but for Barry and the Aussie angle, I fear The Masterpiece as a peep show of post-post-colonial psyche in general beats around the bush.Chinua Achebe argues that writers, just as historians look for history or politicians deal with politics, have to fulfill their assigne d duty To educate and regenerate their people about their countrys view of themselves, their history, and the world. He openly and impregnably expresses his firm conviction about how Europe influenced Africas self-image, and his arguments are designed to tell this opinion. Assertively, he makes it clear that Africans would suffer from the view that racial inferiority is acceptable. He wants to change this view and calls African writers to be responsible for and dedicate themselves to their society. Throughout the essay, he uses several tangible occasions as supportive examples for his claim. Achebe begins by clarifying that the kind of writing he does is relatively new (40) in Africa. By explaining that the Africans have been educated by the Europeans in terms of the common relationship between writer and society, he shows that the Europeans view has been injected into the African mind fit in to the Europeans, an artist in particular a writer would be in revolt against societ y (41).Achebe, however, hints that his people should not reproduce (40) the Europeans . He is eager to explore what society expects of his writers instead of what writers expect of society. By doing so, he wants to concentrate on the situation at his homeland, stating that he knows thathe does not have to write for a foreign audience (41). This sentence is one of the examples for when his language reveals that he is very autonomous, even a little bit arrogant, and willing to express his opinion overtly. In the contiguous segment, Achebe indicates that most of his referees are young, which implies that they stillness have a lot of capacity to get educated. Thus, hope on a better self-image of Africa arises. Achebe claims that many of his readers regard him as a teacher, a pedagogy which is almost pretentious. In this part, he also includes a letter from a Northern Nigerian fan in order to show what a reader like him expects from the author, Achebe. Suggesting that it is quite clea r what this particular reader expects of him (42) is a fancied dilemma because it seems like there is and one option of looking at the situation, which manipulatively guides the reader to view things like Achebe. Through an encounter with a young woman teacher who complained about the progress of the course of events in Achebes No Longer at Ease, the author realized that he drives to make his novels afford an opportunity for education (42).He does not think the womans opinion is right. In this part it becomes clear again that Achebe is very self-assured, as he points out that no self-respecting writer will take bidding from his audience and must remain free to disagree. However, he cleverly depicts himself as merciful because he comprehends that his European-influenced society needs to be efficiently educated. His concern comes into card sharper relief in the next segment. Achebe sardonically illustrates one of the differences between Europeans and Africans by the example of tu rning hygiene into a god (43), a peculiar desecration in Achebes eyes. He admits, though, that Africans have their own respective sins, the most significant being their acceptance of racial inferiority (43). He confesses that not only others need to be blamed African people, too, would have to find out where they went wrong (43). It follows a short anecdote of 1940s Christians who where shocked to see Nigerian dances on an anniversary, which exemplifies the result of the disaster brought upon the African psyche in the period of subjection to alien race (43).Achebe uses appeal to pity here and in other parts, as he only presents the picture of the pathetic African. In this way, he disregards the fact that the West does indeed know many educated, highly respected men, tales, and traditions from Africa. His nextexample further describes the traumatic effects of Africas first confrontation with Europe (44). Achebe tells about a student who wrote winter instead of the African trade wind harmattan which occurs during wintertime just because he was afraid to be called a bushman by his peers. Achebe does not want his people to be ashamed of their origin, he wants Africa to regain belief in itself and put away the complexes of denigration and self-abasement (44). It seems like Achebe tries to rectify the sentiment that has been inflicted to his African people through post-colonialism. Achebe maintains that education needs to be right in order to get on their own feet again (45). Achebes theme becomes most clear in the next part when he requests his society to confront racism and rediscover themselves as people. In order to achieve these goals, he obliges writers to educate society with their works. He glorifies the writer as the sensitive point of community, and brings up the argument that each job carries certain duties that need to be fulfilled as society expects them to be. Achebe himself almost seems to crave for these expectations, as he would not wish to be e xcused (45).The essay concludes with Achebe quoting a Hausa folk tale in order to show that art and education do not need to be mutually exclusive. He leads the reader onto a slippery slope here, as he claims that if one considers the tales ending a nave anticlimax (46) then one would not know much about Africa. This expressive conclusion can make the reader feel like he would be uneducated and prejudiced. Achebes urge to make African society stand up for autonomy and to make them find self-confidence is approached in a very subjective manner. It is questionable whether he is too subjective at some points. Reading his essay raises the question When is subjectivity proper? It depends whether Achebes claims and false dilemmas base on historical facts, common opinions, or his personal observations, which can not absolutely be detected through this essay.However, regardless of where his claims have their origin, he overgeneralizes too forceful for example by demanding that each and ever y writer should take upon the task of education society. Achebe could as well just speak up for himself and announce that he proudly embraces the task that he himself has given to him. He could be satisfied with that and leave the rest alone, but his emotion come into play. cod to his troubled attitude towards Africansself-perception and its history with Europe, Achebes views are inevitably colored with a sometimes direct, sometimes indirect call for change. He strives to present the world a different image than the self-conscious one he assumes exists persistently. By the time he wrote the essay, this assumption might have been true, but reading the essay today, it leaves an impression of an author who desperately tries to force the righteous image of Africa onto the public.