Nationalism And Independence In The Books Achebe And Armah

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Name: Hassan Basarally ID: 806007430 Faculty: Humanities and Education Department: Liberal Arts University: University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Course Title: African Literature in English: Prose Fiction Course Code: LITS 2110 Course Lecturer: Ms. Rhoda Bharath Course Tutor: Ms. Rhoda Bharath Tutorial Day and Time: Tuesday 4-5 p.m. Assignment: Discuss the response of any two authors in this course to African independence and nationalism. Date Due: 12/11/08

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Independence and nationalism connote emotions of self sufficiency and pride in the people who claim to possess it. However, the maxims degenerate into empty promises as the words simply have nice meanings, but are tangibly nothing. Such is the case of the colonised world, Africa being no exception, in which independence and nationalism meant a change in national paraphernalia only, while maintaining a stagnant socio-political and economic condition. Chinua Achebe and Ayi Kwei Armah identify the problem of a socio-political system that is tied to Europe and America, a capitalist system that creates another aloof elite, bureaucracy and an education system that simply continues the colonial one as the causes of the inadequacies of the African state. Their respective novels, in particular, Anthills of the Savannah and The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born juxtapose the problems with the solutions of the feminine healing potential, the artist as teacher, the goodness of the individual. The capitalist system Africa engaged in after independence caused a fundamental shift in the nature of society, the communal responsibility was abandoned for an individual one and the leadership became fixated with assuming the former coloniser’s position. This situation “is exemplified not only in the consumption of foreign goods with a parallel contempt for locally made ones, but also in individual identities” (Adeoti 6). This is represented in Mrs. Koomson’s taste for foreign liquor, Oyo’s dislike for wearing her hair natural and Sam’s parties in which he praises the foreign education of Beatrice and tries to impress an American reporter. Sam, the dictator of Anthills of the Savannah was trained “in the high tradition of proud aloofness from politics and public affairs” (Achebe 12). In addition, professed ideals are ignored by those who are supposed to represent it. One of the problems with the abandonment of ideals is that the ideology that entered Africa was imported and removed from the reality of life on the continent. Armah shows this with Koomson in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born who is a “Hero of

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Socialist Labour”, but in reality is a capitalist of the worst kind, he believes that “money was life” (77). The crass materialism destroys Odili in Achebe’s A Man of the People, he vows at the end “never to be corrupted by bourgeois privileges of which the car was the most visible symbol” (Achebe “A Man” 122). The cultural dislocation as a result of the capitalist yearning for the foreign leaves the society seeking only ways of individual advancement. The rise of a selfish individualism results in morality being the casualty of economic and political expedience. The cash economy that becomes prevalent “destabilises the traditional balance between the acquisitive and spiritual aspects of society” (Killam 20). Sam in Anthills of the Savannah deludes himself by claiming his thirst for power is progress, discipline and stability. The same is for The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born’s Koomson who is described by the woman selling bread as “my white man” (Armah, 37), immediately power in the independent nations are associated with whiteness. Armah’s Teacher says that all they have struggled for was “to be nearer to the white man” (92). For the authors, the idealist and the corrupt politician offer no better alternatives. One cannot connect to the people, the other steals from them. Armah and Achebe also address the question of whether power can ever be beautiful. The characters that wield it are educated, politically astute but are deformed by the abuse of power. Koomson is physically unattractive and hygienically deficient. Sam has phantom-like anonymity. For Armah, the degradation of the individual is reflected in the filth of society. The hyperbole of putrefaction and tiredness does not serve to sicken the reader but highlight the condition of the people. In The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, the novel begins with the dawn of a new day, but the symbolic nature of dawn as being new life is destroyed by tiredness. The dawn of a new nation is overcome by the tiredness of corruption.

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Bureaucracy creates in inefficient public service, causing the ordinary person to suffer for services. In such a desperate situation corruption is seen as the only way to gain ones needs. The concern for the individual and the separation of the educated elite form the masses allows the graft to thrive. Achebe’s No Longer at Ease begins with a fundamental question: “How a young man of your education and brilliant promise could have done this” (Achebe “No Longer” 2). The concern among the new elite is not the morality of the issue but the act being discovered. Koomson proposes to buy a boat with his embezzled money and place it in “the man’s” name. The reason is simple, that Koomson’s enemies in the party are watching. Even the proverbs that were Achebe’s form of teaching and guidance are perverted, when a leader in Obi’s village says, “I am against people reaping where they have not sown. But we have a saying that if you want to eat a toad you should look for a fat juicy one” (Achebe “No Longer” 5). The need for morality is important to Armah in particular as his novels “focus on the question of how one should live purely in an impure society” (Colmer 49). Ironically, the image of light is associated with corruption and the craving of wealthy and status. The “gleam” in The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born is avoided by “the man” who walks in the dark to and from work. Like the green light in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby the gleam is artificial, undesirable, menacing and represents the materialism of the society. The gleam can also be in human form, Modin’s predatory girlfriend represents “the shiny things in human form” (Colmer 55). In short the gleam is the “seductive allure of all things foreign and exotic” (Fraser 21). For Armah, corruption is everywhere. Even birth and bearing is corrupted. There is the desirable birth that needs decay to flourish like the flower and the other is the “violent parturition, an ugly process of producing an offspring that decays unnaturally before its time” (Colmer 51).

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The society can only be whole when the masculine and feminine aspects are reconciled to cause healing after the abuse of power. This abuse is a crime carried out by men in which the women are the proverbial anthills. Masculinity is associated with financial and political power as embodied by Koomson. The women are left after the chaos and witness and heal. Armah’s women suffer the same disease of greed in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. In fact Oyo and her mother represent some of the very qualities that caused the rot in society. By making them susceptible to the flaws of men, Armah shows the egalitarian nature of decay in society. When the mothers who nurture are corrupt, what can one expect from the children they rear and men they support? However, there is transformation at the end for Oyo who shows “real gratitude” for her husband’s stance after seeing Koomson’s fate (Armah 165). Achebe’s character Beatrice in Anthills of the Savannah embraces the world of her spirituality, taking the role of the priestess after Chris’s death. Beatrice also transforms in the novel from being ambivalent to the African culture to being associated with Idemili, “the avenger of man’s misuse of power” (Killam 32). Vengeance is not mere survival, it is to continue, to remember, to continue to work. “The women, it appears, are now entrusted with the tasks of national renewal and the return to political sanity” (Parekh and Jagne, 25). By applying psychoanalysis, it can be deduced that Achebe is reconciling the previous view of women; Beatrice is the attempt to right past deficiencies in female characters. Ikem who can be viewed as Achebe’s voice says, “I can’t tell you what the new role of Woman will be. I don’t know. I should never have presumed to know” (Achebe “Anthills” 98). The capitalisation of women, transforms the sex into a gendered group. The artist is viewed as the force of change and the teacher of the novels. Achebe characterised the writer, embodied by Ikem as the voice “condemned to cry in the wilderness” (Fraser, 18). Armah’s Teacher has a sense of culture and imparts knowledge to “the man”. In

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addition The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is considered a polemic novel, a strong verbal or written attack and a serious issue. The role of the artist is to teach and reflect the communal vision and values of the people, because the artist creates, there must be value to the community he creates for. Achebe rejects the “artist as an alienated individual who projects a private vision forged in isolation” (Parekh and Jagne 20). That type of intellectual is the character Odili in Achebe’s A Man of the People, his education abroad causes him to shun the cultural practices of the ordinary man. The foreign education which many characters received in the novels mimics the colonial system that taught contempt for local culture. This created the exact colonial mindset that was supposed to be replaced. When facing the corrupt Nanga who understands the people and at least shows respect, Odili cannot win despite his idealism being free from corruption. In Achebe’s No Longer at Ease the same thing occurs, Obi is distant to the practices of the village; the foreign educated Obi does not understand the place of tradition in society. Both sides “become the victims of a society which has undergone tremendous ideological changes” (Klooss 36). As a result they cannot deal with the dynamic nature of society. The same occurs in Armah’s Why Are We So Blest? with Modin whose education and love interests isolate him. In No Longer at Ease and Are We So Blest? the characters’ human interaction, in particular love interests, isolate them from mainstream society. Odili seeks to marry an Osu which is forbidden and Modin a white foreigner who twists him to her way. The artist is needed to show the importance of the African culture in the process of nation building. Achebe writes that “[t]he worst thing that can happen to any people is the loss of their dignity and self respect. The writer’s duty is to help them regain it by showing them in human terms what happened to them what they lost it” (qtd. in Killam, 17). The human terms are what Armah used in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, the corruption in society is complete,

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the bus conductor, railway clerk and government minister are all involved. The people’s dislike of it is not that it is wrong, but that they are not reaping its rewards. The artist therefore is to struggle against the problems. Achebe uses the following metaphor to describe the work of the artist, which the artist must struggle; may not necessarily win but the struggle itself brings remembrance and eventual success, as remembrance causes reflection: You remember in the Igbo folktale that the leopard caught up with the tortoise. He had been trying to catch him for a long time. He wanted to kill him. So, when he finally caught him, he said, ‘Aha, now prepare yourself to die.’ So the tortoise

began to scatter and push sand all around him on the road, to create

the

impression of a struggle. The leopard was mystified. He thought

the tortoise

would simply stand still and contemplate his death, rather than get

involved in this

frantic action. So he said, ‘Why are you doing that?’ And the

tortoise told him, ‘When I’m dead, I want people who pass by to say that here a man met his match’ (Achebe, “Writing Across Worlds”, 64)

The opposite of the metaphor is shown in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born and Anthills of the Savannah where the artist and his work are judged in monetary terms and conformity to expectations. The Teacher explains that poets are bandleaders who have failed. The truth of their vision is no longer necessary, only the capitalist fixation on monetary accumulation. Ikem is given the post of the editor of the national newspaper and required to simply not criticise Sam’s military regime. He is tolerated and eventually dismissed, however his real power is when he interacts with the people at the university, and it is that which prompts his murder. Again, Achebe

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shows the need for the artist and leaders to connect with the people which is the main concern of Anthills of the Savannah. The distance between tradition and modernity is described as Ngugi wa Thiong’o as a crises in African identity and culture. This is another result of the education system and Africa’s copying of foreign systems. Like Obi and the villagers who cannot compromise, Ngugi wa Thiong’o believes that the two groups, traditionalists and modernists, need to accommodate each other or be both wiped away. To conflict is not between tradition and modernity as the relationship between the two is symbiotic. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, like Achebe and Armah reject the social, political and economic systems used in Africa that are dictated by Europe and America, a change in these systems will create a new cultural order. The order “has its roots in the dynamic progressive aspects of a national tradition while remaining open to the progressive and humanist cultural elements all over the world” (wa Thiong’o 175). From this definition the way forward for Africa is based on accommodation not assimilation. The artists aim to reconcile the dualities that they both experienced in life. Achebe and Armah went to prestigious universities that caused them to be politically and culturally aware, but at the same time making the authors work to relate to the African audience. The authors are examples of what the new order must entail. In addition to the artist being the agent for change, the ordinary man has an equally important role. Though in Anthills of the Savannah the main characters can be classified as ordinary as they do not have the excesses of Armah’s Koomson: Ikem, Chris and Beatrice are still government officials and writers who enjoy certain privileges given by “His Excellency”, Sam. The nameless man in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born represents the ordinary man more completely. He ekes out a living, faces the everyday troubles of the working class and it is that character that shows a goodness and morality that has him aiding even the most degenerate

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when in need, Koomson. Therefore, it is both the intelligentsia and common people that must work to create the state. “Everybody seemed to sweat a lot, not from the exertion of their jobs, but from some kind of inner struggle” (Armah 20). The ordinary man struggles to negotiate a world that seems strange. There is always a reversal with the misappropriation of power. Koomson becomes totally dependent on the man for escape. Sam cannot prevent his own overthrow after ordering so many arrests. This realisation would prevent the separation of both people and leadership when power is assumed. The very anonymity that Achebe and Armah use in the naming of characters and places make their work applicable to all of Africa. The anonymity in the case of Sam, however, has a different role, his genealogy cannot be traced making him an anomaly, unnatural, but that is the result of isolation from the people one is supposed to represent. The level of corruption and injustice in the society seeps into the character of even good men in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born and Anthills of the Savannah. The man and Teacher both resist the corruption of their office. The man when asked why he did not accept the bribe cannot answer. He does not have the conviction or courage to justify his morality. However it is this same lack of courage or moral obligation that the man aided Koomson’s escape. The Teacher “has obtained freedom but only at the price of condemning himself to a half life of loneliness” (Palmer 139). The teacher is a realist who understands that the land itself cannot have a completely honest man, hence the degeneration of the physical environment. The characters are damaged in the response to the social situation around them. Chris in Anthills of the Savannah is a voice of reason in the cabinet of Sam. However, in the beginning of the novel he seems to appear as the timid courtier who observes and comments quietly on the others in the chamber. “Disenchantment with them turned long ago into detached clinical interest” (Achebe “Anthills”

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2). Chris believes that his presence will check the power of Sam. However, he is caught in the bureaucracy making it impossible to defend his principles. The contrast is Ikem, who keeps his distance and is able to deliver satire in the national newspaper. There also seems to be an inversion of basic human principles in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born and No Longer at Ease graft, bribery and corruption is viewed as initiative. In Anthills of the Savannah speaking against injustice is treason and subversion. Achebe and Armah decry the evil of the abuse of power and see the solution lying in the morality of the individual who unlike the corrupt values goodness over expedience. This is embodied in “the man”. Society views him as a fool or coward for doing what is right (Armah, 51). Morality is criminal and results in loneliness, “for who but a criminal, could ever be left with such a feeling of loneliness” (Armah 32). Despite Koomson’s character he aids his escape after the coup. In a way it is a rebirth, a vindication of his stance. The man rejects the chichidodo metaphor; he likes wealth but will not steal it. Achebe views Nigerians as timid, as Chris is initially, when it comes to criticising leadership and Armah shows that the people’s goodness is the only redemption of society as they are the first to be polluted by its ills. “Sometimes it is understandable that people spit so much, when all around decaying things push inward and mix all the body’s juices with rot.” (Armah 40). At least the people try to expel the rot, it is recognised as distasteful. The man represents the need of individual resistance to injustice. Even his sexual life is affected by society. The first time he tries to have intercourse with his wife in the novel he feels a fault in his soul. The second time, they cannot as Koomson has sought refuge in their home. It is the ordinary man that must reject the excesses of “good military training and discipline any day!” (Achebe “Anthills” 21). Chris is not given heroic proportions for a daring feat of revolution but the attempt to save a girl from rape. In the incident the goodness of the

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people shows as on the shooting of Chris the crowd chases the police officer, a symbol of the state’s power. The novels of Chinua Achebe and Ayi Kwei Armah highlight the flaws of the newly independent African societies. The authors highlight foreign domination s the root of the failures of the state. A transformation of social, political and economic life is needed to rectify the condition. The transformation can only be achieved with a transformation of the African psyche. This requires an active role of women, the vigilance of the artist and a move from individualism to individual action.