The Mounting Tension between Colonizer and Colonized

The Mounting Tension between Colonizer and Colonized

In his essay, Frantz Fanon writes, “Colonialism is non satisfied simply with keeping a people in its clasp and emptying the native’s encephalon of all signifiers and content. By a sort of kinky logic, it turns to the yesteryear of the laden people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it” (Fanon210 ) . V.S Naipaul’sA Bend in the Riverillustrates the power of colonialism over its colonised topics after its going in an nameless newly-Independent Africa. Naipaul uses Salim, the supporter and the undependable first-person storyteller of the novel, as an sharp perceiver of the postcolonial universe to exemplify the impossibleness of get awaying from the European Empire’s colonial influences on the colonised topics such as the Africans, Indians, Portuguese, Arabs and Persians. Salim serves a metonymic character for the external and internal struggle between European colonial influences versus the pre-colonial influences because he exhibits a colonial and anti-colonial mentality.

Naipaul illustrates that impact that the Europeans have on Arabs history that Salim strives to derive cognition about in order seek that connexion with his ascendants. For case, turning up Salim hardly had any cognition of his hereditary yesteryear so had to trust on European books to make full in the historical spreads that his household was unable to. When his gramps tells him a narrative about the clip that he shipped boatful of slaves as a lading of rubber” (A Bend11 ) , Salim realized that his gramps couldn’t put the day of the months of his narrative so he perused through the European books to derive cognition about his hereditary yesteryear because he knew that they weren’t the type of people known for entering history, they merely lived in the minute. Hence, when Salim says:

Of that whole period of turbulence in Africa— the ejection of the Arabs, the enlargement of Europe, the parcelling out of the continent— that is the lone household narrative I have. That was the kind of people we were. All that I know of our history and the history of the Indian Ocean I have got from books written by Europeans ( 11 ) .

Then he mentions that “Africa was my place, had been the place of my household for centuries” (A Bend10 ) .The ground that these cabals are used is to exemplify the impact the Europeans had on Salim’s household history and to explicate why it is hard to craft that connexion with his ascendants when the history is written by the European. When Salim references that his household had been in Africa for centuries it proves the reader with the cognition that Salim’s household was one time portion of the Arab imperium during the colonizing of the E Africa around first century CE. Harmonizing to Sara Constantakis, the Europeans came and conquered the land of Zanzibar, on the east seashore of Africa and forced the Arabs to go apprenticed retainers. Although Salim is obscure about his location, the fact that he says “we looked east to the lands with which we traded—Arabia, India, Persia” ( A Bend 10 ) gives the reader an thought about where his fatherland is. When Salim says that “they ceased to be driven on by their thought of their place in the universe, and their energy was lost ; they forgot who they were and where they had come from” (A Bend14 ) . The connotative wordtheythat Salim uses is in mention to his people, the Arabs and how they permitted their egos to lost the ties to their yesteryear because they allowed their egos to fall under “European flag” (A Bend14 ) . Salim says that although the Europeans impact caused the Arabs to bury about their yesteryear it was the lone cognition that he had of the yesteryear. Hence when he says that had it non been for the European books his yesteryear would hold been “washed off, like the mules Markss of fishermen on the beach” (A Bend12 ) . The phasedmule makesis used a simile to the Arab’s being andwashed awayis used as symbol for their history because Arabs have a longstanding history of trading on the Indian Ocean between the Zanziber, an island on the east seashore of Africa, and the Arabs universe ( Streissguth 289 ) .

In add-on, he sees the history that is provided by the Europeans as being limited because it doesn’t provide Arabs the full cognition behind their original civilisation. Salim states the issue with miming the Arabs original civilisation harmonizing to the history provide by the Europeans is that:

“they hardly had an thought of their original civilisation. They had the Koran and its Torahs ; they struck to certain manners in frock, wore certain sort of cap, had a particular cut of face fungus ; and that was all. They had small thought of what their ascendants had done in Africa. They had merely wont of authorization, without the energy or instruction to endorse up that authority…The universe is what it is” (A Bend15 ) .

The lines above illustrates Homi Bhabha’s impressionOf Mimicry and Manthat the history produced by Europeans “transforms into uncertainness which fixes the colonial topic as a ‘partial’ presence (Bhabha122 ) because the history provided by the Europeans paperss when it all changed, non when the original Arab civilisation started so the colonial topics are left with a partial portion of their history. Therefore, he sees the restriction of history written by Europeans as a manner to command the colonisers and do them bury their power and place.

Last, Salim sees that Arab’s history provided by the Europeans as self-serving and misguided because it gave them a great advantage over the colonised topics. For case, Salim utters “I feared the prevarications — -black work forces presuming the prevarications of the white work forces. If it was Europe that gave us on the seashore some thought of our history, it was Europe, I feel, that besides introduced us to the lies” (A Bend16 ) . The tone that Salim uses for the wordprevaricationillustrates the deficiency of trust and defeat about the European’s version of his Indian history. He goes on to state that the “Europeans could make one thing and say something rather different ; and they could move in this manner because they had an thought of what was owed to their civilization” (A Bend17 ) . The Europeans had a great advantage over the colonised topics because they wanted gold, slaves and to be seen as making good things for the barbaric, uneducated and inferior colonised topics. Therefore, the history provided was constructed to set up control over the colonised topics by portraying a negative position of their pre-colonial history and doing it look as though they were asseverating the “highest moral authority” (Chrisman3 ) by educating their race. Despite the prevarications that the Europeans introduced to the Arab race, Salim relied on the European books to derive cognition about his yesteryear, which creates conflicting emotion because he believes the narratives to be fabricate, yet he knows that he can non travel without some cognition of the yesteryear.

Naipaul illustrates the impact that the Europeans have on Salim’s position about the African people. For case, when Zabeth, a client of Salim, asks Salim to learn her boy Ferdinand how to be civilized English work forces, he hesitates and depict how Ferdinand’s smile made him experience uneasy because it resembled the Africa mask that he had seen. Hence, when he says “with memories of those masks, I thought I saw a particular differentiation in his characteristics. The thought came to me that I was looking at Ferdinand with the eyes of an African” (A Bend37 ) . Salim subsequently clarifies that the African mask contains specific spiritual intents that “are dead and without beauty” (A Bend61 ) , which assents to Frantz Fanon impression that Africa was seen as a “ huge continent that was the hangout by barbarians, a state riddled with superstitious notions and fanaticism” (Fanon211 ) because of their dark skin color and crude ways of life.

In add-on, when Ferdinand asks Salim to pay for his survey abroad and he refuses, he accuses Ferdinand of misinterpreting their relationship because he sees himself as the “guardian and educator” ( A Bend 38 ) to Ferdinand. He explains away his relationship with Ferdinand to Mahesh, the friend of Salim that “Ferdinand’s an African” (A Bend50 ) , he uses African as a negative intension word to devaluate the relationship that he has with Ferdinand in order to salvage his repute in the presence of his friend Mahesh. Subsequently he says “And I felt now that out of his prevarications and hyperboles, and the character he had given me, a web was being spun around me. I had become prey” (A Bend55 ) , the imagination that he uses creates a negative image of Ferdinand because he sees him as being a marauder and the web as the trap that Ferdinand crafted by informing the villagers that Salim promised to direct America. Naipaul solidifies colonizer’s perceptual experience that Salim has about the Africans when he says “the people here were malins the manner a Canis familiaris trailing a lizard was malin, or a cat trailing a bird. The people were malins because they lived with the cognition of work forces as prey” (A Bend56 ) . The analogy that Salim uses between theCanis familiarisandmalins, which is a Gallic word for wicked, arch and bad-minded, demonstrates that his colonizer’s positions of Africans as a secondary race because he portrays them as animate beings and barbarians.

On the contrary, Salim sees himself as falling into the same class as the Africans in the face of the Europeans because he views himself as a secondary race to the Whites. For case, when Salim browses through the magazine and Ferdinand asks about who’s contriving the telephone ; he replies “the scientist” , yet what he genuinely wanted to state to Ferdinand was that it was “the white men” (A Bend44 ) that were making the telephone. Salim comes to the realisation that whenever there is a talk about the Europeans, the indigens refer to them as they such as “they’re doing autos that will run on water” , “they’re doing telecasting sets every bit little as a matchbox” (A Bend44 ) , the tone that Salim uses illustrates the distance and the difference that he acknowledges about the Europeans and himself. Then he mentions that the ties that he has with the Africans and the emigres when he says:

They! When we wanted to talk politically, when we wanted to mistreat or praise politically, we said “the Americans, ” “the Europeans, ” “the white people, ”“the Belgians.” When we wanted to talk of the actors and shapers and the discoverers, we all—whatever our race— said “they.” ( A Bend 43-44 )

Thewethat Salim uses illustrates the chumminess that he has non merely with the Africans, but the emigres within the part. He metaphorically creates a separation between the Whites and “others” , others being the operative word for anyone that is non white. This illustration correlates to Stuart Hall’sCultural Identity and Diasporabecause it recognizes “many points of similarity, they are besides critical points of deep and significance differences which constitutes to what we truly are” ( 298 ) , intending that despite the obvious difference between Salim, a Muslim Indian and the Africans, he acknowledge the similarities such as the supposed primitive and dark nature that the Europeans portrayed them as a secondary race to the Whites. The ambivalency that Salim possess illustrates that he is on the fencing about where he falls into the class of colonised and coloniser because he looks down at the African race, yet sees himself as falling into the same class as them.

Naipaul illustrates Salim’s position about Africa stems from the colonialist point of view because he views Africa as being a land that does non possess a hereafter. At the beginning of the novel, when Salim drives to the country of Peugeot and gets “deeper into Africa” , he glances at “the chaparral, the desert, the rocky climb up to the mountains, the lakes, the rain in the afternoons, the clay, and so, other wetter side of the mountain” ( A Bend 4 ) , he claims that, “I am traveling in the incorrect way. There can’t be a new life at the terminal of this” ( A Bend 4 ) . The landscape of Africa discourages Salim from seeking to boom in the country because Africa is a land filled with shrubs, in Salim’s point of view ; the landscape goes against any possibility of geting a hereafter. To Salim the country of Africa serves as a measure back instead than frontward. Hence, when Salim states that “you felt like a shade, non from the past, but from the future” ( A Bend 27 ) . The imagination that Salim creates illustrates his colonial position of Africa because he sees it as backwater and fusty.