Brenton
Colonial, and Post Colonial Novels.
August 10th 2007 15:06
I read the novel ‘Coral Island’ not to long ago. Guess who the good guys are? The white civilized British boys, Jack, Ralph and Peterkin. Guess who aren’t? Those silly black people.
This is pretty typical of English Colonial novels. The white folk are good, smart, intelligent, civilized and Christian. The Others are typically evil, or child like and naive.
Another good example is Robinson Crusoe. This work, written in 1719 features both of these Archtypes. The Black inhabitants of the island on which Crusoe finds himself marooned, are soon revealed as blood thirsty cannibals. However, the one he saves, (whom he names Friday for the date of their meeting) is converted to Christianity, and becomes educated as a good Englishman.
Post Colonial novels are distinctive in their rejection of this ideology. The most obvious of these is the novel Lord of the Flies. This novel features a premise similar to much of the ‘Boys Own’ magazines of the earlier periods. A group of English boys are marooned on an island, left to fend for themselves. However, instead of remaining civilized and resourceful, traits often portrayed as distinctly British in Colonial literature, the boys descend into a dark chaos.
The book is a reference to the realities of human nature in contrast to the nationalistic glurge of the Colonial literature. This is make explicit with multiple references, including the names of the main protagonist and antagonist being Jack and Ralph, as borrowed from Coral Island.
Why did this change? The most likely answer would be, I think, War. The Boer War was off in ‘that mysterious continent Africa’ so it could be jazzed up, repackaged and sold as Patriotic War Porn.
However, when war comes home to you and claims so many lives of people close to you – not only in statistics but in people close to you, it becomes a bit less appealing to chow down on the shiny patriotic celebrations of Colonization. Thus the glory days of fighting the Boers as the jolly English transformed into dark works of warning, such as Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Where to now for the Colonial novel? The question seems rhetorical, but from what I can see in the book shop I work it, it clearly isn’t. If anything the trend is returning with a vengeance. Today Africa is replaced by the Middle East, and the new heroes are SAS, Army and CIA men with bulging muscles, fighting the evil Islamic Terror groups to defend all that is good, and the mighty United States of America (notice – not Britain any more). As our desire for simplicity grows, the gap between what we recognize as reality seems to decrease… but to what effect?
This is pretty typical of English Colonial novels. The white folk are good, smart, intelligent, civilized and Christian. The Others are typically evil, or child like and naive.
Coral Island
Another good example is Robinson Crusoe. This work, written in 1719 features both of these Archtypes. The Black inhabitants of the island on which Crusoe finds himself marooned, are soon revealed as blood thirsty cannibals. However, the one he saves, (whom he names Friday for the date of their meeting) is converted to Christianity, and becomes educated as a good Englishman.
Robinson Crusoe
Post Colonial novels are distinctive in their rejection of this ideology. The most obvious of these is the novel Lord of the Flies. This novel features a premise similar to much of the ‘Boys Own’ magazines of the earlier periods. A group of English boys are marooned on an island, left to fend for themselves. However, instead of remaining civilized and resourceful, traits often portrayed as distinctly British in Colonial literature, the boys descend into a dark chaos.
Lord of the Flies
The book is a reference to the realities of human nature in contrast to the nationalistic glurge of the Colonial literature. This is make explicit with multiple references, including the names of the main protagonist and antagonist being Jack and Ralph, as borrowed from Coral Island.
Why did this change? The most likely answer would be, I think, War. The Boer War was off in ‘that mysterious continent Africa’ so it could be jazzed up, repackaged and sold as Patriotic War Porn.
However, when war comes home to you and claims so many lives of people close to you – not only in statistics but in people close to you, it becomes a bit less appealing to chow down on the shiny patriotic celebrations of Colonization. Thus the glory days of fighting the Boers as the jolly English transformed into dark works of warning, such as Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Heart of Darkness
Where to now for the Colonial novel? The question seems rhetorical, but from what I can see in the book shop I work it, it clearly isn’t. If anything the trend is returning with a vengeance. Today Africa is replaced by the Middle East, and the new heroes are SAS, Army and CIA men with bulging muscles, fighting the evil Islamic Terror groups to defend all that is good, and the mighty United States of America (notice – not Britain any more). As our desire for simplicity grows, the gap between what we recognize as reality seems to decrease… but to what effect?
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