CHINUA ACHEBE'S AFRICAN TRILOGY AND THE DUAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE OTHER

Abstract

Folowing Lacan's distinction between the other, defining the identity of the self, and the great Other, in whose gaze the subject gains identity, this article analyses the consequences of such a differentiation in postcolonial theory and literature. To this purpose, the authors resort to Spivak's understanding of the dialectal process of othering in order to examine the consequences of the double misrepresentation of the O/other, leading to the rather pathetic failure of Chinua Achebe's characters in the novels belonging to his African Trilogy: Things Fall Apart (1958), No Longer at Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964).

Headnote

Abstract: Folowing Lacan's distinction between the other, defining the identity of the self, and the great Other, in whose gaze the subject gains identity, this article analyses the consequences of such a differentiation in postcolonial theory and literature. To this purpose, the authors resort to Spivak's understanding of the dialectal process of othering in order to examine the consequences of the double misrepresentation of the O/other, leading to the rather pathetic failure of Chinua Achebe's characters in the novels belonging to his African Trilogy: Things Fall Apart (1958), No Longer at Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964).

Keywords: imperial discourse, O/other, othering, postcolonial literature, postcolonial theory

1. Introduction

From a Lacanian perspective, doubled by a postcolonial approach to literature, the analysis and understanding of the character development in Chinua Achebe's novels Things Fall Apart (1958), No Longer at Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964) asks for a brief preamble into Lacan's view of the Imaginary, Symbolic and Real, as well as into Spivak's in-depth decomposition of the dialectal process of othering.

According to Lacan (2006), the Imaginary Order is triggered by the Mirrror stage of the individual's development, during which the child experiences the world through images and holds on to the illusion of control over its environment and, more specifically, over its mother (the Desire of the Mother). The illusion of fulfillment and control is soon shattered by the separation from the intimate union with the mother, which represents the individual's most important experience of loss, haunting him throughout his entire life. In Lacanian terms, the lost object of desire is object petit a, with the letter a standing for autre, the French word for other. The acquisition of language plunges the child into the Symbolic Order, a symbolic system of meaning-making which changes the mother into an other and involves the greater experience of separation from all the others, an entire world of separate people and things. The repression of the desire for the union with the mother initiates the split into conscious and unconscious mind, since the unconscious desire refers to the search for the lost object of desire, the fantasy mother of the preverbal experience:

Thus, if man comes to think about the symbolic order, it is because he is first caught in it in his being. The illusion that he has formed this order through his consciousness stems from the fact that it is through the pathway of a specific gap in his imaginary relationship with his semblable that he has been able to enter into this order as a subject. But he has only been able to make this entrance by passing through the radical defile of speech, a genetic moment of which we have seen in a child's game, but which, in its complete form, is reproduced each time the subject addresses the Other as absolute, that is, as the Other who can annul him himself, just as he can act accordingly with the Other, that is, by making himself into an object in order to deceive the Other. (Lacan 2006: 40)

The Symbolic Order brings along the replacement of the Desire of the Mother with the Name-of-the-Father; at a more general level, through language, people are socially programmed to learn the rules and prohibitions of a society which is still authored by the Father, by men in control. After all, the individuals' responses to society's ideologies shape their personalities and dictate who they are: "The satisfaction of human desire is possible only when mediated by the other's desire and labor" (Lacan 2006: 98). The great Other (language, ideology, any authority figure or accepted social practice) is responsible for the creation of people's subjectivity or in Lacan's words, "the unconscious is the Other's discourse" (2006: 21). Apart from the Symbolic, the Real is beyond all human meaning-making systems, that is, outside the world created by the ideologies society uses to explain existence: "what did not come to light in the symbolic appears in the real" (2006: 325). The trauma of the Real makes people realize and be afraid of the fact that the reality hidden beneath the ideologies society has created is a reality beyond their capacity to know and explain and, therefore, certainly beyond their capacity to control.

The complex relationship between the Lacanian Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real undoubtedly affects the character development in Chinua Achebe's African trilogy. There are characters embodying the Imaginary Order by plunging into a fantasy, a delusional world; at the level of the Symbolic Order, ideology and social norms are in full control of the characters' behaviour and there seem to be moments when characters have flashes of the Real, that dimension of existence which terrifies them so much, that a possible encounter has devastating effects.

In The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading the Archives (1985), the postcolonial critic G.C. Spivak tackles the issue of three random examples of othering. Firstly, she uses Captain Geoffrey Birch (assistant agent of the Governor in India) as an illustration of what the dialectal process of othering may mean: "He is actually engaged in consolidating the self of Europe by obliging the native to cathect the space of the Other on his home ground. He is worlding their own world, which is far from mere uninscribed earth, anew, by obliging them to domesticate the alien as Master" (Spivak 1985: 253). Spivak moves even further by adding that the assumption of the existence of an uninscribed earth makes "the worlding of a world" possible and "generates the force necessary to make the 'native' see himself as 'other'" (254). The second example is that of Major-General Sir David Ochterlony, who seems to perceive imperialism in terms of a social mission with its victims assuming "an obligation in the long run" (255). The last example concerns some deletions from a letter made to the Governor General by the Board of Control of the East India Company with the purpose of showing how Imperialist desire is being articulated as a law to be obeyed. All three modes of representation are indicative of the heterogeneous character of the dialectal process of othering:

(a) the installment of the glimpsed stranger as the sovereign subject of information - the agent an instrument: Captain Geoffrey Birch; (b) the reinscription of right as being-obliged - the agent the stereotype of the imperialist villain: Major-General Sir David Ochterlony; (c) the divided master in the metropolis issuing desire proleptically as law: the agent anonymous because incorporated. (257)

What binds together all the different facets of the process of othering is perhaps the inherent contradiction contained in the colonialist surmise of an "uninscribed earth" (264). Under the circumstances, all three protagonists in the African trilogy (the great Umuofia warrior and tribesman Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart, Ezeulu, the chief priest of Umuaro, in Arrow of God and Obi, Okonkwo's England-trained nephew, in No Longer at Ease) reflect the impact of the process of othering on both the individual destiny of the people chosen as protagonists and, on a larger scale, on the social, economic and political issues at stake before, during, and after British colonization.

2. Things Fall Apart (1954) or the first encounter with the O/other

The postcolonial issue of the O/other helps the readers to see through the thicket of culture specific rituals and identify a behavioural pattern of all the protagonists in the African trilogy. Subsequent re-readings of Things Fall Apart diminish the initial impact of the elements of cultural specificity and allow for an analysis of both the individual and community reactions when confronted with the O/other, where the Lacanian distinction designates the other "who resembles the self" and the great Other "in whose gaze the subject gains identity" (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 2007: 155). Critics have drawn the attention to the concentration of Achebe's first novel on "background cultural information" (Whittaker and Msiska 2007: 7) and "the vivid picture [...] of Igbo society at the end of the nineteenth century" (Carroll 1990: 32) more than on the proper development of the plot; what we aim to demonstrate is that such strategy was necessary precisely for stressing the issue of cultural difference and setting the ground for the characters' encounter with the great Other, represented by the colonizing power. The other two novels of the African trilogy preserve the elements of cultural specificity, but nowhere with the same emotional force and power of impact as in Things Fall Apart. What Chinua Achebe wonderfully seeks to achieve in his novel is to represent the subaltern who, in Spivak's eyes, lacks a history and a voice and whose identity lies in its difference; as a consequence, "the intelectual's solution is not to abstain from representation" (Spivak 1994: 80). Once giving the issue of cultural clash its full credit, we can move beyond to what some critics have rightfully called "the novel's universality" (Whittaker and Msiska 2007: 38), thus prefiguring what will later crystallize in Achebe's novels A Man of the People and Anthills of the Savannah.

The first part of Things Fall Apart slowly and skilfully reconstitutes the atmosphere characteristic of the Igbo community, from the daily rituals of breaking the kola nuts to description of important ceremonies, such as The Feast of the New Yam. The village crier summons everybody to the market square, where all important decisions are taken to the benefit of the entire community; such is the decision at the beginning of the story not to go to war against the neighbouring clan of Mbaino for killing a daughter of Umuofia. Retrospectively, the readers learn of the perpetuation of Okonkwo's belonging to the Imaginary Order in the sense that his father Unoka is not a strong enough figure for the replacement of the Desire of the Mother with the Name-of-the-Father to actually take place. Facing the Symbolic order controlled by the tough men of the Igbo community, where physical strength and wealth are important social criteria, Okonkwo "had no patience with his father" (Achebe 2010: 5), whose artistic other he was unable to understand. Being "a man of action, a man of war" (2010: 9) and a great wrestler, he manages to acquire a place of high esteem in the Umuofia community and is the one whom they entrust Ikemefuna for a period of three years. In spite of growing fond of the boy, Okonkwo takes part in his killing for fear of seeming weak and being marginalized by his clan; in other words, the strong sense of affiliation to the clan becomes an element of cultural specificity in itself and represents a characteristic of a society ostensibly unbreakable by exterior forces.

The villagers' inquisitive spirit paves the way for the first mention of the white men, which is dropped as if by accident in a relaxed atmosphere, when Okonkwo and his friends are gathered in Obierika's hut, for a suitor has come for his daughter. They show no fear of these white men, they are just thinking of them with curiosity, wondering if they have toes; they are trying to hide their ignorance by making jokes and comparing the white men with the leper Amadi, since, as the narrator notices, "the polite name for leprosy was the white skin" (Achebe 2010: 53). This narratorial comment preceded by the villagers' reflections mark the debut of a long process of othering, whose complexity will increase gradually and which will have far-reaching consequences for the major characters in all the novels belonging to the African trilogy. The double misrepresentation of the O/other (the other - the natives; the Other - the colonizers) turns out to be the main reason behind life-changing decisions entirely based on the characters' false assumptions about those whom they perceive as their opponents.

When he is banished to his mother's village for seven years (see again a reiteration of the preverbal fantasy of the union with the mother) for accidentally killing a young man, Okonkwo feels twice rejected: both by his former friends and tribesmen and by his relatives, in spite of their efforts to ensure all his comfort. It is Obierika who first introduces the story of the extinction of the village of Abame, when he visits Okonkwo in his second year of exile. According to his story, the people of Abame killed the first white man that came to their village out of an irrational fear of the unknown: "The elders consulted their Oracle who told them that the strange man would break their clan and spread destruction among them. [...] And so they killed the white man and tied his iron horse to their sacred tree because it looked as if it would run away to call the man's friends" (2010: 97). Lack of communication made it impossible for the people of Abame to understand the white man: "What did the white man say before they killed him?" asked Uchendu. "He said nothing", answered one of Obierika's companions. "He said something, only they did not understand him", said Obierika. "He seemed to speak through his nose" (Achebe 2010: 98). Their initial act of violence brought along more white men, who killed almost all the people of the clan.

Okonkwo's absence from his village coincides with the missionaries' arrival in Umuofia. The only consolation the leaders of the clan had was that the handful of converts belonged to "efulefu, worthless, empty men" (2010: 101). When the white man comes to Mbanta with stories of the New God, Okonkwo rejects him completely and considers his words sheer madness. The rulers of Mbanta first gave the missionaries the land of the evil forest to build their church; in this way they expressed their scepticism and rejection.

Okonkwo's son Nwoye is drawn to the new religion because of his frustrations with some of his clan's customs: abandoning the new born twins in the evil forest or the ritual retribution killing of Ikemefuna as a compensation for the killing of a woman in his clan. Okonkwo's violent reaction to what he considered his betrayal alienates Nwoye even further: he leaves his family behind and joins the Christian mission in Umuofia, where they had set up a school to teach the natives to read and write.

The thought of his son's alienation and implicitly of the other is completely unacceptable to Okonkwo, who foresees the destruction of an entire world: "Okonkwo felt a cold shudder run through him at the terrible prospect, like the prospect of annihilation. He saw himself and his father crowding round their ancestral shrine waiting in vain for worship and sacrifice and finding nothing but ashes of bygone days, and his children the while praying to the white man's god" (108). Unable to think of any other way of reacting to such an outcome, Okonkwo considers resorting to violence once again: "If such a thing were ever to happen, he, Okonkwo, would wipe them off the face of the earth" (Achebe 2010: 108).

On Okonkwo's return to Umuofia, Obierika tells him how the white men managed to divide their order by winning their brothers and turning them against their older traditions and customs: "The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peacefully with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart" (124). Similarly to Okonkwo in terms of the inability to accept what is different, Reverend James Smith refused to make any compromise and believed in a clear dichotomy between black and white: "He saw things as black and white. And black was evil. He saw the world as battlefield in which the children of light were locked in mortal conflict with the sons of darkness. He spoke in his sermons about sheep and goats and about wheat and tares. He believed in slaying the prophets of Baal" (130). The head messenger who carries the white man's message forbidding the clan's gathering is killed by Okonkwo on the spot as a representative of the Other menacing to suffocate Umuofia and destroy its lifestyle. Okonkwo's choice to hang himself further alienates him from his clan, since, according to their custom, it is an abomination for a man to take his own life; he cannot be buried by his clansmen, as his body is evil and only strangers can touch it. The protagonist's death is the result of his incapacity to deal with the great Other, stemming from his childhood rejection of his father's way, which will be reiterated by his son Nwoye in rejecting Okonkwo's view of the world. All in all, there seems to be something inherent in people's frustration in the face of the other.

3. The misrepresentation of the O/other in Arrow of God (1964)

The relationship between a father and his son as well as the implications of the process of othering form the backbone of Achebe's Arrow of God too. Unlike his people, Ezeulu, the Chief Priest of Umuaro, is willing to understand the Other; for this reason he sent his son Oduche to learn about the new religion and the white man's customs. Gradually, his fear of assimilation makes him doubt his previous decision: "But now Ezeulu was becoming afraid that the new religion was like a leper. Allow him a handshake and he wants to embrace. Ezeulu had already spoken strongly to his son who was becoming more strange every day" (Achebe 2010: 330). When his other son Nwafo explains to Ezeulu that the bell calls people to leave their yam and coco-yam to go to church, the high priest associates the bell with "the song of extermination" (2010: 331).

For his part, Captain T. K. Winterbottom is angry because of the order he receives to ensure native rule in Africa; he considers that the people in charge at the center are totally unaware of the reality on the field: "Words, words, words. Civilization, African mind, African atmosphere. Has His Honour ever rescued a man buried alive up to his neck, with a piece of roast yam on his head to attract vultures?" (343). What Winterbottom conveniently seems to forget, when he remembers how the attempts to have a native rule led to bribery and an exploitative system, is that the natives had done nothing but imitate the white men's rule. Along the same lines, Mr. Wright's sense of his own superiority and contempt for the natives is obvious: "Many of them were, of course, bone lazy and could only respond to severe handling. But once you got used to them they could be quite amusing" (363). When Obika and his friend Ofoedu arrive late to work for the new road, Mr. Wright does not hesitate to whip Obika or to call them all "black monkeys" (Achebe 2010: 369).

The narrator in Arrow of God notices that an outsider could never fully understand the relationships in a different community: "A stranger to this year's festival might go away thinking that Umuaro had never been more united in all its history" (2010: 354). Moses Unachukwo warns his people that there is nothing they can do to escape white man's power: "[...] I knew there was no escape. As daylight chases away darkness so will the white man drive away all our customs" (371-372).

At the gathering of the age group to which Obika and Ofoedu belong, Nweke Ukpaka tries to make its members understand that the fear of the unknown makes people behave in a certain way: "What a man does not know is greater than he. Those of us who want Unachukwo to go away forget that none of us can say come in the white man's language. We should listen to his advice" (373).

The entire misunderstanding leading to Ezeulu's downfall rests on a lack of communication and on the misrepresentation of the other: although Captain Winterbottom wants to make Ezeulu chief over the entire village, the essence of his message is entirely distorted on the way. Interpreting Ezeulu's refusal to come as a sign of defiance and contempt, Winterbottom signs an arrest warrant for him and then falls ill.

When Ezeulu refuses to be the white man's chief, his respect and reputation among his own people reach an unprecedented level; his anger with his own people is reflected by his attitude toward them: "As long as he was in exile it was easy for Ezeulu to think of Umuaro as one hostile entity" (471). Upon his return, he realizes that "All these people who had left what they were doing or where they were going to say welcome to him could not be called enemies" (Achebe 2010: 471). To make his people acknowledge their mistake of forsaking him in the hands of the white man, Ezeulu refuses to set the date for the New Yam Feast; by doing this, he becomes the Other in their eyes: "Almost overnight Ezeulu had become something of a public enemy in the eyes of all and, as was to be expected, his entire family shared his guilt" (2010: 495). Obika's death plunges Ezeulu into madness and Umuaro into Christianity, as in order to harvest sooner, they offer the yams to the God of the new religion and thus, forced by circumstances, they embrace the Other.

4. No Longer at Ease (1960) - the misshapen appropriation of the O/other

The novel's motto from T. S. Eliot's The Journey of the Magi prefigures the topic of otherness and alludes to what happens in Nigeria of the 1950s, when the action takes place: "We returned to our places, these kingdoms,/ But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,/ With an alien people clutching their gods./ I should be glad of another death." (151).

The first chapter of this chronologically last novel of the African trilogy makes reference to a club in Lagos which is open to Englishmen and Africans alike, but where "few Africans went to" with the exception of the stewards who "served unobtrusively" "in their white uniforms" (154). The narrator's remarks voice the colonizers' general attitude toward the natives: "It was quite possible to go in, drink, sign a cheque, talk to friends and leave again without noticing these stewards in their white uniforms. If everything went right, you did not see them" (154). On the same wavelength, Obi Okonkwo's former boss, Mr. Green, does not see the natives as individual people with their own identity, but as a collectivity incapable to change and therefore not to be trusted: "The African is corrupt through and through" (154); "They are all corrupt" (155). The irony is that, despite his pretense of being an advocate for equal rights, Mr. Green looks at the Africans with nothing but contempt and preserves the typical colonizer's attitude towards those whom he considers his inferiors: "Hello, Peter. Hello, Bill. Hello. Hello. May I join you? Certainly. Most certainly. What are you drinking? Beer? Right. Steward. One beer for this master" (155). The narrator's message is that such an attitude is practically responsible for Okonkwo's grandson's failure.

Although Obi accepts that the Umuofia Progressive Union should pay for his studies in England, he is not fully aware of what this brings along for him in the long run. Upon his return, his people are eager for him to get a job from the government, which they perceive as the great Other: "Have they given you a job yet? the chairman asked Obi over the music. In Nigeria the government was 'they'. It had nothing to do with you or me. It was an alien institution and people's business to get as much from it as they could without getting into trouble" (178). Obi is in fact forced to deal with a corrupt system that seems to affect all levels of society and which places bribery at its very core. His interpretation of the lines of the song he hears during his journey to his village stresses the consequences of the invasion of the Other: "the burden of the song was 'the world turned upside down'" (188), as according to the lyrics, somebody killed his in-law and a fisherman's paddle speaks English. Both acts are inconceivable in the Igbo culture and are perceived as instances of great treachery.

As the narrator notices, the Other loses its fascination once known and mastered: "Nowadays going to England has become as commonplace as going to the village green" (188). Back in his hometown, Obi feels a surge of patriotism listening to his people speak: "Let them come to Umuofia now and listen to the talk of men who made a great art of conversation. Let them come and see men and women and children who knew how to live whose joy of life had not yet been killed by those who claimed to teach other nations how to live" (191). In their turn, the people of Umuofia question Obi about his journey to England in their attempt to understand the mystery of the Other. Their embrace of Christianity is a curious blending between elements of their pagan-beliefs and new rituals they leam from the whiteman's church; for example, Obi's father preserves the ritual of kola breaking, but instead of using it as a "heathen sacrifice" (192), he dedicates it to Jesus Christ.

Burdened with various financial debts, Obi refuses to accept a bribe at the beginning, but finally plunges into the corrupt system propagated by the great colonizing Other and supported by his own people; arrested for taking a 20-pound bribe, he is facing trial and prosecution amidst the hypocritical general claim of a lack of understanding for the actions of such a promising young man.

5. Conclusion

The analysis of all three novels has hopefully proved that the dual construction of the O/other is accountable for the tragic consequences of the act of misrepresentation, caused by the characters' rigid adherence to one type of Symbolic Order and obstinance in at least acknowledging the existence of the Real, where any human ideologies are no longer important.

To provide the marginalized population with a voice of its own, Achebe chooses his protagonists as representatives of the natives and accompanies them throughout three distinct moments of their encounter with the great Other, each of them offering an alternative perspective of the colonizers for a better understanding of the reasons beyond their failure.

Sidebar

Cristina Chifane, an independent scholar, holds a PhD in Translation Studies. She has taught both in Romania and abroad. In 2015, she completed her postdoctoral research on Translating British and Romanian Contemporary Prose for Children - A Comparative Analysis with a Recontextualization of Approaches and Strategies. Her publications include the book Translating Literature for Children. Besides translation, she is also interested in English and American literature, cultural studies as well as in theoretical and applied linguistics.

E-mail address: [email protected]

Liviu-Augustin Chifane is a PhD student at "Dunărea de Jos" University of Galaţi and is currently working on his dissertation entitled A Cultural-Linguistic Approach to Postcolonial Literature: Jhumpa Lahiri and Zadie Smith. His research interests tackle the following areas: English and American literature, postcolonial literature, cultural studies, comparative studies and stylistics. He is also a published author, having written poetry and short fiction and having been awarded several prizes at various national competitions. In 2014, he published the novel for children and young adults, Copilul Deltei (Delta 's Child).

E-mail address: [email protected]

References

References

Achebe, Chinua. 2010. The African Trilogy. New York, London, Toronto: Everyman's Library.

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. 2007. Postcolonial Studies Reader. The Key Concepts. London and New York: Routledge.

Carroll, David. 1990 (1980) Chinua Achebe. Novelist, Poet, Critic. New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc.

Lacan, Jacques. 2006 (1966). Écrits. The First Complete Edition in English. Trans. Bruce Fink in collaboration with Héloi'se Fink and Russell Grigg. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 1985. "The Rani of Sirmur" in Barker, Francis, Peter Hulme, Margaret Iversen and Diana Loxley (eds.). Europe and its Others, vol. 1, Proceedings of the Essex Conference on the Sociology of Literature July 1984. Colchester: University of Essex, pp. 128-151.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 1994. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" in Williams, Patrick and Laura Chrisman (eds.). Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory. A Reader. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 66-111.

Whittaker, David and Mpalive-Hangson Msiska. 2007. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. New York: Routledge.