Free Business Dissertations - Adulrazak Gurnahs Paradise
Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise, the Best Novel of the Twentieth Century and Pat Barker's The Ghost Road
Introduction
While novelist Pat Barker's popular trilogy has gained widespread literary acclaim (even winning the Booker Prize in 1995 for The Ghost Road), it does not have the literary, cultural, or sociopolitical implications of Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise. The Ghost Road is, however, reflective of the emergent secular humanism that brought about the evolution of Western society at the close of the First World War. Its protagonists Rivers, Owen, and Sassoon all contribute social themes that challenge the norm, and in this sense they challenge the strength of Paradise's Yusuf. Themes and their delivery in The Ghost Road, however, are limited in application to one set of traditions while Paradise is almost universal in scope. Through careful evaluation of the plot and specific textual citations, what reveals itself powerfully and most effectively is the power of the theme an author presents. Both novels present an interminable human struggle, but only Paradise shows the self-deprecating facet of human nature manifested in both Man the Victim and Man the Aggressor. Paradise shows remarkable efficacy in communicating its potent and timelessly relevant point. Following Yusuf's journey and life shows Gurnah's frustrations with Africa, the rest of the world, and man's perilous existence.
Criteria Used in Determining a Winner
More important than criteria selected was the hierarchy which had to be applied to decide upon a favorable novel. Readers and scholars alike value certain aspects of a book over others. For some, the depth of scholarly attributes is the deciding factor in a book's constitution. Clarity of thought, style, the extent of allusion, and the organization of essential character dialogue are all notable features. Using such an academic gradient naturally eliminates certain books from greatness, as even the most traditionally brilliant writers often fall short of academic stature. For example, William Faulkner's style discounted clarity of thought as some of its most celebrated aspects were its distortion and interrupted stream of consciousness. The most timeless books are therefore those whose authors are not necessarily as scholarly as they are accomplished raconteurs. The style of narration, pace, and the ability of a story to attract readers is what makes a novel great. The Ghost Road and Paradise, two very different pieces from equally distinguishable authors, had to be held to as closely in comparison as could be feasibly done. It is for this reason that the criteria chosen to evaluate both works would be not just the academic elements of style, but also themes and the ability of each respective novel's narrators to communicate their messages to an audience.
Style, Themes and Presentation in Paradise
Colonial Africa was perhaps the most impoverished continent to suffer the exploitation of Western colonialism. Unlike the rest of what would become the Third World, Africa fell victim to cultural and economic subjugation. What immediately makes Gurnah's work so striking and deserving of top honors is his likening of a young boy to a relatively untouched civilization. His protagonist, Yusuf, represents pre-colonial Africa. Immersed in his own world, the boy knows little of existence outside the shores of his native Zanzibar. Yusuf, like most Africans, knew almost nothing of the Europeans who would exploit him and control his livelihood. Gurnah tactfully describes the sunburned Europeans Yusuf encounters at a train station to exemplify how ignorance can multiply and turn curiosity into fear, noting Yusuf's recollection that Germans were an invincible and brutal people. After all, as soon as the boy saw Europeans for the first time, they became almost like fabled creatures.
Convinced that Germans would hang people if they did not work hard enough, Yusuf becomes Gurnah's representative of native African myopia; Yusuf, like indigenous Africans, fails to realize that he does not have to work for the Germans at all, that there is a world outside one of servitude (Gurnah 7). Gurnah further brings Yusuf's naïveté to the forefront by utilizing immature diction. There are many instances Gurnah could have used familiar terms, but instead opted to write Yusuf's dialogue in a child-like manner, describing feared castration at the hands of German foremen as cutting off [one's] stones (Gurnah 9). Such familiarization of the reader with themes in Paradise was a deciding factor in the choice of Gurnah's work as the top seed. Most every reader can identify him or herself with childish fears and imagination. Subsequent stages in Yusuf's sexual and epochal maturity parallel the dichotomous colonization of Africa in related steps. If colonization was Africa's adulthood, then its enslavement would be reflected in Yusuf's childhood prior to his adoption by Uncle Aziz. Africa's enslavement is almost identical to Yusuf's loss of innocence.
The year Yusuf was reduced to collateral was one of naïveté, where every day was the same as the last (Gurnah 1). Gurnah surmises through these lines that Africa may very well have been conquered in a similar manner. With little organized government, Africa perceived the day Europe touched its shores the same way it perceived any other day. Moreover, Africa, like Yusuf, clamored to European interlopers with a sense of adulation. Yusuf admired Uncle Aziz, ignorant of his status as a future master, instead admiring at his luminous skin and mysterious smell (Gurnah 4). Unlike the Europeans at the train station, Yusuf was not afraid of Uncle Aziz as he was a merchant, a familiar face and one to be admired, despite how different he was. This parallels the African-European connection, where first African involvement was for trade, but later evolved into colonialism. Gurnah also portrays the bribery to which Africa succumbed in Yusuf's ready and willing assumption of the role of the servant, pouring water over his father's and Uncle Aziz's hands. Gurnah describes how Yusuf liked visitors like Uncle Aziz, how they brought wealth (Gurnah 9). The fact that Yusuf was not cognizant in the least about Uncle Aziz's potential to change his life is indicative of Gurnah's contention that Africa was almost childlike in its acceptance of Europe; it was premature and not previously studied. Africa, like Yusuf, longed for a ten anna piece, even stalking for it at first glimpse of an outsider (Gurnah 7). The author not only shows Yusuf's ignorance, but also the little-accepted fact that Africa betrayed itself in its innocence and unassuming, almost cavalier attitude towards outsiders. Ironically, it was Yusuf's own father (the majority of the African people) who surrendered his son (the subjugated future generations) in order to settle a bill (the African price for indulging in European cultural and economic conquest).
As Yusuf grows in his life of servitude under the tutelage of Khalil and Uncle Aziz, the reader bears witness to the death of his innocence and the parallel of Africa's degradation. The character of Khalil, Yusuf's first teacher along the path to civilization, became almost deified and omnipotent, controlling all facets of Yusuf's life. Khalil, an African of Arabic influence, was more Western than other Africans, a symbol of colonization both culturally and economically. He would have no more of nightmares or crying, representing forced maturity, destroying Yusuf's innocence and youth, and completing the circle of Africa's loss of its own identity (Gurnah 22). Africa's humanity was stolen away with Westernized ideas like monotheism and lingual influences. Khalil even goes so far as to convince Yusuf to betray his African roots, to learn Arabic so as to earn the good graces of Uncle Aziz, his seyyid or master (Gurnah 24). This forced, almost ethnically cleansing measure shows Gurnah's disdain of even Arab and Indian colonials, who, while not reaching the pinnacles of European conquest, diminished the status of Africans all the same. For example, Hussein (an Islamic figure and an historically important Shi'a Imam) contributes to Paradise the guise of a superstitious, provincial man from Zanzibar with whom Yusuf stays (Gurnah 82). He is the ignorance and self-loathing of pre-colonial Africa, a race who despite the minimal contact with the outside world, sought to be something else. Gurnah notably uses the Arab influence over African Muslims to excise any ties they have to their indigenous beliefs and culture by describing the land outside Muslim Zanzibar as outside the world [they] know, filled with air the color of plague and pestilence (Gurnah 83). Ironically, it is the pantheistic African continent that reveals the relative inhumanity of foreign interlopers, reminiscent of James Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
Gurnah's literary zenith is not just in his superior style, but also in his utilization of sex as a coming-of-age mechanism without succumbing to clichés. Yusuf's seduction by Zulekha the Mistress in The Grove of Desire, Part Eight is a clever play on both sexual coming of age and an almost integral tendency of Africans to disregard each others' admonishments and better judgments. Khalil beckons Yusuf away from Zulekha, knowing full well that it can lead to trouble. As Yusuf's senior and his only means of communication with the mistress, Khalil can also represent the African who is jealous of his fellow man. Juxtaposed with the servant Amina's subterfuge in her convincing Yusuf of Khalil's reluctance to translate any more than what he wanted or was able to, Amina simultaneously disrupts Yusuf's social fabric by belittling a senior and appealing to Yusuf's youthful curiosity and to a degree, his greed as well (Gurnah 216). Gurnah's juxtaposition of a powerful female with competing males in social strata (Khalil, the senior to Yusuf) is a stark and compelling metaphor for the lust of Africans for the wealth of Europe.
Style, Themes and Presentation in The Ghost Road
It follows naturally that the final installation of the Regeneration trilogy would win the 1995 Booker Prize. Pat Barker's clarity and presence provide her audience with a vivid portrayal of the debilitating process of war and human recovery. Despite the fact that protagonists such as the militarily high-ranking proletariat Prior offer interesting situations and plot insight, Barker's most lasting impressions come from her ability to employ irony to her characters' advantage. Most notable is the professional decadence of the physician Rivers, who, like Gurnah's Yusuf, finds that so-called savages are more human than the civilization from where he arrived. As in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Rivers finds that in a society focused on death and head-hunting, civilization is well-structured and healthy. Meanwhile, the French front of World War I has fallen apart, with the morale failing and men dropping by the hundreds. The erstwhile upright have grown dark as the war wears on, and the further Rivers travels from known civilization, the more he finds that he is the savage. Prior, for example, finds himself questioning why he regards murder as the worst of the mortal sins, exemplifying the post-World War I colonial persona wondering why killing could be the worst thing he could do when murder was only killing in the wrong place (Barker 44). The so-called European war of civilizations, Barker argues, is little more than a smattering of people who lay waste to each others' lives for the very primal urge of power. Barker's parallels work as her most effective narrative tool; though her characters are as dynamic as they are intriguingly dynamic, they fail to evoke the same audience empathy as Yusuf. Comparable thematic suggestions in Barker's work are the juxtaposition of Njiru and Rivers, whose similar positions suggest egalitarian leanings on the part of the narrator. Like Gurnah, Barker describes in great length two different characters in similar situations. Moffett's treatment by Rivers takes place immediately before Njiru's extraction of an octopus from a local. Both men faced irrational, distraught patients, but only Rivers emerged unsuccessful in his diagnosis. Njiru, the savage, represents the natural human, a concept that evolving Europe lost in pursuit of scientific and intellectual achievements. The two doctors both treat their respective patients in similar fashions, but only Njiru manages to treat the woman. Moffett, suffering from hysteria, was no different from the senile woman to whom Njiru tended. Rivers massaged Moffett to return circulation to his body much in the same way Njiru massaged the village woman; the only difference was that Moffett did not find relief, still feeling pins and needles, knowing that a massage could not possibly cure his ailment. Njiru, on the other hand, treated the woman in such a way that she could know exactly what he purported was going on, that removing an octopus from the colon was all she needed (Barker 52). Barker tries to convey to the reader the loss of humanity in science and scholarly pursuit, that through such empirical studies the emotional component of Europe was gone. Though superior to Njiru in his wealth and medical knowledge, Rivers could not accomplish what the spiritual healer could: Rivers could not give his patient peace of mind. It was due to science that Rivers failed Moffett. The problem with Moffett was that he was too intelligent to be satisfied with such a crude solution as paralysis (Barker 48-49). The woman conversely was much happier having had a spiritual octopus removed from her colon (Barker 52). Strangely enough, River thought nothing of his patient's description of pins and needles when treating Moffett (Barker 47). He did, however, find himself almost scoffing at the woman's colon-bound octopi (Barker 52). The two descriptions are the same mechanism utilized by non-medical persons in each culture, but Barker only presents one race with the pride to laugh at another's methodologies.
Barker's style is such that Njiru never has to compromise his humility when in the company of the Western Rivers. While both are men of medicine charged with the same task, it is Rivers who turns out to fail his patient; Barker's apparent theme is the universality of humanity, a concept lost to many Europeans during the 19th and 20th centuries' colonial age. Despite perceived savagery, Barker argues that the Melanesian encounters to which Rivers bears witness are testaments to their humanity; it is European interjection that becomes the universal poison to humanity, contrary to popular contentions at the time. Another instance of the Rivers/Njiru juxtaposition and Barker's employment of superior style is the admiration Rivers has for Njiru's people, despite his cognizance that they are headhunters. Upon discovering a ceremonial display of skulls, Rivers is not taken aback, but rather fosters unconventional acceptance of Njiru's people. He notices, through the brutal display of skulls, that each of them was maintained and intact. This led Rivers to conclude that captives were never ill-treated, that the idea of deliberate cruelty was foreign to the people (Barker 238). These scenes of death elucidated the exact opposite of what Rivers had thought of the Melanesian peoples' culture, civilization, and society. Unlike Rivers, Njiru granted his guest honor by bringing him into the midst of his scene of death. Rivers' culture saw death single dimensionally, further revealing his own truncation of perspective. Unlike the Europeans, whose death tokens (gravesites and the macabre like) were indicative of pain and suffering, the Melanesian scenes of death described by Barker were the [objects] of highest value in the world (Barker 239). The scenes of death Prior and Owen encountered were utter devastation, with human death affecting the environment; the dead horses, unburied men, and array of looted goods showed what Barker intended to be the true savagery of mankind (Barker 240). The juxtaposition of death scenes further shows the comparable societies of The Ghost Road, showing varied degrees of civility at a certain stage in life.
Conclusion
While these stylistic juxtapositions are powerful, they are limited in scope due to the failure of Barker to criticize the Melanesians. Her message is diluted by her inability to communicate not only the universality of civilization, but also the egalitarian sense of imperfection. For all their new customs, the Melanesians were never perceived as savage as the Europeans. However forward and groundbreaking such comparisons were, they failed to utilize Gurnah's sense of irony and self-defeatist characters. Gurnah's message was lucid, extracted from almost tragic heroes whose flaws were as much a testament to their character as their virtues. Njiru is almost benevolent, a hard concept to accept given the ramifications of his European counterparts in The Ghost Road. It is for that purpose that The Ghost Road did not win; for all its attempts to thematically endorse universality, the lack of character dimension in the Melanesians was Barker's weakest point. Though Gurnah was not literarily as sound in sophistication, style, or insight, it did evoke a new perception of Africa not as commonplace as the decrying of European imperialism. There are aspects of Barker's writingdialogue and aesthetic employmentthat outclass Gurnah's storyteller-style in Paradise. Gurnah was by no means deficient in his intellectual presentation; there were impressive parallels in Yusuf's development and Africa's post-colonial history, and still more impacting sexual and moralistic symbolisms manifested in African self-deprecation. What separated Gurnah most from Barker, warranting his book over hers, was his presentation and the case he argued. In addition to universality and the plague of European self-aggrandizement, Barker's novel was almost a secular humanist foray into the futility of war and, to an extent, the existentialist dilemma. The Europeans, after all, set out to civilize and settle the world, only to find out that all was for naught amid their own savageries. This theme is one most celebrated by European audiences, and while widely surmised among other readers, is one that strikes imperialism's critics the most. On the other hand, Gurnah's novel was succinct, lucid, far superior in pace, and shed light on a new subject while simultaneously remaining stylistically neutral enough to reach all audiences.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Barker, Pat. The Ghost Road. New York, Penguin Books 1995.
Gurnah, Abdulrazak. Paradise. New York, The New Press 1994.
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