Unit 12

English 203: Literature of the NonWestern World

Questions:

Chat:

• Western literature almost always stereotypes native religious "types" (shamans, oracles, ritualists) as fakes, frauds or superstitiously ignorant.  Compare the oracle Agbala, who tells Unoka to "go home & work like a man" (2943) with the missionaries (Mr. Kiaga, e.g.). 
• Responding to a white missionary, a tribal says, "You told us . . . there was only one god.  Now you talk about his son."  The, "The missionary ignored him & went on to talk about the Holy Trinity" (3003).  What do such scene imply about the British?  About missionaries? 
• Another postcolonial writer, V.S. Naipaul (an ethnic Indian who grew up in Trinidad) is a highly accomplished writer who is very controversial for espousing much of the colonialist view (i.e. the British 19th c. view).  When the colonial subject is Trinidad Naipaul voices the usual moral objection.  When the object is India, he strangely says that "18th c. India was squalid.  It invited conquest" (An Area of Darkness 213).  Is there any sense in which this is true of Nigeria, that somehow it invited conquest?
• Would yin tactics have worked?  This would mean accepting the British program in regard to schools, the English language, jobs, & law.  Yin tactics would mean toleration of mission propaganda & British arrogance but keeping indigenous religious beliefs & values in tact. This is arguably the pattern of Japanese accommodation with the West & perhaps of India (ef. Gandhi's passive resistance which sought to shame the British for not living up to the ideals that they supposedly were there in India to teach). 
• What should of Okonkwo done?

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