(no subject)
Anna M. Weichselbraun
Literary & Cultural Theory
Prof. Sara Murphy
February 3, 2004
Achebe’s Things Fall Apart as seen with Baktin’s “Discourse in the Novel”
Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart benefits greatly from a formalist reading. Achebe’s novel is the story of an Igbo tribe in Nigeria attempting to come to terms with the intruding force of the English colonizers. Achebe’s purported goal is to write a history of colonization from the colonized point of view. Bakhtin proposes a new style of criticism based on sociolinguistics in his essay “Discourse in the Novel.” He asserts that every person uses several languages in order to communicate throughout the day and must, upon realization that the ideologies of these languages often conflict, choose among them. Now, this idea is not groundbreaking in a linguistic context but applied to the novel, it can yield some surprisingly accurate and interesting readings. The characters’ choose particular “languages” based on their ideology. The novel’s ending lends itself particularly well to a Bakhtinian dissection in terms of novelistic discourse when those discourses experience their final clash and apparently melt together. Achebe forces the reader recognize the opposing ideologies by illustrating that struggle within the narration.
The Characters’ Conflict of Discourse
Bakhtin believes that in contrast to poetry, prose differentiates rather than depersonalizes language. Considering that prose tends to employ a greater number and variety of discourses than poetry this comes to its advantage. The narrative structure of the novel often relates closely to the way the reader narrates his own life while in poetry the whole point (according to the Formalists) is to defamiliarize the word for the reader. Differentiation in prose serves to point out conflicting ideological languages while advancing the novelist’s values and intentions.
Heteroglossia, according to Bakhtin, is the social diversity of speech types. We use many different languages, often representing conflicting ideologies for every day communication. When Obierika sees his highly respected friend hanging from a tree (the result of a successful suicide attempt) he orders his fellow tribesmen to do the appropriate things in order to prepare for the necessary burial ceremony. His style is logistical and organizing; he does not allow himself to be emotional. Rather, he uses the formal language of authority within the tribe in order to create the necessary sense of respect and reverence. In contrast, when he addresses the colonizers he bursts out in anger and disbelief at the atrocities their presence has effected upon his people. Obierika is usually a calm and reserved man, but in this instance he has very strong feelings and is projecting them onto the English.
Bakhtin’s assertion that “consciousness finds itself inevitably facing the necessity of having to choose a language” applies here perfectly since it would be nearly imaginable for Obierika to have switched the languages for his utterances (35). He couldn’t possibly be emotional with his fellow tribesmen because he has a position of authority to uphold. Yet, he also understands (and is quite upset at that at the same time) that the colonizers rank above him in the hierarchy of people according to the European paradigm. His reaction could even be interpreted as childlike and a bit foolish because, in a way, he is a broken man. He realizes the futility of combating the strangers’ presence and finds emotional outburst as the only way to express his frustration with the situation.
In addition, Obierika explains that his tribe isn’t allowed to bury the body, “only strangers can” (208). He creates distance by asserting that only foreigners are supposed to touch a body that died in such a way. The language he uses - a formalistic and authoritative one - helps to alienate (at least for himself) the colonizers from the situation and his tribe. He is speaking in the ceremonial language of his people, a language that the English are not familiar with. Bakhtin traces the difference in languages back to social stratification where class standing and societal hierarchy determine a person’s particular type of speech. Obierika occupies a completely different social stratum than the Commissioner and therefore can use the language of his stratum to set the colonizers apart from himself.
When we look at the Messenger’s two exclamations in the passage, we see that the “Shut up” is intended to place himself with the colonizers and emphasize the alienation he has brought upon himself or even chosen by working with them. Were he still a part of the tribe he wouldn’t dare speak to Obierika in such a tone. Yet, just like the peasant in Bakhtin’s example, the Messenger has realized the contradicting languages he has been using and the conflicting ideologies they represent; he has realized the “necessity of actively choosing one’s orientation among them” (36). The Messenger positions himself in the hierarchy of the English, which he knows to be of higher value in the Western imperialist scale of social strata than the Igbo hierarchy.
The Narrator and Reader’s Conflict of Discourse
Bakhtin calls the interaction between authoritarian discourses the dialogic relationship. Especially in the novel, which is far better organized than life, can the reader extract meaning from the forms. Opposing ways of speaking, and therefore thinking, are presented within a closed context. The novel presents the persistent reality and presence of ideologies that the reader (and character) tends to take for granted. Having internalized these specifically demagogic assumptions about the world without being conscious of the way they dictate individual behavior, the form calls to the reader’s attention the discrepancies with the ideologies and the reader’s personal responsibility to choose a discourse.
When the Messenger answers “Yes, sah” to the Commissioner’s orders he is additionally distancing himself from his former people by now following orders from the English superior. He willingly places himself into the pecking order of the colonizers while he, at the same time, is being colonized. He has chosen one authorial discourse over the other. The interaction of the different languages within the novel clearly represents the struggle of ideologies these languages reflect. By positioning the conflicting discourses next to each other, Achebe achieves that the contrast of the ideologies grows even clearer. We must not even know the entire plot in order to grasp the power struggle on the last two pages.
The only direct quote from the Commissioner is, similar to Obierika’s orders yet in an entirely different discourse, managerial and bureaucratic. His tone implies that he is in charge there and getting things done. When the narrator continues the Commissioner’s thoughts and in that fashion ends the book, which is called free indirect discourse, we become aware of a truly bleak outcome. The narrator, who has been an objective commentator throughout the novel, first hotly describes Obierika’s reaction by using the word “ferociously” and then ends up being hijacked by the Commissioner’s voice.
Bakthin would contend that our words are ever our own.
Language is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker’s intentions; it is populated - overpopulated - with the intentions of others. Expropriating it, forcing it to submit to one’s own intentions and accents, is a difficult and complicated process (35.)
Yet, the narrator has been more or less neutral and simple in his storytelling. The abrupt change of camps, first with the Igbo, then permanently with the English surprises us as readers. But perhaps the narrator himself is struggling with which language to speak and which authoritative discourse to belong to. This process of differentiation in narration allows the reader to step back and clearly see the contradictory motivations, means, and ends the various parties in the novel subscribe to.
Achebe is clearly not telling the reader that he believes the colonizers did good things for the Igbo. Instead, he is using free indirect discourse in order to show us the future that we already know. He makes it quite clear that even though he attempts to tell his people’s history, the history that truly matters within the social stratification of the current world order is the history of the dominators. Ironically pointing out that the Commissioner intends to write a book like so many already written about colonization. Achebe allows his narrator to end the novel with the Commissioner’s thoughts because he wants the reader to clearly see the opposing ideologies. Only by assimilating the colonizers’ language into the narrator’s can he bluntly point out the reality that exists despite the good intentions of reformist history.
According to Bakhtin, the novelist uses different languages in the “unitary plane of the novel” for the “orchestration of his themes and for the refracted (indirect) expression of his intentions and values” (34-35). By juxtaposing Obierika’s speech types to the Messenger’s and the Commissioner’s utterances we recognize and grasp the ideological and, therefore, power struggle between the Igbo and the English colonizers that Achebe describes in his narrative.
However, the way Bakhtin describes the nature of authoritative discourse in his essay raises a few more questions.
Authoritative discourse may organize around itself great masses of other types of discourses…but the authoritative discourse itself does not merge with these; it remains sharply demarcated, compact and inert (42).
The narrator’s incorporation of the Commissioner’s thoughts into his discourse is at once abrupt and seamless. The distance that Bakhtin proposes is created by keeping the authoritative discourse distant from the other languages is eradicated. The narrator describes the near future to us in the vocabulary and language structure of the colonizers. Achebe defies Bakhtin’s idea that “the distance we here ourselves observe vis-à-vis this authoritative discourse remains unchanged in all its projections” by assimilating authoritative discourse in the until now assumedly objective narrative discourse.
Although Achebe destroys the distance to the authorial, he does not transform it into an internally persuasive discourse. The reader does not warm up to the authorial because of proximity. Rather, its strangeness and blatant ideology is presented in an even clearer and more polarizing way than if Achebe had put the Commissioner’s thoughts into quotation marks. The reader is alienated by the narrative’s sudden change in discursive ideology and recognizes the colonizing foe as a threatening force because of the nature of its presentation.
The way Achebe uses differentiation in order to point out the sharp contrasts between the clashing languages and ideologies serve to compellingly tell the story of the Igbo that will not be told as history. History is written by the Commissioners and the main end of Achebe’s novel wasn’t to accurately portray the plight of the Igbo during their “pacification” but to point out that such a task is not yet possible in the historically authoritative discourse of our Western paradigm.
Literary & Cultural Theory
Prof. Sara Murphy
February 3, 2004
Achebe’s Things Fall Apart as seen with Baktin’s “Discourse in the Novel”
Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart benefits greatly from a formalist reading. Achebe’s novel is the story of an Igbo tribe in Nigeria attempting to come to terms with the intruding force of the English colonizers. Achebe’s purported goal is to write a history of colonization from the colonized point of view. Bakhtin proposes a new style of criticism based on sociolinguistics in his essay “Discourse in the Novel.” He asserts that every person uses several languages in order to communicate throughout the day and must, upon realization that the ideologies of these languages often conflict, choose among them. Now, this idea is not groundbreaking in a linguistic context but applied to the novel, it can yield some surprisingly accurate and interesting readings. The characters’ choose particular “languages” based on their ideology. The novel’s ending lends itself particularly well to a Bakhtinian dissection in terms of novelistic discourse when those discourses experience their final clash and apparently melt together. Achebe forces the reader recognize the opposing ideologies by illustrating that struggle within the narration.
The Characters’ Conflict of Discourse
Bakhtin believes that in contrast to poetry, prose differentiates rather than depersonalizes language. Considering that prose tends to employ a greater number and variety of discourses than poetry this comes to its advantage. The narrative structure of the novel often relates closely to the way the reader narrates his own life while in poetry the whole point (according to the Formalists) is to defamiliarize the word for the reader. Differentiation in prose serves to point out conflicting ideological languages while advancing the novelist’s values and intentions.
Heteroglossia, according to Bakhtin, is the social diversity of speech types. We use many different languages, often representing conflicting ideologies for every day communication. When Obierika sees his highly respected friend hanging from a tree (the result of a successful suicide attempt) he orders his fellow tribesmen to do the appropriate things in order to prepare for the necessary burial ceremony. His style is logistical and organizing; he does not allow himself to be emotional. Rather, he uses the formal language of authority within the tribe in order to create the necessary sense of respect and reverence. In contrast, when he addresses the colonizers he bursts out in anger and disbelief at the atrocities their presence has effected upon his people. Obierika is usually a calm and reserved man, but in this instance he has very strong feelings and is projecting them onto the English.
Bakhtin’s assertion that “consciousness finds itself inevitably facing the necessity of having to choose a language” applies here perfectly since it would be nearly imaginable for Obierika to have switched the languages for his utterances (35). He couldn’t possibly be emotional with his fellow tribesmen because he has a position of authority to uphold. Yet, he also understands (and is quite upset at that at the same time) that the colonizers rank above him in the hierarchy of people according to the European paradigm. His reaction could even be interpreted as childlike and a bit foolish because, in a way, he is a broken man. He realizes the futility of combating the strangers’ presence and finds emotional outburst as the only way to express his frustration with the situation.
In addition, Obierika explains that his tribe isn’t allowed to bury the body, “only strangers can” (208). He creates distance by asserting that only foreigners are supposed to touch a body that died in such a way. The language he uses - a formalistic and authoritative one - helps to alienate (at least for himself) the colonizers from the situation and his tribe. He is speaking in the ceremonial language of his people, a language that the English are not familiar with. Bakhtin traces the difference in languages back to social stratification where class standing and societal hierarchy determine a person’s particular type of speech. Obierika occupies a completely different social stratum than the Commissioner and therefore can use the language of his stratum to set the colonizers apart from himself.
When we look at the Messenger’s two exclamations in the passage, we see that the “Shut up” is intended to place himself with the colonizers and emphasize the alienation he has brought upon himself or even chosen by working with them. Were he still a part of the tribe he wouldn’t dare speak to Obierika in such a tone. Yet, just like the peasant in Bakhtin’s example, the Messenger has realized the contradicting languages he has been using and the conflicting ideologies they represent; he has realized the “necessity of actively choosing one’s orientation among them” (36). The Messenger positions himself in the hierarchy of the English, which he knows to be of higher value in the Western imperialist scale of social strata than the Igbo hierarchy.
The Narrator and Reader’s Conflict of Discourse
Bakhtin calls the interaction between authoritarian discourses the dialogic relationship. Especially in the novel, which is far better organized than life, can the reader extract meaning from the forms. Opposing ways of speaking, and therefore thinking, are presented within a closed context. The novel presents the persistent reality and presence of ideologies that the reader (and character) tends to take for granted. Having internalized these specifically demagogic assumptions about the world without being conscious of the way they dictate individual behavior, the form calls to the reader’s attention the discrepancies with the ideologies and the reader’s personal responsibility to choose a discourse.
When the Messenger answers “Yes, sah” to the Commissioner’s orders he is additionally distancing himself from his former people by now following orders from the English superior. He willingly places himself into the pecking order of the colonizers while he, at the same time, is being colonized. He has chosen one authorial discourse over the other. The interaction of the different languages within the novel clearly represents the struggle of ideologies these languages reflect. By positioning the conflicting discourses next to each other, Achebe achieves that the contrast of the ideologies grows even clearer. We must not even know the entire plot in order to grasp the power struggle on the last two pages.
The only direct quote from the Commissioner is, similar to Obierika’s orders yet in an entirely different discourse, managerial and bureaucratic. His tone implies that he is in charge there and getting things done. When the narrator continues the Commissioner’s thoughts and in that fashion ends the book, which is called free indirect discourse, we become aware of a truly bleak outcome. The narrator, who has been an objective commentator throughout the novel, first hotly describes Obierika’s reaction by using the word “ferociously” and then ends up being hijacked by the Commissioner’s voice.
Bakthin would contend that our words are ever our own.
Language is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker’s intentions; it is populated - overpopulated - with the intentions of others. Expropriating it, forcing it to submit to one’s own intentions and accents, is a difficult and complicated process (35.)
Yet, the narrator has been more or less neutral and simple in his storytelling. The abrupt change of camps, first with the Igbo, then permanently with the English surprises us as readers. But perhaps the narrator himself is struggling with which language to speak and which authoritative discourse to belong to. This process of differentiation in narration allows the reader to step back and clearly see the contradictory motivations, means, and ends the various parties in the novel subscribe to.
Achebe is clearly not telling the reader that he believes the colonizers did good things for the Igbo. Instead, he is using free indirect discourse in order to show us the future that we already know. He makes it quite clear that even though he attempts to tell his people’s history, the history that truly matters within the social stratification of the current world order is the history of the dominators. Ironically pointing out that the Commissioner intends to write a book like so many already written about colonization. Achebe allows his narrator to end the novel with the Commissioner’s thoughts because he wants the reader to clearly see the opposing ideologies. Only by assimilating the colonizers’ language into the narrator’s can he bluntly point out the reality that exists despite the good intentions of reformist history.
According to Bakhtin, the novelist uses different languages in the “unitary plane of the novel” for the “orchestration of his themes and for the refracted (indirect) expression of his intentions and values” (34-35). By juxtaposing Obierika’s speech types to the Messenger’s and the Commissioner’s utterances we recognize and grasp the ideological and, therefore, power struggle between the Igbo and the English colonizers that Achebe describes in his narrative.
However, the way Bakhtin describes the nature of authoritative discourse in his essay raises a few more questions.
Authoritative discourse may organize around itself great masses of other types of discourses…but the authoritative discourse itself does not merge with these; it remains sharply demarcated, compact and inert (42).
The narrator’s incorporation of the Commissioner’s thoughts into his discourse is at once abrupt and seamless. The distance that Bakhtin proposes is created by keeping the authoritative discourse distant from the other languages is eradicated. The narrator describes the near future to us in the vocabulary and language structure of the colonizers. Achebe defies Bakhtin’s idea that “the distance we here ourselves observe vis-à-vis this authoritative discourse remains unchanged in all its projections” by assimilating authoritative discourse in the until now assumedly objective narrative discourse.
Although Achebe destroys the distance to the authorial, he does not transform it into an internally persuasive discourse. The reader does not warm up to the authorial because of proximity. Rather, its strangeness and blatant ideology is presented in an even clearer and more polarizing way than if Achebe had put the Commissioner’s thoughts into quotation marks. The reader is alienated by the narrative’s sudden change in discursive ideology and recognizes the colonizing foe as a threatening force because of the nature of its presentation.
The way Achebe uses differentiation in order to point out the sharp contrasts between the clashing languages and ideologies serve to compellingly tell the story of the Igbo that will not be told as history. History is written by the Commissioners and the main end of Achebe’s novel wasn’t to accurately portray the plight of the Igbo during their “pacification” but to point out that such a task is not yet possible in the historically authoritative discourse of our Western paradigm.