Customer Reviews

The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Over my lengthy teaching career, I taught Chinua Achebe's novels THINGS FALL APART (1959) and NO LONGER AT EASE (1960) more often than I taught any other works of imaginative literature of comparable length. Consequently, when I read that Achebe had published a new short collection of essays, I hastened to order a copy of THE EDUCATION OF A BRITISH-PROTECTED CHILD: ESSAYS. As you might expect, I found some of the essays more interesting than others.

But I am writing this customer review to protest against Achebe's continuing charge against Conrad over alleged racist views in Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS. Achebe himself gives no evidence in the essays in this new collection - or anywhere else that I know of -- of having considered any counterarguments to his well-publicized arguments. So I propose to set forth here counterarguments for prospective readers of Achebe's new collection of essays to consider.

With respect to the passages in Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS that Achebe has selected to object to, I agree with him that the views expressed in the selected passages in the text can be characterized as racist. But I can think of less harsh terms to use to register the same criticism about the limited range of humanity expressed in certain statements.

But in the frame narrative in Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS, the views that Achebe has selected as expressing racist views are imputed in the text to Marlow. But Achebe imputes them to Conrad! But the views in question are not necessarily Conrad's!

Moreover, nowhere in the text is Marlow presented as an apotheosis of all that is good in human nature, as Beatrice is presented in Dante's PARADISO. Furthermore, nowhere does Conrad tell us to take everything Marlow says at face value. Thus if there are no explicit hints about exactly how we are to be circumspect about what Marlow says, there are no explicit injunctions to regard him as an entirely reliable narrator either. In short, we are free to question Marlow's judgment, as Achebe does.

But what about the title? The title of Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS does not lead me to expect that I will be reading about an imaginary paradise, as the title of Dante's PARADISO leads me to expect. On the contrary, the title of Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS leads me to expect that I will be reading about the heart of darkness, but the title does not tell me exactly wherein I may find the heart of darkness in the novella.

If Achebe understands that Marlow is expressing racist views, isn't Achebe thereby examining the heart of darkness in Marlow? In short, can't Achebe understand Marlow's racist views to be one form of darkness, although perhaps not the only form of darkness to be found in Conrad's novella?

Moreover, when Achebe himself spells out the problem that he finds in the text by saying that Marlow does not recognize that the Africans are people, aren't we coming pretty close to the heart of darkness? In plain English, Marlow distances himself from and de-humanizes the Africans.

As Achebe notes, when we read novels, we tend to identify with the dominant cultural conditioning that is expressed in the novel. In plain English, we tend to say "we" and "us" to the dominant cultural conditioning expressed in the novel. As a result, when we first read Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS, we may tend to say "we" and "us" to the limited views expressed by Marlow. But we are free to reflect on and question his views, as Achebe does. This process of reflection involves critical reading - in plain English, not being taken in uncritically by the novel.

After I have removed Conrad the author as the target of Achebe's criticism about racist views and have substituted Marlow as the appropriate target for Achebe's criticism about racist views, I can thank Achebe for deepening my critical understanding of Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS.

Next, I want to discuss an analogy based on Achebe's THINGS FALL APART. In this novel the author uses the narrative device known as the omniscient narrator. This is a far more straightforward narrative device than the tricky narrative device of the frame narrative that the author of HEART OF DARKNESS uses. At times, the omniscient narrator in THINGS FALL APART comments in no uncertain terms about something portrayed in the novel, most notably at the very end of the novel.

The main character is Okonkwo. He is presented sympathetically but not uncritically. He is a strong man whose father was weak and unsuccessful. Okonkwo worked hard and overcame adversity to become a successful farmer. As a young man, he became a champion wrestler. Subsequently, he was an outstanding warrior, and he was recognized and rewarded for his warrior services to his village by being given certain public responsibilities within the village. Nevertheless, he is at times a rash man. In the course of the novel we learn enough about Okonkwo that we can classify him as a round character, not a flat character.

Compared to all the things that we learn about Okonkwo in the course of the novel, we learn relatively little about Agamemnon and Achilles in the Homeric epic the ILIAD. So compared to Okonkwo, Agamemnon and even Achilles are flat characters, not round characters. However, in the opening episode, we learn that both Agamemnon and Achilles are rash men, just as we learn that Okonkwo is at times a rash man.

But we should pause and note certain things that we do not learn a lot about in the novel. Even though we learn that Okonkwo is a successful warrior, we are not given detailed battle scenes, as we are in the three big battle scenes of the successful warrior Beowulf in the medieval heroic epic BEOWULF. (When the British slaughter the people in a neighboring village, that event also takes place off-stage and is merely reported to us in the novel.)

But Beowulf is not portrayed as a rash man, as are Agamemnon and Achilles in the opening episode of the ILIAD and as is Okonkwo.

Conversely, apart from battle scenes, we learn a lot more about Okonkwo than we do learn about Beowulf. Compared to Okonkwo, Beowulf is not a round character but a flat character, just as Agamemnon and Achilles are flat characters.

However, despite his flaws and limitations, Okonkwo is arguably a great man in his cultural context, as Beowulf is in his, and as Achilles and Hector are in their cultural contexts in the Homeric epic the ILIAD. But to understand Okonkwo's greatness, we will probably have to consider him carefully as a warrior and compare him to Beowulf -- and to Achilles and Hector. The cultural conditions in Africa that gave rise to the warrior Okonkwo are roughly comparable to the cultural conditions in antiquity that gave rise to the warriors Achilles and Hector, and in medieval culture to Beowulf.

Moreover, symbolically, Okonkwo symbolizes all of us who find ourselves mid-life in emerging cultural conditions that are significantly different from the cultural conditioning in which we grew up.

But what can we say about the two episodes in the novel concerning wife-beating, where the omniscient narrator does not comment in no uncertain terms about wife-beating? Should we charge the author with endorsing wife-beating because the omniscient narrators fails to criticize the practice in no uncertain terms?

As each episode stands, it appears that the practice of wife-beating is accepted by the Ibo people, but with the understanding that there is a limit beyond which it is not acceptable to go.

From those two episodes, should we charge that the author condones limited wife-beating? After all, the author uses the narrative device of the omniscient narrator, and the omniscient narrator does not criticize the practice of wife-beating in no uncertain terms. In this way, limited wife-beating appears to be an accepted practice not only among the Ibo people but also for the omniscient narrator. But can we go beyond pointing out these obvious points and charge the author with condoning limited wife-beating because the author does not portray any explicit criticism of this practice in the text of the novel, just criticism of carrying the wife-beating too far?

For the sake of discussion, I will assume that the author would want to object to having me make such a charge against him.

But if he were to object to the charge of condoning wife-beating against him because the omniscient narrators does not criticize the practice in no uncertain terms, then he should join me in objecting to his charge against the author Joseph Conrad.

We do not need to have the omniscient narrator tell us what exactly we should think about wife-beating, just as we do not need to have explicit hints about how we are to think about Marlow's racist views.

And what should we say about the cultural conditions in Nigeria that gave rise to the author Chinua Achebe and conspired to enable him to write the novels THINGS FALL APART and NO LONGER AT EASE - two sensitive creative achievements? If Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS grated against Achebe's sensibility so strongly that he was moved to write those two novels, then I say glory be to God for Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS -- and glory be to God for Achebe's novels.

As Achebe intimates in places in this collection of essays, the supposed darkness of Africa (the so-called dark continent) and Africans involved projections of the European and Western psyche. But if we are going to give credit where credit is due, then Conrad deserves a certain share of credit for plumbing the depths of that projection.

If you ask me, Achebe understood and understands what Conrad's novella is all about - it is about the heart of darkness that Achebe chooses to sum up as racist, although that is not all that it is about or all of the heart of darkness portrayed in the novella. In effect, Conrad was Achebe's muse. Thus it is sad that Achebe cannot be more respectful of Conrad's achievement as a European in plumbing the depths of the European and Western heart of darkness.

But the European and Western heart of darkness may be more than just racist - it may also be sexist, as may the heart of darkness in other cultures (just as the heart of darkness in other cultures may be racist - or ethnocentric).

"Does it matter, I ask myself, that centuries before these European Christians sailed down to us in ships to deliver the Gospel and save us from darkness, their ancestors, also sailing in ships, had delivered our forefathers to the horrendous transatlantic slave trade and unleashed darkness in our world?" Chinua Achebe, "The Education of a British Protected Child"

51 years ago Chinua Achebe wrote in "Things Fall Apart", "A child's fingers cannot be scalded by a piece of hot yam which its mother puts into its palm." In "The Education of a British Protected Child", Achebe revealed why that is so. Woven into a collection of 16 essays the author portrayed the essence Africa in general, and Nigeria in particular, to the world in general, and the English speaking west in particular. The themes and topics in this book were not new; some of the essays were revised pieces from his published oeuvre. His defence of English as the lingua franca of Nigeria despite his disdain for colonial rule is best appreciated in the context of the book as a whole. The snippets of life of oppressed Africans, impoverished Nigerians, his personal life growing up in Africa and studying abroad, the impact of Christianity on Africans all have a profound personal impact on this famous, sensitive (in the positive sense) son of Ogidi, Nigeria.

Some of his more famous criticisms of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" can be found in the chapter entitled "Africa's Tarnished Image". After reading his comments on Conrad's book, one might be tempted to agree with the sentiments of that English professor who went up to Achebe - after he had listened to a speech in which Achebe had severely criticized Conrad as racist - and said, "I now realize that I had never really read "Heart of Darkness" although I have taught it for years." Achebe felt that Conrad, among other things, "devised a simple hierarchical order of souls for the characters in Heart of Darkness. At the bottom are the Africans, whom he calls `rudimentary souls.' Above them are the defective Europeans, obsessed with ivory, petty vicious, morally obtuse; he calls them `tainted souls' or `small souls.' At the top are regular Europeans, and their souls don't seem to have the need for an adjective." His criticism of Conrad and colonialism was not pure venom. "The point", in his words, "of all this is to alert us to the image burden that Africa bears today and make us recognize how that image has molded contemporary attitudes, including perhaps our own, to that continent."


Writing from afar might sometimes let us see not only farther, but also deeper. Achebe, a Nigerian, accomplished in English prose in a way an Englishman has yet to acquit himself in any African language. This is not a criticism of the Englishman or his language. It is a plain (neutral) fact that has such meaning and implications as one might draw from Achebe's works. He might be living in New York, but Achebe declares that his "romance with the world is subsidiary to [his] involvement with Nigeria." Or was that because he had not quite acquired the taste of Nigerian nationalism?

I very rarely find essays satisfying, but since this was Achebe and it was a library check out, I went for it. I was hoping to learn more about this author and something of Nigeria. There were a few interesting moments such as Achebe's meeting Richard Wright and Langston Hughes, his views on Conrad, travel in Africa in the early 1960's and his impressions on high level literary or policy gatherings, but on the whole this book validates my feeling.

Achebe is a master in developing themes. The essay forces a point and doesn't have the space for layering ideas. Essays work for news events, but there is not enough space to develop a theme.

These pieces cover colonialism, images of Africans in print and the historical record, the rape of Africa after "independence", etc. The book is OK, but Achebe's views are better expressed in his books.

Later - The 5 star rating does not match my review. I meant to give this 3 stars. My finger must have slipped. It does not appear that this can be edited.

When the author was turned down by Trinity College, Cambridge, he stayed in Nigeria and wrote fiction. In 1957 when he traveled and was granted a passport, it was as a British Protected Person. It was a middle ground, neither a position of origin, nor the last.

There were two first class boarding schools for boys in Nigeria. The author attended Umuahia. Later he went to University College at Ibadon. The author's village was Igidi. His father, born in the 1880's, was employed at the Anglican Mission.

The author has found being a Nigerian frustrating and exciting. In 1962 Langston Hughes and Saunders Redding visited Makerere University in Uganda. The author writes convincingly of the poisonous writing of Joseph Conrad. This book of essays is wonderful. Achebe considers so many issues about which to think deeply.

This book is a part of a book club reading. I grew up reading Professor Achebes books so I wasnt surprised to find out that this was also excellent. Very interesting to read. Glad that I did.

This would have been so helpful in college. Achebe discusses the issues and questions:
Why can't African counrtries get it together?
Did they sell each other into slavery?
Did Europeans 'discover' Africa?
The book 'Heart of Darkness
Martin Luther King

Achebe had a lot of ideas new to me, and from an original viewpoint.

"Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu" should be repeated every hour on the hour by every school child all over the world until it becomes the mantra of all societies. It is Bantu for "A human is human because of other humans."

The simple but profound adage is the theme of Chinua Achebe's collection of essays, The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays. It may also be the theme of his life's work, judging by the simple message it conveys about the importance of the communal aspirations of the peoples of Africa. He uses it several times in various essays in the book, but really drives the point home in the concluding paragraph of the last one, titled "Africa Is People."

"Our humanity is contingent on the humanity of our fellows. No person or group can be human alone. We rise above the animal together, or not at all. If we learned that lesson even this late in the day, we would have taken a truly millennial step forward."

Achebe, winner of the Man Booker International Prize and best known as the author of Things Fall Apart, one of the seminal works of African fiction, has a subtle, dry voice that makes each of these seventeen essays something to savor and linger over. He makes his points about racial stereotypes, African development, history, and politics, and the African-American diaspora, sometimes with humor, sometimes with biting directness, but always graciously and without rancor. You sense Achebe knows that to rail against injustice is futile; change must come through education achieved one cogent argument at a time.

While Achebe is a scholar, he is also a master storyteller. More often than not, he makes his points not with dry logical argument but with an exegetical tale about someone he's met or something that's happened to him. Those little narratives are much more illustrative than pure cant. In "Spelling Our Proper Name," he tells the story of Dom Afonso of Bukongo, for example, who negotiated with King John III of Portugal in 1526 as an equal. He then writes:

"Such stories as Dom Alfonso's encounter with Europe are not found in the history books we read in schools. If we knew them....young James Baldwin would not have felt a necessity to compare himself so adversely with peasants in a Swiss village. He would have known that his African ancestors did not sit through the millennia idly gazing into the horizon, waiting for European slavers to come and get them."

I found his exploration of the complex politics and history of Africa in "Africa's Tarnished Name" to be particularly thought-provoking. He also talks frequently about Joseph Conrad's purported racism, which has become an important theme in the deconstruction of Heart of Darkness. Some of these essays have been presented elsewhere, although they have been revised and updated since they were first published. Nothing in them is dated, however, and Achebe's insightful discussions with Langston Hughes and James Baldwin ring as true as his observations about the potent symbolism of Barack Obama's election as President of the United States.

If you enjoyed other books by Chinua Achibi you will find this to be a waste of time. It is a compilation of his various lectures and is not particularly entertaining.
Huge disappointment

I am starting to read Mr. Achebe's latest book for the second time. I think Mr. Achebe, like other passionate writers who's life is intertwined with the continent of Africa, e.g. Chinweizu, continues the old saga of attempting to help the rest of the world understand the heart beat of the most valuable resource on the continent of Africa, the people.