Friday's Inner Foe

“He tells the story of oppression without pretending to speak for the oppressed.”

Although it shows condensed reasoning, the isolated statement above requires further explanation. It is a quote of Scott G. Bishop’s from an article that he wrote titled: J.M. Coetzee’s Foe: A Culmination and a Solution to a Problem of White Identity. Without adequate elaboration of specific varieties of oppression within the novel there remains an enigmatic, blank, and non-negotiable paradigm attempting to posses the meaning of oppression for itself. Bishop is, of course, critiquing the part played by Friday, Crusoe’s slave, in relation to his white “overlord," or more pointedly Crusoe. However, my impression of Friday’s whole demeanor throughout the novel leads me to believe that Coetzee is not making the point that skin color alone is responsible for developing a spontaneous and universal caste system on an island of two people. If it were, there would have to be a very ridiculous couple of castaways to create it.

I do not think this was the case with Crusoe, who, although depicted savagely by Coetzee, was a simple, O.C.D. savage, and required help from Friday only to maintain their mutual survival. He is not a cruel taskmaster, as his claim on page 37 of Coetzee's novel Foe puts it: “There is no call to punish Friday,” replied Crusoe. “Friday has lived with me for many years. He has no other master. He follows me in all things.” Is he being evil to Friday? Quite the contrary, this quote gives the impression that Friday's state of servitude stems almost from an acquired sense of instinct that compels him to serve Crusoe in return for the acquired benefits inherent to being a member (albeit at a lower layer) of their island hierarchy. It is a focused fragment of the text where Coetzee diverts the reader's attention from Crusoe and directs it toward Friday. Therefore, the poor conditions of his servitude, according to my readings of the text, stem from his inability to obtain independence from Crusoe due to his state of mental or verbal concealment. Now, we have to assume that his thought life is more than a gapping void, so the bolder behavior of his silence vs. his mind points to a type of verbal avoidance on his part.

My theory is that the purposefully aggravated tension between Friday and Susan in Foe stems from a mysterious event in this man’s past which set the wheels of his mind down a path that excludes extroverted communication altogether and thrives on a semi-self-inflicted introversion. This is alluded to in Foe, which expounds on Susan’s encounters, and one in particular, with Friday. It reads, “Tears came to my eyes, I am ashamed to say; all the elation of my discovery that through the medium of music I might at last converse with Friday was dashed, and bitterly I began to recognize that it might not be mere dullness that kept him shut up in himself, nor the accident of the loss of his tongue, nor even an incapacity to distinguish speech from babbling, but a disdain for intercourse with me.” (98) Apparently, next to no method could be suitably contrived to vivify his thought life into a communicable form or drive it into the present. Most of us would find a non-verbal existence such as Friday's unbearable, but behind this initial reaction of ours lurks the long-term uncertainty that non-verbal individuals have nothing to say.

Conclusions such as this can be reached from an analytic reworking of the novel Foe as a first-person narrative, such as the one I will provide in the following paragraphs. It is the concise clash of several key allergens of motive that invade the nostrils of quasi-sophisticated humanity, simultaneously compressing the primary brainwork of Friday’s inner foe into a readable, chronological and cognitive arrangement. Among other tidbits in this analysis, I explore the controlling power of suppressed memories. The origins of Friday’s omnivorous mentality. Human speech verses noises from nature. And the comparative connection between natural death and being hunted for food. Most, if not all of these stimuli are encoded in his mind in the form of metaphor from the time he was four years old. The metaphors in my analysis embody and take on the nature of that which they stand for. In other words, I use the metaphor "worms" to represent human and animal tongues. It would be less than considerate and considerably more difficult for me to write out his thoughts in pure hieroglyphic format!

It is therefore neccissary, at least in my mind, to use metaphor when attempting to connect with the mind of both a mute and non-communicative individual. This is the primary method whereby I attempt an analysis of his psyche. Almost all of the objects in the following tale are described by Friday using natural terminology, such as the example of the "worms" I provided above. You will soon discover the logical progression of this genesis of non-verbal association. The following account takes place as a memory of his life, as Friday is speaking to himself in his mind in a narrative format with quotes from Foe (with Susan, not Friday, doing much of the talking) interspersed to give the reader a context by which to fasten Coetzee's text to mine in a way that elaborates on those particular contexts in which Friday plays a part. It is elucidated as follows:

'I stared in amazement. "Who cut out his tongue?"

"The slavers."

"The slavers cut out his tongue and sold him into slavery? The slave-hunters of Africa? But surely he was a mere child when they took him. Why would they cut out a child's tongue?" (23)

"Perhaps the slavers, who are Moors, hold the tongue to be a delicacy." (23)

Their claws pinned down my face and they wrapped their tales around my wrists...they were much greater than me, you know. One of the beasts drew near with a hot glowing claw extending from its paw. It reached into my mouth, past the fangs, ignoring the slithering movements of the worm inside. The claw tore at it. Blood scattered everywhere, as though it was afraid of the worm from which it came. Its red body flopped out of the mouth onto the tough hide of the big hollow beast. Pain with noise from my mouth attacks the other beasts. Their claws retract. More slithering comes...from every part of me.

'Was Friday then a child, when the ship went down?" I asked. "Aye, a child, a mere child, a little slave-boy," replied Cruso.' (12)

Everything is a beast, both small and great. And this I have come to know...some beasts that are smaller are greater beasts than even the great beast itself. Ahhh! Now that is something worth remembering! When I was first in danger from being taken by it I knew that I had to avoid it at all costs. Its giant waves of saliva hunted in the blackness spraying its wetness over the head of the big hollow beast in whose belly chambers I lay, a mere morsel among others...how long ago I’m not certain. It spilled down into those chambers. Beasts like me crawled out on the hide to do battle with it. It must have taken many of them to satisfy its never-ending hunger for its roars and tossing never relent. It never swallows me though because I know better, I know better.

Though my hiding place below kept me from being tossed into this destruction I could sense from its turmoil of noise and the looks of the other beasts that the hard, hollow beast’s life would soon be taken from it. It was a good beast, never brushing off the other beasts that clambored about on it and in it, always letting me climb its tall arms that allowed me to see far out over the saliva in every direction. The other beasts stored food in its belly and nothing happened to it...maybe it was dead. From time to time I’d wondered about this, only to be corrected by my own observation that it must have been alive on account of it swimming through the saliva with great speed. It did not seem to care if one of the beasts like myself had slipped into the saliva, for it would swim back only if the beast with white hair growing from its face growled to the others and made them twist the horns of the hollow beast in that direction. Why it allowed them to do this I do not know. They gave it nothing in return.

Now that I think of it, that beast must not have been very cunning, for it rammed itself into the giant teeth that jut out of the tossing saliva. I see these very hard, solid teeth every now and then when I paddle through the saliva. Though I did not see them then, when the blue beast above my head fled from the dark beast with fire in its many eyes.

At first there was quiet, then noise following noise attacked the beasts from every side. And just as the hollow beast began its battle with those teeth, a beast with dark hair and white skin rushes up to me and growls something in my face. Its eyes flash with fire like the eyes of dark beast over our heads. Taking my arm it leads me up to the back hide of our beast, where I could see its face. It was not one of the beasts who removed the worm from my mouth, but had been the only one who tried to pull the other beasts off of me. For what reason I do not know. Maybe it wanted the worm for itself...though I do not think so.

We leapt from the back of that hollow beast into the saliva! Again, at the time I did not know why it was doing this and thought that it was a beast that was not following its senses and wanted to do battle with the saliva by being devoured alive by it! But when I started swimming through it with this beast pulling me along by the paw, I knew that we would come out of the saliva alive. The multi-speckled beast over our heads was still hovering over us when we clawed our way onto the belly of the great beast, where I have since spent the remainder of my life...

"Wind, rain, wind, rain: such was the pattern of the days in that place, and had been, for all I knew, since the beginning of time." (14,15)

It’s breath is still breathing on us, breathing without end. I don’t yet understand why it does this and I never have. Maybe it is to cause us to hate it. Or is it a way of taunting us, playing with us so that we’ll know that we are the one’s that can never tear out its worm? Where even is its worm! Since we have landed on its body the breath of the great beast has never stopped. It whips our hair into our faces, and at times is so strong that it knocks us onto its body. By “us” I mean the two other beasts like me, and myself. The one with hair on its face and the other who seems unable to grow it. And although I spent more time with the first one I am prone to remember more about the second. There is...too much for that now. Let me see what I remember from when I was smaller, and had just clawed my way up onto the belly of the great beast. Oh yes...

The one with dark hair was looking me over and I could tell that it was hungry from the fire in its eyes. It was larger than I and I knew that if I fought back more than my worm would be taken from me. After all, it had fought alone against many of the beasts at once. It had done injury to a few of their hides and removed many of their tales...which was more than I could do. Had it now dragged me through the saliva and away from the others to deposit me in a secret place and make a private feast of me? I looked around to see if there was anything nearby I could kill and lay at its hind-paws to appease it. And, by such a gift, there was the chance that it would protect me as one of its offspring. However, it altered its gaze at something moving in the nearby hairs that grow out of the great beast and growled at me to follow behind it in pursuit. Apparently no such gift was required and I had joined the pack. In no time we overtook a helpless beast that was chewing on the hairs that grow out of the great beast. Its ears were long and it had a little patch of hair shooting out from under its chin.

We played with it...at first. Then the dark-haired beast put something hard in its own paw and struck it in the head. Though, it did not die and the noise attacking us from its mouth needed to stop. I pinned it to the hide of the great beast with my paws, took a sharp claw that belonged to the dark one, and cut out its worm. Blood scattered everywhere, as though it was afraid of the worm from which it came.

"I asked Cruso about the apes. When he first arrived, he said, they had roamed all over the island, bold and mischievous.

He had killed many, after which the remainder had retreated to the cliffs of what he called the North Bluff. On my walks I

sometimes heard their cries and saw them leaping from rock to rock. In size they were between a cat and a fox, grey, with

black faces and black paws. I saw no harm in them; but Cruso held them a pest, and he and Friday killed them whenever

they could." (20,21)

Many times the blue beast above our heads had chased away the beast with fiery eyes until we discovered that other beasts, even hairier ones than the dark one were also wandering hither and thither on the belly of the beast. They had strange faces and paws like us, with long tales that do not detach. I never thought that what happened next would make me slither inside...from every part of me.

It wasn’t a planned attack, though this scarcely mattered because of the way they toyed with us. They were much smaller and nimbler than us, and they outnumbered us twenty to one. At first it didn’t seem like they were attacking, but then I heard one of them make a noise and shot a glimpse of the dark one a moment later holding it limply in its paw. It must have attacked, though I didn’t see any gouge marks on the dark one’s face. This was not the case with me, however. Once they saw the limp body they began attacking me with noises such as you’ve never heard! Then one after the other leapt onto me, biting my ears and fingers. The dark one sprang over to throw them off and proceeded to lump them on the head with hard objects...I did the same. We came away from there with twenty beast hides, and were finally able to keep the breath of the great beast from freezing us to death because they had a great deal of hair on them.

"In the centre of the flat hilltop was a cluster of rocks as high as a house. In the angle between two of the these rocks Cruso had

built himself a hut of poles and reeds, the reeds artfully thatched together and woven in and out of the poles with fronds to form

roof and walls." (9)

Hair, hmmm. Yes, we used the hair of the great beast that grows up out of it everywhere and make ourselves a den to further protect us from its own breath. We survived a long time without it noticing, though when it often did it would scatter the hairs from where we placed them and its saliva would come out of its belly and wash them out into the greater saliva. We had no way of predicting just what the great beast will do once it grows angry again that we have removed its hairs. But one thing is certain, its breath always returned soon afterwards. I learned to ignore it.

'"How many words of English does Friday know?" I asked. "As many as he needs," replied Cruso.' (21)

However, one thing I couldn’t ignore were the growls from the dark one. Its breath came at me less seldom than the great beast’s, and now it does hardly at all. But back then it taught me, using these growls and motions from its paws, that some things make a certain growl that cannot be heard, and that when we make this growl for them it means that we want them or that we can see them. It was, and still is difficult for me to distinguish between these two, because how often do I want something I cannot see? I am still at a loss to understand how the dark one could know all of the growls which bodies that are not beasts make. But I leave it to that one and not to me to think about...for I know better. Breath and noise are almost the same beast.

"Off the island grew beds of brown seaweed which, borne ashore by the waves, gave off a noisome stench and supported swarms

of pale fleas." (7)

When I was still small, without hair on my face, I used to escape the dark one’s breath (for then it was stronger and attacked me with greater force then). I’d scamper down to the great saliva and see if I could discover anything else that had crawled up out of it. I carefully avoided the areas swarming with unusual amounts of activity and decay. There were such small beasts there that you could hardly see them. They jumped into your hairs, like the very hairy beasts jumping through the hairs of the great beast. These were far too small to play with and because of that fact made a rather unsubstantial feast.

"He (Friday) gave no reply, but regarded me as he would a seal or a porpoise thrown up the by the waves, that would shortly

expire and might then be cut up for food." (6)

My eyes prowled the surface of the saliva and observed several beasts being spit up out of it onto the great beast’s belly. They have no hair, as far as I can tell, but possess fins and are extremely bulbous in the midsection. I had no idea why the great beast would refuse to eat such things, until I did so myself. There are many things that look so much like they shouldn’t be hunted, though usually the hunter finds this out after it is too late. Ever afterwards I left those beasts alone and captured faster ones with scales instead. They swim in the great beast’s saliva and come up from the depths in droves as though they were once packs of greater beasts that have been chewed up into smaller bits by the great beast’s teeth. They must be...they are so frightened that their eyes never blink!

I was satisfied with my improved stalking and felt that I was becoming a full beast, whatever that meant. I envisioned that eventually I would be as great as the dark one and know what beasts were growling without them growling it. I do not know how I would do this...perhaps by eating a beast of some kind that you can only obtain when you are large enough. Or perhaps, if I wasn’t eaten by any beast for a long time I could become so great that I would be like the great beast itself so that nothing could ever eat me. Nevertheless, the dark one hadn’t changed into something as large the great beast yet, so my thoughts of becoming my worst fear slowly died away.

The dark one did change, however. His hide grew darker and more like the hairs growing out of the great beast, while the hair on his head became lighter like the white bodies in the great blue beast that lives over our heads. They never fall into the great saliva or die and crash onto the great beast’s belly. And they are high enough to escape every kind of breath. Who knows? Maybe the dark one will turn into one of them and won’t have to listen to any more growls and breath down here with the rest of us beasts. I look at the dark one from time to time and wonder if there is something more to the growls and the breath since I hear them so often from it, and from every other beast but myself. Yet out of them all, it’s growls draw the most attention from me because they are all so different from one another.

'A dark shadow fell upon me, not of a cloud but of a man with a dazzling halo about him. "Castaway," I said with my thick dry

tongue. "I am cast away. I am all alone." And I held out my sore hands.'

Though not as different as those of the light one. When the blue beast was above our heads I found this one spit out of the great saliva, and making many growls like the dark one it looked at me with intensity in its eyes. They were like the eyes of the beasts with scales. I wondered how the great beast had hardly sucked any of its breath out, as there was a constant stream of high-sounding growls coming from it. I thought it best that the dark one should have a look at this new beast and slung it lightly into my arms. I learned that it came from another hollow beast which had also been devoured by the teeth of the great beast.

'I would pursue, and he would nod again. "So in the end I did not know what was truth, what was lies, and what was mere

rambling." (12)

What followed was what seemed like a struggle for the dark one to understand the light one’s growls. I certainly could not, though it’s breath was breathing on me, breathing without end. It facilitated the use of its paws with growling less than I needed, but seemed content to leave me alone when I failed to growl in return. And yet, it became even more agitated at the breath and growls of the great beast than we were. It came to the point where I was made to slice up small bits of the hairy beast’s hide and cover it’s ears with them. This went from bad to worse. Like the dark one it growled and pawed at everything it saw but seemed to need what it pawed at a great deal less, for it would suddenly spring onto something else it saw...which was tossed aside with as much disinterest and confusion as the last thing it was looking at.

This didn’t mean, however, that it didn’t require anything...quite the contrary infact. I was made to get all manner of things for this new beast. Whether it was beasts with scales and fins from the great saliva for it to feast itself on, or things that the dark one commonly used, I found myself responding to certain growls that I could tell it enjoyed using. Its worm never grew tired, though I was half-hoping it would shrivel up and die all by itself. I didn’t remove it because I felt that this creature had interests in me that involved something besides eating me or turning me into its mother. What it produced in me I cannot say.

"All this time Friday made no effort to help me, but on the contrary shunned the hut as though we two had the plague. At

daybreak he would set off with his fishing-spear." (27)

I abandoned that instinct soon after the light one took it up for the dark one. I learned to ignore this. There wasn’t much that I could do except roam the belly of the great beast more than usual to get it out of my mind. That was another thing: it growled me out of the dark one’s den and made me sleep out where I could see the beast over our heads when it turned dark. The tears of the white bodies over our heads wet me from nose to paw, and made the dark one so sad that he shook and lay in his den with the other one. I was understanding then where my path was leading, where all of ours must flow.

"Cruso was buried the next day. The crew stood bare-headed, the captain said a prayer, two sailors tilted the bier, and Cruso's remains, sewn in a canvas shroud, with the last stitch through his nose (I saw this done, as did Friday), wrapped about with a great chain, slid into the waves." (45)

The dark one’s hair has become nearly white by now, drooping as though it were dripping itself off his face like one of the white bodies does in its death. All of the beasts in my pack will come to this end if they do not grow scales and swim about with fins. What does it matter though, these other beasts have sown a web around it’s body and are taking it to the edge of their hollow beast. Look! They are casting the dark one into the great saliva!...I was wrong about escaping the great beast, it is all the beasts combined that are nudging each other into its gapping mouth and are themselves greater than it could ever be. Not in an effort to gain hope, for certain. Look at their faces, every beast alike! They are so frightened that their eyes never blink! These memories are growing cold...I must get back to my drawing.

"I tell a tale of oppression by pretending to speak for the oppressed."

Works Cited:

Bishop, Scott G. "J. M. Coetzee's Foe: A Culmination and a Solution to a Problem of White Identity." World Literature Today 64.1 (1990): 54-57. CSUN Oviatt Library. Web. 25 Nov. 2010.

Coetzee, J. M. Foe. New York, NY, USA: Penguin, 1987. Print.

Proposal - Friday's Metamorphosis

I propose to write an article chronicling the metamorphosis of Friday’s relationship with Susan, Crusoe and Foe from the novel entitled Foe, by J.M. Coetzee, and to do it by using outlandish metaphor. Exploring his experiences via a long stream of creative metaphor during a dream which he is having after living in England for some time. The dream harkens him back to the foggy moments before his own shipwreck when he is no more than five years old, and the trauma of having his tongue removed is expressed in strikingly nightmarish, yet concealed ways; propelling the use of metaphor throughout my analysis. It continues from that point in semi-connected leaps of imagery and animal sounds, where Friday even views himself and Crusoe as types of animals. At the juncture where he meets Susan on the shore his dream takes a different turn, where he could possibly begin to see himself and Crusoe as more than animals among the other wildly behaving inhabitants of the island (i.e. the fauna AND flora)...though not quite. When he is “rescued” from the island he will not smile, cry, become angry, or grateful...but will observe (along with the reader) what is happening in his surroundings and his own behavior in a dreamlike fashion. The main division between this metaphorical rendition and Coetzee’s silent treatment of the character is that, while he remains unable or unwilling to express himself in words, the images, sounds and sensations of touch that could be imagined by him will be described via an outside, entirely non-omniscient narrator who is just as surprised (though a little less baffled?) as the reader is at the quantity and quality of spontaneous imagery to be decoded. By accentuating the use of metaphor to include sensations like pleasure, pain, touch, sound, and logical actions of the metaphors that stand for people in the dream I will make it a challenge for the reader to decipher whether this is a dream, or if Friday’s actual waking senses or thought-life is what is occurring. It will become a shortened version of the short book format, extending the periods of physical activity and wholly eliminating everyone’s feelings; being that he cannot accurately describe his own, but leaves it up to the metaphorical narration to explain “merely” what he does and what they do.

Breathtaking Silence

"In every story there is a silence, some sight concealed, some word unspoken, I believe." (141)

Examining the last chapter of a book titled: Foe by J.M. Coetzee has led me to believe that there is only one cognizant thematic energy in the novel, an energy responsible for connecting the lives of four opposing personalities as a radio tower connects distant cities. The main characters include Susan, a castaway on an island inhabited by two men. Crusoe, a male castaway with a servant and a lover (who is also Susan). Foe, the writer of her novel with a lover (also Susan). And Friday, a black servant who on many occasions becomes the focus of everyone's attention. But why? Because he is mute. As one short paragraph from the last chapter puts it: "But this is not a place of words. Each syllable, as it comes out, is caught and filled with water and diffused. This is a place where bodies are their own signs. It is the home of Friday." (157) The meaning of this will become blindingly apparent in this critique.

As the novel quickly unwinds itself the energy or non-energy of silence is responsible for the twists and turns, the progressions and relapses within. Every personal struggle, vocalized or otherwise, is amplified by the echo of silence. Susan washes up on Crusoe's island, only to find herself shore-locked with a man who has grown proud from years of loneliness. His unwillingness to speak with Susan beyond the minimal amount of communication to ensure their survival is exactly what creates her anxiety and turns the island into a place of uncertainty. This same uncertainty is carried over to Foe's house, a confining place where a different silence can be heard. It is a craftier silence. Nevertheless, the similarity between his silent moments and Crusoe's are that they both use them to devise a plan where Susan's will slips from her hands like a slippery eel...even though this "eel" bites and hangs on for its life all the way down. Whether she is trying to escape from the island or find companionship there, or relate the details of her epoch to the writer Foe, she is kept in a state of mental limbo between her complacency for being used (both physically and mentally), and her victory in obtaining equality among people in a position of power via attempting to bond with them through companionship or asserting her right to the authorial cohesion of her story.

Crusoe's dramatic silence during the long intervals of Susan's stay on the island spurred on in her a desire to escape. It was a silence measured in an prolonged, indistinguishable way. Whereas Foe's cunning, divided-up periods of silence re-enforce her drive to super-cede his encrouching opinions. Where before she tested Crusoe's boundaries, she now attempted to protect hers by focusing Foe's attention away from sensitive areas. Her silence surrounding the existence of her daughter prompts Foe to solidify her presence in his household by miraculously presenting her pseudo-daughter to her. Susan's two primary surroundings are an island of predictable, tediously quiet periods and Foe's house, transplanted to a quiet loft high above the commotion and activity of the streets of England. And even, harkening back to the island, we see that the relentless concussion of the wind throughout it presents a wordless, lifeless type of silence that must be blamed on something living to distinguish it from pure blankness, which in turn connects with Friday's apparent blankness. Who better to set at the core of this problematic web than the enigmatic Friday, whose whole world is expressed in silence?!

He is the only one who is set up within the narrative to exist apart from the friction and confusion, and yet he bares most of the blame for it. He continues through the story not so much because he is liked, but through his failure to communicate his feelings or thoughts he is turned into an anti-person, being referred to by Susan as her shadow. It is an insult that carries with it the opinion that he is a hovering, or otherwise looming silence, the kind that takes on metaphysical qualities of dreamlike proportions. Indeed, the last chapter of Foe is structured like a dream and at its heart and conclusion is none other than Friday, whose bared mouth produces the silence that transcends all of her experiences in the book. The person manifesting this dream, who I believe is Susan, pries her fingernails in-between his clamped teeth and observes that "His mouth opens. From inside him comes a slow stream, without breath, without interruption. It flows up through his body and out upon me; it passes through the cabin, through the wreck; washing the cliffs and shores of the island, it runs northward and southward to the ends of the earth. Soft and cold, dark and unending, it beats against my eyelids, against the skin of my face."

This dream is strikingly similar to Susan's own thoughts about Friday when she daydreams about his breath coming up the stairs of Foe's house to suffocate her. In brief, Susan's anxiousness to be heard, produced by a number of factors, is given the growth serum of Friday's company which amplifies her internal tension to an urgency to be understood, which he does worse than any of the other men because of his limited vocabulary. The quality of understanding her is something which both Crusoe and Foe considerably lack in abundance, but are time and again pardoned for their contributions due to the presence of Friday. A man who is "witless" enough to witness the behavior of these two men and be perceived as the one who acquiesces to it through his silence is a psychologically grey, yet ominously convincing trigger to Susan. Therefore, silence is the trait that Susan has been known to immediately pinpoint in others, arranging them by degrees of it, and does so with Friday in greater frequency than anyone else in the novel. Her interpretation of his world is the one of silence that she stepped into when she washed up on the shore of that remote island, which she continues in until the realization, or decoding of all of her experiences in the dream at the end. If Crusoe was the "king" of his island, the king of silence, Friday was his chief magician who, while being his subject, had the power to control him, and Foe, and her...but all in her unconscious mind.

The Hutu Know Best

TWO PRESIDENTS ELIMINATED,

ONE HUNDRED DAYS OF SLAUGHTER,

THOUSANDS CRYING OUT FROM THE GRAVE!

The Hutu uprising was only a matter of time, and whether or not it was they who threw the first punch, its blindingly obvious that the Tutsi's ability to defend themselves and their families against the Hutu genocidists didn't evolve beyond a slap on the cheek.

In Nick Hugh's turn of the century film, 100 days, he portrays a turbulent country bitterly divided into two quietly brewing nationality groups before the death of their president. After his assassination its another story. One of these groups, the Hutu's, comprise the majority of Rwanda's population who have experienced years of second-hand treatment from the Tutsis, the nation's minority. The film only goes so far as mentioning that Hutus were cheated by the Tutsis in the local shops. While this can't be ignored, the genocide that follows the president's election remains a vague reason and wholly imbalanced reaction to such treatment.

As the film moves along in an apathetic tone towards the Tutsi's situation, the Tutsi's are vacated to a local catholic church and are impregnated with the U.N.'s pithy lies to defend them against Hutu raids. When the U.N. soldiers abandon them, leaving them completely defenseless, you can read hopelessness on the Tutsi faces, as if it was written there with bamboo shoots. They don't embrace this death sentence, they aren't like a madman who believes that a July brushfire surrounding him on all sides will suddenly extinguish itself. Was it their sense of peaceful resistance that brought about their deaths that same night? Or was it something a great deal less subtle, like their lack of defensive weapons?

The catholic priests in this film were elements used to passify the Tutsis, keeping them from leaving the church, because of the church's corroboration with the Hutu terrorists. Their payment? The "right" to molest young Tutsi women who caught their eye. Mainly though, this factor added to the demobilization of a defensive strategy by the Tutsi. Although, what weapons did they really possess that would have meant anything in such a strategy? Since the mayor of the town and the Rwandan government were supplying Hutus with weaponry its a logical assumption that they were also keeping those tools out of the hands of the Tutsi. In essence, all that placing Tutsis in the church did was provide a non-recognizable barrier to their freedom. It was only mildly different than the road blocks for the fact that they were not blockaded inside of the church and instantly shot down by Hutus if they stepped outside the doors, whereas this would be their fate if any of them attempted to pass through road blocks that led out of town. Keeping them clustered in the church also allowed the Hutus to burn down a building with Tutsi children in it and encounter less resistance. Regardless of this, however, none of villagers watching the conflagration attempted to rescue these children who were screaming with the anticipation of what they knew would be their horrifying deaths. One of the watching townspeople, at the very least, would have been a sympathizing Hutu. Maybe, just maybe putting a riffle in their hand would have given them a chance to redeem their conscience and the reputation of their people.

One man, a wealthy shop owner, kept denying over and over again that there would be any violence against his town or family because, as he said: "This has never happened here before." And yet his wife was trying, on multiple occasions, to wake him up to the leering possibility that it just might because, as she put it: "Everybody knows we are Tutsi." Can this be a case of misplaced ecumenicalism verses the sobering instincts being echoed by thousands of worried people at the departure of the U.N.? Exactly. How can her reaction equate to anything but a petition to her husband to either flee the country, defend themselves, or defend themselves as they left the country? She knew automatically that the second option would be out of the question.

Perhaps the recoiling shock of this diabolical escapade wouldn't have existed before it began if the people had an adequate means of obtaining weapons for their defense. Or maybe their lack of weapons had nothing at all to do with their genocide. But this is impossible to prove without generating unsupported philosophies about the advantages of masses of dead corpses with no legitimate weapons to be found among them.

Being Yaaba

In this post I will attempt to rewrite Ama Ata Aidoo's sad story: The Late Bud, from the perspective of one of its characters, Yaaba, a complicated youth...

"I'm going to be an expert at Soso-mba when I grow up; I practice it more than any of my friends. Maybe some day I'll become so good that they'll have to make a national sport out of it!" I think excitedly to myself as I study, with the intensity of a cat about to leap on a tortoise, where the other children's rocks are hitting the ground. "But wait, that smell coming from a chimney somewhere! Oh no, I might be too late and won't get any of the cocoyam porridge and seasoned beef to die for!" I run with all the speed my ten year old legs can muster to my mother's kitchen and behold...not a scrap left, again. My brothers and sisters are taking their time with their filled bowls, giving me an evil eye or paying no attention to my growling tummy.

I could care less that they care less, what I'm really concerned about is my sister Adwoa getting all the attention. Maami only trusts her to do things for her when she knows I'm capable of doing the same things...like fetching a fork. Anyway, that's too simple...a dog could do that. Why doesn't she give me something challenging to do like, I don't know, go knock fruit off the trees with my rock-throwing skills and bring them home! Or go digging in the red earth pit and bring back buckets of the rusty-looking stuff...that would be fun! Instead, Maami always tells me that whenever I'm cleaned up I go out and get dirty, but so does everybody else eventually. She confuses me.

But sometimes I feel like she wouldn't tell me anything. It feels like whatever I do, whether its good or not, she'll yell at me. At those times I feel like rolling up into a ball like an armadillo and protecting my ears, and then when my fingers won't drown out her screaming just covering up my head like I'm being beaten. I felt like that one time when I had a fish bone stuck in my throat, but I didn't say anything because she might call me foolish and if anything I might believe it and choke on the thing to prove it. That was when I heard her complaining about how the floor looks, and that it needed some touching up before Christmas Sunday. "I can do something about that!" I thought, my mind ticking away. I'd gather a bunch of red earth from the pit and make a dazzling display on the floor before they even got back from church tomorrow. Maybe, just maybe I can get my mother to recognize me. But I don't know how I'll pull it off until I find out from Kakra and Panyin, the twins, that they were going to the pit that very morning!

They don't believe my plans for the floor will work out, but I still have to try. I tell them to wake me up early in the morning by pelting my mother's window with pebbles. I'm not so sure it'll work without waking everyone else up too. For all I know they might send them sailing through the glass! But that's a chance I'll have to take, I should have thought of doing this with the floor earlier but how was I supposed to know if I was never asked to help out? I'm home early that same evening and, after a quick bite, lay down so I'll be rested up enough for tomorrow's expedition to the pit. It seems like I had just laid my head down on the hard, stamped ground to doze when I felt a hand hit me in the side of the face, followed by 'You lazy lazy thing. You good-for-nothing, empty-corn husk of a daughter...'. The words are those my Maami...

...

...

After what seems like hours she stops beating the dust out of her dirty little daughter rug and looks at me, but I had already wandered into a waking dream from the throttling and made no response, not even with my eyes. I don't speak with her much anyways, or to others for that matter...maybe this is why. This makes her angrier than ever and I can hear the dull thuds of palms and fists continue on my backside and legs as I role over to block my face, while she accuses me of being things that I'd never even seen before. How can this get any worse? I've been wondering for some time now whether this angry person is actually my mother because she treats me this way, but, what could now make my suspicions any greater? There! She is finished, and is resting now on the bed with, with...Adwoa! I never even knew she was there! Kofi, Kwame, Adwoa...they're all there! But, they're also out like a light, even through my beating. I suppose can sneak out and get the red earth now and have more time to finish the floor...oh!...if I can move that is.

I pick myself up and drag my feet into the outer room, and, stumbling in the dark (or is it just dark to me?), try to grab Adwoa's hoe from the bamboo shelf and leave without making any noise. But that's just what I didn't do, as I trip over a water bowl...my chest slams against it. The last thing I hear before I loose consciousness is Maami's familiar voice that is heard around the neighborhood because she's yelling "Theif! Thief!" I'm not a thief!...but she doesn't know that. In my dreams I can see blurry figures surrounding me, one of the women shouts: 'Touch her feet with a little fire.'...it sounds like they are torturers of some kind, I want to wake up. But it is too late...I'm already awake. Some woman squeezes ginger juice into my nose and I can feel my dull pains return. I drift between consciousness and troubled sleep for, I cannot say how long, but long enough to make me worry if the twins will come and if I'll get to the pit in time. Then, as if it were a complete stranger talking, I hear someone say 'My child Yaaba...' It was my Maami? I couldn't believe my ears, but my mouth couldn't even manage to breath out my disbelief...it was still there, inside of me. She's crying, but does it take this to make me important to her? I guess that's what all of the beatings had meant, that I was important enough for that. But this is different because she's speaking gently and weeping...but is it for me? I'm in so much pain that I can't even ask her, she's too busy saying things that I can't understand.

Mechanical Africa

"I was here when all of these machines were installed...They have a big advantage over us - they can be repaired, recast, made new again. I knew the ones that were here before these; in the days when the line from Dakar only came as far as this. People said that some day the "smoke of the savanna" would reach as far as Bamako, but no one really believed it. But you could never swear that a thing wouldn't happen, if those red-eared men wanted it to happen! I remember my father telling me the story of Mour Dial, the tribal chief everyone called Greed. He swore that the rails would never cross his lands and make him lose the tribute he collected from travelers, but the re-eared men weren't interested in anything he swore or anything he lost. Their chief - the one who wore a round cap with a flat crescent of black leather at the front to shield his eyes from the sun - just put some of his soldiers in the railway cars and took them to where Mour Dial's lands began. When they got there they fired a few shots and there were bodies stretched all over the ground, but they were on Mour Dial's side of the ground because the shots cam from only one direction. Mour Dial was arrested and taken to Saint-Lois and then to Dakar, to the big council hall of the toubabs. People who saw that hall said that it was entirely red. After that, people never talked about Mour Dial any more, except with their mouths glued to their neighbor's ear, and no one ever knew what had become of him."

A single example, such as the one shown above, is suitable enough evidence to contrive a working behavioral theory on the automated view of humanity. Particularly when it comes to the book from which this quote is taken, where the fictional/cultural interaction between the French "toubab" masters and the entire native population of French West Africa collide in very estranging ways. Briefly put, their masters are overworking and underpaying the natives who work on the railroads and in the surrounding shops, when a strike is called against them and held. When seen from this perspective the whole ethos of the book, as it were, is mechanical.

The inception of this argument can stem from a number of its chapters, but one must go no further than the above paragraph on the bottom of page 129 to establish a broad view of the underlying psyche of the natives and their French masters. It was spoken by Sounkare, the watchman, a man who felt that he was deeply intertwined in the symbiotic relationship between his fellow workmen and the railroad machines they worked along side of. So magnanimous was the appearance of the railroad during his lifetime that he hadn't taken part in the strike that would paralyze them. He saw them not as machines, but as semi-human extensions of the biological. This point of view is expanded in another paragraph on the top of page 129 when he recalled the sight of a now-empty workstation that had been swarming with sweating bodies in the months prior to the strike.

Perhaps the gravity of this connection is felt to its highest degree when a middle-aged villager, Ramatoulaye, is forced to take drastic measures to ensure the survival of her town by killing her brother's ram for food as a result of the strike on page 69. The implication of this action, based on the villager's initial reactions to it, is that it was almost an unimaginable solution to the problem of hunger. They had abandoned a hunting life-style generations ago, which only compounded the anxiety surrounding the need to revert to such measures. Seen from a mechanical perspective, their taproot (the railroad) had been severed, and those natives feeling the effect of this were compelled to re-integrate into a position that placed them at odds with the mechanical schemata.

Though, undoubtedly, the people's positive connection to machinery is dwarfed by the big-ended view of their foreign bosses. To individuals such as Monsieur Dejean, the French regional director of the railway company at Thies, workers and their families are the machines themselves. From his reflection on the events of the strike it is obvious that it never occurred to him that they were alive in the sense that he is. Even when he has knowledge of the natives who died in the strike he brushes it aside and lies in a report to his supervisor on page 29 by saying "Dead? No, there are no dead. The soldiers have been ordered just to frighten them." Regardless of whether they are dead or wounded, content or starving, the over-all sense is that the natives are aware of something which the toubabs aren't...that they aren't machines but living people. As the heading line of the above paragraph insinuates, they "can be repaired, recast, made new again." Although this is a reference to Sounkare's take on the immortal quality of the rusted machinery of the railroad, the philosophy becomes interchangeable with the natives due to their tight connection with it. The toubabs perceived their lives as replaceable, as is illustrated by some other of Dejean's remarks to his superior, such as "The minute they have some money they go out and buy themselves another wife, and the children multiply like flies!" According to their convoluted thought process the machine will repair itself.

Thus far, the turbine of humanity's relationship to machines is an eerie sight when seen through the eye of the conquerer. Alternative solutions to this problem are on the rise throughout the book, as the initiator of the strike, Tiemoko, develops an awareness of the mechanical impetus of his oppressors. Gradually, by reading books from the toubabs, he programs his mind with the strategy of winning an argument itself over that of being right and presenting correct evidence. Yet, the most that can be said about him is that he values ideas as a tool of change on page 103. But in the process he is abandoning what makes him human by opposing Fa Keita's human approach to social relations during his uncle's trial and the injustice of the replicating patterns of similar culture when unique collectives are enslaved by industry on page 94.

People, even one's own, are believed to serve a function that is determined by those with the knowledge and power to execute what are seen as higher functions. After all, Sounkare's own description of the drive of the white men in the first paragraph above was that "you could never swear that a thing wouldn't happen, if those red-eared men wanted it to happen!" This doesn't come out of nowhere, but it is born out of the engine of philosophy that, as the same paragraph states "He (an african chief) swore that the rails would never cross his lands and make him lose the tribute he collected from travelers, but the red-eared men weren't interested in anything he swore or anything he lost. " Which itself reflects the less apparent legitimization in the book of enforcing the shutting-down of a social machine by shutting off water supplies to the towns along the railway and other such actions of the omnipotently withdrawn ones and their button pressing.