World literature shows us great examples of penetrating into human psychology, depicting human nature and the contradictions of people’s life. Such masters of word as W. Shakespeare, F. Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy, O. de Balzac provided us with longstanding and immortal images of such inherently human feelings as love, hatred, tenderness, anger. There is no denying the importance of the fact that human nature includes both positive and negative features. To be human means to be contradictive and unstable, have something to adore and hate. Only robots can be integral since they have no soul. Thus, the portraying of essentially different and opposite features of characters, measuring both their weaknesses and strengths was the main characteristic of humanist and realist literature for a long period of time. Those writers who were insightful and attentive to details rightly thought that there can be no absolutely positive and negative characters. On the contrary, the integration of oppositions constitutes the fabric of human life. Such renowned humanists in literature as Faulkner, Dostoevsky, Stendhal always left place for some hope. Besides those negative features they depicted in their protagonists such as Rodion Raskolnikov, Julien Sorel etc. they understood that human nature has an impulse to become more kind, loving and tender. This is the leitmotiv of all best modern writers.
In order to make these suggestions obvious and understandable it is needed to apply them to analysis of the work of certain modern writer. I will try to fulfill this task through analysis of the novels of such writers as Joseph Conrad, Toni Morrison and Chinua Achebe.
Among the modern writers who best understood the dilemma of contradiction and tragedy one must point to a talented writer J. Conrad and his well-known novel Heart of Darkness.
Talking about the context of this novel it is critical to note that the plot is developed in Belgian colony and concerns the life of indigenous people. The narration develops on the two levels. At first level the author describes intrinsic to early modernist literature themes as alienation, disintegration, confusion etc. and on the second level ties them into the wider context of colonialism and discusses how it influences the relations between people, how it makes them what they are. In this terms the plot and the greater idea of the Conrad’ s novel goes in line with our task to analyze how does the dilemma of contradictory human nature is realized in the modern literature. Heart in Darkness in total is a novel about the understanding the world and people.
The novel main character is Marlow, an insightful traveler who makes journey to Congo River in order to find Kurtz, a person well-known for his intellectual and personal skills. Conrad depicts this travel as permanent encounters with situations when local and indigenous people are oppressed by Belgian colonizers. Marlow reacts to this oppression with anger and tries to protect these people who are brutally treated by whites. These images are the materialization of Conrad’s own distaste with colonialism and imperialism and the western self-asserted role to civilize indigenous people. Marlow himself from the beginning to the end of the story is presented as compassionate, emphatic and kind person, who is always ready to help ordinary people. But besides this, Konrad points out to other features of Marlow’s character which show his negative characteristics. Besides his genuinely human feelings, Marlow is sometimes depicted as passive, visionary traveler, who just registers facts and does not engage in actions to change something. Even in those cases when he tries to help badly treated people he is not resolute. This contradiction leads him to alienation, endless suffering and desperateness. The only hope that is left is to find Kurtz, whom he so admires. But what is his disillusionment when he finds out that Kurtz is double-dyed colonialist hating indigenous people, notwithstanding his great intellectual abilities. The words he says before his death “Exterminate all the brutes” confirm the negative features of his character. Further in the novel Marlow meets Kurtz fiancée deeply suffering from the death of her beloved and tries to reassure her about Kurtz’s kindness and love for her. Many scholars, among them Cole and Grant (1995) showed that the disorientation and alienation are inherent characteristics of the Marlow’s character which Konrad puts the emphasis on. The strengths and weaknesses of Marlow’s character reinforce each other creating contradictive personality. By the same token, Griffith (1995) describes this situation as “anthropological” dilemma, a natural rupture constituting human subjectivity. So, as we could see the developing of oppositions, which are torn into catharsis is characteristic of every good novel of modern times.
Another novel, which best characterizes such an approach is a wonderful novel of Nobel Prize recipient Toni Morrison, describing the life of poor black girl Pecola in the Midwest racist environment. The girl and her family are abused by whites and she lives in feeling of permanent despair, “dirt” and inevitability of the disaster. She is a small girl trying to understand the world, but it welcomes her with anger and violence. Deeply influenced by it she loses hope and goes insane, which in Morrison’s idea is the only way to escape this cruel world. The racist environment has deep violent effect on her family. Pecola’s father living in complete misery, not knowing how to feed his family loses inherent human features, becoming violent to his daughter. Pecola notwithstanding her suffering is depicted by Morrison as a kind, pensive child, dreaming to have beautiful blue eyes. The world kills her, but she is pure, kind victim of it. In this way, in our view authors tried to show that child’s innocence is something inalienable to every person, the remainder of his brutalized soul, which must be fermented and cherished.
Another example of this is Pecola’s mother who also tries to escape brutal reality I dreams, fantasies and isolation. Claudia McTeer represents another opposition. She is a friend of Pecola, a kind, sensitive girl with strict but loving family contrary to the Pecola’s. Their friendship is the best portraying of positive human features which unfortunately are ruined by social environment. It is characteristic of Morrison that she tries to avoid depicting the protagonist of the novel in a uniform manner. It can be explained by the fact that she tries to make characters more human thus putting emphasis on that besides their weaknesses and drawbacks they have some positive impulses which are curtailed by the ruining atmosphere of community and society they live in. No one is considered to be the cause of injustice but may be described as victims of it. This is evidently the most critical feature that makes this novel of Tony Morrison to be so deep and insightful in what concerns interpersonal relations and human nature. As Napieralski (1994) shows the utilization of certain expressive means creates the atmosphere that people are not totally emotionally ruined and the world has a possibility to change for the better.
Another novel in which the issue of human soul’s contradictory nature is put at the forefront is Chinua Achebe’s famous novel Things fall apart. Chinua Achebe is a renowned Nigerian literary critique and novelist who devoted his talents to debunking colonialism and its ruining effect o African societies. His primarily interest lies in the sphere of politics, which can be explained that during 1967-1970 he was a career diplomat in the Nigerian government. He is also known for his depiction of the vivid images of the African pre-colonial customs and culture, which is characterized by deep penetration into the human soul. His novel describes tragic consequences of an Ibo man demise whose name is Okonkwo. Okonkwo family belongs to the lowest layer of social ladder, but due to his personal capabilities becomes a powerful ruler in Umuofia, a village in Nigeria.
As Okonkwo obtains social status and success it becomes evident that his personal strengths are being replaced by his weaknesses. His self-esteem and confidence transforms into pride, his masculinity and manliness transforms into authoritarianism and cruel rule over ordinary people and eventually his physical strength alters into the unrestrained rage and violence. The personal tragedy of Okonkwo starts with the British aggression against his native community. Okonkwo is described in a contradictory manner in this regard. Achebe presents his protagonist as a brave man ready to resist British colonizers but at the same time feeling the pressure from tribesmen some of which oppose such resistance. The changes to Okonkwo character described above did not abolish his love for the Ibo culture and people. His tragedy thus in this inevitability of disaster, which leads him to suicide. For him it is better to dye than loose his native land. His suicide in my view symbolically presents the ruination of the African cultures by colonialism, which Achebe himself deeply suffered.
It is important to note that Achebe did not try to exaggerate personal virtues of Okonkwo and make him reincarnation of the entire Ibo culture. On the contrary, he tried to create a tragic character following Aristotelian tradition. Achebe understood that for his hero to be inherently human he must enclose both negative and positive features. This strategy is realized through this seminal work.
As Achebe himself pointed out in the interview with Rowell : “The tragic protagonist is the man who’s larger than life, who exemplifies virtues that are admired by the community, but also a who for all that is still human. He can have flaws, you see; all that seems to me to be very elegantly underlined in Aristotle’s work”.
Another characteristic that runs through Achebe novel concerns his opposition to the European colonialism. He passionately debunks the colonialist discourse of “rudimentary African souls” which are brutal and inhumane by describing African presenting such powerful characters as Okonkwo which have dignity and kindness in their heart. Okonkwo tries to express his thought that negative features of human character are universal and can not be reduced to race and nationality by depicting ignorant Europeans which consider themselves to be superior representatives of the civilized culture while being even more brutal and inhuman than “African brutes”. By violently attacking cultural racism Achebe makes a great contribution to the cause of peace and peaceful dialogue among different cultures and religions.
The novels of three talented and insightful modern writers which we discussed show the profound characteristic of good literature that is the creation of integrated character by clashing the oppositions of his personality. Without this tragic component the literature is reduced to banality and legitimization of current conditions. The really progressive literature must counter the negative impact society has on human beings by means of which providing the possibility of human liberation.
The inalienable feature of human soul depicted in such characters as Marlow, Pecola and Okonkwo as its position vis-Ă -vis world and society must be preserved in order to produce valuable literature piece.
References
- Achebe, Chinua. “Things fall apart”. London: Anchor publishers, 1994.
- Cole, David W., and Kenneth B. Grant. “Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Explicator 54, no. 1 (1995): 24-26.
- Conrad, Joseph. “Heart of darkness.” London: Dover publications, 72
- Griffith, John W. Joseph Conrad and the Anthropological Dilemma: Bewildered Traveller. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
- Morrison, Toni. “ The bluest eye.” New York: Plume, 2000
- Napieralski, Edmund A. “Morrison’s the Bluest Eye.” Explicator 53, no. 1 (1994): 59-62.
- Rowell, Charles H. “An Interview with Chinua Achebe.” Callaloo 13, no.1, (1990):17-25.