Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Colonial and Post Colonial Short Stories
In the 19th and 20th centuries, much of the world was divided and compartmentalized. Empire nations colonized lands all over the world creating cultures which were based upon differentiation and racial inequality. In a colonized nation, the population would be comprised of the colonizers who were the ethnic and racial power and the colonized that would be considered ethnically inferior. In the short stories "Going to Exile" by author Liam O'Flaherty and "The Day They Burnt the Books" by Jean Rhys, the authors relate brief narratives which reflect the racial prejudices and conflicts that were bubbling beneath, and often times above, the surface of colonized countries.
In colonial literature, one of the dilemmas that come up most often is the question of identity. People who are colonized are forced to create for themselves a dual identity. At one they have their innate cultures, but at the same time, they are encouraged and often forced to identify with the culture of the colonizers. This happens in the Liam O'Flaherty story "Going to Exile." In the story, a young man named Michael is being forced to leave his home in Ireland for the United States where he believes that the will be able to better support himself and aid in taking care of his family....
He will have to turn his back on his own culture in order to embrace and be embraced by the American identity. The father makes this idea clear when he says, "It's your own, the land, and over there…you'll be giving your sweat to some other man's land, or what's equal to it" (O'Flaherty). Although the young man feels some sadness at leaving his father, he does not at this point comprehend the greater meaning behind his leaving. To the father, it is as if there are two distinct groups: the Irish and the Americans and Michael's leaving is a form of treachery.
This idea of ethnic differentiation is repeated in the second story. In "The Day They Burnt the Books," Rhys begins the story describing a character named Mr. Sawyer. This man is married to a native Caribbean woman and mistreats her. However, the treatment does not affect the narrator so much as the fact that this white man has married a member of the colonized population. "They (the island population) never decided why he had chosen to settle in a place he didn't like and to marry a coloured woman" (Rhys). The author amends this statement by complimenting the woman, but the inequalities of the society which are determined by racial differences are still obvious.
The ways that peoples interact with each other is a…
Works Cited:
O'Flaherty, Liam. "Going into Exile." Ed. Baldwin, Dean R., and Patrick J. Quinn. An Anthology
of Colonial and Postcolonial Short Fiction. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. 283-291.
Print.
Rhys, Jean. "The Day They Burnt the Books." Ed. Baldwin, Dean R., and Patrick J. Quinn. An Anthology of Colonial and Postcolonial Short Fiction. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. 452-457. Print.
Wall of Fire Rising" is a tragic story by Haitian author Edwidge Danticat. The title of the tale comes from a line in a play about Dutty Boukman, a slave rebel turned revolutionary hero in Haiti. Boukman's story symbolizes release from bondage and oppression, and the ongoing struggle of the Haitian people evident in the complicated daily lives of ordinary families like that of Guy, Lili, and their son.
Postmodern Lit. An Analysis of the Postmodern Short Story Robert Coover's "Going for a Beer" passes like a dream: the faint perceptions of a man who does not know if he is coming or going -- or as Coover puts it, whether he has achieved an "orgasm" or not -- in the midst of various connections and misconnections to an assortment of characters. At the end, his life is over and all
Small Place," Jamaica Kincaid fulfills Rushdie's call for postcolonial writers to carve territories for themselves within language to overcome their oppression and perceived inferiority. Kincaid achieves this first by writing about what she knows best: the postcolonial environment of her native country of Antigua. In "A Small Place," Kincaid analyzes the way colonialism has impacted the development of social, cultural, political, and economic institutions in Antigua. The author emphasizes
Post Colonial Literature Historical literature is filled with examples of pre- and post-colonialist paradigms. Within each of these models, however, there is a certain part of a larger story that can only be told in the larger view of the historical process. One of the grand themes that help us wade through that process is that of the dehumanization of the individual. For whatever psychotically reasons, humans seem to have the
Colonial Resistance in Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe was born in Ogidi, Nigeria, and his father was a teacher in a missionary school. His parents were devout evangelical Protestants and christened him Albert after Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, although they installed in him many of the values of their traditional Igbo culture. He attended University College in Ibadan, where he studied English, history and theology. At the university Achebe
Post War Iraq: A Paradox in the Making: Legitimacy vs. legality The regulations pertaining to the application of force in International Law has transformed greatly from the culmination of the Second World War, and again in the new circumstances confronting the world in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War. Novel establishments have been formed, old ones have withered away and an equally enormous quantity of intellectual writing has