A common theme running through all the readings assigned for this course, such as “The Dew Breaker” by Haitian-American author, Edwidge Danticat, and “Crick Crack, Monkey” by Trinidadian Merle Hodge, “A Very Small Place” by Antiguan-American Jamaica Kincaid, and “In the Castle of My Skin” Paule Marshall, from Barbados is the traumatic effects of colonialism on the psyche of the colonized peoples.The effect might result in physical, psychological and emotional scares, as in the cases of ex-colonials of Haiti now living in exile, who have escaped the violence in their country; but continue to suffer the after-shocks of their traumatic experiences even in the relative safety and security of their land of refuge. On another plane, the traumatic effect of colonialism can be seen in the wholesale loss of original identity of colonized peoples, as illustrated in confused identity experienced by a child growing up among African-Caribbeans in Trinidad and other Post-Colonial countries in the Caribbean.A third psychological reaction to the traumatic effect of colonialism on African-Caribbeans is what one may refer to as suppressed rage and anger, as palpably evident in the work of Jamaica Kincaid, titled, “A Very Small Place. “ These writings though recorded as works of fiction reflect the psychological aftermath of colonialism on the life of ex-colonial peoples of the Caribbean. The net effect of colonialism as gleaned from these readings is one of irreparable damage to both body and soul of the colonized people.
PreambleThe literature of African Caribbean cultures as represented by the works of well known African Caribbean writers like the Haitian-American, Edwidge Danticat author of “The Dew Breaker”(1), Merle Hodge author of “Crick Crack, Monkey”(2), Jamaica Kincaid, in “A Very Small Place” and Paule Marshall “In the Castle of My Skin”, serve as mirrors which reflect recent political and economic history of Caribbean countries. All the ex-colonies of the Caribbean Islands have a lot in common. The islands of the Caribbean Sea were forcefully taken over by Europeans, who came to plunder the land and enslave the inhabitants.When most of the indigenous peoples perished as a result of the harsh life of slavery meted out to them, the Europeans turned to Africa, from were slave labor was imported into the West Indian Islands to replace the eliminated Arawacks and Tainos.
After slavery was abolished, the Europeans turned to South East Asia from where indentured laborers were brought in to supplement the efforts of the freed slaves most of who stayed behind on their erstwhile masters’ plantations as farm hands.Added to these were the scum of European societies, who were forcibly deported from metropolitan Europe to work on the plantations. Thus at independence, each of the ex-colonies was made up of a mix of transplanted cultures and peoples; the original cultures of the Caribbean having been wiped out. Having lost their original identities, the Afro-Caribbeans who form the majority of most of these ex-colonies now have to grapple with identity crises.
These crises of identity are some of the themes addressed by African-Caribbean authors whose books are under study in this essay.Post Colonial Afro-Caribbeans Since most Afro-Caribbeans had long lost all contact with their places of origin, as well as forgotten their original languages, they were given a modicum of European education and spoke the languages of their colonial masters, and thus identified more with Europe than their native lands. After independence, the Afro-Caribbeans now faced a psychological dilemma arising from their loss of unique identity. Added to this is the culture of violence inherited from the colonial histories of these islands.
For example, the effects of wholesale violence on the populace of Haiti which has traumatized Haitians both at home and in the Diaspora are addressed by Edwidge Danticat in her book “The Dew Breaker”. ‘The title, The Dew Breaker, comes from a Creole phrase which refers to those who break the serenity of the grass in the morning dew. ‘“Dew Breaker” is a Creole nickname for torturer”’ (1). The stories told in “The Dew Breaker” can best be appreciated in all the blood-chilling detailed narrations within its pages, when one remembers the often violent and bloody history of Haiti.Haiti has for a long time been portrayed in the popular press as a violent, unruly, backward entity within the comity of American nations. While not challenging this popular view of the first autonomous Black Republic in the Western Hemisphere, it is worthy of note to go down memory lane, in order to understand the violent streak in the Haitian psyche.
The culture of violence against its citizens did not start with the regimes of the two Duvaliers, ‘Papa Doc’ Francois and his son ‘Baby Doc’ Jean-Claude Duvalier.The culture of doing wholesale violence to populations of the Island of Hispaniola, of which Haiti is one third parts; was introduced by the founding fathers of Santo Domingo, which later metamorphosed into Haiti and Dominican Republic at their independence from France and Spain respectively. The traumatic effect of violence on the various actors, from the dictator’s “Ton ton Macaute” to the victims and their descendants are evident from “the Dew Breaker”. Each actor carries a scare. The victims carry physical as well as emotional scares of their torture in Haiti’s gulag.The torturers carry their guilt feelings as emotional and psychological scares for the rest of their lives.
“The Dew Breakers” as a Mirror of Post Colonial Haiti In her series of short stories which together have a common theme, and were put together as a novel “The Dew Breakers”; Danticat explores the lives of Haitians who had escaped the Duvalier gulag. The book opens with the lives of a small Haitian family of three: father, mother and their daughter. The father had been a member of the ‘Ton ton Macaute’, who had tortured and killed many of his countrymen.However, he had been living incognito in New York as a barber, and had even claimed to all and sundry including his own daughter, that he had been a victim of the ‘Dew Breakers’. The ugly scare which ran down his cheek, he claimed to have been inflicted on him while a prisoner in Haiti.
The truth finally came out that rather than being a prey and a victim, he was actually a falconer and the torturer of prisoners. "You see, Ka, your father was the hunter, he was not the prey. " thus admitted Anne, the barber’s wife to her daughter.His confession to his daughter was supposed to assuage his guilty conscience, and give him some respite from his nightmares. Some conclusions can be drawn from the “The Dew Breakers”, on the nature of the human mind.
One of them is that all the actors in Haiti’s infamous recent past live each with their own scars. The victims of torture who survive Haitian prisons and escaped into exile, never really forget. They carry the physical and psychological marks of their traumatic experience with them for the rest of their lifetime.The torturers themselves, who try to hide their identities, live with psychological traumas equal to if not surpassing those of their victims.
In the immortal words of Shakespeare, “they have murdered sleep”. One can also learn in these stories the elasticity of the human mind to forgive, even those who have deprived them of the most precious gift God has given them. Anne, who married her brother’s murderer, was the epitome of Christian forgiveness. “Crick Crack, Monkey” as a Mirror of Colonial MentalityIn the book “Crick Crack, Monkey” (2) by Merle Hodge, we see the net effect of colonialism on a little child named Tee, growing up in post colonial Trinidad. Her inability to identify with the three conflicting social environments, to which she was exposed, leaves her in identity crises.
Tee lost her mother at childbirth. Her father emigrated from Trinidad soon after, and Tee was left in the care of her aunties. She first lived with her urban lower class auntie named Tantie, who taught her to be street-smart and look out for herself.After primary school she was taken to live with her middle-class Aunt Beatrice for her high school education. Aunty Beatrice was mimicry of European mannerisms. Caught between the conflicting ways of life of the two classes, the little girl did not know where she belonged.
To add to her confusion, whenever Tee visited her grandmother, who was still very much attached to her African roots, her granny told her stories about her ancestors which her little mind could not comprehend. The experiences of Tee in a nutshell, are the lot of ex-colonial peoples.The colonial masters not only exploit their lands to produce raw materials for their home factories in Europe, they also colonize the minds of their subjects, who prefer to lose their own identities while following sheepishly, the ways of their colonial masters; a case of ‘Black skin, white mask’ (courtesy of Frantz Fanon). The theme of the psychological damage, done to the African-Caribbean peoples of the West Indies by their colonial experience, run through these two works of literary fiction.
The traumatic damage left on both body and soul, is greater for Haitians, because of the violence underlying their colonial experiences.Although the colonial history of Trinidad was less sanguine than that of Haiti, the net effect of colonialism as reflected in these two books had the same outcome. The ex-colonial peoples preferred to identify with their former colonial masters. In case of Haiti, persecuted Haitians flee the island of their birth to America, the land of their former masters.
In the case of Trinidadians and other former British colonial, their land of refuge was Britain. There they felt they could have a better education and standard of life. In both cases, African-Caribbean exiles hardly gave thought to returning to their native lands.
