Foe's Enigma

Ever heard of a little book called Robinson Crusoe? Well actually not so little at all, it's a bit of a whopper. A long and boring whopper at that. I know I read it once upon a time, but of course now that it's actually important I can't remember a thing. All I remember is thinking that the movie must be more interesting than the tedious pages I was slowly moving through.

Thankfully, I am evidently not the only one who thought so. Yesterday afternoon I picked up J.M. Coetzee's book Foe, and by last night I had read every page. The novel is something like a parallel of Robinson Crusoe except that it is actually interesting.

In very simple terms, the novel follows a woman as she is castaway, meets the character Cruso and his man Friday on an island, then is rescued and attempts to write a book about her experiences. Embedded in there is some cool stuff about postmodernism and even some absurdist and linguistic bits thrown in for good measure. The first 152 pages of the novel are quite an interesting read in and of themselves.

Then there is the last chapter.

Chapter IV is an enigma, for lack of better description. At first glance it has little to do with the novel and is clearly written in an entirely different vein. However, with some deeper thought, this chapter is the most important of the entire novel. I will attempt my analysis this chapter assuming that my blog reader has also read Foe. This will discuss the last four pages of the novel, p. 153-157.

The chapter seems to take place sometime in the future. The route up to the room our protagonist was last in is described as "dark and mean," which is our first indication of something ominous. The person ascending comes across a woman, and although it is not specified it is immediately clear to the reader that the woman is dead. She is wrapped as a mummy would be in an endless scarf, and she is describes as, "weigh[ing] no more than a sack of straw." Previously in the novel, the main character Susan is concerned about the reality of a girl claiming to be her long lost daughter. Just the page before, Susan and her writer Foe are involved in a conversation as to whether or not the girl is "substantial." This comparison of the girl to a "sack of straw" would seem to indicate that Susan was correct. The girl was not a complete person, made up of straw like a scarecrow.

Next the narrator sees two people in bed. Their skin is taught and "their lips have receded, uncovering their teeth." They too are obviously dead, again seemingly mummified. The reader can easily infer that these two are Susan and Foe. As "their eyes are closed" it would seem that they died at peace in their sleep. They are described as smelling of lilac, which symbolizes both love and innocence. This is interesting because Susan and Foe were not in love, nor was either of them innocent. Quite to the contrary actually. The smell is indicative of the contraditions that Susan and Foe embody.

Friday, still in his alcove, is still alive. This sets of the magical feel of this chapter. Obviously, if Susan and Foe are mummified, a very long time has passed. And yet Friday's "skin is warm." This is our first indication that Friday is eternal, so clearly he symbolizes something. Later the narrator diescovers, "a scar like a necklace, left by a rope or chain." Remember that earlier Susan had put a necklace on Friday containing his freedom papers. The reader can recognize now how Friday has been permanently scarred, both figuratively and literally, by Susan. Friday is a black African slave and Susan effectively his master. Clearly it is the enslavement by the white people that has cause the black man's scarring. However, Friday is still alive. Neither the enslavement nor the enslavers have killed the spirit of Friday. He will in fact live long past them, always bearing the scars they gave him.

Still, Friday will not speak. He will not even open his mouth when pressed to do so. Only of his own accord does his mouth open, and then the sounds of the island come out. The island for both Cruso and Friday symbolized a kind of freedom. Friday thus speaks only of what has made him free.

There is a plaque on the wall with the name Daniel DeFoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe. Interestingly, the words below are too small to read. This lets the reader of Foe make his own epitaph for Daniel DeFoe.

The narrator reads a page on the table containing the words, "Dear Mr. Foe, At last I could row no further." These are the words from the opening of the novel itself. So the reader can infer that it is actually we who have stepped into this room. We are seeing the novel we are currently reading sitting on a table. Again, there is an air of unreality. Or perhaps true reality, as we are invited to make our own interpretations rather than relying on the interpretations of Susan or Coetzee as they write their books.

However, the words go on to become not the words we had read in the opening of the novel. Instead the narrative describes the person sinking into the water off the island where Friday laid out his petals. The "gay little fish" are now gone. These fish were a sign of life and hope, but they are now gone. The writer attempts to hold a candle up, but it gives off no light, no understanding. Something obstructs the unknown writer, and they describe the water as "dirty." Something terrible has happened in this water.

The writer discovers Susan and the captain of her original ship dead and floating in the water. They are described as "fat as pigs." Friday is there as well. The writer "finger[s] the chain about his throat." So, the underwater Friday is still in captivity. But the words the writer speaks become "filled with water" and don't come out... instead the "bodies are their own signs." This is reminiscent of Saussure's signifier and signified. For Friday, who cannot speak, the bodies are the outward signs of ideas. Susan and her captain are "fat" because they have gained so much off the misfortune of the slaves.

Again the writer tries to open Friday's mouth. This time, however, when his mouth opens the reader encounters a "slow stream" that "washes... the island" and "beats... against the skin of my face." This is Friday's world. Without words, he is now washing clean the experiences throughout the book and also the reader.

Overall, this is Friday's chapter. Coetzee chose to give him no voice through the novel because he, Coetzee, did not have the experience with which to voice him correctly. But this chapter is for him. Friday is eternal. He will not die, as Susan does. Susan embodies the white colonialists and slave drivers who will eventually lose their lives. Friday, the spirit of Africa, lives on. Although he is scarred by the efforts of the colonialists he will break free of their chains and continue to live. Eventually those who come after will be able to see, as if they are reading in a book, what really happened to those like Friday. Perhaps this chapter does not take place at a future point in the novel, but rather in the real time of the reader. Perhaps in reality Susan died in the mutiny. In an abstract way, her entire story was then her concoction of reality. The whole novel then, up until the last chapter, was the colonialist viewpoint of the island and the escape. Only now, when the colonialists have passed, can the real story be understood. And in the end, this reality will be inescapable. The reader, symbolic of the people of the world, will finally know Friday's story. It will beat against our faces and softly force us to understand it.

God's Bits of Wood

I've just finished a brilliant book called God's Bits of Wood by my favorite African artist, Ousmane Sembene (at that time, Sembene Ousmane).

Sembene wrote this book after his own personal experiences with a 1940s strike on the Dakar-Niger railroad in Senegal. The book takes place in a few cities (notably Thies and Dakar) and tells the story of the strike through the individual experiences of a dozen or so highlighted people.

One paragraph in particular stood out to me. The opening paragraph of the chapter entitled Thies; Doudou (p. 143) is important simply because of the literary adeptness with which it was written. It is not a place of a particular plot turn within the book. No action is described in the paragraph, and no major understandings are reached. But somehow this paragraph is able to convey much more than the simple words it is made up of.

What I appreciate most in this paragraph is everything it relates that is not specifically stated.

Firstly, this paragraph provides a timeline. Sembene says, "In the six weeks that had passed since the battle with the troops on the first day..." There has been little difinitive timing up until this point. This emphasis on time marks an interesting point in the story. As we have seen from other African novels (most notably No Sweetness Here by Ama Ata Aidoo) the importance of time is a Western notion. It is interesting that Sembene chooses to place time in this part of the novel. It does help we Western readers to understand the scope of the strike. But, more importantly, it emphasizes how the character Doudou is struggling with the railroad itself, a distinctly Western invention. On the one hand he is attempting to support his own culture by participating in the strike. On the other, he is the "secretary-general of the union." The very title "secretary-general" invokes a Western concept. By inserting the idea of time, Sembene has subtly shown the coming together of these two cultures.

By the same token, Sembene is sure to remind us that these people are still African. To do this he inserts a single line, "when he walked his head drooped toward the ground, like a fruit too heavy for its branch." Over and over again in African literature we see comparisions to nature, such as the python in Sia representing old, repressive customs and the locusts in Things Fall Apart as the settling of the white men. Here, Doudou's form is being compared to a fruit. This is particularly poignant because there is no fruit, indeed nothing to eat at all, in the village. The fact that Doudou is represented as the fruit signifies the fact that it is actually the people themselves who are being eaten (alive) by this experience.

Another point that stands out in this paragraph is the use of repetition. Since the inception of the strike, each character in the novel has continually pointed out the devastating monotony of their situation. The men gather in front of their old workplace but do nothing. The young boys pretend day after day to be soldiers but have grown tired even of their play. The women search for food and water. The same thing, day after day. And in this paragraph we see rhetorical examples of this endless repetition. Doudou is "more and more" aware of his responsibility. The people have, "no food, no money, and no credit." Each day for the strikers is a redundant rehearsal of the last, a point which Sembene is making clear even in his very language.

Finally, the structure of the paragraph itself seems to embody the very struggle Doudou is faced with. The beginning of the paragraph is very straightforward. It established Doudou's place in the strike, his title, and exactly what his problem at present is, namely that, "the difficulties had been even greater than he feared." Each of these is stated as an unwavering fact. Yet as the paragraph continues, this surity falls apart. By the end, Doudou can, "only see the hunger etched around the rim of the children's eyes." He no longer has hold of the simple facts. He can only concentrate on the harm caused to those around him. He, "asked himself constantly if he was in the right" showing that he is no longer holding firm to his beliefs. Rather, he now goes back and forth about his decision. This unraveling into confusion holds true for all the people participating in the strike. They no longer are sure it was the correct decision. They have lost food and water and loved ones. Yet, like Doudou, they perservere. Thankfully, at the conclusion of the strike, they are rewarded with a happy ending.

100 Days

100 days is a sad, sad movie about the Rwandan Genocide.  My favorite thing about this movie though is the way it deals with the genocide so subtly.  Easily, 100 days could be a simple cry.  Like paint by numbers, this could be one of those movies where the director shows his audience exactly where he wants them to feel the emotional pull.  But not this movie.  Nick Hughes (the director) instead chose to focus on specific character development.   In fact, the overall toll of the genocide is never specifically mentioned.  Still, the audience is bawling by the end.

The emotional pull of 100 days is entirely due to a cleverly crafted character/audience relationship.  The two main characters, Baptiste (Eric Bridges Twahirwa)  and Josette (Cleophas Kabisita), are young lovers intending to be married.  From the beginning, the scenes with just these two are vibrant and happy.  The first time we see them together they are playing in trees.  The colors on the screen are bright and the camera picks up various shafts of light coming through the trees.  The dialogue is simple but conveys a youthful sense of hope.  Even Josette's dress, which she proudly proclaims is from, "Paris!" is colorful and full of life, just like the young people themselves.  From this scene the audience has a sense of progression, that these two want life to be better for themselves and future generations.  Josette refuses to sleep with Baptiste because she doesn't want to be pregnant and unhappily married, as she says, "like my other friends."  They want to have children when they choose and wear clothing from far away.  These dreams and others like them are so similar to this American audience that we can't help but be swept away with Josette and Baptiste. 

 

There is one beautiful shot in this sequence that deserves special remark.  When they are discussing their future, Josette and Baptiste are sitting on the forest floor on a small hill.  The camera looks up at them, Josette in the foreground on the right and Baptiste far in the background on the top left.  At this point this shot is jarring because it places the lovers physically distant from each other.  Unfortunately this is a camera's way of foreshadowing their future.  

At the end of the movie we see an almost identical shot.  Josette is sitting on the right in the foreground, and Baptiste on the top left corner in the background.  However, Josette's beautiful dress is now discolored, torn and dull.  Baptiste too has dirt and blood on him, and looks to have aged ten years in those short 100 days.  Even without viewing the movie, these two production stills get the point across vividly.

A movie about genocide could easily go overboard on the violence.  Although it is important to recognize that horrific things did happen, the danger is that, somehow, showing too much of this in a film is more likely to desensitize the audience than make the needed point.  This is much like Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, which endeavors to make a religious/humanistic point but is overwhelmingly remembered for its excessive violence. A movie about genocide could end up similarly.  Instead, there are relatively few direct discussions of the genocide happening around the characters.  One such scene is a simple yet horrific shot of body after body after body being dumped into a pit.  Some of the bodies aren't even fully in the pit.  The visual trick of seeing a dead body hanging only half over a ledge and some villain walking over the former person with no sense of decorum shows the genius of Hughes.  Without use of dialogue he has effectively captured the evil of the genocide.  

Another scene with very little dialogue but huge portent comes almost exactly in the middle of the film.  Interestingly, the larger part of the violence only takes place in the second half of the movie.  However, the inhumanity can be summed up in a single scene.  The scene begins with three groups of men coming to a crossroads (how symbolic) with a gas station in the middle.  The Tutsi children from the local boys school are called forth by name and put in the gas station.  The gas station is filled with kerosene, but even after the order is given to burn it no one will carry the torch.  Finally a single man takes charge of the fire, and only after this do the others join in.  This scene seems to me significant for two reasons: 1) No one wanted to lead the violence, only follow it.  They have no real reason to cause the disturbance, but follow almost gleefully when another leads.  2) The schoolchildren don't scream.  Even when the kerosene seeps into their single-room prison, these 10 year old men don't scream.  Instead, there is a beautiful pan shot of the boys protecting each other.  How powerful.

Lastly and perhaps most poignant is a dreadful scene at the end of the film.  At first the Tutsis were captive in a church, at which point they were abandoned by the UN and effectively left to their deaths.  At this point however it is the Hutus who have taken refuge in the church and are now trapped.  A small child asks why the Tutsis are different.  A woman answers her that Tutsis have long fingers and lighter skin, all the while stroking the child's fingers and face. The visual effect is creepy, but the dialogue here is all important.  In a single question and answer these two have summed up the problem.  The child cannot understand how the oppressed are any different from she, and the only answer the "knowledgeable" adult has is that they are physically different, and not even remarkably so.

How indescribably awful that a million people were killed for having slightly longer fingers.

Overall, the most remarkable part of 100 Days is that it conveys the deep sense of horror without specifically dwelling on the genocide.  This is the genius of the film.  The audience walks away with a deeply ingrained sense of frustration, indignation, disgust and an incredible sadness without even seeing the full effect of the genocide on the Rwandan people.  A remarkable film.

Some Fun

A witty, silly, and somehow pretty accurate trailer for Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.

ZOOOOOOM!

Faat Kine, at first glance, is a happy little movie about a single mother living her life. However, with only the slightest effort, the deeper aspects of the movie unfold to deliver a stunning piece of work concerning a plethora of themes. Just some of these are; gender relations, problems with tradition, friendship, charity, feminism and even love. With the cunning combination of wit, humor and just a little bite thrown into the mix, Ousmane Sembene created a powerful movie with far reaching social implications.

I have to admit, the very first technical aspect I noticed about Faat Kine was the focus-pull shot that opens the movie. Unfortunately, due to its rarity, I was unable to see the movie before the appointed time, and we discussed this aspect in class before I was able to write about it! I will take this as a vote of confidence in my own viewing, and go forth with another noticable trait.

One distinct technical aspect was the use of zoom on Kine's face. This is particularly interesting because there was no use of zoom in Sia, the first African movie our class viewed. I think for this reason I noticed the use of a zoom in Faat Kine.

The first time the zoom is used is when we the audience first meet Kine. She has worked her way up to managing a gas station, and is sitting comfortably in her white doctor-ish coat. Several people come in to her office, and each time the zoom is only on Kine's face.

One person who comes to visit is a woman selling flowers. By zooming in on Kine's face we can see her caring nature. It is almost as if Sembene is inviting us to be closer to her ourselves. The audience recognizes immediately the sweetness and charity embodied in Kine. We feel as if we would like to be closer to a woman like her. This feeling is undoubtedly increased by the visual aspect of moving closer to her.

However, these charming feelings are quickly tempered in comparison with another visitor, the man who left her pregnant and uneducated. This time, the zoom allows the audience to focus on her harder nature. She becomes almost masculine in her motions, and the slight pull towards the focal point of her face allows the audience to recognize her harsher character traits. Indeed, it is at this point that we can see some flaws in her skin. This was probably unintentional. Even still, it is almost as if the camera itself is recognizing all the character traits of Kine.

Through the use of zoom, we are able to see Kine at her most personal. This means the audience is privy to both her personable and giving nature as well as her harder, masculine traits. Although unconscious, the zoom allows these recognitions to take place. It takes a true genius to implement these smallest of details in such an effective manner.

Ousmane Sembene

Interesting and Award winning video of Ousmane Sembene

Experiment with Blog Sounds

Gabcast! My Blog Sounds Like.... #1