Analyzation of the Element of Power Play in the Poem, A Far Cry From Africa and Indian reservation:Caughnagawa

My assignemnt for PGDE English Course in Sherubtse college, Bhutan-Eng 317 assignment, if it benefits the audience at large, i am more than happy to oblige

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A Far Cry from Africa is perhaps one of the best poems of Derek Walcott where he tries to portray
the feeling of being torn apart by his roots. Behind this poem lies the tragedy of both internal and
external conflict. His maternal roots from the blacks and his paternal roots from whites actually tear
him apart. The whole concept of the poem is shrouded in ambivalence.
In the late 1800s British colonies began to settle throughout a territory that native Kikuyu called
home. As British colonies began to spread so did the injustices: natives were thrown off of their own
land and impoverished by poor work and poor wages. However a great uprising occurred and this
poem is set with the backdrop of this great Kikuyu uprising of the 1950‟s.
The poem clearly depicts the subjugation and the mistreatment of the Kikuyu
1
clan. As time went by
the oppression reached its heights and it was natural for the Kikuyu clan to react. And in 1952 a
secret Kikuyu society known as the Mau Mau
2
began a war of violence against the British and any
Africans who were loyal to them. Consequently a great many lives were lost. (Anon, 2010) The poem
clearly shows that Derek Walcott was openly against the colonial subjugation of the people of Kenya.
Derek aptly puts in:
Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews?
3
(Walcott, 2000)
The consideration of the black people as expendable Jews is all the more noteworthy here. Adolf
Hitler dominated Europe and then killed Jews in millions. This holocaust made them expendables at
least to the eyes of the Nazi. But the comparison of the Kikuyu tribes in the uprising of the Mau Mau
to the Jews of the Second World War makes them less human as history has shown that Jews really
were made expendable then. The treatment of the Kikuyu clan and the subjugation of this tribe for the
last 150 years was a clear sign of testing human endurance. This power play not only led to the killing
of hundreds of people but also led to the degradation of the human values of compassion. I say this
with certain degree of understanding of the poem that the treatment of a fellow human being at par
with the other was crossed way beyond. More or less the blacks then were treated at par with slaves.
In this poem, the poet‟s ambivalent feelings in facing cultural identity are clearly presented. When the
African subcontinent was colonized by the different countries form Europe. When colonizing Africa,
the white people fought against Africans they killed them in thousands as they took them as savages
and in Walcott‟s words the white people took those savages as “expendable as Jews.” (Davis,
2009)The white people‟s cruel treatment of Africans makes Walcott believe that the whites are even
crueler than the beast. So the poet writes,
“The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.” (Walcott, 2000)
In order to cleanse the Kenyan culture through treating them as savages is quite an irony. It is also
quite ironic that the whites seek divinity by inflicting pain on those Africans. And as Derek being one
of the hybrids of the two cultures finds himself even harder to bear the pain inflicted. This is to say

1
African tribe. These days they are modern Kenyans from Kenya.
2
Were revolutionary kikuyu tribes who were dead against the British people.
3
During the Second World War the Nazi treated the Jews inhumanly, hence Expendable.

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that in this power play, being in the interstice made him a loser from both the sides. This powerful
means of propagating the British culture led to the gradual acceptance of the culture. Eventually the
psyche of the people changed and made them feel that their culture was inferior. Tyson in (Davis,
2009),Effectively puts in: In order to effectively colonize another’s land, the colonizer’s culture has
to become so widely spread and deeply embedded in the colonized land’s culture so that the
indigenous peoples will begin to accept that they are inferior to the colonizers. This vicious cycle of
dominance through the propagation of the new culture by means of mimicry
4
gradually played a
source of power for the British. There was divided loyalty because of this cultural acceptance and
their differences. This power play in fact killed a lot of Kikuyu tribal people than the British.
Unlike A Far Cry from Africa, Indian Reservation: Caughnawaga
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portrays a relatively easy life;
however, the power play in this poem is all the more persistent. The poet tries to compare the lives of
the red Indians with that of the Jews in Nazi Germany.
Though AM Klein was a Jew yet he does not reflect the atrocities of humanity as suffered by those
million Jews in the Second World War. The poet does not dwell on injustice committed in particular
against his own ethnic group; in this poem, he grieves the collapse of the humanist ideal, he identifies
his own plight with another important instance of ethnic persecution. (Glinter, 2008) In "Indian
Reservation: Caughnawaga," Klein highlights the maiming of the Indian culture and tradition:
This is a grassy ghetto, and no home.
And these are fauna in a museum kept.
The better hunters have prevailed. The game,
losing its blood, now makes these grounds its crypt. (Klein, 2000)

Klein advocates preservation of traditions. Those who alienate themselves from the traditions are
dismissed by him as mere ghosts. In this poem Klein depicts the corrosive impact that the western
culture has effected on the Red-Indian's traditional life style.
Klein laments the extinction of the ancient Red Indian Race in the first stanza of the poem as
follows:
Where are the braves, the faces like autumn fruit,
Who stared at the child from the coloured frontispiece?
And the monosyllabic chief who spoke with his throat? (Klein, 2000)
Klein records his ache to meet the brave Red Indians whose faces were like the autumn fruit. The
autumn fruit stands for the possession of ripe wisdom by Red Indians. The poet longs to see the Red
Indians standing at their 'frontispiece'[the door step] gazing at their children walking out. He is very
eager to meet the 'monosyllabic' chief who spoke briefly in a gruff and guttural voice. He calls the
Red Indians affectionately as 'feathered bestiaries', because they with their fur and feathers resemble
mythic animals such as Chief Running Deer, Black Bear, and Old Buffalo Head featured in the
Aesop‟s fables. He says:
Where are the tribes, the feathered bestiaries?-
Rank Aesop's animals erect and red,
With fur on their names to make all live things kin-
Chief Running Deer, Black Bear, Old Buffalo Head? (Klein, 2000)
Klein then proceeds to describe the degradation of the Red Indian Civilization. The Red Indians have
given up their traditional life style being lured by the commercial western culture. They adopt modern
French names.


4
Mimicry is a term used to explain the natives’ imitating the colonizing country due to their want to be “accepted by
the colonizing culture” and their feeling of inferiority and shame for their own culture. (Davis, 2009)
5
Name of a place associated with the red Indians

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All in all, the poem „Indian Reservation: Caughnawaga‟ epitomizes Klein‟s feelings that the
civilization of the Red Indians has disappeared and can never be revived or revitalized. Just like A Far
Cry in Africa, this poem actually has a very good similarity through the means of power play. We see
that the central message of Walcott is the disappearance of the Kikuyu culture, so is the Indians‟ rich
culture. Walcott in his poem tries to portray the importance of the language and the powerful English
culture taking over the transcendent culture of the Kenyans thereby making them look and feel
inferior Klein on the other hand portrays the changing times in the lives of Indians from
Caughnawaga . he attacks the influence of the French culture on the Indians while Derek attacks the
influence of the British culture on the Kenyan lives. So the psyche of these two races of people are all
moulded into thinking the cultures of the foreigners as superior in turn making their culture feel
inferior.
This indeed is a power play by the foreigners as we find that the whole society gives in gradually
making them a stranger to their own culture.

Bibliography
Anon. (2010, December 14). A Far Cry From Africa Analysis. Retrieved January 4, 2012, from Eliteskills
classics:
http://www.eliteskills.com/analysis_poetry/A_Far_Cry_From_Africa_by_Derek_Walcott_analysis.php
Davis, M. A. (2009). Literary Criticism, Derek Walcott. Retrieved january 4, 2012, from Student pulse, online
academic student journal: http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/56/derek-walcotts-a-far-cry-from-
africa
Glinter, E. (2008). A.M Klein and the Artistic Transimission of Ethnic Identity. Student Journal of Canadian
Jewish studies, 9.
Klein, A. M. (2000). indian reservation: caughnawaga. In N. C. Kevin McNeilly, Currents. Stories, Essays,
poems, and Plays (p. 134). Ontario: Prentice Hall Canada.
Walcott, D. (2000). A far cry from africa. In N. C. Kevin McNeilly, Currents, Stories, Essays, Poems and
Plays (p. 266). Ontario: Prentice Hall Canada.