Srimad Andavan Arts and Science College, Tiruchirappalli-5.

Department of English
Centre for Research
III B.A. English
Common Wealth Literature
Unit –I Australia A.D.Hope

Alec Derwent was one of Australia’s greatest poets, who touched the lives of many
throughout the world. Within the 7 stanzas of “Australia”, A.D hope gives us a very negative
one-sided approach to the poem. His poetry explores the spiritual poverty of our land. He
insinuates that it takes so much to survive which has prevented Australians from reflecting
upon their journey through life. A.D hope is looking down on Australia and our way of life.
The sombre images of ‘ a nation of trees, drab green and desolate grey’ indicate that Australia
is a monotonous and dreary place. Each stanza consists of four lines with the rhyme scheme
being ABBA.

Biographical Information

Hope was born on July 21, 1907, in Cooma, New South Wales, Australia, and spent most of his
childhood in rural areas in New South Wales and Tasmania. He received his B.A. from Sydney
University in 1928 and then went on to Oxford University for two years. He returned to
Australia, working as a psychologist with the New South Wales Department of Labour and
Industry. In 1937 he accepted a position as lecturer at Sydney Teachers' College, and then in
1945 at the University of Melbourne. In 1951 he was appointed the first Professor of English at
Canberra University College, and held the position until his retirement in 1968. In his mid-
thirties his poetry was starting to appear in periodicals, but it was not until 1955 that he published
his first collection of poems, The Wandering Islands. After his retirement from teaching, he was
appointed Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University. He was awarded the Robert
Frost Award for Poetry in 1976, the Levinson Prize for Poetry in 1968, and the Myer Award for
Australian Literature in 1967. He was awarded an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in
1972. He died on July 13, 2000 in Canberra, A.C.T, Australia.

Major Works

Although Hope's poetry is regarded as stylistically conservative—he utilized the iambic

quatrain—the subjects of his verse were varied in scope. He is considered a major writer of
erotic verse. Several of his early poems, such as “Phallus,” reject the pleasures of sexual
relationships and romantic attachment. Yet in later work, the beauty of the human body and the
thrill of passion and erotic adventure become a central theme in many of his poems. In others he
reflects on the dual nature of love; in “Imperial Adam,” for example, Adam finishes a
pleasurable sexual tryst with Eve only to visualize that their act has unleashed the first murderer,
their son Cain, on the world. Hope is also viewed as a satirical poet, as many of his works poke
fun at technology, conformity, and the absurdity of modern life. In “Australia” he notes the lack
of culture and intellectual challenges to be found in Australian society. “The Return from the
Freudian Islands” skewers the trend of psychological theorizing. Other poems explore such
topics as creativity, nature, music, and the wonders of science. Hope's incorporation of myth and
legend is viewed as a defining characteristic of his poems. “The End of the Journey” is an
imaginative and bleak retelling of the Ulysses-Penelope story. “Paradise Saved” and “Imperial
Adam” concern the Edenic myth. In other works Hope discusses the role of the artist in
contemporary society and asserts his theory of poetic expression. His long poem, “Conversation
with Calliope,” investigates the status of epic poetry in our modern world.

Margaret Atwood's "Journey to the Interior

About the author

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, CC OOnt FRSC (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary
critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of
Asturias Award for Literature, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once, and
has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award several times, winning twice.[ She is also a founder
of the Writers' Trust of Canada, a non-profit literary organization that seeks to encourage Canada's
writing community.[While she is best known for her work as a novelist, she has also published fifteen
books of poetry. Many of her poems have been inspired by myths and fairy tales, which have been
interests of hers from an early age. Atwood has published short stories in Tamarack Review, Alphabet,
Harper's, CBC Anthology, Ms., Saturday Night, and many other magazines. She has also published four
collections of stories and threecollections of unclassifiable short prose works

 THEME OF THE POEM

Journey to the Interior by Margaret Atwood is a journey to the unknown, a journey

within. This poem describes the human psyche by comparing it to the Canadian environment and
natural landscape. Journey to the Interior is an inner journey of self discovery.The title 'Journey
to the Interior' implies of a journey from the exterior reality to the inner depths of the human
psyche. In historical times this phrase would imply the discovery of a new land, venturing into
the unknown which could involve danger This idea is similar in this poem, Margaret Atwood is
delving into the mysteries of the human mind, uncertain and apprehensive "many have been
here, but only somehavereturnedsafely.

A Portrait of my mother
A.M. Klein
Author Introduction
It is difficult to maintain a relationship with A.M. Klein’s work that is not sentimentalized, made
melancholy and nostalgic, by the events of his later years. Klein’s frustration with the Jewish
community’s reception of his writing, and with his success in the larger world of literary endeavors, his
hatred of his employ under Sam Bronfman, his growing depressions and silence, blanket his marvelous
and varied work in an atmosphere of melancholy and self-disgust. Notebooks: Selections from the A.M.
Klein Papers has the unintended effect of heightening this atmosphere of gloom and defeat; included in
its contents are numerous incomplete and failed efforts, as well as a gathering of "Selected Notes and
Fragments" that are often bizarre in their eccentric subject matter and high-flown diction.

The editors date the manuscripts from which this volume has been gathered from the early forties through
the early to middle fifties. The earliest work in Notebooks is by far the most readable and the least
tortured, and as well, it will prove most useful to Klein’s readers in their hunt for the background material
that fed his better known work. In lightly fictionalized autobiographical studies, Klein creates strikingly
clear portraits of family, Montreal life, and of the position he felt himself in as a literary man among
compatriots who’d gone in for more lucrative vocations:
my mother’s greatest boast—her defense-mechanism against the mothers of rich sons—was always that
her son, without worldly possessions, without property or cars, had "a name in the town."

In the mid-forties Klein began reworking these sketches into a prison novel he intended to call "Stranger
and Afraid." With its claustrophobic portrayal of an articulate man’s incarceration for an unnamed crime,
this work recalls Albert Camus’ L’étranger, which Klein may have read after its appearance in 1942.
"Stranger and Afraid" is intriguing as well for its treatment of the Holocaust—one markedly different
from that inThe Second Scroll. Unencumbered by the latter novel’s insistence on making the declaration
of the State of Israel a redemptive final chapter to the war, Klein’s response in "Stranger and Afraid" is
more direct in its consideration of Nazi crimes, as well as in its portrait of the effect of their discovery on
Canadians at home.

Unfortunately, Klein’s diary entries included in Notebooks cover less than ten pages, but the few entries
we have here, from 1944 and ’45 offer insight into Klein’s half-hearted political involvement as a
candidate for the C.C.F., as well as a won- derful recreation of a visit he made to the University Club at
McGill—in his words, a "club right out of a cartoon in Punch"—to arrange a visiting lectureship in
poetry.

Two major projects, each resolutely strange in the fragments Klein left, are a second unfinished novel
modeled on the detective genre, and a treatment of the legend of the golem of Prague. Though the former
was to be set in Klein’s Montreal, and the latter in medieval Prague and Venice, both are meditations on
the narrator’s struggle with the contradictory claims of an observant and a secular life. Pimontel, Klein’s
alter-ego in the untitled detective novel, is explicit about the role literature must play once he has rejected
normative religion: "it would be with words, themselves a kind of deed, that he would serve his Author."
Klein, it would seem, was in many ways our Graham Greene, a religious writer whose value lay, as John
Updike has said of Greene, in "his agonized sense of faith’s shaky ground in the unhappy human
condition." Why, then, did Greeneland become such a familiar topography, while Kleinland faltered, so
many of its plans and characters foldered in an Outremont study? The manuscripts published
in Notebooks will prove invaluable to anyone dedicated to unravelling this question.

In Shlepping the Exile, Michael Wex creates his own bizarre cultural landscape—a late-fifties southern
Alberta town nuzzled against rolling coulees, where Jewish newcomers from Europe have settled among
cowboys and farmers, "Ukrainians all." Still rooted in its European past, but moving, warily, toward an
acceptance of Canadian ways, the Jewish outpost at Coalbanks is seen through the eyes of Yoine Levkes,
who dresses like a yeshiva boy from pre-war Poland, but sneaks Elvis Presley records into his room when
his orthodox parents aren’t looking.
Wex is a lover of crazy juxtapositions and the carnivalesque possibilities that lie behind the prospect of
Yoine trading his yarmulke for more stylish headgear:
The world was going beatnik, and you didn’t have to be good in gym. . . . secret admirers were wooing
Genia Mandelbroit with valentines of bongos, and compared to a plain old yarmulke, my new black beret
was the bendin, solid-sendin, the all-offendin . . . livin’ END.

Wex’s narrator is prone to this kind of riffing; his language is a conglomeration of Lenny Bruce, Borscht
Belt shtick, with a liberal sprinkling of Yiddish. In his use of the latter, Wex can be set apart from the
typical North American Jewish writer who learned a few dirty words as a kid. Himself a translator and
teacher of Yiddish, Wex tries, inShlepping the Exile, to convey the imaginative and emotional world that
was inextricably linked with the workaday language of Jewish communities before the War. To aid the
general reader, Wex’s publisher has included a glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew terms. But these may not
serve to unlock some of the idiomatic oddities Yoine and his family make use of. Wex’s narrator points to
the fact that even for Jews after the War, Yiddish literature had fallen into a strange no man’s land: "most
of the people who could still read it were too religious to want it."

Wex has performed parts of Shlepping the Exile at night clubs and folk festivals, accompanied by a jazz
troupe reminiscent of early-1960s poetry readings. His work seems most at home in this milieu of
resurrected bohemianism. Like Wex’s fiction, the bohemians thrived on crazy juxtaposition, on the
surprising brew that came of mixing Buddhist chants, Yiddishist leftism, and Times Square sleaze, all of
it seasoned with the strong scent of Arabic bean and French cigarettes. In Shlepping the Exile, however,
the scents that stir the memory are garlic and herring.

Unit - II

THE CASUALITIES- J.P.Clark

About the author

Born in Kiagbodo, Nigeria, to Ijaw parents, Clark received his early education at the Native
Administration School and the prestigious Government College in Ughelli, and his BA degree in English at
the University of Ibadan, where he edited various magazines, including the Beacon and The Horn. Upon
graduation from Ibadan in 1960, he worked as an information officer in the Ministry of Information, in
the old Western Region of Nigeria, as features editor of the Daily Express, and as a research fellow at the
Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan. He served for several years as a professor of English at
the University of Lagos, a position from which he retired in 1980. While at the University of Lagos he was
co-editor of the literary magazine Black Orpheus. In 1982, along with his wife Ebun Odutola (a professor
and former director of the Centre for Cultural Studies at the University of Lagos), he founded the PEC
Repertory Theatre in Lagos.

A widely travelled man, Clark has, since his retirement, held visiting professorial appointments
at several institutions of higher learning, including Yale and Wesleyan University in the United
States.

Theme of the poem

TheCasualtiesis not just a poem but indeed a prophetic statement of national interest.While it is
true that Nigeria is not currently in a full-blown conventional civil war, the indicesare glaring. In
other words, the poem is not just a sad reminder of the past; it is a pointer to a possible future.
The work ―brings home today‘s Nigeria in a sad manner‖. There is therefore,the need for all
stakeholders to have a round-table conference to discuss the future of the Nigerian state and the
critical place of the minorities. We cannot shy away from thecontending issues and expect peace
to reign. This is perhaps the only way to avert arecurrence of the bloody Nigerian civil war.
physical war going on at home seems less important.

The Casualties is a post-mortem of the Nigeria civil war. The operational subject is thatwe are all
casualties of the war and not only those who died while fighting the war. It is the position of the
poet that all categories of Nigerians were originators, facilitators and victims of the national
tragedy. The creative writer expresses his disgust and disappointment in a rather subtle and
subdued tone, thereby heightening the poetic quality of a work referred to by somescholars as
predominantly prosaic. The poet creatively begins by eliminating the obvious casesfrom the list
of the casualties, and goes ahead to categorically states those he believes to bevictims, taking
time to digress on the propagandist role played by agents of both sides using thetelling image of
people beating on ―the drums of the human hearts‖.He goes ahead to givereasons why the
casualty rate is all-inclusive. The last line of the poem seems to expand the bounds of the poem
and make accomplice of non-Nigerians. This is an obvious reference to theglobal dimensions of
the war.
Poets in Africa – Roy Campbell

About the authorRoy Campbell (1901-1957) was a South African poet and satirist. He was
born in 1901 in Durband and was educated at Durban High School. His first loves were literature
and the outdoor life . He wrote verse imitation on T.S.Eliot and Paul Verlaine. He published his
first collection of poems The Flaming Terrapin 1924 when he was just 22.

Summary: The landscape of Africa affords matter for the poetic efforts of young poets. They can write
about the lilies seen in plenty. Those who want to play with words, the old ballads are of much
use. Ordinary poets can write about the different kinds of the country’s soil.

From an early age, the Africans are stimulated by anger remebering the injustices they have
suffered. So they do not have the awareness towards imagination to write stories. They lack
creativity and aesthetic sense because they have become violent in nature. This is due to their
victimization.

The Africans are the product of rough and tough life. They have covered difficult terrain in gold
hunting and also have faced the rough sea. Their experiences have made them firebrands
(trouble makers) Nature has not softened the attitude of the Africans. Their poetry is neither
sentimental nor tuneful. They are particular in expressing nothing but truth.

The flower and stars which are the subjects of other poets do not inspire the Africans. They have
the sun as an ally (friend and supporter) in scorching (boiling or burning) out the fragile (weak
and flimsy) things and romantic ideas from their thoughts.
 Some poets are affected by colonial sensibilities and their poems suffer from the weakness of
portraying unreal situations with an implicaiton of sensuality (unchastity)

Race relations is a subject handled by the African poets. Africans were not shown real mercy and
the love shown to them was mere pretension. The mud they tread (walk) on is soaked (flooded) with the
blood of their fellowmen. It will scream like the spirit of Abel who became the first viciim of fratricide
(one who kills his or her brother) The Africans though their culture has no roots. Their culture is the
product of the wild nature surrounding them. Their vision is bright and they are gifted by a second
sight.To utter terrible truth is their mission (task) Their utterance will reflect the trouble they have
borne in the past.They may not be cogent in their narration. Their lives will rll on like the waters of
Scamander, a river mentioned in Homer’s ‘The Iiiad’.
Conclusion: The author clearly portrays through his poem that the Africans are very violent in nature.
This is because they have been suffering under the crisis like exploitation, racism, colonialism and
humiliation. In addition to this, the African land is also terrible and harsh. It is true that atmosphere
plays are important role in the character of human beings. Thus the poetry of the Africans is also quite
harsh. It lacks melody but contains truth.

A Far Cry from Africa- Derek Walcott

About the author

Derek Alton Walcott, OBE OCC (born 23 January 1930) is a Saint Lucian poet and playwright.
He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature He is currently Professor of poetry at the
University of Essex. His works include the Homeric epic poem, Omeros (1990), which many
critics view "as Walcott's major achievement." In addition to having won the Nobel, Walcott has
won many literary awards over the course of his career including an Obie Award in 1971 for his
play Dream on Monkey Mountain, a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award, a Royal Society of
Literature Award, the Queen's Medal for Poetry, and the 2011 T. S. Eliot Prize for his book of
poetry, White Egrets.

Theme of the poem

Behind this poem lies the tragedy of both external and internal conflict. The historical backdrop of the
poem is the civil uprising of the Mau Mau against British colonialists in Kenya. 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.
The subjugation and mistreatment of the Kikuyu only got brutally worse as time progressed. Finally
enough was enough. In the 1950s he Muingi (also called Mau Mau) could no longer hold on to empty
promises of reparation and economic equality, nor could they tolerate anymore passive complaints-
they rebelled violently. As a result, British military forces rapidly expanded and, along with African
loyalists, pursued and eventually put to death 11,000 of the rebel force. Although it served as the
catalysis for the independence of the Kikuyu and greater Kenya, the conflicts of the Mau Mau Uprising
were savage, bloody, and cruel (both ways). Bitter memories and no doubt latent hostilities followed the
bloodshed.Which leads us to our poet.Derek Walcott was of mixed heritage: both of (white) English and
African decent. He was openly against the colonial subjugation of the people of Kenya (with whom he
felt a deep connection). At the same time, and as a result of his direct connection to his English heritage,
it grieved him to see them being killed during the Mau Mau Uprising. Thus an internal conflict of loyalty
emerged within the poet. His poem ask a solitary question: “With whom do I side?”

The poem is essentially divided (in thought, anyhow) between a poetic narrative of the conflict through)
and the conflict as it exists with the poet internally..

The tone of the poem is urgent. And you can see that within the poem itself, there is a cycle. It begins
with questions and ends with questions. However, the only difference is that the being questions are
rhetorical ones,ie, we can answer them, but the questions towards the end has no answer to them.
There is paradox used in line 4 "corpses are scattered through a paradise" Corpses do not belong in the
world of paradise, therefore contrdictory. Simile "quick as flies" and metaphor in the front line are also
used to make the poem more energetic and interesting to read. This effect also gives impact to what
Walcott is trying to suggest. The poem is very deep and needs great understanding of historical context
to further your knowledge of "A far cry from Africa.

Unit - III

The Sin Eater-Margret Atwood

About the Author

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto.
She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her
master's degree from Radcliffe College.

Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary
degrees. She is the author of more than thirty-five volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and
non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The
Handmaid's Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won
the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood's dystopic novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003
Content of the story

The title of this story refers to a Welsh tradition in which a “sin-eater” was a person who sat up
with the body of someone who died and ate a meal in the presence of the deceased in order to
transfer the dead person’s sins to himself or herself so that the soul of the dead could go to
heaven. This symbolism is the focus of this tale about a modern psychiatrist who dies
unexpectedly, leaving several former wives and many female patients feeling betrayed.

When the narrator first hears about the psychiatrist’s death, she—like his other women—is horrified,
yet also angry with him for having risked his life by pruning a tree, from which he fell to his death. There
is a hint that the psychiatrist may have planned his death in order to punish the women who relied on
him, forcing him to assume a strength of character that he did not have. His relationship with the
narrator was more than professional, but less than intimate. Her sense of his betrayal infects her
memories of their therapy sessions and leads her to reexamine her notions of reality and strength. As
she tries to find meaning in Joseph’s death, if not in his life, she re-creates discussions that always led to
his problems, needs, or fears. It is in this context that the story of “The Sin-Eater” is told.

The Old Woman Joyce Marshall

About the Author : Joyce Marshall born in Montreal and educated at McGill University. She is the
author of two novels and three collecions of short stories

Summary:
“The Old Woman” is about a woman called Molly who has left England and has immigrated to Canada to
live with her husband. They had known each other for few months when they married in England. Soon
after marriage her husband has left her to come to Canada. For her, it has been three years of waiting
and loneliness while her husband has been busy with his beloved power-house.
A house close to a noisy waterfall, several miles away from the nearest town, taciturn people with
French-Canadian culture are numerous problems that she has to deal with. The author, Joyce Marshall,
has pointed loneliness as one of the most important issues that can hurt an immigrant in a new country.
The story starts in the station at Montreal. Molly has found that her husband is changed. “It was more
than the absence of uniform. His face seemed so still, and there was something about his mouth—a sort
of slackness. And at times she would turn and find him looking at her, his eyes absorbed and watchful”
(Marshall 34). The word “still”, “slackness” and “watchful” shows that he is not interested to see his
wife. Molly feels that her husband doesn’t have enough attention to her. Despite the sad condition, she
tries to tell herself that her husband would be closer to her when they get home. It’s a romantic
morning when they leave the train. “It was grey dawn faintly disturbed with pink when they left the
train” (Marshall 34). After a long journey over the snow they arrive home. Molly is tired and she needs a
quiet and friendly environment but the sound of the waterfall is annoying her.
This inconvenience situation and lack of attention from her husband is increasing her fear of loneliness.
It reminds her last three years, three years of waiting and loneliness. She has left England to escape the
loneliness. She deserves it. She doesn’t have family or relative and she is far from her friends, this fact is
increasing her dependency on her husband. He doesn’t help her to settle into new life.

Another issue that Molly is experiencing is environmental loneliness. Not only her husband doesn’t
spend time with her but also she doesn’t know any neighbour. As Marshal writes:
“There were no neighbours within miles, no telephone calls or visits from milkman or baker—only one
of Toddy’s sweepers coming in once a fortnight with supplies and mail from Missawani” (P 37.) If it was
a crowded and friendlier neighborhood or if she knew some people around her, there would be fewer
issues. Coldness, grey and cloudy sky, lack of sun, taciturn people are parameters that are helping
loneliness to take over molly’s life. When I first came to Canada, I was living in Richmond Hill which is a
quiet area. I can remember how lonely I felt. I felt there's no one in my life that I can share my feelings
with. I came to the conclusion that I’m unacceptable and unlovable. But actually that wasn’t because of
me, it was society which made me feel that way. Molly in “The Old Woman” has the same feeling. She
came from a European-style country where people are friendlier and warmer. It must be so hard for her
to leave in a house so far from any neighborhood.

Immigration is a long and complex process and relocation to another country is not easy. A different
culture and a different life-style will increase the issues that an immigrant is experiencing in the new
country. Without any doubt, loneliness is one the most important problems that will affect a
newcomer’s life. “The Old Woman” has demonstrated that how a woman can be hurt by her husband if
he doesn’t show compassion and understanding for her situation as an immigrant in the new country.

Unit - IV

The lion and the Jewel

Wole Soyinka

About the Author The Lion and the Jewel is a play by Wole Soyinka first performed in 1959. It
chronicles how Baroka, the lion, fights with the modern Lakunle over the right to marry Sidi, the titular
Jewel.

Characters: Lakunle, Ailatu, Sidi, Sadiku, Baroka

Summary: The Lion and the Jewel is a satirical comedy with music, songs and dance. It treats serious
issues in a genjerally light-hearted manner, content to over-simplify and to leave some issues
unresolved in order to provide an entertaining and provocative experience.

The play is set in Iiunjinle, an imaginary Yoruba village; and it presents the conflict between the Bale,
Baroka and village school teacher Lakunle is wooing Sidi. Sidi is prepared to marry Lakunle if he well pay
her bride-price, but he is unwilling to do this, Baroka, the Bale of Iiujnle, notices Sidi when photographs
of her are published in a magazine. When his proposal is rejected, as an introduction to seducing her he
invites her to supper through his senior wife, Sadiku. But Sidi senses this plot and declines the invitation
saying that Baroka is “too old”. Enraged by this reply, Baroka plans a more clever plot: he tells Sadiku
that he has become impotent, anticipating that she will reveal this ‘secret’ and that Sidi will be drawn to
his palace by curiosity and crue;ty. The plot works and once he has Sidi in his room he impresses her,
flatters her and, finally, seduces her. In the final scene Sidi, weeping tells sadiku and Lakunle repeats his
offer to marry her, but she him and compares him unfavourable with Baroka. In the course of the plot,
Baroka’s qualities of cunning, discrimination and strength are shown to advantage and some of his
weaknesses are revealed, Lakunle is provided with a number of opportunities to display his talents and
proclaim his Principles. It becomes clear that he is a shallow and superficial young man with little
understanding of the foreign ideas he has embraced. Sidi’s decision to marry Baroka reflectgs the play-
wrights opinion that in the context provided by the play, Baroka the better man and his attitudes are the
more important and worthy.
Theme: The most prominent theme of this story is the rapid modernisation of Africa, coupled with the
rapid evangelisation of the population. This has driven a wedge between the traditionalists, who seek to
nullify the changes done in the name of progress due to vested interests or simply not liking the result of
progress, and the modernists, who want to see the last of outdated traditional beliefs at all cost.

Unit - V

Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe

About the Author : Things Fall Apart is an English-language novel by Nigerian author
Chinua Achebe published in 1958 by William Heinemann Ltd in the UK. It is seen as the archetypal
modern African novel in English, one of the first to receive global critical acclaim.

Published: 1958

Characters: Nwoye, Ezinma, Ikemefuna, Mr. Brown, Okonkwo

Summary: Set in pre-colonial Nigeria in the 1890s, Things Fall Apart highlights the clash
between colonialism and traditional culture. The protaganist Okonkwo is strong, hard-working, and
strives to show no weakness. Okonkwo wants to dispel his father Unoka’s tainted legacy of being cheap
(he borrowed and lost money, and neglected his wife and children) and cowardly (he feared the sight of
blood). Okonkwo works to build his wealth entirely on his own, as Unoka died a shameful death and left
many unpaid debts. Although brusque with his three wives, children, and neighbours, he is wealthy,
courageous, and powerful among the people of his village. He is a leader of his village, and he has
attained a position in his society for which he has striven all his life.

Because of the great esteem in which the village holds him, Okonkwo is selected by the elders to be the
guardian of Ikemefuna, a boy taken by the village as a peace settlement between Umuofia and another
village after Ikemefuna's father killed an Umuofian woman. The boy lives with Okonkwo's family and
Okonkwo grows fond of him. The boy looks up to Okonkwo and considers him a second father. The
Oracle of Umuofia eventually pronounces that the boy must be killed. Ezeudu, the oldest man in the
village, warns Okonkwo that he should have nothing to do with the murder because it would be like killing
his own child. But to avoid seeming weak and feminine to the other men of the village, Okonkwo
participates in the murder of the boy despite the warning from the old man. In fact, Okonkwo himself
strikes the killing blow even as Ikemefuna begs his "father" for protection. For many days after killing
Ikemefuna, Okonkwo feels guilty and saddened by this.

Shortly after Ikemefuna's death, things begin to go wrong for Okonkwo. During a gun salute at Ezeudu's
funeral, Okonkwo's gun explodes and kills Ezeudu's son. He and his family are sent into exile for seven
years to appease the gods he has offended. While Okonkwo is away, white men begin to arrive in
Umuofia with the intent of introducing their religion. As the number of converts increases, the foothold of
the white people grows and a new government is introduced. The village is forced to respond with either
appeasement or resistance to the imposition of the white people's nascent society.

Returning from exile, Okonkwo finds his village changed by the presence of the white men. He and other
tribal leaders try to reclaim their hold on their native land by destroying a local Christian church. In return,
the leader of the white government takes them prisoner and holds them for ransom for a short while,
further humiliating and insulting the native leaders. As a result, the people of Umuofia finally gather for
what could be a great uprising. Okonkwo, a warrior by nature and adamant about following Umuofian
custom and tradition, despises any form of cowardice and advocates war against the white men. When
messengers of the white government try to stop the meeting, Okonkwo kills one of them. He realizes with
despair that the people of Umuofia are not going to fight to protect themselves — his society's response
to such a conflict, which for so long had been predictable and dictated by tradition, is changing.

When the local leader of the white government comes to Okonkwo's house to take him to court, he finds
that Okonkwo has hanged himself; he ultimately commits suicide rather than be tried in a colonial court.
Among his own people, Okonkwo's actions have ruined his reputation and status, as it is strictly against
the teachings of the Igbo to commit suicide.
Theme : Individuals gain strength from their society or community, and societies derive strength from the
individuals who belong to them. In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo builds his titles and strength with the
support of his society's customs. Likewise, Okonkwo's community profits from his hard work and
willpower to remain strong.
Surfacing
Margaret Atwood
Author Introduction
Surfacing is the second published novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. It was first published by McClelland
[1]
and Stewart in 1972. It has been called a companion novel to Atwood's collection of poems, Power Politics, which
was written the previous year and deals with complementary issues.

The novel, grappling with notions of national and gendered identity, anticipated rising concerns about
conservation and preservation and the emergence of Canadian Nationalism. It was adapted into a movie in 1981.

Summary: The unnamed narrator returns to Quebec after years of absence to search for her missing
father. She brings her boyfriend, Joe, and a married couple, Anna and David. On the way to a village near
her father’s island, the narrator visits her father’s friend Paul. Paul can provide no new information on
how to locate the narrator’s father. A guide named Evans takes the narrator and her companions to her
father’s island, where the narrator searches for clues regarding her father’s disappearance. She
becomes convinced that her father has gone mad and is still alive.
The narrator works in spurts on her freelance job illustrating a book of fairy tales, but her
worries prevent her from accomplishing any real work. David proposes staying on the island for a week.
The narrator agrees, though she secretly fears her crazed father’s reemergence. During their stay, David
launches constant insults at Anna, couching them as jokes. Anna confesses to the narrator that David is
a womanizer. She complains that David constantly demands that Anna wear makeup. The four go on a
blueberry-picking expedition. They canoe to a nearby island, where Joe unexpectedly proposes to the
narrator. The narrator refuses Joe, telling him how she left her last husband and child.
Back on the island, Paul arrives with an American named Malmstrom. Malmstrom claims to be from a
Detroit wildlife agency. He offers to purchase the island, but the narrator refuses. She pulls Paul aside
and tells him that her father is still alive. Paul seems skeptical. After the visitors leave, David offhandedly
accuses Malmstrom of being a C.I.A. operative who is organizing an American invasion of Canada. The
narrator looks through her father’s records and consequently believes that he is likely dead. She sees
that he had been researching Indian wall paintings and that he had marked several sites on a map. She
decides to visit a site.
The narrator convinces her friends to accompany her on a camping trip to see the wall paintings.
On their way to the campsite, they see a decomposing blue heron that has been hanged from a tree.
David insists on filming the dead heron for a movie he is making called Random Samples. The heron’s
death haunts the narrator. She sees evidence of two campers entering the area beforehand, and she
quickly assumes that they are Americans and to blame for the crime. Meanwhile, the four companions
set up camp. Anna tells the narrator she has forgotten her makeup and David will punish her. The
narrator goes fishing with David and Joe. They encounter the Americans, and the narrator notices an
American flag on their boat. The narrator brings her companions to a site from her father’s map, but
there are no wall paintings. Frustrated and confused, they return to camp. On the way, they again
encounter the American campers. The narrator is surprised to discover that the campers are actually
Canadian; what she had thought was an American flag is actually a sticker. However, the narrator claims
the campers are still Americans because their slaughter of the heron is a distinctly American action.
The four return to the cabin. The narrator locates another site on her father’s map but realizes
that the government has raised the water level in this part of the lake. She will have to dive to see the
paintings. Outside, the narrator observes David tormenting Anna by insisting she take off her clothes
for Random Samples. Anna eventually relents but then feels humiliated. The narrator asks David why he
tortures Anna, and David claims he does so because Anna cheats on him. The narrator canoes to a site
from her father’s map. She dives repeatedly in search of the paintings. On a particularly deep dive, she
sees a disturbing object and screams and swims for the surface. Joe has followed her onto the lake and
demands to know what she’s doing. She ignores Joe and realizes that what she saw was a dead child.
She believes it to be her aborted baby. She changes her story from leaving her husband and child to
having an affair with her art professor and being forced to abort their baby.
The narrator’s vision throws her into a psychosis. She believes that her father had found sacred
Indian sites and resolves to thank the gods for granting her “the power.” Joe tries to speak to the
narrator, but she remains impenetrable. He tries to rape her, but he leaves her alone once she warns
him that she will get pregnant. Later, David tries to seduce the narrator, telling her that Joe and Anna
are having sex. The narrator nevertheless resists David’s advances. A police boat comes to the island,
and David tells the narrator that the police have found her father’s body. Deep in her madness, the
narrator refuses to believe David. That night, she seduces Joe so she can get pregnant. She feels that a
new child will replace her lost baby. Joe falsely believes that the narrator has forgiven him for cheating
on her.
On their last day on the island, the narrator abandons her friends. She destroys David’s film and
escapes in a canoe. The narrator’s companions search in vain for her, eventually leaving the island.
Alone on the island, the narrator falls deeper into madness. She destroys the art from her job and nearly
everything inside the cabin. She becomes an animal, running around naked, eating unwashed plants,
and living in a burrow. She imagines raising her baby outdoors and never teaching it language. She also
has visions of her parents. Eventually, hunger and exhaustion bring the narrator to sanity. She looks at
herself in the mirror and sees just a natural woman. She resolves not to feel powerless anymore. Paul
arrives at the island with Joe. The narrator realizes she loves Joe and resolves to reunite with him. She
pauses in the cabin, looking out at Joe, waiting.

Theme:Separation is a major theme of Surfacing. This is established in the first chapter, when the
narrator is shown to be politically dispossessed as an English-speaker in Quebec, at a time in which
Quebec was aspiring to become an independent French-speaking nation. The narrator also feels
disconnected from the people around her, equating human interaction with that of animals. For
example, while overhearing David and Anna make love, the narrator thinks "of an animal at the moment
the trap closes".
Courtesy : Literary Websites