Sudan University of Science and Technolgy

College of Graduate Studies

Department of English Language

The Religious Identity in

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958)and

Saud Alsanousi's The Bamboo Stalk (2015)

‫ في روايتي األشياء تتداعى لجينو أجيبي و ساق البامبو لسعود‬G‫الهوية الدينية‬

‫السنعوسي‬
A Thesis Submitted in the Fulfillment of the Requirements

for Ph. D Degree in Intercultural Communication

Submitted by:Abu-Bakr Muhammad Ahmed Abdul-Hakam

: Supervisor

Dr. Mohamed Elamin Elshingeety

:Co-supervisor

Dr. Wigdan Yagoub Sherif

2020
 Seminar (2)

Definitions of the Relevant Concepts

This second seminar aims at defining the main relevant concepts

regarding the core of the study. These concepts include: culture,
intercultural, communication, identity, religion, religious identity. The
study states the relations and interplay between all these concepts.

Since this study aims to investigate the religious identity in the two
fictive works (TFA and TBS) it is important to know more about the
nexus between religion, identity, communication, culture and the study of
language.

The term identity refers to the self-concept one has about himself and the
others have about him. Identity is originally studied in the field of
psychology, sociology and human science. However, this study points out
its connection with the field of linguistics. That is, the study posits that
identity is formed and perceived through communication. Without
encountering with others it is not easy to know them and even to know
oneself. Many linguists highlighted the necessity of communication in
shaping and conceptualizing identity (Martin and Nakayama 2010, Ting-
Toomey 2015).

As the study explores the identity concept in two intercultural sort of data
(the above-mentioned novels) it is desirable to draw the attention to the
matter of the difference in cultures and its influence on communication.
The study, thus, argues that culture is the context of language and the user
of any language depends on the cultural background he or she has to
convey meanings and be understood by others. That is, the interpretation
of the verbal or non-verbal languages depends on the knowledge of the
cultural symbols the two communicators shares. The more cultural
understanding one has the better communicator he is.

The two novels under-study depict the intercultural conflicts occurred in

the two societies of the novels, so the study exploits the theory of
intercultural communication to read the data. The cultural distinction
between the characters of each novel made the data fruitful source of
analysis and helps the researcher investigate the identity concept.
As far as culture is concerned, religion is thought to be the most
influential item in shaping and modifying culture. The study assumes that
most of the cultural aspects take their bases from religious beliefs and
systems. Therefore, the communication process is thought to be affected
by religion as it constitutes one of the essential sources of human way of
life.

The study also argues that identity refers to the concept of belonging, that
is, every individual may affiliate to a number of social and cultural
groups. The same person may have a sense of belonging to his country,
religion, region, tribe, class, family, etc. The degree of affiliation differs
from one person to another and even the same individual has different
degrees of connection with each of these dimensions. This could clearer
when the individual falls in contradiction between two or more of these
orientations. For example, the family habit may contradict the religious
belief, so the family member is caught between these two contradicted
forces. In case of such discrepancy this study assumes that the individuals
is expected to behave according to the most influential identity dimension
(family or religion). That is, the item that is deeply rooted in the
individual's life is the one that works most. Thus, this study adopts such
kind of comparison as a measurement by which religiosity can be
measured. The person or the action can be categorized as religious when
it has pure religious motivation, particularly if it is contradicted by the
attraction of another identity dimension. The current study, therefore,
attempts to explore the influence of religion on the other identity
dimensions and the effect of these dimensions and the other cultural
factors on the religious attitude.

This study is thought to be significant to the IC field as it applies the

theory on an area that was scarcely touched by the previous studies, i.,e.,
fictive writings. Hervonen (2014) and some other researchers drew
attention to the poverty of the IC field of the studies that take fiction as
data for their analysis. Thus, the present study sees this scarcity as a
factor that signifies it.

Summary of the Novel Things Fall Apart

The setting of the novel is in a small fictional district in Nigeria. It is
centered on the life of its protagonist Okonkwo. Okonkwo is a brave,
famous man and is respected by all the nine villages of the district
Umoufia. Unlike his father, who was known to be weak, afraid of blood,
lazy and poor, because he does not like work. Okonkwo has three wives
and a number of children, among them is Nwoye, the eldest son of the
first wife, who converted to the new religion. For this purpose, conflict
arose between Okonkwo and his son. His 10-year-old daughter Ezinma is
beloved to him, because she has similar ideas in life to her father. The
people of Umoufia belong to the same cultural clan and know nothing
about the world around them. The clansmen have many different gods
that they worship. They have strong rules and customs that they believe
are the core foundation to pleasing the gods and none can disobey these
rules and if anyone does so then they believe he must be mad. Okonkwo
did so by killing his foster son Ikemefuna, who was given to him as a
compensation for the spilt blood of an Umoufia clanswoman. Therefore,
Okonkwo was punished by the gods for this. As the novel develops, he is
exiled from his land (Umoufia) as a result of accidently killing a young
man. When he returns to his village, he finds that the whites changed the
village’s lifestyle by introducing their religion (Christianity) and the new
European culture, so ‘Things Fall Apart’. He tries to drive the
missionaries out of his land, so he kills one messenger in a meeting. He
discovers that his people would no longer join him to fight the white man,
because they let the other messengers escape. As the white man's justice
is searching for him, Okonkwo, once known as the bravest man of
Umoufia, is found dead (Achebe 1958).

Summary of the novel The Bamboo Stalk

The novel is centered on recounting the tragedy of a young Kuwaiti-
Filipino boy Jose who was born as a result of illegitimate marriage (it is
called illegitimate marriage in Islam as it is based on the acceptance of
the couple without the permission of their families and without being
declared to the public) between his Filipino mother, Josephine, and the
son of her Kuwaiti employer Rashid Al-Taroof.
The themes of the novel are set in the protagonist's father's and mother's
lands as he migrates between the two in quest of identity and stable life.
The story traces Jose's fluctuation between two races, three religions,
three languages and cultures. The boy was born in his father's land, but he
could not live long there as his father was forced to cast him out of
Kuwait as the father divorced his mother due to the pressure of Rashid's
mother Ghanima, who feared social criticism. By returning to
Philippines, his mother lost her job, which was to be a source of income
to the family, a thing that stirred the anger of his mother's father Mendoza
who, in turn, started to hate the boy regarding him as the cause of losing
his mother's job. Grandfather's harsh treatment to Jose and his cousin
Merla reached the extent of cursing them as illegitimate children, though
Merla really is, but this is her fate not her fault. This treatment has
massive effect on the two children and played a passive role in breeding a
sense of belonging and national identity on them.
From the very early days of his life, Jose experienced a sense of identity
fracture as he found himself confused in the pronunciation of his name,
which is pronounced as Jose in Filipino and Isa in Arabic. Moreover, he
found himself waving between more than one nationality, religion and
race. With regard to religion, which is the focus of the current study, Jose
was born as Muslim and given a Muslim name, and his mother was not
serious in teaching him Christianity during their stay in the Philippines as
she was influenced by his father's promise to take him back to the
Kuwaiti Muslim society. Unfortunately, the news of his father's death
came to them. Sometime later, Ghassan, the intimate friend of Rashid,
came to take Jose to Kuwait in fulfillment of his dead father's will.
Surprisingly, Jose was encountered by the saddest kind of treatment,
especially from his grandmother Ghanima, who drove him away of being
considered as a family member in fear of the communal prestigious
norms that condemns having a half-Filipino son. Jose's two aunts Noriah
and Awatif supported their mother’s viewpoint and the youngest one,
Hind, was waving between her mother's stance and her social duty in
defending the rights of theBidoon (bidoon literally means “without” in
Arabic. The term comes from “bidoonjensiyya”, which is Arabic for
‘without citizenship’ and is used to refer to the stateless in Kuwait
(Belkhasher and Badurais 2016:6)). His half-sister Khawla is the only one
family member, who welcomes him, stands with him and tries to settle
down Ghanima's anger and severe treatment towards him.
Although Jose was not deprived of his financial rights in Kuwait, he was
denied of his social and familial intimacy. During his stay in Kuwait, he
concluded that he will no longer bear to live there with the social refusal
he faces, so he decided to return to the Philippines, where he joined his
beloved cousin Merla and got married. Eventually, he succeeded in
adapting himself to an acceptable kind of life (Al-Sanousi2015).