Emily Philbrook
Professor Helms
Currents in Global Literature
3/2/2022
When Generations of Oppression Collide
There is an inevitable divide that lies between the advancements of new generations into a progressing world and the strength of the older generations who have endured. The world is always changing, and often, there is hesitation to change along with it. Literature is a window in which to view these divides in the minutiae; rather than speaking about them in the abstract, characters and their dynamics among generations provide a representation of how these divides happen and ways that they can be seen in the real-world, everyday interactions around us. Religion, often, is a dynamic aspect of life that is story-telling passed on through centuries of tradition, and when divides are created, sects of religion fail, as the system does not adapt to new changes within each generation. This is seen often in literature as new generations defy or reject the religion of the masses, or even simply of their parents, and adopt a different form or no religion at all. The weaving of this theme through many forms of literature shows just how universal and globally-reaching generational divides are, and how for better or worse, they leave no relationship unscathed.
Religion is commonly convoluted by Western assumptions of what constitutes something worthy of being named as an organized religion. In Wole Soyinka’s, “Death and The King’s Horseman”, this is clear in both the colonist authoritarian leaders refusing to attempt to understand the religious tradition of the closest advisor to the King committing ritual suicide to follow their leader into the afterlife and in the divide between Elesin’s views on custom, and his son Olunde’s, more progressive understanding of the impacts of colonization in their Yoruba culture. In Olunde’s conversation with Jane Pilkings, he has clearly come to transcend the more traditional views of his father in that following custom is a way of defiance and has decided to learn the ways of his people’s oppressor’s to hopefully provide some aid in preserving their culture. Despite his untimely death, his relationship with his father and with the British society that he left his home for is a prime example of the tensions that exist among generations when culture is being juxtapositioned with betrayal involving colonialism. “You white races know how to survive…But at least have the humility to let others survive in their own way,” (p. 53, Soyinka). In this scene, Olunde is attempting to show Jane Pilkings the hypocrisy in her line of thinking. All customs appear bizarre to an outsider, and to interfere in stopping the ritual suicide of his father, would be to descrate the sanctity of preserving separate cultures. This, however, proves his larger point. The inhumanity involved in colonialism in which countries own not just lands, but all of the peoples who inhabit those lands. Olunde, despite the fact that neither his father nor Jane can see this, has attempted to learn the skills that he needs to overcome the insurmountable oppression that colonialism puts on him. “Subaltern subjects at times both embrace and confront the “master’s tools” when constructing a new postcolonial identity,” (p.597, Kim). For Olunde, and often for the marginalized, formal education is the most important of “tools’ ‘ that can be earned in order to confront oppression. To his village, this appears to be his conformity and betrayal of his heritage, but Olunde never loses his identity and transcends a binary identity to understand that in order to help his people, he must gain an education. Much of this comes from his existence as a child growing up under colonialism where he was forced to watch his father’s generation cling to any semblance of their traditions and preserve what was under their control. Elesin never understood that his son was never against him, and was attempting to help their people, by embracing the tools of the oppressor, but upon his death, grieves for his loss, and possibly for the loss of hope for his people’s fight against colonialism as well.
This utilization of religion against oppression is a much different tone than the condemnation of all Western practices than any of the other characters in the play take. This is fairly reminiscent of the shape that religion takes in Frederick Douglass’s “The Heroic Slave”. Frederick Douglass uses the absence of religious belief to create a space of freedom within nature through Washington’s perspective on the matter. “He shuns the church, the altar, and the great congregation of christian worshippers, and wanders away to the gloomy forest,.. Which the religion of his times and his country can neither console or relieve,” (P.12, Douglass). In this passage, Douglass is clearly stating that Washington finds refuge in nature, rather than religion, and shuns the concept that anyone following any sense of morality would be in agreement with slavery. Christianity is convoluted in the United States with capitalism; the advancement of an agenda for a purpose of gaining something, whether conversion or currency. Washington is hyper aware that religion is meant as a way to justify his enslavement, not to save him from it.
In order to understand Olunde’s reasoning rather than his father’s and Madison Washington’s in “The Heroic Slave”, there is value in understanding a resistance to cultural conformity in the first place. Within the confines of the United States, there are similar divides between the understandings of colonists and the enslaved. In “The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano”, Equiano becomes as slave in the American colonies after he is captured from his home village in Africa. Eventually, he finds freedom and success as a freed Black man in business; the entire narrative is essentially a call to end slavery, both for barabaric and practical reasons. There is a scene in which a Reverend asks Equiano to join a bizarre tradition called bull-baiting under the guise of practicing religion. “It would be only hypocritical for me to embrace his offer, as I could not consciously conform to the opinions of his church,” (Equiano, 360). In this scene, Equiano finds the brutality of the event to be immoral and is confused on how the form of christianeity that he has been taught by other oppressors based around morality could be accepting of this. In many ways, Equiano is using this to parallel to the morality of slavery and the use of Black bodies for entertainment. This is appealing to a white Christian-audience and is an example of how religion can be used to expose hypocrisy, especially in Christian sects. Equiano is utilizing a tool of the oppressor, in religion, to take aim at the morality of oppression, which is inherently monumental and proof of a progressing world. Equiano has realized that simply declaring slavery wrong will not be enough to stop the injustice, and so, he must learn to use articulate argument creation to call to white readers to change.
Confusion and resentment can come without religious ties and is often a result of the generational nature of oppression is again comparable to the confines of the United States through Zora Neale Hurston’s, “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, where Janie resents her grandmother, Nanny, for arranging her marriage to a wealthy man she does not love, without understanding the deep trauma that Nanny underwent having fled slavery where she was raped, (Hurston). While Janie had less free-will in many ways than Ka, there is a parallel of the range of feelings that come from generational oppression, and being distanced from that by time makes understanding that trauma difficult. This creates resentment and misunderstandings in relationships; for Nanny, however, there is less of a religious connotation, but more of a spiritual understanding that Janie must do right by her grandmother’s suffering and be successful by marrying this man.
These learned tools of defying oppression often cause conflict amongst generations as expressed in Elesin and Olunde’s dispute, but also in more modern and subtle ways at first. In Edwidge Danticat’s, “The Dew Breaker”, the relationship between Ka and her parents is often explored through the perspective of Ka trying to understand her father’s life as a torturer and her mother’s ultimate ability to love him in spite of this. Ka’s mother Anne is devout and firmly believes in miracles, and brings her daughter and husband to mass every Christmas. One Christmas, before Ka knows the truth about her father, they attend mass where there is a rumored torturer among them and Ka is visibly upset. “I don’t really know what happened. I wasn’t there,” (p.86, Danticat). To which Anne replies, internally; “It was always like this, her life a pendulum of forgiveness and regret,” (p.86, Danticat). Ka is self-aware enough here to know that she can never fully understand the trauma that her parents have gone through, but still feels the confusion of whether she has the right to be angry. This is often the feeling that comes from generational trauma. Ka never experienced the trauma first-hand, but has struggled with the distance that her parents have kept between her and Haiti. She pities her parents, rather than attempting to understand them, sympathizing rather than providing empathy when she learns of her father’s past.
The convolution of religion with colonialism has created a complex dynamic between generations of the oppressed who struggle with ways to defy their oppressors while also preserving their own culture and fighting injustice. Throughout literature, these dynamics are often explored between generations of marginalized peoples who struggle to make connections through trauma, but prove the everlasting impacts of oppression are not to be discounted, and should continue to be something that is grappled with, even today.
Works Cited
Danticat, Edwidge, House, Random. Dew Breaker. Alfred A Knopf, 2004.
Equiano, Olaudah. Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The. Bottom Of The Hill Publis, 2011.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God: Zora Neale Hurston. Spark Pub., 2014.
Jensen, Melba P. Frederick Douglass’s The Heroic Slave: Text, Context, and Interpretation: a Dissertation. 2005.
Kim, bio), Grace Ji-Sun. “Postcolonial Theology and Intersectionality.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies, vol. 55, no. 4, Fall 2020, p. N.PAG. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.libproxy.plymouth.edu/10.1353/ecu.2020.0047.Soyinka, Wole. Death and the King’s Horseman: a Play. Turtleback Books, 2002.
Sprockets and Springes 