Neohelicon XXIX (2002) 2, 247–260

TONY E. AFEJUKU

SETTING IN THE AFRICAN LITERARY AUTOBIOGRAPHY

This essay examines aspects of setting – place, time, social context of characters – and the atmosphere, which includes mood, feeling and emotion that they generate in selected African autobiographies noted for their artistry and argues that the autobiographers, through the use of such means as shift in time frames, symbolized and naturalistic descriptions are able effectively to render and re-create the setting in their autobiographies, stressing that such rendering and re-creation enable them to transmute an ordinary experience into fantasy. Setting is a vital part of the autobiographies as literary works, the essay concludes.

The presentation of setting for artistic purposes in prose fiction is an outstanding quality of the African literary autobiography. Richard Gill describes setting as a “broad word” which refers to: The places in which characters are presented; the social context of characters, such as their families, friends, and class; the customs, beliefs and rules of behaviour of their society; the scenes that are the background of the situation for the events of the [narrative] and the total atmosphere, mood or feel that is created by these.1

All of these are aspects of setting, but here we will only be considering how the African literary autobiography re-creates the atmosphere and the physical environment. However, we cannot talk of atmosphere and physical environment without reference to other aspects of setting noticed in the above quotation. In the works we shall be considering here – The African Child, Ake: The Years of Childhood, Child of Two Worlds, Tell Freedom, and Down Second Avenue2 – the atTony E. Afejuku, Department of English and Literature, University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria. E-mail: [email protected] 1 2

Richard Gill, Mastering English. London: Macmillan, 1985, 106. Camara Laye, The African Child, translated by James Kirkup (1954; rpt. London: Fontana, 1976); Wole Soyinka, Ake: The Years of Childhood (London: Rex Collins, 1981); R. Mugo Gatheru, Child of Two Worlds (1964: rpt. London: Heinemann, 1975); Peter Abrahams, Tell Freedom (1954; rpt. London: Faber and Faber, 1981); Ezekiel Mphahlele, Down Second Avenue (1959; rpt. London: Faber and Faber, 1973). All page references to the texts refer to these editions.

0324–4652/2002/$5.00 © Akadémiai Kiadó

Akadémiai Kiadó Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht

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mosphere is a vivid, imaginative re-creation of mood, feeling or emotion through specific scenes and situations. Unlike the first three autobiographies, however, the last two – Tell Freedom and Down Second Avenue – concretely render the physical environment so as to evoke a sense of reality. But generally, in all these works, descriptions, whether of atmosphere or the physical environment, gain aesthetic appeal through the various means employed by the writers to give their autobiographies the stamp of artistry. For example, through the use of shift in time frames and symbols, these writers are able to underscore the artistry of their narratives. This is similarly the case through their use of naturalistic passages to recreate setting.

1. TEMPORAL SETTING: SHIFT IN TIME PERSPECTIVES

Through a shift in time perspectives and the use of powerful imagination some autobiographers succeed in transforming reality into fiction. Events are so imaginatively and artistically presented that they acquire a semblance of reality but the fact is that they are not as real as they seem. The events have actually been tampered with and the emotions associated with them have been heightened. The event as presented is no doubt aesthetically satisfying, but a close examination reveals a disparity between what actually happened and what is purported to have occurred. A typical example is Camara Laye’s The African Child. Here is a passage from the book. It is the opening episode and Laye is recalling an encounter with a snake. I was a little boy playing around my father’s hut. How old would I have been at that time? I cannot remember exactly. I still must have been very young: five, may be six years old. My mother was in the workshop with my father and I could just hear their familiar voices […] Suddenly I stopped playing, my whole attention fixed on a snake that was creeping round the hut […] After a moment I went over to him. I had taken in my hand a reed that was lying in the yard. […] I thrust this reed into the reptile’s mouth. The snake did not try to get away: he was beginning to enjoy our little game: he was slowly swallowing the reed, he was devouring it, I thought, as if it was some delicious prey, his eyes glittering with voluptuous bliss […] I was laughing, I had not the slightest fear and now I know that the snake would not have hesitated much longer before burying his fangs in my fingers if at that moment Dany […] had not come out of the workshop. The apprentice shouted to my father and almost at once I felt myself lifted off my feet […] I began to weep […] A little later, when I had calmed down a little […] my mother solemnly warned me never to play such a game again; I promised although I could not really know where the danger lay. (pp. 1–2)

Here we observe a temporal structure which is built on a curious juxtaposition of present and past time frames. The adult Laye narrates the passage in the “present” of writing, while the child Laye is supposedly having the experience in the past of action. The past of action is, however, not narrated directly from the perception of the child, but rather as a memory of the adult narrator. This gives the added scene emotional intensity, but whose emotion is being presented? The child’s or the adult narrator’s ? – “I was laughing. I had not the slightest fear and now I know that the snake would not have hesitated much longer before burying his fangs in my fingers.” This realization

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can only be that of the adult narrator who supposedly wants to convey as accurately as possible the child’s experience. But despite this attempt at fidelity to events, the whole scene with all its emotional intensity has a high element of fabrication. The child may be “actually aware of sights and sounds,”3 he may feel the “terrific commotion going on all round” him (p. 10), but at this point in time he certainly still lacks the type of mature understanding of his environment which this passage falsely projects. Because it might help us to resolve the complexity of the passage, it is necessary to identify the two time perspectives it has. The first is the early time of the child: “How old would I have been at that time? I cannot remember exactly.” The second is the present, distinguishable time of the adult narrator… “and now I know that the snake would not have hesitated much longer before burying his fangs in my fingers…” Despite these two distinct time perspectives noticed in the passage one thing is clear: the dominant perspective is that of the adult narrator who is the one who knows that a snake is also called a “reptile”, and who also perceives the sensations of the snake who devours its “delicious prey” with “voluptuous bliss”. What all this boils down to is that the entire process has a degree of illusion whose reality, so to say, resides in the imagination of the adult narrator. The re-creation of this process here is possible because the adult narrator in the present of writing is able to activate forces in himself which he ascribes to the past. Part of Laye’s art in the above passage is his use of the past progressive to re-create the impression of the encounter with the snake. “The snake did not try to get away: he was beginning to enjoy our little game: he was slowly swallowing the reed; he was devouring it, I thought, as if it were some delicious prey, his eyes [were] glittering with voluptuous bliss.” The past progressive identified in the italicised phrases creates a lingering slow-motion effect that enables us to follow closely Laye’s description. The rhythmic effect of this past progressive tense is enhanced by the repetition of parallel constructions (… he was beginning …; he was swallowing…; he was devouring…; his eyes [were] glittering…). Lastly, the conversational tone with which the passage begins suggests that Laye wants the reader to participate in the scene rather than being a mere observer of it. He tries to engage the reader’s interest by addressing him directly: “How old would I have been at that time?” Here Laye gives the impression that he is responding to a probable reader’s reaction. This way, he tries to convince the reader to accept as genuine the description he is re-creating: There is a revealing contrast between this snake scene in The African Child and the one in Child of Two Worlds: […] when I was able to sit up unaided […] my mother went to work again [in the garden] and she carried me with her. This time I was able to crawl around […] I was quite happy by myself, playing with potatoes, and Mother went about working and singing […] she worked and I played; she sang and I talked away to myself. 3

Adele King, The Writings of Camara Laye. London: Heinemann, n. d., 3.

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‘Ma-ma-mum; Ma-ma-mum ee-ee-e.’ ‘Daadaa – daadaah; Daa-daah; eee – eee – e.’ Every thing was very peaceful until suddenly, while glancing over at me my mother saw slithering towards me fast a large snake, its head raised and long forked tongue flickering from its open mouth and only twelve yards away from me. My mother flung herself towards me; throwing her hoe at the snake in a desperate effort to slow its speed. Fortunately, the hoe hit the snake on the head and it twisted with pain, away from me. At that instant my mother reached me. And without stopping, scooped me up in her arms and ran away for help. A couple working nearby hurried to my mother’s aid but shocked as she was with the danger and her great effort, she could only gasp: ‘Snake, Snake, big snake.’ (pp. 13–14).

As in The African Child, the feeling or sensation generated by this encounter with a snake rather than the encounter itself or the description of the garden in which it occurred seems to be what interests Gatheru. It is this he recalls and describes. Like in the Laye episode, two time perspectives are described here. Although the early childhood time of the child (who did not observe or experience the described scene) is stated here, what stands out clearly is the conscious time of the adult narrator who is raking from his memory the incident of the encounter with the snake as his mother (who was the actual experiencer of the scene) described it to him. Thus here, unlike in the Laye episode, there is no confusion as to who is describing the event – Is it the child or the adult narrator? Such a question does not arise. Similarly, there is no doubt as to whose intense feeling is being recalled. But because the child did not perceive then what the adult writes now the whole episode can be seen as tending towards fantasy. The whole description, especially of the snake as it slides towards the pre-conscious child, is quite imaginative: “my mother saw slithering towards me fast a large snake, its head raised and long forked tongue flickering from its open mouth – and only a few yards away!” The menace the snake portends is conveyed well in the sinister flickering of its “long forked tongue” from “its open mouth” as it eagerly slithers towards its prey whom, to borrow Laye’s phrase, it wants to devour with “voluptuous bliss”. The child’s mother’s terror is also well communicated in the exclamatory ending phrase: “and only twelve yards away!” This is a significant phrase that stresses the sense of urgency on both the part of the child’s mother and that of the snake [it should be noted that each one is eager to get to the child before the other]. This phrase heightens the passage’s dramatic interest and intensity. Moreover, the brief but equally dramatic description of the mother’s gasp: “Snake, snake, big snake,” is a repetitive naming of the object of her terror and it accentuates the intensity of the emotion which Gatheru captures and re-creates here through the creative power of present consciousness. In the above passage Gatheru employs the simple past tense to serve his artistic purpose, unlike Laye who uses the past progressive tense. Gatheru’s use of this simple past tense gives the effect of an instantaneous action, one short burst, unlike the lingering effect achieved in Laye’s description.

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The careful selection and patterning of the words used underscore the passage’s artistry. For example, “This time I was able to crawl around … I was quite happy by myself, playing with potatoes, and mother went about working and singing … she worked and I played; she sang and I talked away to myself [.]” Here is an artistic use of language made possible by repetitions within a compound sentence structure. This produces a rhythmic effect similar to the one in Laye’s passage where the past progressive verb is enhanced aesthetically by the repetition of parallel constructions. But here this passage owes its rhythmic effect to lexical-structural parallelism involving the repetition of sentence structure as well as individual words (“she worked and I played; she sang and I talked …”). Moreover, the nursery rhythm and music conveyed in the playful hum of the child also gives the passage poetic quality: ‘Ma-ma-mum, Ma-ma-mum; eee-eee-e.’ ‘Daada-daadah; Daa-daah; eee-eee-e.’

However, the importance of the hum lies less in this poetic quality than in the way it underscores the passage’s fictionality. For how do we believe that this was the exact hum Gatheru made at this point in time? His sense of time and its recreation in the passage is like Laye’s – it is beautifully recaptured but strongly imbued with fantasy. Generally speaking, all these artistic elements collectively give Gatheru’s and Laye’s re-creations aesthetic appeal. It is necessary to state that the shift in time frames in Ake is the same as in Child of Two Worlds. Like Gatheru, Soyinka deliberately uses it not only to reveal the identity of the child as protagonist and the identity of the adult author as narrator, but also to evoke or re-create setting. The following passage which opens the book is quite typical: The sprawling, undulating terrain is all of Ake. More than mere loyalty to the parsonage gave birth to a puzzle, and a resentment, that God should choose to look down on his pious station, the parsonage compound, from the profane heights of Itoko. There was of course the mystery of the Chief’s stable with live horses near the crest of the hill, but beyond that, this dizzying road only sheered upward from one noisy market to the other, looking down across Ibarapa and Ita Ake into the most secret recesses of the parsonage. (p. 1)

The first sentence of the passage is an indication that it is the adult author who is talking here. From the second sentence, with its complex lexical structure, to the third with its equally complex sentence structure, there is a shift from this adult perspective to that of the child whose recollection of the past topography of Ake the adult narrator describes. The “puzzle” mere loyalty to the parsonage gave birth to” as well as the “mystery of the Chief’s stable with live horses near the crest of the hill” are the child’s and not the adult narrator’s. Soyinka here, like Gatheru, but quite unlike Laye, does not super-impose his present impression of the “sprawling, undulating terrain” of Ake on the child who is supposedly fascinated by the “dizzying road” “looking down across Ibarapa and Ita Ake into the most secret recesses to the parsonage.” Because Soyinka does not pretend to evoke the topography from the present time of the child

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his re-creation here appears to be true and authentic – more so than Laye’s or even Gatheru’s. For instance, although Gatheru does not super-impose emotions or feelings on the child, he nonetheless resorted to deliberate fantasy in the glaring way he raked from his memory what otherwise he did not experience or was aware of. But what perhaps significantly distinguishes Ake from The African Child and Child of Two Worlds is that very much unlike these, Soyinka’s autobiography is essentially a picture of a place. Descriptions in Ake, as we shall see in the subsequent discussion, whether they have a temporal dimension or not, are pre-eminently employed to evoke the sound, sights, tastes and smells of Ake. It is evident from the above discussion that through a shift in time perspectives and the use of a powerful imagination, the writers are able to transform reality into fiction and to make their autobiographies aesthetically satisfying.

2. SYMBOLIC PRESENTATION OF SETTING

In almost all the works under consideration the writers’ presentation of setting also acquires symbolic importance. The opening passage in Peter Abrahams’s Tell Freedom is significant in this respect. Here the mature Abrahams looks back and re-creates the “rain-drop word” of his childhood which is symbolic of the child’s romantic aspiration. This world which he tries to make visible sharply contrasts with the misery of the adult world: I pushed my nose and lips against the pane and tried to lick a raindrop sliding down on the other side. As it slid past my eyes, I saw the many colours in the raindrop… It must be warm in there. Warm and dry. And perhaps the sun would be shining in there. The green must be the tree and the grass and the brightness, the sun … I was inside the raindrop, away from the misery of the cold damp room. I was in a place of warmth and sunshine, inside my raindrop world. (p. 9)

The colourful and enchanting world Abrahams is trying to make real here is difficult to describe since it belongs to the world of the imagination. Hence the occurrence of contradictions – the child imagines the inside of the rain-drop to be “Warm and dry.” Because he is searching for a place in the sun, it does not occur to him that it is not usual to have sunshine inside a rain-drop. But this, of course, can only happen in his fictional, fairy-tale world. What is more significant, however, is that this passage is infused with the emotions of loneliness and deprivation expertly conveyed in “I was inside the raindrop, away from the misery of the cold damp room.” To escape from this abject condition, he invents a world of “warmth and sunshine” in which the images of colour – the “green” trees and grass, the unidentified “many colours in the raindrop” and the “sun […] shining in there” – collectively establish gaiety, beauty and happiness which the real world does not offer. Here is another symbolic passage in which Abrahams offers us an image of his aspiration in contrast to the outer circumstances of South Africa where he does not want

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to be because it is not a place for a coloured boy to dream.4 In the passage, Abrahams’s older brother, Harry, who is serving a fourteen–day jail–term at a Reformatory for a gambling offence, is “breaking rock under the hot sun.” The young Abrahams who accompanies his elder sister Maggie and Enna, his brother’s fiancée, on the visit to Harry is the centre of consciousness: The afternoon sun slanted westward, but only slightly. A lone eagle circled overhead. Once, it spread its great wing and swooped down low. No doubt to see what manner of men these striped beings were. Then, with movements of great power and grace, it climbed. It made an almost straight line up. I watched it grow smaller, hazy and then merge into the blue sky that had suddenly grown infinitely far removed from the world of men. I longed, suddenly, to be like that eagle, able to fly right out of the range of this place so that I would not have to watch my brother breaking rock under the hot sun. (pp. 135–136)

This episode demonstrates Abrahams’s perception of his brother’s and other prisoners’ sad situation. He reacts imaginatively to the physical conditions that disturb his feelings. The powerful and graceful eagle flying unhindered creates in him a feeling of envy for he wants to be like the bird, away from the cruelty of the here and now. For the moment his mind is serene with this blissful longing and he is at one with “the blue sky that had suddenly grown infinitely far removed from the world of men.” The whole episode is symbolic and it recalls the untainted dream world of peace and security which we saw in the beginning of the narration. It also pre-figures his final escape from South Africa into the so much dreamt-of world of freedom. Thus, part of the artistic greatness of Tell Freedom derives from Abrahams’s ability to re-create setting by a symbolic depiction of what goes on in his mind in contrast with what he observes externally. This is an achievement also shared by Soyinka and Laye. In Ake, for example, the description of the fruits in the orchard which is between the “Canon’s house and the school’s playing-fields” is symbolic: Between the left flank of the Canon’s house and the school playing fields was – the orchard. It was too varied, much too profuse to be called a garden, even a fruit-garden. And there were plants and fruits in it which made the orchard an extension of scripture classes, church lessons or sermons. A leaf-plant, noted white-and-red was classed the Cana lily. As Christ was nailed to the cross and his wounds spurted blood, a few drops stuck to the leaves of the lily stigmatizing it for ever. No one bothered to explain the cause of the abundant white spots which also appeared on every leaf. Perhaps it had to do with the washing of sins in the blood of Christ leaving even the most mottled spots in a person’s soul, snow-white. (p. 2)

Commenting on Soyinka’s handling of setting, or more appropriately, his creation of atmosphere in The Interpreters, Emmanuel Obiechina says that 4

For a related view on this, see Kolawole Ogungbesan, The Writing of Peter Abrahams, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1979, 86. Furthermore, some of the points and remarks I have here are contained in an earlier essay. Thus see Tony E. Afejuku, “Language as Sensation: The Use of Poetic and Evocative Language in Five African Autobiographies,” Neohelicon 19 (1) (1992): 278–279.

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Soyinka’s description of setting suggests the movement of a cinema camera. The lens travels as the author directs, resting where he wills and taking in the details he thinks relevant. The effect is to foster specific feelings or insights. Once the camera has travelled over the picture and established a strong visual impression, the image so formed can become a frame of reference for subsequent illumination and interpretation of other actions and impressions.5

This comment is quite relevant to Soyinka’s handling of setting in Ake as in the creation of atmosphere in the above quoted passage. What Soyinka gives us in the passage is not a piece of description for its own sake, but the picture, so to speak, of nature which conveys and underlines the heightened consciousness awakened in him by Sunday school lessons. The biblical dimensions of this consciousness are here made powerfully plain by the presentation of an image of the cana-lily which provides a visual impression of Christ’s suffering and crucifixion. Thus, the charm of the orchard does not lie in its description, but in the extent to which parallels can be drawn between what it contains and the mystical and mythical stories from the scripture classes. The pomegranate, another fruit in the orchard to which our attention is drawn, also has the same mythical and enchanting quality, but there is something elusive, inexplicable and paradoxical about it: The pomegranate was the Queen of Sheba, rebellions and wars, the passion of Salome, the siege of Troy, the praise of beauty in the song of Solomon. This fruit, with its stone-hearted look and feel unlocked the cellars of Ali Baba, extracted the genie from Aladin’s lamp, plucked the strings of the harp that restored David to sanity, parted the waters of the Nile and filled our parsonage with incense from the dim temple of Jerusalem. (p. 3)

The pomegranate may have a “stone-hearted look and feel,” which makes it unpleasant to fondle and to look at, but a taste of it transports Soyinka to the “world of fabled lands, to the Aladin-world,” which is similar in its enchantment, to Abrahams’s “rain-drop world.” “Only Gardener could be trusted to share the occasional fruits among the small, dedicated band of pomegranate watchers, yet even the tiniest wedge transported us to the illustrated world of the Biblical Tales Retold” (p. 31). Thus here the pomegranate becomes a symbolic medium and imagistic reference to the “illustrated world of the Biblical Tales Retold” and the fabled land of the Arabian Nights. In this orchard scene, Soyinka reveals his love for fantasy, which explains why the narration does not move entirely on the surface level of experience, but also in the submerged level of his creative mind. It also explains why the narrative must not be read as mere autobiography but as a deliberate “fantasy” whose underlying meaning, as in all fantasies and as evident in the above quotations, are symbolically manifested in image or metaphor. In The African Child, Laye also uses symbol to re-create atmosphere and in the process we once more observe how reality recedes into fantasy. The scene where he evokes a picture of his father turning trinket into gold is quite illustrative of this: 5

Emmanuel Obiechina, Culture, Tradition and Society in the West African Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1975, 152.

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What were the words my father’s lips were forming? I don’t know; I do not know for certain: I was never told what they were. But what else could they have been, if not magical incantations? Were they not the spirits of fire and gold, of fire and air breathed through the earthen pipes, of fire born of air, of gold married with fire – were not these the spirits he was invoking? Was it not their help and their friendship he was calling upon in marriage of elemental things? Yes, it was almost certainly those spirits he was calling upon, for they are the most elemental of all spirits and their presence is essential at the melting of gold. (p. 36)

What distinguishes this passage is not the magical ritual of gold-smelting that is taking place but Laye’s passionate and sensitive evocation of the music and symbolism of the act itself. Parallelism is the stylistic device Laye frequently employs here: “Were they not the spirits of fire and gold, of fire and air, air breathed through the earthen pipes, of fire born of air, of gold married with fire – were not these the spirits he was invoking?” Parallelism here as elsewhere in the passage consists of both the repetition of words as well as the varying of the order or similar phrases and repeated syntactic units, and is used to describe action, sensations and feelings associated with the magical ritual of gold-smelting. The significance of the reference to stylistic details here is to stress the extent to which Laye engages the reader’s involvement, as Soyinka does in the orchard scene, in what might appear to be a mere realistic description. The whole episode shows that Laye, like Soyinka and Abrahams, possesses in abundance the fundamental qualities normally ascribed to the creative artist who is recollecting his childhood. These qualities include acute sensitivity, empathy, awareness of form and the plasticity of response (of the child)6 to a specific episode, which becomes a sources of symbol for his state of feeling: The operation that was going on before my eyes was simply the smelting of gold; but it was something more than that; a magical operation that the guiding spirits could look upon with favour or disfavour; and that is why there should be all around my father that absolute silence and that anxious expectancy. I could understand, though I was just a child, that there was no craft greater than the goldsmith’s. I expected a ceremony, I had come to be present at a ceremony, and it really was one, though very protracted. I was still too young to be able to understand why it was so protracted; nevertheless, I had an inkling, beholding the almost religious concentration of all those present as they watched the mixing process. (p. 25)

This passage, like the previous one of which it is a continuation, is effective in its evocation of background and atmosphere and the experience of wonder in childhood; but Laye is not so much concerned with painting a mere picture of the wondrous, “religious ceremony” going on in his father’s forge as with the symbolic transformation of natural phenomenon into fantasy, which sustains the distinctive idyllic setting of the African Child. Turning trinket into valuable gold is a simple, realistic, secular activity. Yet in the passages above this exercise is subtly metamorphosed into a mystical expe6

See, for instance, Albert E. Stone, Autobiographical Occasions and Original Acts: Versions of American Identity from Henry James to Nate Shaw. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982, 96 and 107.

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rience, steeped in invocation, mystery, magic and mystical communications with invisible, supernatural forces. Right from the beginning we are persuaded into believing that we are not dealing with an ordinary “mixing process” but with a mystical process commanding metaphysical forces: What were the words my father’s lips were forming? I don’t know for certain: I was never told what they were. But what else could they have been, if not magical incantations? Where they not the spirits of fire and gold, … were not these he was invoking? The operation that was going on before my eyes was simiply the smelting of gold; but it was something more than that; a magical operation … I expected a ceremony, I had come to be present at a ceremony and it really was one….

The symbolic picture of the smelting of gold which depends on the guiding spirits for its success is part of Laye’s device for indicating the significance of the supernatural in shaping the daily life and destiny of the people in The African Child. Thus, as the narrative progresses there is a transition from a known reality to the symbolic world of religion and myth. A common observation from the episodes cited from these writers is that the African autobiographical writing shares a common way of presenting a lived reality, through the use of symbols. To fictionalise actual experience as these writers do, some elements of fantasy become imperative. These writers are conscious of their role as artists and entertainers and in order to remove the narratives from stark narration of cold facts they have re-created their setting by employing symbolism among other artistic devices.

3. NATURALISTIC PRESENTATION OF SETTING

Another source of interest in the African literary autobiography is the naturalistic presentation of setting. Generally, naturalistic presentation of material in a narrative involves the use of graphic descriptions to spotlight details. Among the autobiographers under consideration, Abrahams and Mphahlele are the masters of graphic description and hence naturalistic presentation of setting. As both writers are mainly concerned with portraying the wretchedness of their respective living conditions in cruel South Africa, their re-creation of setting in their autobiographies is more concrete than in any of the other writers. In order to achieve the desired effect, which is to evoke a sense of reality, both writers skilfully combine authorial comments with actual physical descriptions of setting. Thus, the background against which the events are narrated in both works suggests an atmosphere that is hostile to the well-being of man from which he must escape. The misery of the Coloureds and Blacks as a whole is well illustrated in the writers’ effective and perceptive descriptions of the environment and the slum that houses them. The following passage from Tell Freedom is worthy of note as it illustrates the point eloquently:

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The yard was tiny: no more than six yards wide, and just as long. And in it, taking up half the space , was a high pile of junk: twisted bicycle wheel, old tyres, a bicycle frame, broken chairs, part of an iron bed, brown with rust; pots and pans and pieces of broken crockery; rags and bones and much rubbish beyond recognition. (p. 57)

Through this kind of physical description, reminiscent of Alex la Guma’s A Walk in the Night, Abrahams demonstrates his awareness of his and his people’s perpetual privation. He artistically conveys this by listing material items which collectively present one vivid image of decay. Thus the physical items of decay we notice in the passage objectify the environmental squalor as well as his and his people’s plight. The “tiny yard” graphically depicts Abrahams and his people’s confinement in a caged, narrow world of decayed scraps. The “high pile of junk” which spotlights the physical decay of the whole area, that is the location of Vrededorp, thus becomes the objective correlative of the spiritual and social disintegration of the South African society. Fear, resignation and hopelessness which are some of the emotions which dominate the people living in this type of environment are partly induced by their squalid environment. It is necessary to point out here that the brevity of the sentences and phrases does not only help to make the passage vivid, but also to suggest the sense of urgency with which its squalor is presented. It is as if the sight of the decay is too sickening to dwell on for too long. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, the use of colons and sem-colons is strategic. The colons and semi-colons are not used in the passage necessarily to differentiate a set of listed items from one another but to emphasise how the life of the people who live in this type of environment has been dislocated and encaged in decay and filth. Thus, the way the sentences are phrased and patterned matches the idea of sense that is conveyed. The hurried listing of unpleasant items of junk reflects the author’s disgust with the nauseating list and his haste to get over these items quickly and move on to something else. Emotions similar to those noticed in Abrahams’s portrayal are generated in Down Second Avenue where we learn that for Mphahlele the lasting impression of Marabastad, the Black location near Pretoria, is its squalor: Marabastad, like most locations, was an organised rubble of tin cans. The streets were straight; but the houses stood cheek by jowl, rusty as ever on the outside, as if they thought they might as well crumble in straight rows if that was to be their fate. (pp. 31–32)

Like Abrahams, Mphahlele’s description of his environment is also graphically vivid. Phrases like “orgainsed rubble of tin cans”, “stood cheek by jowl,” “crumble in straight rows” create a vivid picture of the chaotic life of the people. But unlike Abrahams, Mphahlele subtly creates humour by the ambiguity of the phrases which suggest that there is some order in the disorderliness described. The harrowing and depressing conditions of the Coloureds in Vrededorp and the Blacks in Marabastad where “you hear humanity wailing for help, for food, for shelter, humanity gasping for air” (p. 204), are in sharp contrast to the conditions in the white suburbs. As Abrahams walks away from the narrow streets of Vrededorp, as he

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walks away from the throb of the pushing crowds to the “broad, tree-line streets of upper Fordsburg,” a white suburb, he says that: The world seemed hushed and empty here. Peace hung over it. The broad pavements were clean. No black ran down the gutters of these streets. No half-naked, pot-bellied children fought and played in these gutters […] A stranger […] would find it hard to believe a place called Vrededorp was less than an hour’s walk away […] I might as well have stepped into another world, on another planet. (p. 103)

Mphahlele, on his part, illuminates the contrasting life-styles of the Whites and Blacks thus: While we blacks shouted and laughed in our packed and stuffy trains, in our long, long weary bus queues, in the buses, they [the whites] boarded their clean buses, and separate train coaches from their separate platforms and travelled to their separate suburbs – clean, quiet. (p. 174)

In trying to make their descriptions vivid, both writers employ a cinematographic technique, moving their spotlights over well-chosen range, concentrating on them long enough to reinforce impressions through which the hopeless state of the Coloured and Black peoples is expressed. In both passages, Abrahams and Mphahlele take the reader on a guided tour spotlighting the difference between the way in which the oppressed people (the Coloureds and Blacks) live and the way the oppressors (Whites) live; the filth and squalor of the former contrast sharply with the sanitary splendour, opulence and grandeur inhabited by the latter. The actual way in which both writers build this contrast demands an eye that takes in precise details, “a nose”, to borrow Obiechina’s phrase made in respect of Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, “that smells fine distinctions and a nervous system that is sensitive to the smallest distinctions of texture. 7 In equating the world inhabited by the Whites to “another world on another planet” Abrahams (inadvertently) recalls his fairly-tale world which we saw in the “rain-drop” scene at the opening of the book. It seems we can liken this invented world of the “rain-drop” to the European world of splendour, opulence and grandeur. It seems also we can liken the beauty and gaiety of the “rain-drop world” to the beauty and serenity of the European world which Abrahams pictorially portrays here through verbal clarity. Concluding his article on Tell Freedom and Down Second Avenue Brian Worsfold says that “the autobiographies of Ezekiel Mphahlele and Peter Abrahams gives a deeply-penetrating insight into the twilight world of the people of the Black and Coloured South African township and constitute vivid, first-hand accounts of life in their respective communities.”8 I am in perfect agreement with Brian Worsfold and wish to 7 8

Obiechina, op. cit. 154. Brian Worsfold, “Growing up with Apartheid: A look at the Socio-Political Background in Ezekiel Mphahlele’s Down Second Avenue and Peter Abrahams’s Tell Freedom”, in Doirean MacDermott (ed.), Autobiographical and Biographical Writing in the Commonwealth. Sabadell, Barcelona: Editorial AUSA, 1984, 259.

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add that these vivid accounts of the world of the Black and Coloured South African owe much to Abrahams’s and Mphahlele’s tendency of paying close attention to the details of setting in the manner of naturalists. Although this manner of presenting setting may appear less fictional than the symbolic or poetic types discussed above, it is nonetheless equally artistic in the way it is employed to evoke a sense of reality. In fact while the symbolic and poetic passages invite disbelief, the naturalistic passages ring authentic. The events Abrahams and Mphahlele recall and describe in Tell Freedom and Down Second Avenue are creditable enough, and the feelings they generate (and this is the crux of the matter) are incredibly crippling. It is necessary to state here that Soyinka and Gatheru also attempt to give their works the semblance of reality by way of naturalistic, matter-of-fact descriptions as witnessed, for example, in Soyinka’s description of the poor sanitary conditions of Isara (pp. 130–131) or in Gatheru’s description of the condition of Nairobi’s public lavatories. Their descriptions, however, do not evoke the same sense of reality noticed in Tell Freedom and Down Second Avenue. Let us take a brief look at two passages from Ake and Child of the Two Worlds beginning with the former: Isara was not the most sanitary of places. There were common salanga, deep latrine-pits, usually well-kept. But it seemed to be accepted that children’s excrement could be passed anywhere after which the mongrel dogs which roamed about in abundance were summoned to eat it up. If they were not available, flies swarmed them until they finally dried up, were scattered by unwary feet at night, churned through by bicycles and the occasional motor lorry.

And from Child of Two Worlds: The tins and floors (of the public lavatories) were a sickening sight and there were flies every where. One could see long threads or rings of tape worms or the faeces dropped by people who were suffering from them, an inevitable disease amongst those forced to live in such circumstances.

In these two passages, we see the poverty and filthy habits of the people of Isara and Nairobi, and nothing more. As pieces of information, as realistic descriptions that attempt to present an unacceptable aspect of an African world, the inclusion of the two passages in the narratives can be justified. But in trying to present setting realistically, Soyinka and Gatheru are unlike Abrahams and Mphahlele who use more metaphoric expressions that make it possible for the reader to visualise the environment and live through the experiences described. In this light none of the two passages above can compare with Abrahams’s and Mphahlele’s. The words used in Soyinka’s and Gatheru’s descriptions above are plain and unimaginative. What emerges from the above discussion is that the writers employ naturalistic descriptions to spotlight the harsh and environmental conditions their people are forced to live in. Through their varied re-creations they invite disgust at unhygienic habits and sympathy for suffering humanity “forced to live in such circumstances”. But Abrahams’s and Mphahele’s naturalistic descriptions are more artistic than Soyinka’s and Gatheru’s.

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CONCLUSION

From the foregoing discussion it is quite glaring that setting in the African literary autobiography is presented as we normally find in a work of fiction. Through the use of shift in time frames, symbolised and naturalistic descriptions the writers effectively re-create the setting in their narratives. They are able to satisfy the basic requirement of literary activity described by Humphrey House as the “process of imaginative transformation from original to fiction.”9 The setting in all the works treated are not incidental but a significant part of the autobiographies as literary works.

9

Humphrey House, The World of Dickens. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942, 11.