RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 "The Gods Disapprove of the Mingling of Peoples": Conrad, Achiebe and Gordimer on the Plight of Europeans in Africa
A1 Varela-Zapata, Jesús
AB The quotation above, from Virgil’s Aeneid, serves to illustrate theill-fated relationship between Europeans and Africans since the timesof colonization. Literature reflects how this meeting of races has notbeen a successful story. Joseph Conrad and Chinua Achebe, now consideredclassic figures in the portrayal of the African plight, denouncein their work the abuse of the African population, a phenomenon whichcosts many lives and has since then represented the most revolting aspectof the European intervention. As we will see in this paper, thesupercilious colonists, paradoxically enough, had also to undergo physicaland spiritual ordeals. Conradian figures as Kurtz, Carlier or Kayertsattest to the hardships imposed on them by the hostile landscape andtheir own moral disintegration. Nadine Gordimer, writing at the end ofthe XX century, reflects how the inheritors of those European explorers,merchants and officers, now living in a post-colonial African context,are suffering a similar plight. They have become a marginal minority,feeling the rejection of the citizens of the newly-independentcountries and being the easy target of the demagogy of the post-colonialrulers. Very often, they are also weighed down by the burden of thefeelings of guilt over the colonial abuses or by their own futile attemptsto cling to old positions of privilege.
PB Servicio de Publicaciones. Universidad de La Laguna
SN e-2530-8335
YR 1997
FD 1997
LK http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/30589
UL http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/30589
LA en
DS Repositorio institucional de la Universidad de La Laguna
RD 21-nov-2024