Personal Freedom in an Oppressive Community
Every word has a
meaning, every novel a theme. A theme is what the point of the novel is or what the
novel is trying to say. In all novels, one should be able to figure out the purpose
the author tries to portray to a particular theme. Throughout this quarter, A
Community of Stories has been reading novels which all have a similar theme.
These novels which include Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora
Neale Hurston, Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, and Fools Crow
by James Welch, all show how a person or group can be oppressed by their community because
of their habit of life or choices they choose to take in life.
It is very easy to see
how similar these three novels are. In all three novels, the main character always
has an obstacle to face regarding his or her community. Particularly because the
main character is of a different culture than the majority of their community.
Communities can be very unaccepting of someone who is different or out of the
normal, this unacceptance causes great hardships for the main characters of these novels.
In the novel, Their
Eyes Were Watching God, Janie, the main character, goes through a period of finding
her identity. Janie is black; she has grown up in a white community who looks down
upon her for the color of her skin, not the content of her character.
“It’s bad bein’ strange niggers wid white folks. Everybody is
against yuh” (Hurston 172). Tea Cake, Janie’s third husband, is expressing
how he feels being a black man living in a white community. Janie’s community
is a place full of gossip, people sitting on their porches waiting to hear the latest
news. They are intrigued to hear news about Janie because she is different.
“Ah know all dem sitters-and-talkers gointuh worry they guts into fiddle
strings till dey find out whut we be talkin’ bout” (Hurston 191). Janie
doesn’t let her community stop her from achieving the thing she wants in life: love.
Janie conquers her oppressive community and finds her personal freedom.
Communities can play a
large role in developing one’s character. In the novel Nervous
Conditions, Tambudzai, the narrator, must overcome the autocratic authority exercised
by men in her community and the racism and patriarchy of the colonial culture.
Tambudzai gains much of her growth through the four women in her life- her mother,
whose life is one of neglect and deprivation; her two aunts, who experience mistreatment
from the men in their lives; and her cousin Nyasha, who rebels against her oppressive
father and eventually develops an eating disorder. By being with these women and
witnessing the injustices they endure and the losses they suffer, Tambudzai acknowledges
the realities of her community and the kind of clarity and strength it will take to make
her way beyond it. “I was having to revise my thinking” (Dangarembga
116). This quote refers to Tambu having to completely learn how to not be in a
situation where she feels oppressed. Poverty effects each character in the novel
creating each of them a type of nervous condition. In general, Nervous
Conditions is a novel that presents African women characters who, through action and
dialogue, resist aspects of racism, sexism, and oppression in their community while
navigating their lives within the margins of both traditional and Western colonial
cultures. This novel is a search for personal freedom.
Sometimes a community
may need reconstruction. A community can lose a sense of who they are and what they
represent. One can lose his or her focus while being wrapped up in his or her
community. Communities have values and often times meaning this is shown in Fools
Crow. For the Pikunis, an Indian tribe, dreams are valued and represent
meaning. The characters of this novel are oppressed because of some of their actions
they choose to take. The main character, Fools Crow, overcomes these feelings of
oppression and gets his tribe to gain the confidence that they once had. “This
world has changed and we do not belong to it. We would be better off to join our
before-people in the Sand Hills. It is as Curlew Woman says. We would rather
be killed by the Napikwans than live in their world” (Welch 385). The Pikunis
have lost a sense of their community through the oppression brought by the Napikwans
(white men). Through much battle the Pikunis gain hold of their community.
“For even though he was, like Feather Woman, burdened with the knowledge of
his people, their lives and the lives of their children, he knew they would survive, for
they were the chosen ones” (Welch 390). Throughout and after the battles of
this tribe they fight for their freedom and they eventually find the freedom they have
always wanted.
Freedom is a word that
can be defined differently from community to community. Each community has unique
values that are sometimes not comparable to another community’s values. But
personal freedom is usually similar community to community. “Everyone wants to
be worthy or thought of as ‘one of a kind’” (Fanon 16). Personal
freedom is the feeling of acceptance by all people. After reading all of these
novels, I found that the characters were always searching for their identity which has a
lot to do with personal freedom. Themes can be similar but have a whole different story
just like communities can be similar but have a whole different problem.
Works Cited
Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. The Seal Press; Seattle,
1986.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Grover Publishing; New York, 1967.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Harper Collins
Publishers; New York, 1937.
Welch, James. Fools Crow. Penguin Books; New York, 1986.
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