STATE AS THE INSTRUMENT OF CLASS OPPRESSION AS
SEEN IN NGUGI WA THIONG’O’S
WEEP NOT, CHILD AND
MATIGARI: A COMPARATIVE STUDY
AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree ofSarjana Sastra
in English Letters
By
ALBERTUS BUDI PRASETYO
Student Number: 064214083
ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAMME DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS
FACULTY OF LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY
YOGYAKARTA 2011
“…literature cannot escape from the class power structures that shape
our everyday life. Here a writer has no choice. Whether or not he is
aware of it, his works reflect one or more aspects of the intense
economic, political, cultural and ideological struggles in a society.
What he can choose is one or the other side in the battle field: the side
of the people, or the side of those social forces and classes that try to
keep the people down. What he or she cannot do is to remain neutral.”
(Ngugi wa Thiong’o, preface on
Writers in Politics)
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A.
Background of the StudyThe departure of European colonizing power from colonies historically
marked the birth of post-colonial era which put racial oppression and domination
into an end. However, it has left complicated problems to the indigenous peoples
to deal with. One major problem is that the post-colonial countries are forced to
struggle with the capitalistic political economic structure inherited from colonial
period which, in most part, result in negative ways. The problems under this
system including unequal wealth distribution, extreme economic gap between
citizens, extreme poverty, underdevelopment, and relentless conflicts between
economic classes resulting from class oppression and domination become some of
the haunting faces. In other words, while the post-independence period has left
racial oppression as colonial artifact, class oppression stands still.
One could trace back these undesirable faces to the moment when
European colonizing power invaded the life of indigenous people. Amongst most
of European colonies, Africa must be one precise example. As European
colonizing power set foot on their lands, most of Africans had not known
capitalist economic system as most European states did. In other words,
capitalism is not indigenous for Africans.
Colonialism and capitalism became mutual systems which the colonizing
European powers brought to the colonies. The growing needs of capital expansion
1
and the new sources of raw materials for capitalist production and goods
embattled in European markets motivated imperial journey overseas, land
discoveries, and settlement which began the long history of colonialism. The
needs to satisfy economic demands of the capitalist production in the empires
meant that it was necessary to run economic acceleration in the peripheries. In
consequence, the European power need to impose revolutionary changes in mode
of production in the colonies including changes in ownership mode of the means
of production, class distinction, class relation, and production relation, which
supported the very nature of capitalist system deployment. In this regards, as a
researcher on African Governance and Development, Ludeki Chweya suggested,
colonialism was therefore more of an economic enterprise that involved capitalist
exploitation and accumulation based on hitherto untapped natural resources of the
colonies than merely a political undertaking that targeted European territorial
annexation and political domination of foreign lands (2006:9).
The scheme of the capitalist exploitation and accumulation was evidently
demonstrated in terms of change in ownership mode of primary means of
production such as land ownership which became destructive force toward the
pre-colonial system of the indigenous peoples. Massive European settlement and
land territorialization intended to seize indigenous lands from the indigenous
hands to the few European’s became one most significant change. In the context
of most colonies in Africa, land grabbing has devastated the pre-colonial
indigenous mode of land ownership which was much more communal and
3
African ownership mode of primary means of production was replaced by more
private, exclusive, and centralized one regulated in the interests of the privileged
ruling group.
The ruling group was only few (mostly European, Asian, and in smaller
amount African capitalists) who had access to own and control primary means of
production, while the rest (mostly Africans) was denied, alienated from the means
of production. In Marxist explanation on classes of capitalist production relation,
the former is called bourgeoisie, those having access to own, control the means of
production, and have power over capital while the latter is proletariat, those
deprived of means of production and compelled to sell their labor-power to the
former in order to survive.
Since revolutionary change in ownership mode of primary means of
production was imposed, the class division as such was inevitable. The
proletarization of the indigenous peoples was compulsory in the scheme of
capitalistic accumulation and production as it necessitated the use of plentiful and,
above all, cheap native-wage labor. The proletarization was compulsory as land
alienation was stretched in order to restrict the land and associated resources in
reserves. It consequently created socioeconomic hardship, and ultimately
compelled native men, women and children to seek wage employment—to
become proletariat (Chweya, 2006:12).
Despite of the fact that majority of the colonial bourgeoisie in colonies
consisted of European population and most of indigenous peoples were subjected
to the level of proletariat due to the needs of cheap wage-laborer, the existence of
indigenous capitalists in smaller quantity was also undeniable. The latter consisted
of indigenous middle-up class who owned and controlled primary means of
production, and ran capitalistic production relation. According to Nicola
Swainson, the embryo of the African bourgeoisie emerged from the 1920s
onwards, based on new forms of commodity production founded on the direct
employment of wage labour... This new class of local capitalists had its basis links
between trade, commodity production in the reserves and salaried places within
the state apparatus (1980:173-174).
In this regards, capitalism injected to the colonies brought about
entrenched capitalistic economic classes which had not existed in the pre-colonial
era, and thereby generates “the emergence of dominant classes that have
oppressed the subordinate categories resulting in authoritarian rule and economic
exclusion of the latter” (Chweya, 2006:7). As the result of such entrenched
economic classes, capitalism, geared inherently by its exploiting production
relation, had its own special share in the economic inequality and poverty in the
colonies as it promoted rural-urban, regional and class differences, class
domination and oppression. The contradictions in the production relations
between the international and domestic bourgeoisie, between the peasantries and
the bourgeoisie, and between capital and labour become fundamental in
generating such problems (Ndege, 2009:7).
On behalf of such exploiting production relation, stand (colonial) state, the
privileged extra-economic (political) body, functioned to regulate and maintain
5
pre-capitalist communities into the colonial and international economic systems”
which was obviously capitalistic (Ndege, 2009:5) Authorized to conduct
economic policy, it was this privileged political power which handed the role of
accelerating economic system in colonies with the imperial centre. Therefore, it
was not beyond the bound of possibility that (colonial) state acted on behalf of the
ruling class in this colonial capitalistic system. Not only did it back the European
bourgeoisie, it also supported non-European bourgeoisie including the indigenous
capitalists who benefitted from collaborating with the colonialists.
The Independence Day and its aftermath marked the departure of European
colonizing power and began the indigenous government. However, it meant
nothing more than the nativization of the European personnel controlled the
former political economic systems which left its exploiting nature untouched.
Capitalist production relation along with its class structure, class exploitation, and
class antagonism introduced during colonial period continues to exist because the
attempt to break away from the colonial economic system is doubtless
insignificant. The nativization led to the massive growth of new indigenous
bourgeoisie who took control over primary economy sector (land ownership,
commerce, and industry) and had its basis in the large scale employment of
wage-laborer in agriculture and industry. In other words, this indigenous bourgeoisie
turned to be the new dominant ruling class who lives by exploiting the class of
wage laborer.
This indigenous class utilized the state power to support their economic
interests including to further their control over the means of production,
investment in large-scale agriculture and manufacturing, ensuring civil order, and
repressing labour movement (Swainson, 1980:16). As already operated during
colonial period, the function of post-colonial state power therefore becomes
nothing but the nativized instrument of the colonial capitalist system which was
distinguished by its racial-based nature. “The old role of colonial settlers as a
means of transporting economic compulsions,” as Wood described it, “has been
taken over by local nation states, which act as transmission belts for capitalist
imperatives” (2002:156).
Ngugi wa Thingo’s, one prominent Kenyan writer, shares the same
judgment on such nature of post-colonial political economic structure. As he
observes, capitalism becomes the European most expansive economic system
which affects massively the life of indigenous peoples from the time of European
colonizing power set foot on their lands to the moment when national liberation
has been already achieved. He regards that this exploitative system would produce
society where a few groups, no matter what race that operate it is, “live on the
blood of others” (Thiong’o, 1972:vii). He clearly admitted the bitter truth that the
Independence era means only deracializing or nativizing the ownership of
European settlers over varied vital means of production, but not ending such
system:
There is no area of our lives which has not been affected by the social,
political and expansionist needs of European capitalism…Yet the sad truth
7
acres of land is replaced by a single African owning the same 600 acres.
There has been no change in the structure and nature of ownership…
(1972:xv-xvi).
As a post-colonial African writer, the ideological commitment of Ngugi wa
Thiong’o’s toward the proletariat, which means primarily wage-peasants and
industrial workers, exists distinctively compared to the other post-colonial African
writers such as Chinua Achebe or Wole Soyinka. His Marxist ideological
tendency in the way he represents the reality of colonialism and its aftermath
through both literary and non-literary works is undeniably dense. In his writing
entitled Ngugi: A Marxist Dialogues with the Past
(http://www.nigerianbestforum.com/blog/?m=201004&paged=241) Gbenga
Adeniji asserts that most of Ngugi’s creative works, particularly his late novels
and plays, reveal much of his “Marxist creed”.
The Marxist tendency in the creative works is certainly connected to his
acceptance of Marxist world frame which he demonstrates while analyzing
economic structure and class formation in society. As his following suggestion
demonstrates, Marxist notions on individual relation to the means of production as
the determining factor on class distinction, antagonism between classes, and on
state’s function as the instrument of the ruling class are evidently present:
The economic structure is at the same time a class structure so that at every level of a community's being, that society is characterized by opposing classes with the dominant class, usually a minority, owning and controlling the means of production, and hence having greater access to the social product, social because it is the product of the combined efforts of men. It is the dominant class which wields political power, and whose interests are mainly served by the state and all the machinery of state power, like the
police and the army and the law courts (Thiong’o, 1981:9-10).
Some of Ngugi's novels which represent dense Marxist perspective on
societal interaction, particularly in the context of colonial and post-colonial
society, areWeep Not, Child andMatigari. The former represents the condition of
colonial Kenya in which racial distinction and relation largely determines social
interaction in various life aspects. However, besides narrating such picture which
are quite common in most colonies, the writer notices that the novel further
depicts how capitalistic formation of economic classes exists and how individual
membership in particular class also determine the social interaction.
The later, set in colonial Kenya, describes much how
post-independence era becomes the continuation of colonial economic structure
inheriting its class distinction, class relation, and class antagonism. Post-colonial
period which becomes the highest achievement of national liberation and marks
the beginning of native control upon their own life in fact does not abolish class
distinction and class relation which have already operated since capitalism was
introduced in colonial epoch. The former freedom fighters, who struggled to fight
the European colonization, turn to be the new ruling class that utilize state power
to serve their class interests.
This thesis is a comparative study which concerns with a number of shared
features presented in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s novels Weep Not, Child and Matigari
The thesis will focus on figuring out the continuity which connects both novels in
terms of class distinction and class relation, despite of their being set in different
historical period. By comparatively describing class distinction and class relation
9
both societies run capitalist production relation from which class oppression, the
bourgeoisie’s oppression over the proletariat, is generated. Subsequently, by
looking at the capitalist production relation in both societies, the writer moves on
achieving the ultimate objective of the present thesis, i.e. to demonstrate the
parallelism in terms of how colonial and post-colonial states in the novels run the
continuous function, i.e. the instrument of class oppression.
How do colonial society and post-colonial society in the novels,
differentiated boldly by the existence of and the abolition of racial oppression and
domination, share continuity in terms of class distinction and class relation? How
do states during these different historical stages tend to run its similar function as
the instrument of class oppression? These are the problems this thesis aims to
answer.
B.
Problem FormulationIn order to focus the analysis, two problems are formulated as follow:
1. In terms of class distinction and class relation, how are societies in the
novels (colonial society inWeep Not, Child and post-colonial society in
Matigari) similarly depicted through setting and characters?
2. How do both colonial and post-colonial societies in the novels depict
state as the instrument of class oppression?
C.
Objectives of the StudyIn relation to the problem formulation, this thesis will firstly describe,
compare, and expose the similarity between colonial and post-colonial society in
the novels, in terms of class distinction and class relation. Secondly, based on
such intrinsic findings, the thesis will then examine how both novels depict state
as the instrument of class oppression.
The fundamental objective of this thesis is not to refute the fact that there
exists significant difference in terms of racial relations between colonial and
post-colonial period, not to negate that in colonies race largely determines relations in
various life aspects, and not to deny that colonial state becomes the instrument of
racial oppression (which ends at the onset of native independence). Instead, while
regarding them as common facts, this thesis is concerned more on analyzing to
what extent that class (rather than race) continuously determines individual and
class relations both in colonial and post-colonial societies, on demonstrating how
in both colonial and post-colonial societies class distinction significantly takes
role to generate oppression and antagonism when racial distinction no longer
does, that state both in colonial and post-colonial period tends to demonstrate its
similar, and continuous function: the instrument of class oppression.
The impetus and the rationale of such focus is that the difference between
colonial and post-colonial society in terms of racial distinction and relation (the
existence of racial oppression and domination during colonial period which ends
in the post-colonial period) has been widely acknowledged as common fact.
post-11
colonial society will offer no new and challenging task except affirming the
difference which has been clearly reflected in the term colonial andpost-colonial.
Besides, by analyzing the similarity or continuity between the novels which
connects to the reality of post-colonial societies along with their colonial
antecedents, this thesis intends to figure out fundamental aspects which can
explain complicated socio-economic problems existing in post-colonial countries
nowadays. To observe how colonial capitalism is inherited to post-colonial
society through its relatively unchanged class distinction, class relation, and
state’s function is the main motif of this thesis.
D.
Definition of Terms1. State
State is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is a
power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate the class conflict
and keep it within the bounds of 'order'. This power, arisen out of society but
placing itself above it, alienates itself more and more from it. The existence of
public power detached from the society becomes its essential characteristic. It
consists not merely of armed men but also of material adjuncts, prisons, and
institutions of coercion of all kinds (Engels, 2004:157-158).
2. Class Oppression
Class oppression is the oppression which arises from the appropriation of
labour-product by one class that owns and controls primary means of production
over the other class deprived of primary means of production. The oppression is
preceded by the rise of private ownership of means of production and, split of
labour, and the condition in which production develops to such an extent that
force human labour to produce more than was required for the bare subsistence of
workers. The existence of exploitation by the owners of the means of production
over masses of working class is the essence of Marxist definition of class
oppression (Dutt, 1963:127-128).
3. Colonial society
In Latin and Greek the literal meaning of the word ‘colonia’ is settlement.
Settlement is widely known as one of the most important characteristics of
colonialism, meaning essentially the movement of people to a peripheral region or
a ‘new world’ from metropolitan state. Colonial society is, therefore, region which
is invaded by non-indigenous population, either smaller or larger than indigenous
inhabitants, and is controlled to serve the interests of the metropolitan state (Ryan
and Mullen:221).
4. Post-colonial society
This thesis uses the more conventional hyphenated term post-colonial,
which historically marks the end of colonial occupation or refers to life during the
post-independence day (more generally means term designating post-Second
World War Era). The term should be differentiated with the unbroken term
postcolonial which more complicatedly refers to the long history of colonial
13
5. Capitalist society
A society is capitalist if the production of material goods is dominated by
the use of wage labor, that is, the use of labor power sold, to make a living, by
people controlling no significant means of production and bought by other people
who do have significant control over means of production and mostly gain their
income from profits on the sale of the results of combining bought labor power
with those productive means (Miller in Carver, 1991:55)
6. The bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie is the class of the owners of the basic means of
production, which lives by exploiting the hired labour of the workers; it is the
ruling class of capitalist society (Dutt, 1963:154). The class does not always mean
owners of the means of production in modern or industrial economic sector but
also rural one which includes the independent farmers (usually wealthy peasantry)
whose farm-ownership is larger than they are able to cultivate with the aid of the
members of their family alone, and thereby whose existence is necessarily
dependent on wage agricultural laborers (Lenin, 1966:18)
7. The proletariat
The term derived from Latin Proles which means “lots of mouths to feed”.
The proletariat is the creator of colossal wealth appropriated by the bourgeoisie,
the chief productive force of capitalist society. It is a class deprived of ownership
of the means of production, and therefore compels to sell its labour-power to the
capitalist (Dutt, 1963:154). This working class is not simply manual laborers or
factory workers, but Marx and Engels themselves put forward a broader
definition. In 1848 they wrote of “a class of laborers who live only so long as they
find work and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital” (Marx
and Engels, 2008:14). Thus there exists also rural proletariat, which is a class of
wage laborers domesticated usually in agricultural sectors. This comprises poor
peasantry possessing allotments such as insignificant dimension of the farm on a
small patch of land, farm in a state of ruin, a rented farm, or those completely
deprived of land. Yet the general feature of the class is their inability to exist
without selling labour-power (Lenin, 1966:19)
8. Capital
Capital consists of raw materials, instruments of labor, and means of
subsistence of all kinds, which are employed in producing new raw materials, new
instruments, and new means of subsistence (Marx, 1933:28). Unlike more liberal
economics who asserts that every means of production, raw materials, instruments
of labor, and means of subsistence, are capital, Marxist theorists argue that these
become capital only when transformed into a means of exploiting workers, a
means of surplus-value extraction. Capital is not merely things but more
essentially a social relationship between the basic classes of capitalist society—a
relationship of the exploitation of wage-workers by the owners of the means of
production. (Dutt, 1963:220)
9. Production relation
Production relation is the relationships that people enter into the course of
CHAPTER II
THEORETICAL REVIEW
This chapter is divided into three parts. The first is a review on related studies
which provides two literary criticisms on Weep Not, Child and Matigari. The
second is theoretical review in which the theories employed to analyze the novel
are elaborated. The third is theoretical framework which draws on how the
theories are systematically utilized in the analysis.
A. Review of Related Studies
This part consists of two studies conducted by two different writers. The
first study connects to this study in terms of its comparative approach and one of
its similar object of the study, Weep Not, Child. However, it differs essentially in
its comparative focuses from this study. The second study connects to this thesis
in terms of similar object of study,Matigari, but differs in its analysis focuses.
The first study is a comparative study conducted by Apollo Obonyo
Amoko, which is concerned on juxtaposing two Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s novels
Weep Not, Child and The River Between. By the title Early Fictions of School
Culture: The River Between and Weep Not, Child, the study presents a number of
literary comparisons covering from juxtaposition of main characters, of discourse
of prophecy, up to conflict which both novels display.
In terms of main character, Mahoko suggests that Ngugi wa Thiong’o
consciously intends Weep Not, Child as a sequel to and revision of The River
15
Between. Njoroge, a central character in Weep Not, Child, is regarded as “a thinly
veiled reincarnation of Waiyaki”, the protagonist of The River Between. “The
image of Njoroge-as-savior depicted in Weep Not, Child harks back to the image
of Waiyaki-as-savior inThe River Between” (Amoko, 2010:49).
Besides, the two characters are similarly constructed as ridiculous fools
rather than innocent heroes. Njoroge’s desires to the extreme absurdity are to
prepare the ground for his pathetic fall. Whereas Waiyaki’s fall at the conclusion
of The River Between elicits a measure of empathy and moral authority even in
tragic defeat, Njoroge’s fall at the end of Weep Not, Child seems to be a pathetic
affair that effectively deflates all his claims of his hopes of prophecy. The novel
ridicules and rejects the messianism he so passionately embraces (Amoko,
2010:63).
In terms of discourse on prophecy, yet still in relation to the main
characters, like The River Between, Mahoko asserts that Weep Not, Child hinges
on the prophecy placed onto the ill-suited body of a child character. Njoroge
demonstrates exactly the same hubris that motivates Waiyaki. He displays the
same neutralism that tragically destroys Waiyaki. He attempts to “graft a Gikuyu
sacral ontology seamlessly onto Christian dogma”, yet without considering the
extreme differences between the two, especially in the context of violent
colonialism. However, the difference between the novels is that, unlike in The
River Between, the discourse of prophecy is contested in Weep Not, Child
In terms of conflict,Weep Not, Child occupies the same imaginative space
as The River Between. They share identical main conflict including the way to
overcome the colonial conquest and dispossession, and the role of the colonial
school in anti-colonial politics. However, Amoko notes there is a critical
difference between the two texts. The question of colonial education is addressed
by Weep Not, Child in the context of the Mau Mau Rebellion and a state of
emergency, which set up a new frame including the role of the colonial school
during an age of violent anti-colonial struggle, the role of the school during a
generalized state of terror, and the significance to imagine the colonial school as a
protected enclave for individual improvement when the wider society is being
torn apart by the violence of anti-colonial struggle and the colonial state’s
terroristic response (Amoko, 2010:52-53). Furthermore, Amoko adds that if in
The River Between the central conflict took the form of an internal contest in the
shadow of encroaching colonial power, in Weep Not, Child the conflict is directly
between white people and black people (2010:55).
The second related study is that of Simon Gikandi’s entitled The Work of
Art in Exile: Matigari. Unlike the first study which focuses on some thematic in
both novels, in the study Gikandi seeks to scrutinize the profound link between
the return to Gikuyu oral sources and the trope of exile, where focus on narrative
voice of the novel is set in. In other words, the study seeks to figure out the
connection between the objective text and the external fact that it is written during
exile. According to Gikandi, the author’s being in exile becomes the fundamental
factor which determines the literary form which Matigari possesses. Through 17
exile the author is capable of “freeing himself from the anxieties of the European
novel and its conventions.” He overcomes “the pressure of representing the
historical realities of the postcolonial state in Kenya” (2000:227).
Gikandi brilliantly finds out that Matigari is distinguished from Ngugi's
prior novels by its “complete evacuation of the authoritative narrative voice”.
Gikandi figures out that through features of its contingency and irony, and in its
celebration of alienation, the narrative voice “exists both inside and outside the
politics it seeks to represent”. The narrative voice’s ability to observe both from
inside and outside signals special feature of Matigari as being identically the
author’s creative results in exile in which he needs to “acknowledge his own
estrangement from the people he had chosen as the subject of his work of art”.
Being in line with the author’s assertion, Gikandi suggests further that there exists
conjunction between notions of home and return, and those of alienation and
exile. The novel’s being produced in exile, which means being furthest removed
from its subject, enables itself to be interpreted to “reflect its author’s
self-consciousness about his distance from his cultural sources, his language, and his
intended audience” (2000:226-228).
Focused on the narrative voice, Gikandi asserts that Matigari is best read
as a novel generated by uncertainties about personal and collective identity, the
authority of temporality, and the reader's ability to recuperate meanings from the
narrative of postcolonial history:
Furthermore, As if this abrogation of narrative authority were not enough, Matigari's narrative is represented as allegorical (thus endowed with specific ecumenical meanings and intentions), and as contingent (surrounded by doubts about its identity and materiality) (2000:229).
Matigari, the protagonist in the novel, is presented to readers as the
representation of multiple and often contradictory fictions and functions. It is in
this presentation of his ambivalence and complicated relation to the postcolonial
world which creatively connects to the author’s self-alienation in exile as viewing
ambivalently his own unstable identity and the post-colonial reality of his nation
(Gikandi, 2000:229-231).
Thus the novel is frustrating to those who seek a definitive identity and
meaning for Matigari and for the history which the author represents. The author
wants to make the important point that in order to understand postcolonial culture
in which neo-colonial oppression occurs, those who have lived the nightmare of
colonialism must dig up its repressed histories and subjects.
In this respect, doubts and questions about Matigari's identity only reinforce the urgent need to establish his elusive character and the tortured history that produced it. Indeed, toward the end, the tone of the novel suggests that the question of Matigari's identity has become so central to understanding the betrayal of nationalism that the narrator is being begged to solve this puzzle and provide answers to the historical riddle before it is too late (Gikandi, 2000:235).
In the end of the study, Gikandi concluded that it is the mysteriousness of
Matigari’s identity and actions that function as “a sign of resistance and identity.”
Without a certain knowledge of who he is and the forces he represents, the
oppressing postcolonial state cannot imprison him; and because he has no
knowable or fixed character, the reader “can transform him, in their imagination,
into an agent of social change” (Gikandi, 2000:245-246)
19
B. Review of Related Theories
This part consists of four theories employed primarily in the analysis
chapter including theory on comparative study, theory on setting, theory on
characters, and Marxist theories that consists of theory on class and Marxist
theory on state.
1. Theory on Comparative Study
Since the objects of the study selected to compare in this study is two
literary texts written by single author, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and originating from
single national literary tradition, Kenyan Literature, the focus will be on
comparing thematic parallelism on both literary texts, i.e. similarity in societal
features including class distinction and class relation, and function of state,
Comparative theory used in this thesis is the conventional and general one which
defines comparative literature as a study of “literary continuity of motifs or of
influences” between texts, whose scope covers “a comparison of particular cases”,
and whose concerns to figure out “parallelism” (Weber in Koelb and Noakes,
1988:58). This general and conventional definition of comparative literature
should be differentiated with the more contemporary one which regards the
international and multi-lingual nature of the field (across national boundary) as
the basic point which this thesis does not belong to.
The methodology of comparative study of novels in its very general sense
placing it among other novels of its time, or its national literature, or other texts
written the same author”. In essence, the first task for the comparativist studying
novels must be to “define a foundation of comparability on which to build”, or to
“explicitly articulate the assumptions and norms that underpin comparisons”,
which theme, metaphor, detail, structural problem might serve. Thus the specific
types of comparative analysis will depend on the kind of comparability that
interests the critic including if “the novels share similar themes, structural
features, or respond to the same cultural phenomena” (Komar in Logan,
2011:208).
InThe Theory of Comparative Literature Dr. J. Parthasarathi also supports
the needs of such comparability while analyzing literary texts under comparative
perspective. The comparability of the objects of the study is fundamentally
necessary as in the absence of a governing motivation or a frame-work,
comparisons are not meaningful. Therefore comparative literary studies are
organized around certain categories that can provide motivation for inter-literature
analyses and function in the manner of frameworks for critical observation.
Amongst others, these categories are literary themes, types or genres tendencies or
influences, movements, styles of expression and literary theories
(http://yabaluri.org/TRIVENI/CDWEB/thetheoryofcomparativeliteraturejul82.htl)
2. Theory on Setting
Abrams defines setting as “the general locale, historical time, and social
circumstances in which its action occurs; the setting of an episode or scene within 21
a work is the particular physical location in which it takes place” (1999:284).
Harvey suggests that setting also includes the social environment of the novel
where “a complex web of individual relationship” operates (1965:56). Within this
social environment, Langland suggests further that there exist subsequent
constructing elements of a particular society including the people, their classes,
customs, conventions, beliefs and values (1984:4).
Furthermore, Holman and Harmon state that the setting is constructed upon
these elements: 1) the actual geographical location, 2) the occupations and daily
manner of living of the characters, 3) the time or period in which the action takes
place, 4) the general environment of the characters, for instance religious, moral,
mental, social and emotional conditions through which the people in the narrative
move (1986:465).
3. Theory on Character
Theory on characters in this study is utilized complementarily to support
the main intrinsic analysis i.e. the setting of the novels. Since it is impossible to
analyze elements of the setting i.e. social circumstances, the occupations and daily
manner of living of the characters, the general environment of the characters such
as their religious, moral, mental, social and emotional conditions, without
referring to the individuals (characters) that construct them, the utilization of the
theory is inevitably integral.
M. J. Murphy in his book Understanding Unseen: An Introduction to
asserts several ways by which the author creates character alive and understood by
the reader:
a. Speech
Speech here is used in a way so that the author can give the reader clue of in
regards to the character of the person in the literature. Whenever the character
speaks about something or about anything at all, the speech is a clue to his or
her character.
b.Character as Seen by Author
The author forms the character through the opinions or the views of other
character in the novel.
c.Personal Description
Personal description is the physical description of the character itself by the
author.
d.Conversation of Other
Using other characters to talk about the character (conversation) in many ways
it gives a clue to what the character is like.
e.Past Life
The author lets the reader know about a character and his or her personality by
looking at his or her past life.
f. Direct Comment
The author uses direct comment to let the reader know about the character.
g. Reaction
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By using the technique of seeing how the character react to various situations
in his or her life, the author make the reader know about the character’s
behavior. People talk about other people and the thing that they say gives the
reader clue to the character that they talk about.
h. Thoughts
Another way of how the author make the reader know the character of a person
through what the character is thinking about. The author give omniscient way
of looking at things, a direct knowledge of what the character is thinking about.
i. Mannerism
Through the observation and description of manners and habit, the author lets
the reader know what the character is like.
4. Marxist Theories
As Marxism constitutes enormously a wide range of theoretical subjects, in
this study the writer only elaborates few which are primarily utilized in the
analysis chapter. The following theoretical display covers from a set of Marxist
theory of class up to its theory of state.
a. Marxist Theory of Class
1. The Essence of Class Distinction
According to Marxist perspective, people’s consciousness depends on their
social being. The material well-being such as size of income, living conditions
whether it is the owner of the means of production or whether it is an oppressed
exploited class. On this basic aspect, there lies its role in political life, its level of
education and its everyday existence.
Marxism postulates that the chief and decisive aspects of social life,
material production—the basis of the division of society into classes, must be
sought in the place occupied by a particular group of people in the system of
social production, in their relation to the means of production. It is clearly stated
by the fullest definition of classes suggested in Vladimir Lenin’s work A Great
Beginning:
“Classes are large groups of people which differ from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organization of labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions and mode of acquiring the share of social wealth of which can appropriate the labour of another owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy” (Lenin in Dutt, 1963:150).
Yet the emergence of class is only possible in the age of private ownership,
in which the division of society into antagonistic classes, and hostility between
them, become an inseparable feature. To differ it with the mode of
communal/social ownership, the major sections of society then are divided into
classes one of which is the owner of the basic means of production and exercises
power, while the other constitutes the basis mass of the exploited:
The origin of classes is directly connected with private ownership of the means of production, which makes possible the exploitation of man by man, the appropriation of the labour of one group of people by another group… and the basis for this was great division of labour between the masses engaged in simple manual labour and the few privileged persons directing labour, conducting trade and public affairs…. Moreover, the class that held the reins of society missed no opportunity of imposing on the 25
masses an ever increasing burden of labour for its own personal advantage. (Dutt, 1963:152)
Furthermore, classes are divided into basic and non basic classes according
to the place they occupy in the society. By the term basic classes, it refers to those
without which the mode of production prevailing in society could not exist and
which have been brought into being by this very mode of production (Dutt,
1963:153). In the following sub-chapter, it is further described what basic classes
in society whose mode of production is capitalism are, what each class
characteristics are, how production relation between these basic classes is, and
what the result of the production relation between these classes is.
ii. Class Distinction and class relation in Capitalist Society
It needs to consider that class distinction does not only exist in the age of
capitalism, but it has existed already in the preceding mode of productions i.e.
slave system and feudal system in which private ownership of the means of
production had taken place. Yet, it is important to emphasize that, although
each system creates class distinction, one differs with the others in terms of the
existing basic classes and the production relation between them.
In slave society the basic classes are those of the slave-owners and
slaves, in feudal society those of landlords (feudal) and serfs, in capitalist
society those of the bourgeoisie (capitalist) and the proletariat (working class).
The bourgeoisie is the class of the owners of the basic means of production,
which lives by exploiting the hired labour of the workers; it is the ruling class of
appropriated by the bourgeoisie, the chief productive force of capitalist society.
It is a class deprived of ownership of the means of production, and therefore
compels to sell its labour-power to the capitalist (Dutt, 1963:154).
The working class is not simply manual laborers or factory workers, but
Marx and Engels themselves put forward a broader definition. In 1848, they
wrote proletariat as “a class of laborers who live only so long as they find work
and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital” (Marx &
Engels, 2008:14). In this respect, Marx and Engels emphasize the individual
position in the scheme of production relation in capitalist system
(selling-buying labor-power) and individual connection to the means of production to
determine whether or not one is proletariat.
Thus there exists also rural proletariat, which is a class of wage laborers
domesticated usually in agricultural sectors. This comprises poor peasantry
possessing allotments such as insignificant dimension of the farm on a small patch
of land, farm in a state of ruin, a rented farm, or those completely deprived of
land. Yet the general feature of the class is their inability to exist without selling
labour-power. In parallel, the bourgeoisie does not always mean owners of the
means of production in modern or industrial economic sector but also rural one
which includes the independent farmers (wealthy peasantry) whose
farm-ownership is larger than they are able to cultivate with the aid of the members of
their family alone, and thereby whose existence is necessarily dependent on wage
agricultural laborers (Lenin, 1966:18-19)
27
The similarity which these systems share in common is that all bases on
the private ownership of the means of production which creates class
distinction, labour division, and thereby exploitation. Thus, the relations
between the classes in such exploiting systems remain antagonistic in character
as “they are based on exploitation, on the oppression of the propertyless by the
possessors of property. They are the relations of an implacable class struggle”
(Dutt, 1969:132).
However, to differ capitalism with the other production relations
including slave and feudal society whose compelling device is primarily
physical force and whose oppressed class is tied with personal dependence, in
capitalist system the capitalist exploits the class of wage-workers who are free
from personal dependence but are compelled to sell their own labour-power
because they are deprived of the means of production:
“…the methods of exploitation and oppression have radically changed, the prevailing form of compulsion has become economic. The capitalist, as a rule, does not require physical force to make people work for him. Deprived of the means of production, the worker is compelled to do so “voluntarily”—under threat of death by starvation. The relations of exploitation are veiled by the “free” hire of workers by the master, by the buying and selling of labour-power” (Dutt, 1963:132)
Marxist theory on the capitalist production relation hinges on a perspective
that sellers in the labor market are burdened with identical inequalities. Capitalism
presumes a manufacturing economy in which all means of productive force such
as equipment, raw materials, and land are owned by a relatively small group, the
capitalists, each of whom possesses substantial purchasing power beyond what is
workers, who control no significant means of production and must sell their labor
power in order to survive. The identical inequality is that, amongst others, exist in
‘dependency complex’ of the proletariat on the bourgeoisie where the latter’s
possessing economic power over the former results in an unequal bargaining
position in the process of buying-selling labor-power.
A given capitalist bargaining with a given worker is under no urgent pressure to employ him or her, on pain of going hungry or losing a home, whereas workers must bargain under such pressure (Miller in Carver, 1991:57-58).
Distinctively, in capitalism wage-labor (selling-buying of labour-power)
becomes central in the production relation between the owners of the means of
production and those deprived of the means of production. Unlike slaves who are
the commodity/property of the slave-owners, in capitalism the proletariat is not
commodity of the bourgeoisie. Yet their labour-power becomes the commodity.
Unlike feudal system in which serfs are tied to land and the land-owners, the
proletariat does not belong to the bourgeoisie or the means of production but their
labor-power. As Marx put it inWage Labour and Capital:
Labor-power was not always a commodity (merchandise). Labor was not always wage-labor, i.e., free labor. The slave did not sell his labor-power to the slave-owner, any more than the ox sells his labor to the farmer. The slave, together with his labor-power, was sold to his owner once for all. He is a commodity that can pass from the hand of one owner to that of another. He himself is a commodity, but his labor-power is not his commodity. The serf sells only a portion of his labor-power. It is not he who receives wages from the owner of the land; it is rather the owner of the land who receives a tribute from him. The serf belongs to the soil, and to the lord of the soil he brings its fruit. The free laborer, on the other hand, sells his very self, and that by fractions. He auctions off eight, 10, 12, 15 hours of his life, one day like the next, to the highest bidder, to the owner of raw materials, tools, and the means of life -- i.e., to the capitalist. The laborer belongs neither to an owner nor to the soil, but eight, 10, 12, 15 hours of his daily life belong to whomsoever buys them. The worker leaves 29
the capitalist, to whom he has sold himself, as often as he chooses, and the capitalist discharges him as often as he sees fit, as soon as he no longer gets any use, or not the required use, out of him. But the worker, whose only source of income is the sale of his labor-power, cannot leave the whole class of buyers, i.e., the capitalist class, unless he gives up his own existence. He does not belong to this or that capitalist, but to the capitalist class; and it is for him to find his man -- i.e., to find a buyer in this capitalist class (Marx, 1933:19).
Furthermore, the central exploitation by the bourgeoisie in capitalism is the
extraction of surplus-value. During one portion of his labour-time, the proletariat
create a product which is necessary for his own maintenance. During another
portion of his labour-time, surplus labour-time, the worker creates surplus-value
by his surplus labour. Surplus-value is the value created by labour of the
proletariat over and above the value of his labour-power and appropriated without
payment by the capitalist. It is described by Fredrick Engels in the following
assertion:
Let us assume that these means of subsistence represent six hours of labour-time daily. Our incipient capitalist, who buys labour-power for carrying his business, i.e. hires a labourer, consequently pays this labourer
the full value of his day’s labour-power if he pays him a sum of money
which also represents six hours of labour. And as soon as the labourer has worked six hours in the employment of the incipient capitalist, he has fully
reimbursed the latter for his outlay, for the value of the day’s labour-power
which he had paid. But so far the money would not have been converted into capital, it would not have produced any surplus-value. And for this reason the buyer of labour-power has quite a different notion of the nature
of the transaction he has carried out. The fact that only six hours’ labour is
necessary to keep the labourer alive for twenty-four hours, does not in any way prevent him from working twelve hours out of the twenty-four. The value of the labour power, and the value, and the value which that
labour-power creates in the labour-process, are two different magnitudes… On our
assumption, therefore, the labourer each day costs the owner of money of
embodied. The trick has been performed. Surplus-value has been produced; money has been converted into capital (Engels in Dutt, 1963:219).
It is relatively easy to see how the extraction of surplus-value is operated
by the bourgeoisie in capitalist production relation. Firstly, as implied by Engels’
elaboration on the origin of surplus-value, it is of course operated through
suppressing wage standard. The capitalist seek to reduce wages their physical
minimum (which consists of the value of the means of subsistence that are
absolutely necessary for the proletariat’s existence, the maintenance of their
ability to work and support their family) because the capitalistic production
relation it is only the wages falls which determines the profit rises, and vice versa:
What, then is the general law that determines the rise and fall of wages and profit in their reciprocal relation? They stand in inverse proportion to each other. The share of (profit) increases in the same proportion in which the share of labor (wages) falls, and vice versa. Profit rises in the same degree in which wages fall; it falls in the same degree in which wages rise (Marx, 1933:37)
Besides the suppression of wage standard, the prolonging of working day
or intensifying labour becomes the capitalist’s mechanism to extract
surplus-value:
The growth of surplus-value consists in prolonging the working day or intensifying labour (increased labour intensity, or greater expenditure of human energy per unit time). Marx called this surplus-value absolute surplus-value. The capitalists would, if it were possible, extend the working day to 24 hours, since the longer the working day, the greater amount of surplus value created (Dutt, 1963:220-221)
In consequence, this unequal and exploiting capitalistic production relation
gives rise to class antagonism, or the "more or less veiled civil war" that Marx
asserts as intrinsic to the capitalist society (Marx and Engels, 2008:21). While the
bourgeoisie are interested in compelling the working class to produce as much as 31
possible while paying them as little as possible in order to extract profit, the
working class is naturally interested in exactly the opposite. The incompatibility
of economic interests between these antagonistic classes gives rise to an
implacable struggle between them.
On the side of the proletariat, the movement of wages and the change in
working day depends essentially on the class struggle waged by the proletariat, its
organizational strength and the resistance it offers to the employers. The struggle
of the proletariat for the improvement of labour conditions and its standard of
living, without altering the system of private of ownership of the means of
production and of political power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, can make their
position easier:
The economic struggle is that waged for improving the workers’ condition
of life and labour; increased wage, a shorter working day, etc. The most widespread method of economic struggle for the workers to state their
demands and, if these demands are not satisfied, to carry out strikes…
Every worker, even the least politically developed, realizes the need to protect his immediate economic interest. It is therefore with economic
struggle that the workers’ movement begins (Dutt, 1963:164).
b. Marxist Theory of State
The nature of state, as proposed by Fredrick Engels in The Origin of the
Family, Private Property and the State, is a product and a manifestation of the
irreconcilability of class antagonism. The state arises where, when and insofar as
class antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled. State maintains and regulates
power position between these antagonistic classes by acting as a separated or
“It is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of 'order'; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state” (Engels, 2004:157).
The Communist Manifesto provides probably the wide-known and most
often-quoted statement on the subject of the bourgeois state to be found in Marx’s
writing which constitutes the cornerstone of Marxist view on the subject of the
state. Within this monumental document, the anti-liberal conception of state,
which refuses notion that state is an independent neutral power managing class
conflicts in society, is specifically proposed. Not only is state a product of
irreconcilable class antagonism, it is also claimed that political or state power has
been conquered or taken over by the exploiting class and is used exclusively (i.e.
to the exclusion of other classes) to defend and advance the interests of the class.
Hence the Communist Manifesto theorizes an instrumentalist perspective in which
the state is viewed as an instrument controlled by the exploiting class for its own
purposes.
This instrumentalist perspective involves three major claims. First it
characterizes state power as primarily coercive—the state is, fundamentally, a
coercive apparatus. The state is defined in terms of the means specific to it,
namely the use of physical force. This conception is clearly indicated in the
inevitable emergence of public power which alienates itself from the majority of
population in society (specialized power), which consists of armed men and every 33
kinds of coercive institutions. It distinguishes state power from the preceding
public power in tribal society, which coincides with the population:
…the establishment of a public power which no longer directly coincides
with the population organizing itself as an armed force. This special, public power is necessary because a self-acting armed organization of the population has become impossible since the split into classes.... This public power exists in every state; it consists not merely of armed men but also of material adjuncts, prisons, and institutions of coercion of all kinds, of which gentile [clan] society knew nothing.... (Engels, 2004:158).
Marx crucially adds to this conception a crucial class dimension so that we
have the second, more specific, claim that state or “political power, properly so
called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another” (Marx
and Engels, 2008:36). In this sense, the primary function of the state is thus to
maintain class domination through basically oppressive or coercive instruments.
In slave society it is the domination of the slave-owners and the slaves, in feudal
society it is between the landlords and serfs, meanwhile in capitalist society this
means that it is the organized power of the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie) for
oppressing the proletariat (the working class).
State power is inevitably to enforce the dominant position of the exploiting
class against the threat from the proletariat. This third claim, which may be seen
as the essence of the instrumentalist thesis, tells us how it comes to be that the
state manages the common affairs of the exploiting class rather than that of liberal
conception which points that state acts for the public and the ‘common good’. The
state is an instrument in the hands of the exploiting class and used in the interests
of that class:
classes, it is, as a rule, the state of the most powerful, economically dominant class, which, through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically dominant class, and thus acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class.... The ancient and feudal states were organs for the exploitation of the slaves and serfs; likewise, the modern representative state is an instrument of exploitation of wage-labor by capital (Engels, 2004:159).
In sum, the nature of state within Marxist perspective is that it is a product
of irreconcilable of class antagonism. Furthermore, the dominating position in
state was seized by the exploiting classes. Since they composed only an
insignificant minority of society, these classes had to rely on direct coercion as
well as on their economic power to maintain the system suited them. For this a
special apparatus was required—detachments of armed mean (army and police),
courts, prisons whose control of coercion was placed in the hands of men devoted
to their interests not of the whole of society but of the exploiting minority.
In this way the state was built up as a machine for maintaining the domination of one class over another. With the help of this machine the economically dominant class consolidates the social system that is to its advantage and forcibly keeps its class opponents within the framework of the given mode of production. For this reason, in an exploiting society of the state, in essence, always represents the dictatorship of the class or classes of exploiters. In relation to society as a whole, the state acts as an instrument of direction and government on behalf of the ruling class; in relation to the opponents of this class (in an exploiting society this means the majority of the population), it acts as an instrument of suppression and coercion (Dutt, 1969:156-157).
C. Theoretical Framework
Theory on comparative study foregrounds the comparison on thematic
similarities in the two novels written by single author and from single literary
tradition. The general and conventional definition of comparative study
theoretically legitimizes the analysis along with its objects of study. The 35
