Camara Laye’s The Dark Child:
The undecided world of a mental mulatto
Deicy Jiménez
The Dark Child by Camara Laye shows the African struggle and search for an identity in colonial times. Published in 1953, Laye’s first novel makes part of a movement started some years before by writers such as Léopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire. The Negritude Movement, as it is known, sought to explain Africa in its own terms as well as to break down the negative representations which had led Europeans to an easy colonization. The Dark Child proves the task to be more complex than it may seem at first sight. This paper examines the ambivalence that characterizes the autobiographical novel of the Guinean writer. My purpose is to prove that its narrator-protagonist is a mental mulatto, a child that gradually moves from its African traditions to an increasing Westernized education. The result is an undecided subject who finds himself caught between two cultures, neither of which he can fully understand.In the early 30’s, a group of African and West Indian students in Paris established a newspaper called L’Etudiant Noir (The Black Student). Under the leadership of the Senegalese poet Léopold Sédar Senghor, the groups’ principal objective was to accomplish a reversal of African values. Traditionally stereotyped as irrational, primitive, uninventive and oversexed (in direct opposition to European values), African should be depicted in more positive ways. In these new terms, what could have been seen as oversexed was instead portrayed as ‘healthy sensuality’. Initially, poetry was the means of expression of Negritude, under a great influence of Marxism and surrealism. Further writers, like Camara Laye, would prefer narrative.The emergence of the movement among francophone writers responds to the French system of colonization. While British colonizers opted for an indirect rule in which some tribal order would be kept, French colonies should be an extension of France and Africans were encouraged to become black French citizens. In order to avoid complete assimilation, these writers undertook a defence of African values. However this optimistic purpose was not a guarantee to avoid contradictions: How representative and/or authentic could these writers be, bearing in mind the fact that they made part of an educated elite? This idea is key to analyze Laye’s aporia and will be developed in detail later in this paper.Lucien Lévy-Bruhl in his book Primitive Mentality presents his theories about natives from Australia and Africa. The central objective of the book published in 1923 is “to show what causation means to primitives, and the inferences derived from their idea of it” (Lévy-Bruhl 12). To achieve this goal, Lévy-Bruhl focuses on issues such as mystic and invisible forces, dreams, omens, ordeals and other practices traditionally related with irrationality. The whole study is permeated by an emphasis on the gap between the ‘civilized west’, of which Lévy-Bruhl makes part, and the ‘irrational primitives’: “An acquaintance with their mental habits, in so far as they differ from our own […]” (12) (The emphasis is mine). One of his conclusions is that “the primitive, whether he be an African or any other, never troubles to inquire into casual connections which are not self-evident, but straightway refers them to a mystic power”(Lévy-Bruhl 36). At a time when anthropological studies came to these conclusions, Negritude needed to be anchored in the reversal of such negative values.The relation between the rites mentioned above and the African’s primitiveness and irrationality is relevant in the case of Camara Laye’s The Dark Child. Laye’s attempt to turn this concept the other way round gives him an important place in the Negritude Movement. In the novel, the story is told by a grown-up narrator-protagonist who recalls his years as a young boy. The autobiographical characteristics of the novel leads the reader to assume that this boy is the young Camara Laye. The first sentence introduces this idea: “I was a little boy playing around my father’s hut” (Laye 17). The relationship with his parents is the link between the six year-old boy and his African roots. Its analysis is key to the purpose of this paper.Laye’s father is a well-recognized blacksmith in his community. The memory that marks the beginning of the narrative is determined by the knowledge of his father’s spiritual powers. Snakes play an important role in this respect. The second paragraph tells about the fascination of the young boy with a snake. As he dangerously plays with it, he is strongly reprimanded by his mother. This event is a symbolic antecedent of a more important knowledge: his father’s guiding spirit is actually a snake. When young Laye warns his mother about the presence of a black snake approaching the workshop, she replies: “My son, this one must not be killed, he is not like other snakes, […]” (Laye 22). Through the dialogue between the child and his father, the reader becomes well acquainted with the importance of the snake in their lives. The father fully explains this fact and concludes; “It is to this snake that I owe everything” (Laye 25). There is a strong sense of morality behind this belief. In the narrator’s own words: “there were good spirits, and there were evil ones” (Laye 23). What could be confined as ‘primitive thinking’ allows the community to live under certain order. In this respect, Christopher L. Miller states that “[…] in a few paragraphs, the non-Mande reader has already been thrust into a very specific world, and allowed a degree of understanding of a certain family structure, architecture, and spiritual belief system” (134). I would add that this world is portrayed in positive, and even idealistic, ways, showing Laye’s need to portray African values optimistically.As well as the father, the mother is an outstanding character. The narrator says, “I realize that my mother’s authoritarian attitudes may appear surprising; generally the role of the African woman is though to be a ridiculously humble one, […]; but Africa is vast, with a diversity equal to its vastness” (Laye 69). The highlighting of women’s strength was not common among African writers. However, there is a more relevant characteristic of this woman, at least for the purpose of this paper. Laye’s mother has supernatural powers as well: “[…] It was due also to the strange powers she possessed” (Laye 69). Among these powers were persuading animals and being able to approach crocodiles without getting harmed. These powers had been endowed to her for being the next child born after twins. The narrator makes great emphasis on the veracity of these powers. The narration of these events is accompanied by constant comments such as “they seem to be unbelievable; they are unbelievable. Nevertheless I can only tell you what I saw with my own eyes” (Laye 70). He extends this certainty to the whole community: “No one ever doubted it” (Laye 73). The reiteration of the testimony seems to be a response to the conclusions made by theorists like Lévy-Bruhl. Laye is inviting the reader to go deeper into Africans’ beliefs and to avoid the simplistic and comfortable option of the West to label them as ‘primitive’.However, the narration of these events is obscured by a certain degree of doubt. The narrator- protagonist of The Dark Child shows confusion towards the supernatural. When his father asks him if he can understand what the snake means to their race the answer is yes, but says to himself that he did not understand very well. He seems to be different. He seems to respond to a different understanding. His dilemma is precisely related to whether he should follow his father’s steps or continue to attend school. He asks his father the question: “What must I do if I am to do the right thing?” (Laye 28). But there is no answer. Young Laye seemed destined to be as great as his father in his African context. But western education takes away this possibility. His father says, “There is certain form of behaviour to observe, and certain ways of acting in order that the guiding spirit of our race may approach you also […] I fear, I very much fear, little one, that you are not often enough in my company. You are all day at school […]” (Laye 27).The strong current of doubt accompanying Laye’s childhood marks the understanding of his mother’s powers as well. He is well acquainted with the symbolic meaning of the crocodiles in her mother’s life: “The totem is identified with its possessor: this identification is absolute, and of such a nature that its possessor has the power to take the form of the totem itself” (Laye 75). However, he does not know his own: “yes, the world rolls on, the world changes, it rolls on and changes, and the proof of it is that my own totem --I too have my totem-- is still unknown to me” (Laye 75). From my point of view, the phrase included between hyphens is key to understand Laye’s dilemma. After carefully constructing his mother’s character, the narrator needs to recognize these values in himself. When he informs the reader that he too has a totem, he is reinforcing his difference from his parents. At the end of chapter five, where this sentence belongs, the narrator assumes that the reader might not expect him to have a totem. It also seems to me that he needs to remind himself of this.According to Miller the name of the Guinean writer also reflects certain degree of contradiction. He states that among the Mande (Laye’s ethnic group), the family name or jamu is very important and that “Camara is one of the Mande jamuw; Laye is an Islamic given name, a shortened name of Abdoulaye. But outside the Mande the distinction is lost and confusion reigns, a confusion that is symptomatic of the clash between the West and Africa” (116). What I find relevant in this argument is the fact that Laye, the name under he is cited, is not associated to his family. This fact becomes a metaphor of his detachment from Africa.
In my opinion, Miller has a stronger argument when he refers to the literature as individual production in contrast with the traditional collective authorship of African oral literature. He reduces the distinction to orality versus literacy. The relevant point concerning Camara Laye is the fact that literacy represents an unauthentic means of expressing the African realities. Miller states that “Africans who have written novels are people who have detached themselves from traditional society or who were detached from it, who went to French school and learned to write as individuals” (115). I Think that this idea is closely related with the dilemma of the narrator-protagonist analyzed above. The grown-up narrator is trying to highlight his African roots but from a Western point of view.In the novel, a gradual transition between Africa and Europe is taking place. The six year-old Laye is already strongly influenced and confused by French education as it was analyzed above. But this is just the beginning of a process in which he gets farther and farther from his African traditions. Education first takes him away from Kouroussa, his birth town, to Conakry, the capital of Guinea. When this happens, the now adolescent Laye had been already initiated in his community through circumcision. This means that he was now considered to be a man. However, he does not stay to fulfil his new condition, but rather leaves in search of a higher westernized education. His mother is still very understanding of this situation, although she thinks that her son’s venture is “rather like going to live among savages” (Laye 138). This seems to make part of the reversal of values, being that the city is usually viewed as “civilized”.His confusion increases with this new experience. In the narrator’s words: “I was ambivalent” (Laye 148). Ambivalence is precisely the condition pervading the mental mulatto: he is racially black but culturally undecided. In spite of his dilemma, there seems to be no ways to go back. The reason for this might be that Laye did not acknowledge the wisdom of his African culture. There are certain abilities he never developed in his own land: “But I was not old enough nor curious enough to inquire, nor did I become so until I was no longer in Africa” (Laye 56). Moreover, even when he already knows all his parents’ secrets and supernatural powers and has experienced some of the most important rites in his community (circumcision and Kondén Diara), the fifiteen year-old Laye thinks he knows little. When the praise-singers compliment him, he questions them speaking to himself: “After all, what did I know? I was still very far from «wise»” (Laye 142). Undoubtedly, the narrator-protagonist is thinking of wisdom in Western terms. From this perspective his final departure to Paris was inevitable.Métissage has been a term used to explain racial or cultural mixtures. In this respect, Yoder argues that while “assimilation presupposes the total destruction of African values, the Negritude writers were (at least in theory) stressing the contributions which the black writers could make to Western civilization (106). This assumption implies that Negritude writers saw métissage as a better option than assimilation. I agree with this position, but some questions come to my mind: To what extent is the exchange or mixture based on equality?, How can the colonized subject avoid the possible inequality when he/she is already established in the Western world? From my point of view, The Dark Child is an example of the tension that such situation produces. The theory of a harmonious métissage seems to be difficult to practice.This idea is especially true when the cultural métissage is not the product of a racial mixture. The Negritude movement found important echoes among many Caribbean writers. Following the same general objectives as their African partners, some of these writers started to acknowledge their African heritage as an important part of their identity. The Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén is one of them. Guillén is in fact a racial mulatto: born to direct black and white parents or grandparents. Métissage for this poet is rather a happy and celebratory fact. In his poem “Balada de los dos abuelos” (“Ballad of my Two Grandfathers”), Guillén describes his white and black grandfathers:I bring them together.-Federico!
Facundo! The two embrace.
They both sigh. They both
lift their strong heads;
both the same size,
beneath the lofty stars;
both the same size,
black longing, white longing,
both the same size,
they shout, they dream, they weep, they sing.
They dream, they weep, they sing.
They weep, they sing.
They sing.
Sardinha says about the two ancestors of the poet: “each in his way is shown to be equal of the other”(29). Black and white inhabit the poem harmoniously. This idea is expressed in the three final verses: “They dream, they weep, they sing./They weep, they sing./They sing”. Unfortunately, the black writers do not find a solution to their dilemma in the happy encounter of their ancestors.Frantz Fanon in his book Black skin, white masks deeply analyzes the condition of the black man as a colonized subject. He is very acute in his conclusions. For instance, he states that “the black man who has lived in France for a length of time returns radically changed. To express it in genetic terms, his phenotype undergoes a definite and absolute mutation”(19). As I see it, the word mutation has a negative connotation in this context. The black man has been transformed, he has abandoned his original characteristics. Fanon also introduces the idea of whitening: “The Negro of the Antilles will be proportionally whiter-- that is, he will come closer to being a real human being --in direct ratio of his mastery of the French language”(18). This implies the idea that the black man needs to master the white man’s culture in order to be acknowledged as a human being. Fanon adds, “He becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness, his jungle”(18).Fanon’s ideas are in direct relation with the case analyzed in this essay. In Camara Laye, there is not only cultural (confusing and undecided) métissage, but also a process of whitening to certain extent. Education is its main instrument as it was analyzed before. But, there is another evidence. It has to do with the girls in the life of the young Laye: Fanta and Marie. Their names already suggest the African/European dichotomy. Fanta is the girl that accompanied his childhood games in Kouroussa. She mostly represents his African world. Marie, instead, is described in more detail: “Her skin was very light, almost white. She was very beautiful,[…]She had exceptionally long hair which hung down to her waist” (Laye 158). Her beauty seems to be related to he white skin. As it could be predicted, this is the girl who young Laye keeps at the end of the novel, as a sign of his own whitening.Camera Laye’s novel The Dark Child has been most generally criticized as being too sweet for not portraying the social injustice of colonization. Among these critics is the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. Other critics argue that the idealization of reality does not imply the lack of a political commitment. My conclusion is that Camara Laye’s The Dark Child represents a good example of the colonized subject’s dilemma. It shows his/her struggle for keeping an identity that, in most of the cases, is discouraged by the colonizer. Westernized education becomes an inevitable path to be acknowledged in the new order. Negritude proved to have a well-intended purpose. However, the contradictions did not let the theory to be a feasible practice. As a result, the cultures that should be highlighted or recuperated are left behind. Camara Laye’s departure to Paris at the end of his novel is the metaphor of the social and cultural oblivion of his African roots.Bibliography:Fanon, Frantz. Black skin, white masks. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991.
Laye, Camara. The Dark Child.
Lévy Bruhl, Lucien. Primitive Mentality. London, George Allen & Unwin ltd.; New York: The Macmillan company,1923.
Miller, Christopher L. Theories of Africans: Francophone literature and anthropology in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Sardinha, Carl Dennis. The poetry of Nicolás Guillén: an introduction. London: New Beacon Books, 1976.
Yoder, Carroll. White shadows: a dialectical view of the French African novel. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1991.
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© Deicy Jiménez
LA CASA DE ASTERIÓN
ISSN: 0124 - 9282
Revista Trimestral de Estudios Literarios
Volumen V – Número 19
Octubre-Noviembre-Diciembre de 2004
DEPARTAMENTO DE IDIOMAS
FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS HUMANAS - FACULTAD DE EDUCACIÓN
UNIVERSIDAD DEL ATLÁNTICO
Barranquilla - Colombia
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