I.

Othering:

1) Sally Morgan’s My Place 1987

 “You see, if there was an argument or if something had been damaged, and
it was your word against a white kid, you were never believed. They
expected us black kids to be in the wrong. We learnt it was better not to tell
the truth, it only led to more trouble … [The new headmaster] was always
squeezing [the older girls’] legs and wanting to sit at their desks and help
them with their work. Everyone just ignored it. There was no use
complaining because no one would believe you” (64-65).
 
That’s me, I thought, I wanted to be a princess, not a servant … I couldn’t
help flinging it onto the floor and screaming, “I don’t want a black doll, I
don’t want a black doll”. Alice just laughed and said to my mother, “Fancy,
her not wanting a black doll (262).

2) David Malouf, Remembering Babylon, 1993

[A] fragment of ti-tree swamp, some bit of the land that was forbidden to
them, had detached itself from the band of grey that made up the far side of
the swamp, in a shape more like a watery, heat-struck mirage than thing of
substance, elongated and airily indistinct was bowling, leaping, flying
towards them … A black! … We’re being raided by blacks … The boy was
too struck but had begun to recover. Though he was very pale about the
mouth, he did what his manhood required him to do. Holding fast to the
stick, he stepped resolutely in front … the thing, as far as he could make it
out through the sweat in his eyes and its flame-like flickering, was not
even, maybe, human. The stick-like legs, all knobbed at the joints,
suggested a wounded waterbird, a brolga, or a human that in the manner of
the tales they told one another, all spells and curses, had been changed into
a bird, but only halfway, and now, neither one thing or the other, was
hopping and flapping towards them out of a world over there, beyond the
no-man’s-land of the swamp, that was the abode of everything savage and
fearsome, and since it lay so far beyond experience, not just their own but
their parents’ too, of nightmare rumours, superstitions and all that belonged
to Absolute Dark … It was a scarecrow that had somehow caught the spark
of life … its leathery face scorched black, but with hair … as their own.
Whatever it was, it was the boy’s intention to confront it (2-3).

1. What does the swamp represent in the settler imagination?

2. Gemmy’s perceived intrusion rests on ‘othering’. What binaries are
used? animated/inanimated (scarecrow catching the spark of life).
3. What does the last line suggest?
II. Mimicry

1) V.S.Naipaul, The Mimic Men, 1967

“I paid Mr Shylock [his Jewish landlord] three guineas a week for a tall,
multi-mirrored, book-shaped room with a coffin-like wardrobe. And for Mr
Shylock, the recipient each week of fifteen times three guineas, the
possessor of a mistress and of suits made of cloth so fine I felt I could eat
it, I had nothing but admiration…. I thought Mr Shylock looked
distinguished, like a lawyer or businessman or politician. He had the habit
of stroking the fore of his ear inclining his head to listen. I thought the
gesture was attractive; I copied it. I knew of recent events in Europe; they
tormented me; and although I was trying to live on seven pounds a week I
offered Mr Shylock my fullest, silent compassion” (p.7; quoted in Ashcroft
e.a. 2007, p.126).

1. What is your impression of the room?

2. What is your impression of Mr Shylock?
3. What “recent events” are referred too?
4. What’s the effect of the semi-colons?
5. Do you believe the last line?

2) E.M. Forster, A Passage to India, 1989 (1924)

“…. the only link [Ronny] could be conscious of with an Indian was the
official … As private individuals he forgot them. Unfortunately Aziz was
in no mood to be forgotten. He would not give up the secure and intimate
note of the last hour. He had not risen … and now, offensively friendly,
called from his seat, ‘Come along up and join us, Mr Heaslop; sit down till
your mother turns up.’ Ronny replied by ordering one of Fielding’s
servants to fetch his master at once. ‘He may not understand that. Allow me
–’ Aziz repeated the order idiomatically. Ronny was tempted to retort; he
knew the type; he knew all the types, and this was the spoilt westernised.
But he was a servant of the Government, it was his job to avoid ‘incidents,
so he said nothing and ignored the provocation. Aziz was provocative.
Everything he said had an impertinent flavour or jarred. He did not mean to
be impertinent … but here was an Anglo-Indian who must become a man
before comfort could be regained” (p.93).

1. What does the colonial officer Ronny Heaslop and Dr Aziz’s interaction
epitomize? 2. What is the role of gender in this scene?
3. Who is the centre of narrative focalisation? Why?