COMPARATIVE

RESEARCH PAPER
Terneika Henry - 20120536

EDUC 2015
MR. AVALON ALI
Children’s Literature
Background

Derek Walcott was born in the Caribbean Island of St. Lucia in 1930, the son of a civil
servant and a teacher, and the grandson of two white grandfathers and two black
grandmothers. His mother was an arts-loving teacher who would frequently read poetry to her
children. Walcott witnessed and experienced the difficult events that his family members
encountered because of colonialism in his early years. Some of these trials provided him with
inspiration and material for his poetry. Walcott's grandmothers had lived during the
abolitionist era, and the subject of slavery would appear in several of his writings.

Post-Colonial Writing

In Derek Walcott’s Ti-Jean and His Brothers he looked at post- colonialism in his writing.
Postcolonialism is a historical moment or situation that follows Western colonialism; it can
also refer to a parallel movement to recover and reimagine the history and agency of people
who have been subjected to colonialism in various forms. Although postcolonialism suggests
a future free of colonialism, this is not always the reality as new kinds of control or
submission, particularly new aspects of international imperialism, may develop as a result of
such changes.

Ti-Jean and His Brothers by Derek Walcott is a Caribbean play with a plot based on St.
Lucian legend. Ti-Jean and His Brothers is a pluralistic allegory that appears to focus solely
on a poverty-stricken mother and her three sons, who live on the outskirts of a mystical
forest, and their battle with the devil. The play's underlying relevance, however, is that it is a
retelling of the anti-colonial battle, the struggle between society, as represented by Ti-Jean
and his brother, and the colonial system, as represented by the Devil/Planter, as we witnessed
with the plantation.

The three brothers represent colonialism's opponents: Gros-Jean is a slave who believes that
physical strength is the solution to all issues. The roots of a civilisation and culture were
slavery and colonialism. It's worth mentioning that, as Gros Jean, the family's first
competitor, demonstrated, most cultures that went through this process, such as Africa's,
either lost their culture totally or became culturally empty. Gros Jean is a first-generation
West Indian who has all the physical strength of a slave but is culturally inept due to his
belief that strength and power are all that is required rather than combining all the helpful
information he was receiving from many sources.
Mi-Jean, with his snobby attitude, represents the middle class. His actions scream of someone
misled by his partial comprehension of his oppressor's ways, based primarily on what he
reads in books. He is so convinced that he has learned all about the planter's culture from
books that he struggles to understand and ignores sound advice from his mother and the
animals, who are well-versed in the devil's methods. Despite the Bird, Cricket, Frog, and
Firefly's best efforts to save him, his arrogance would not allow him to listen to anybody but
his books.

Today's generation is Ti-Jean, who on the other hand represents the cultural reawakening in
the West Indies that Walcott talks about in his novel, triumphs over the Devil or the
colonizers. He succeeds because he employs the same deceptive tactics that the devil used
against him and his followers. He identifies foreign culture's dishonest, corrupt, and
destructive character and realizes that he will need more than physical strength to defeat his
enemy. As a result, he seeks guidance from his mother, Frog, Cricket, Bird, and the workers
in the cane fields. Unlike his brothers, he places a premium on unity, insight, and
understanding from elders.

As a result, the brothers reflect the progression of generations in western Indian history. In
this novel Derek Walcott also looks back on times of pre-colonialism where workers had no
choice but to deal with injustices in society to feed themselves. As shown, the Devil dresses
up as a plantation owner and makes Gros Jean work for him to labour unimaginably long
hours. During that time the planter uses coded racial language to address Gros Jean, such as
when he says "sometimes we people in control of industry forget that you people aren't
robots" or "can't recognize one face from the next out here" to explain why he can't remember
Gros Jean's name. However, when Ti-Jean burns down the Devil's field, it symbolizes victory
over colonialism, and within his victory, Ti-Jean gives life to the Bolom, who was the devil's
advocate and represented the West Indian people who were oppressed by colonialism's
dictatorship; thus, giving life to the Bolom symbolizes a cultural recreation. It was a
reawakening that would not stop with him but would continue to extend over generations of
Caribbeans.

V.S. Naipaul, on the other hand, was born in Trinidad of Indian descent, received a
scholarship to Oxford University, and spent the remainder of his life in England, where he
built one of the most distinguished literary careers of the last half-century. He experienced a
lot of criticism because some readers interpreted his novels as excuses for colonialism.
Nonetheless, neither the colonizer nor the colonized were spared from Mr. Naipaul's scrutiny.

Many of Naipaul's novels are said to be post-colonial writing, as we are going to see in A
House of Mr. Biswas. People living in a post-colonial society confront identity issues because
of colonialism's effects. In A House for Mr. Biswas characters are separated from their
families and must accept the traditions and laws of the ruling culture in which they find
themselves. They become mental refugees because they are unsure if they are part of Indian
or British culture. They are unsure which culture to embrace, and as a result, their
personalities become ambiguous. Their identities shift based on where they are or who they
are associating with, and they bounce back and forth between the dominant culture and their
own. Even though Trinidad was already poor before colonisation, slavery and indentured
servitude additionally impoverished the country and worsened socioeconomic disparities. The
island was occupied by a smally number of white colonists, and families of black slaves and
Indian indentured servants. Mr Biswas views colonial law as a privileged sphere through
which privileged Trinidadians keep their power. When he eventually gets the chance to work
for the Community Welfare Department, it swiftly disbands due to its ineffectiveness. Even
after the end of slavery and involuntary servitude most Trinidadians are still labouring in cane
fields and trying to survive.

Themes/Concerns

Pride vs. Humility, Colonialism and Racism, Capitalism and Dehumanization, and The
Power of Faith are some of the issues explored in Ti-jean and His Brothers. We saw pride vs.
humility: Gros-Jean believed that strength could defeat the devil and refused to listen to
advice from people in his community, whereas Mi-jean believed that he knew everything
there was to know about the devil from the books he read and did not require any advice. Ti-
jean, on the other hand, was the humblest of the three, taking advice from everyone,
including the animals, and ultimately defeating the devil because of this advice.

Colonialism and Racism was shown with the planter, the proprietor of a vast plantation in the
Caribbean, where slave owners in colonial times were infamous for their ferocity and
harshness, is one of the Devil's disguises. When Gros- Jean starts working for the
Planter/Devil, he is mistreated racially and colonially. The description Gros-jean gives of the
plantation was of that of a sugar cane or tobacco plantation where the colonizers would also
have their big white houses on. During the novel, the planter made racial slurs, such as “can’t
tell one face from the next out here” he says, explaining why he can't remember Gros Jean's
name. The planter never openly mentions Black people in either of these scenes, but he does
build a "we vs. them" divide between planters and workers.

Walcott also touched on Capitalism and Dehumanization with the Planter, a rich Caribbean
plantation owner who exploited his workers, is one of the Devil's masks in the novel. The
Planter exemplifies a capitalist value system by prioritizing profit over the well-being of his
employees. This was noted when he said, “sometimes we people in charge of industry forget
that you people aren’t machines”. Walcott emphasizes how capitalism demeans the working
poor, and how, as a result, the working class can only be liberated by abandoning capitalist
principles through his descriptions of Gros Jean and Ti- Jean's interactions with the Planter.
Walcott suggests that by equating capitalism with the Devil, capitalism is inherently bad.

Finally, another key element in Ti-jean and his brothers was the power of faith; it illustrated
how the mother was a woman of faith, but her faith required evidence to be powerful. When
they realized things were tough and they couldn't see a way out, the brothers, on the other
hand, had little to no faith. Despite everything, Ti-jean was the only one who thought that
God would always find a way; he states in the novel, "Whatever God made, we must consider
blessed." Even though it was not on their timeline or what they desired, he knew that God
would always provide and that better will come, and it was this faith that enabled him to face
and defeat the Devil.

However, colonialism was the only topic tackled by both Naipaul and Walcott. The
population was split in both books due to socioeconomic status, and the people's main
purpose was to break free and enjoy freedom and independence. Other topics explored in A
House for Mr. Biswas include independence vs. belongingness, social rank and hierarchy,
education, labour, and language.

Mr. Biswas' journey through subpar jobs, relationships, and family, as well as his desire to
find a place of his own and gain some sense of independence, is at the centre of the story, and
it is here that we see the conflict between independence and belongingness emerge. He
desired a sense of belonging in his own home because he had always lived with employers
and relatives, despising where he resided and never feeling a sense of belonging to the
families. His ambition was to get his own place where he could be himself and have some
sense of independence.
Mr. Biswas’s constant need to be seen to be seen and to win at life is demonstrated since he
was a child. His family has been told that he would bring them down because of the way he
was born, and as a result, he has always allowed others to influence his view of himself. He
was fascinated with social hierarchy and was always worried about how he would fit in, so he
worked hard to gain a position as a reporter. He was so preoccupied with earning respect and
a sense of social entitlement that his true status was eclipsed. With his family and the Tulsis,
he desperately attempted to establish credibility in society, but they refused to recognize his
worth.

Mr. Biswas's triumphs are clearly built around labour and language, since he became a sign
painter because of his love for letter forms and a reporter because he thoroughly enjoyed
perusing the papers that line Green Vale's wall. He was also able to provide his children with
a fantastic opportunity to achieve financial freedom, which he never had because his parents
were illiterate. Education is an important step in moving up the social ladder, thus he made
sure that his children had a legitimate chance in life.

Finally, colonialism, oppression, and escape were discovered in Trinidad as a post-slavery

colonial country during the time of financial and social change to the postcolonial state, as
demonstrated by Naipaul. The country is deeply divided, with animosity based on race,
religion, wealth, education, and the urban/rural gap indicating how colonized people in
Trinidad accepted colonial rules. Even though Trinidad was already poor prior to
colonization, colonial actions worsened social inequities by further impoverishing the country
with enslavement. On the island, there are a few European colonists, relatives of black slaves,
and families of Indian indentured laborers.

Use of Dialect

The authors of Ti-Jean and His Brothers and A House for Mr Biswas both employed dialect
and patois, which is the native language of these countries. The colonized frequently spoke
patois, while the colonizer spoke standard English; this distinguished both parties, and the
colonized may conduct discussions that their colonizer did not comprehend. Walcott
introduced patois through the animals in Ti-jean and his siblings to fool the readers into
thinking it was a quality of the talking animals, but he then exposes that it is the novel's
default language. He uses it to demonstrate that one's intelligence cannot be determined only
by their application of common knowledge. The use of dialect was discovered in a house for
Mr. Biswas, where the pupils, Mr. Biswas, and the Tulsis family were unsure which language
to adopt as their own, therefore they were caught lying or switching it up depending on who
they were speaking to. It made people feel like outcasts if they didn't learn the island's
language.
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