The exploitation and uprising of social class in both God’s Bits of Wood and The House of the Spirits
...o the Tres Marias. Throughout the construction of Tres Marias Estaban puts all his effort into building a name for himself but tries to fight the internal battle against his loneliness. His transformation from a proper man to a ‘barbarian’ is because he has no one to impress and this is when a lot of his anger is unleashed. He is craving a sexual partner but mostly desires to start a family. An example of his psychotic isolated state, “ Beaten, he would let himself float aimlessly, feeling the hug of the current, the kiss of the tadpoles, the lash of the rushes that grew along the banks.” (Allende, pg 72) Allende’s way of describing character is effective in both a contextual sense but also in the tone which her sentences form. When describing Pancha Garcia her sentences seem to be elongated giving the piece a very satisfying tone showing the innocence of the girl. Whereas the descriptions of Estaban are short sentenced fast provocative language giving it a sense of fear and unexpectancy. An example of this is when Esteban says, “Starting tomorrow, I want you to work in the house,” ( Allende, pg.75). The raping of Pancha Garcia showed the reader Esteban’s animal instinct and the exploitation which the workers have to ignore. His superiority is evident in the text when he approaches her, “he looked at her from high in the saddle.” (Allende, pg 74). This shows his arrogance and dominant physical power to forcefully control any situation. There are links between Esteban and the colonials in God’s Bits of Wood. An example being, “…..always bathing himself and changing his clothes for dinner, as he had heard the British colonizers did in the most distant hamlets of Africa and Asia…” (Allende, pg 72). This shows that he is extending his knowledge of his field and feels an extreme detachment from the works on the plantation. He believes that the way he treats his labourers is necessary to gain praise and respect from them and that if he did not they would rebel. Unfortunately for him the tight grasp he held was what caused a revolution on his farm, likewise this is also true relating to the colonials on the workers in God’s Bits of Wood. Similarly in Sembene Ousmane’s novel the reader is placed in Senegal 1947 where the powers of the French colonials overrule African culture and oppress the indigenous West African nation. The novel goes into a descriptive detail of the workers’ who are on strike on the Dakar-Niger railway. They are complaining over pay and labour conditions. The inequality of the locals put forth by the colonials carries the novel’s story into what seems a start to a revolution. This establishes the fate of a nation trying to break away from a racist ideology. An example of this inequality is the inhabitable living conditions in which the Africans are forced to stay while the colonials harvest in their white houses with beautiful garden beds and flowers. Sembene Ousmane tries to show that while the colonials have lush houses they are devoid of individualism because all the houses are identical in structure and colour whereas the houses of the natives, although are ill constructed depict different personalities and represents the natives culture. For example, “the houses themselves were all alike”, (Ousmane, pg 113.) The establishments were kept distant from the villagers showing the rejection of culture from the colonials to the locals, a sense of ethnocentrism. This can also be seen in Allende’s novel where Estaban tries to separate his family from his workers. He has isolated both cultures, there by showing a distinct demarcation between the groups. An example of how Ousmane expressed the way of living of the Africans, “she had played in these tortuous alleyways, these vermin-ridden courtyards and gloomy cabins.”(Ousmane, pg 110) The houses represented the import of European ideology on West Africa. Ousmane constant use and repetition and personification give a dull stale feeling to the colonial’s houses but mansions compared to the diminishing way of living of the Africans. Although throughout his writing he seems to have a sarcastic tone, trying to prove that a house without culture and tradition is not a real home. In Sembene Ousmane’s novel the social uprising is reference to the strikers but I would like to examine the uprising of women’s role in the household. From the beginning of the novel the representations of women were being challenged by the new generation especially Bakayoko’s daughter Ad’jibid’ji. She was taut French by Bakayoko and she was the only woman to go to the meeting of the men. Throughout the novel the struggle of survival makes these women realize that they can do more and they have power. Ousmane uses women as the voice of reason when facing hard situations. An example ...