After reading Ong's book about Orality, and discussing the difficulty associated with writing about oral cultures through literate means, Achebe has tackled that mission head on. He writes Things Fall Apart, a book about an Nigerian clan, Umofia and Okonkwo. The Umofia are an oral culture, and Achebe takes on the task of describing their culture and the infiltration of colonized literate people. Okonkwo is a respected warrior in his clan, though he lives the shame of his father's life choices. The values of the Umofia people are shown not by the books on a bookshelf, but by what the clanspeople find important such as Okonkwo's son being lazy, or his father being a coward and poor with money.
In the book, Okonkwo fears that if the social standards are changed, his status in the society will be changed. The incoming Christian society values those who convert to Christianity over the warriors of the Umofia clan. There are others in the village who do not have the same fears that Okonkwo does. Though he sees his status as uber masculine, he is punished by the community for breaking the week of peace for beating his wife.
The Nigerian clans are heavily reliant on agriculture, and when Okonkwo is exiled his uncle Uchendu lends Yam seeds to help start his new life in a new village during his time away from Umofia.
I have read this book once before, but that was from an anthropological and women's studies standpoint. Reading this book again after reading Ong's book on Orality, really gives this book a different feel. I know from previous study that Achebe wrote the book in English to better show the colonial peoples what life in Africa was really like. Achebe tried to include some of the Umofia words into his writing to better illustrate the complexity of the language, and its useage.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
#1 First 1/2 of Ong
There was a lot of information packed into the first half of Walter J. Ong's book Orality and Literacy. From my initial impressions I took note of the author's first intent, to be able to describe a completely illiterate frame of mind, to a completely literate society, or in this case, reader: me. I understood illiterate to mean that the person in question couldn't read. Ong, however, quickly pointed out that illiteracy was without text, not just a lack of understanding the text. In fact, Ong writes that "in antiquity it was not common practice for any but disgracefully incompetent orators to speak from a text prepared verbatim in advance."
I was in 6th grade when we read the Illiad and the Odyssey, by Homer. I don't remember much of the book (mostly because that was about sixteen years ago.) It was quite facinating when reading Orality and Literacy to see just how often Homer's work was brought up. Ong states, "for over two millennia literates have devoted themselves to the study of Homer." My question was, "why?"
With further reading question was answered. Ong claims that the origins of the Iliad and the Odyssey were unknown, or imprecise, unlike other Greek poetry. Ong also states that these works, "have been commonly regarded from antiquity to the present as the mot exemplary, the truest and the most inspired secular poems in the western heritage." Even while others like Francois Hedeline attacked Homer's works as badly plotted, with poor character development, even going so far as to say "Homer" had never existed. "The Battle of the Books thought that there was indeed a man named Homer but that the various songs that he 'wrote' were not put together into the epic poems until about 500 years later," Ong cites.
Despite the debateability about Homer's existence, Ong states that these works, "were so well structured, so consistent in characterization, and in general such high art that they could not be the work of an unorganized succession of redactors but must be the creation of one man."
One of the fascinating things that I learned about these poems was the variety of language used. For instance, Ong states that there were a multitude of words used just to describe wines. He references that this was probably to meet the specific metric of the phrase. Ong talks about illiteracy not in reference to text as illiteracy suggests (illiterate, meaning not-literate), but in terms of the strengths, the orality or oral culture of the peoples. One of the key points that I learned was that oral cultures used cliches, phrasing, and formulas to help tell stories in place of word for word memorization.
Ong suggests that perhaps Homer stitched together the poems based on the formulas and themes of his oral culture. "In an oral culture, knowledge, once acquired, had to be constantly repeated or it would be lost: fixed, formulaic thought patterns were essential for wisdom and effective administration."
Formulas provide a mnemonic aid for oral cultures, some of which still exist today including, "Red in the morning, sailor's warning; red in the night, the sailor's delight." As well as others such as, "the sturdy oak." These formulas are also the reason that stories include a beautiful princess, instead of just a princess, a brave warrior, weary traveler, or a noble steed, etc. These epithets are all part of the oral cultures.
Ong suggests that oral cultures strewn together stories based on these formulas, but that there were never the same verbatim story every time though each contained the same themes. I wonder how different the poems Iliad and the Odyssey would have been if they had never been inked to paper to lock in the wording of the phrasing.
I was in 6th grade when we read the Illiad and the Odyssey, by Homer. I don't remember much of the book (mostly because that was about sixteen years ago.) It was quite facinating when reading Orality and Literacy to see just how often Homer's work was brought up. Ong states, "for over two millennia literates have devoted themselves to the study of Homer." My question was, "why?"
With further reading question was answered. Ong claims that the origins of the Iliad and the Odyssey were unknown, or imprecise, unlike other Greek poetry. Ong also states that these works, "have been commonly regarded from antiquity to the present as the mot exemplary, the truest and the most inspired secular poems in the western heritage." Even while others like Francois Hedeline attacked Homer's works as badly plotted, with poor character development, even going so far as to say "Homer" had never existed. "The Battle of the Books thought that there was indeed a man named Homer but that the various songs that he 'wrote' were not put together into the epic poems until about 500 years later," Ong cites.
Despite the debateability about Homer's existence, Ong states that these works, "were so well structured, so consistent in characterization, and in general such high art that they could not be the work of an unorganized succession of redactors but must be the creation of one man."
One of the fascinating things that I learned about these poems was the variety of language used. For instance, Ong states that there were a multitude of words used just to describe wines. He references that this was probably to meet the specific metric of the phrase. Ong talks about illiteracy not in reference to text as illiteracy suggests (illiterate, meaning not-literate), but in terms of the strengths, the orality or oral culture of the peoples. One of the key points that I learned was that oral cultures used cliches, phrasing, and formulas to help tell stories in place of word for word memorization.
Ong suggests that perhaps Homer stitched together the poems based on the formulas and themes of his oral culture. "In an oral culture, knowledge, once acquired, had to be constantly repeated or it would be lost: fixed, formulaic thought patterns were essential for wisdom and effective administration."
Formulas provide a mnemonic aid for oral cultures, some of which still exist today including, "Red in the morning, sailor's warning; red in the night, the sailor's delight." As well as others such as, "the sturdy oak." These formulas are also the reason that stories include a beautiful princess, instead of just a princess, a brave warrior, weary traveler, or a noble steed, etc. These epithets are all part of the oral cultures.
Ong suggests that oral cultures strewn together stories based on these formulas, but that there were never the same verbatim story every time though each contained the same themes. I wonder how different the poems Iliad and the Odyssey would have been if they had never been inked to paper to lock in the wording of the phrasing.
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