HORIZON A JOURNAL OF LETTERS, Number 4, March 2011

ISSN 2223-0556

Number 4, 2011

HORIZON A J OURNAL OF L ETTERS

Department of English

University of Chittagong

Number – 4, March 2011 (Published in June 2012)

HORIZON A JOURNAL OF LETTERS

www.cu.ac.bd

HORIZON A JOURNAL OF LETTERS

Department of English University of Chittagong

Number 4, March 2011 (Published in June 2012)

Editor Tapan Jyoti Barua

Members of the Editorial Board Chowdhury Mohammad Ali Jahangir Bin Sarwar Kamaluddin Ahmed Sarwar Morshed

Published by Department of English University of English 154/A College Road, Chittagong, Bangladesh Tel: 88‐031‐2606001‐10 Ext. 4261 Fax: 88‐031‐726310 E‐mail: horizon.eng.cu@gmail.com Website: www.cu.ac.bd

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ISSN: 2223-0556

Editorial The recognition that research and publication comprise an important facet of manifold functional areas of a learning institution such as ours triggers every time the initiative to bring out a journal of letters. Closely tied to it is the underlying assumption that a publication of this type enables a department to break, at least intermittently, the mould of day‐ to‐day study programmes, routinized work of classes and examinations and other pedagogical and official engagements, thereby lending vibrancy and energy to its research‐oriented activity level. At the same time, it facilitates the process of relating to writers and researchers of English faculties of academia. Another objective it serves is to provide a forum for young academics and emergent scholars to express themselves as practitioners of critical writing and promote their professional growth.

A cherished part of the editorial experience has been to find a gathering of senior and young contributors, whose exploratory discussions have made this journal a symposium of critical evaluations on a panoply of topics and issues prominent in our literary and linguistic studies.

The editorial board would be much happier if this journal were less time‐ absorbing in the making and the spell between contemplation and preparation of it could have been appreciably shortened. We hope, our readership will concede to this dissonant fact.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to all the esteemed members of editorial board and the expert panel of reviewers for their invaluable opinion, cooperation and encouragement that proved so essential for the preparation of this journal.

I remain convinced that the next issue of the journal will be taken care of by very capable editorial members, who will fare much better and try new things with a new aura.

Professor Tapan Jyoti Barua Department of English University of Chittagong

Note for contributors

We seek contributions, not to exceed 3000‐3500 words, in the form of research articles and book reviews for the next issue of Horizon. Citations should follow the MLA style sheet. All correspondence and submissions should be addressed to the Editor, Horizon, Department of English, University of Chittagong.

Disclaimer

Horizon is a peer‐reviewed journal. The editorial board is not responsible for views expressed by the writers.

CONTENTS Thoreau: The Political Mind with a Difference

Dr. Kamaluddin Ahmed 7‐14

The Use of Bengali in English Classrooms in Bangladesh

Sukanta Bhattacharjee 15‐32

Opposites Unreconciled: An Existentialist Reading of Macbeth

Mah­E­Nur Qudsi Islam 33‐48

Moving between Academic Cultures: Looking through an Anthropological Lens

Sarwar Morshed 49‐68

Test Usefulness: Diagnosis of a University Admission Test

Ibrahim Hossain 69‐78

Class Conflicts in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

Muhammed Rukan Uddin & Md. Mohib Ullah 79‐94

Passage of Power: A Comparative Study of A Doll’s House and The Doctor’s Wife

Rownak Jahan 95‐104 Journal Writing: A Silent Kit for Improving Writing Skills Samina Nasrin Chowdhury & Mohammad Aminul Islam

Backwash Effects of Examinations upon Teaching and Learning of English: A Case Study Mohammed Humayun Kabir Paradox of Identity in J. M. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country Mohammad Shahidul Islam Chowdhury

Demystification of Children in Golding’s Lord of the Flies Mohammed Solaiman Chowdhury

Analysis of the Students’ Errors in Punctuation: An Empirical Study Kohinoor Akther

Prospero’s Play, or The Manifesto of a “Deformed Slave”?: Shakespeare’s The Tempest from a Post‐Colonised Perspective Sumit Chowdhury

105‐120

121‐142 143‐150 151‐164 165‐184

185‐192

HORIZON ISSN 2223-0556 Number- 4, March 2011. Published in June 2012 (p 7-14)

Thoreau: The Political Mind with a Difference Dr. Kamaluddin Ahmed* Abstract: The reputation of the great American transcendentalist Thoreau in 50s and 60s consists mainly of a dialogue among some commentators. Some choose him to be a nature writer and some choose him to be a social and political thinker. After the conservative politics of the 1950s, the United States was again at war with itself. For a number of Americans in the 1960s, especially the young, poverty, racism and Vietnam War created a volatile intellectual and social environment. That environment necessitated the rereading of Thoreau who was often quoted in intellectual discussions. Never before had Thoreau enjoyed such popularity. He became very important in reading the pulse of the 1960s. His political reputation rose so high that the students were unwilling to see the society disintegrated. There were arguments and counter-arguments about Thoreau’s relevance during that time. This paper examines those arguments given by different commentators showing how much the Americans were interested in Thoreau’s participation in history despite his hatred for politics.

Unlike World War II, the war in Vietnam did not generate any strong consensus among the people in the United States. Many refused to believe that the North Vietnamese represented a threat to national security. The White House’s attempt to justify the escalation of the war was perceived by many Americans only as a game. In the context of a decade of protests against war, racism, poverty, materialism, and environmental pollution, Thoreau’s social and political thought created many dissenters. He had at one time or another said no to all of the right things; this ‘no’ had a significant relevance for many Americans in the 1960s. The reform impulse was too high then. Walden (1854) addressed, in part, specifically to students, had finally found its readership. Moreover, Thoreau’s attack on materialism in Walden was made doubly relevant by the refusal of unjust government in “Civil Disobedience” (1849), perhaps the most

*

Professor, Department of English, University of Chittagong.

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widely known American essay of the decade. These works may have been a matter of displeasure in his own time but they would have projected him onto a television screen in the sixties. This paper focuses on how he arrived there and how the social engagements of that time made him politically different.

At the 1956 annual meeting the founder of The Thoreau Society, Herbert F. West delivered an address on what he called "The Younger Generation’s Response to Thoreau". West polled his students at Dartmouth College on some of Thoreau’s social and political ideas and found that most of them agreed that individualism was on the wane and conformity was not only fashionable but almost a necessity if one was to get on. In addition to being concerned about themselves and their ability “to get on” the students also expressed an unwillingness to see the corporate, social fabric disintegrated. Eighty percent of West’s students felt that the “anarchist attitude” expressed in “Civil Disobedience” was harmful. It is found that “one must not, cannot, obey the ‘moral law within’, but must show respect to the laws of the land, whether it concerns conscientious objection or any other moral decision” (TSB, Summer 1956 p.1).

Although West’s sampling was extremely small, his findings were typical.

Most students of the 50’s found Thoreau to be more of a threat to their values than an eloquent expression of them. Dissension was not fashionable then. That fashion began to change in 1956, however, the moment when Rosa Parks boarded a Cleveland Avenue bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Obeying the moral law within, she took a vacant seat in front of the bus. She refused to give up her seat to a white man and was arrested. She said no, and her refusal generated the career of Martin Luther King Jr., a movement. This was the first phase of the social history of the 1960s taking a new shape.

The Montgomery bus boycott of 1956 was the first nationally significant direct action taken by American blacks. Recounting the episode in detail two years later King wrote in Stride Toward Freedom (1958) that initially he had doubts concerning the morality of the boycott, but after thinking about Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” he remembered: “how as a college student I had been moved when I first read this work. I became convinced that what we were preparing to 8

Thoreau: The Political Mind with a Difference

do in Montgomery was related to what Thoreau had expressed.

We were simply saying to the white community we can no longer lend our cooperation to an evil system” (51).

Mentioning that he had reread “Civil Disobedience” several times, King described the essay as his “first intellectual contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance” (91). King was one of the first members of the civil rights movement to cite Thoreau as an inspiration and an ally, and as King gradually gained prominence in the movement so did Thoreau. The man who spent a night in the Concord jail had earlier been linked to nonviolent resistance and the black person’s struggle for freedom in the United States.

Before King there had never been a highly visible popular movement to sustain the connection so that “Civil Disobedience” would be perceived as relevant to a large number of contemporary Americans.

Even Robert B. Downs praising “Civil Disobedience” in his Books That Changed the World (1956) in the year of Montgomery boycott did not perceive the relevance of nonviolent resistance in the United States, because the civil rights movement was barely underway. He says: “Undoubtedly, the future will witness further use of the principle of civil disobedience, as conceived by Thoreau and perfected by Gandhi. The power of oppressed peoples everywhere even in the ruthless dictatorships of modern times can make itself felt through these means. A current example is the fight of the coloured races of South Africa against the Strijdorn government – a renewal of Gandhi’s crusade” (75).

Here there is no mention of the United States. So Thoreau was popular in the United States during the 1950s largely because he was recognized as an apolitical rather than a political voice.

By the end of the 1950s Thoreau was a popular name when his “Civil Disobedience” was more widely known and associated with the civil rights movement. The debate concerning the effectiveness of civil disobedience as a strategy for blacks naturally included discussions of the essay as well.

Homage was not always paid to Thoreau; occasionally he was attacked.

One such negative treatment by Ernest Earnest challenged the principle of an individual’s moral conscience superseding the laws of the state because the same argument could be used, according to Earnest, to support segregation. He particularly takes college professors to task for claiming Thoreau as a civil rights advocate, because “the intellectual who praises 9

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Thoreau as a political thinker is one who is a victim of neurotic compulsions and of Thoreau’s charming literary style” (42-43). Earnest’s criticism of Thoreau is important because it came just before a moment when Thoreau would be widely celebrated and glorified precisely because he would not compromise, a word that would become an epithet in the 60s.

For Americans who had grown tired of the conventions and conformity of the 50s, Thoreau was a welcome relief.

As the 50s ended, Thoreau’s name was more frequently linked to an American tradition of dissension and rebellion which placed him beside writers such as Dreiser, Steinbeck, Ginsberg, Mailer. John P. Sisk described Thoreau as an “ideal subversive” (75). He praised the Beats, Thoreau and other writers in the subversive tradition, because they refused to compromise their principles. While the country moved towards confrontations that would erupt at lunch counters, universities, and street demonstrations in the 60s, Thoreau’s criticism was also noticed in King’s comments on “Civil Disobedience”. In 1960 the Emerson Quarterly invited a number of college professors to share briefly with their readers' effective methods of teaching Thoreau to undergraduates. About offering approaches to Thoreau, there was nearly a division in emphasizing either a formalistic approach or a content-oriented approach to his work. For example, John C. Broderick said in his “Teaching Thoreau” published in the Emerson Society Quarterly: “Certainly the ideas of Thoreau must be understood and confronted, but only (or primarily) as they exist in a literary medium. My own conviction is that separate consideration of Thoreau’s ideas should emerge at a late stage in undergraduate study and that even graduate students should be taught to consider Thoreau primarily as a literary man, a craftsman working in a specific medium”(3).

Walter Harding also added: “... While Thoreau is unquestionably eminently important as a stylist, he is far more important as a thinker. His primary appeal to the student should be (and usually is) as a philosopher rather than as an artist” (11-12).

He tends to use Thoreau in order to understand the present, whereas those primarily interested in Thoreau’s art have a tendency to use the past in order to understand Thoreau’s style by placing his style in a historical 10

Thoreau: The Political Mind with a Difference

literary context. The attitude of Harding is, in a broad sense, indicative of two of the major approaches to Thoreau in the 60s. The formalistic approach was limited to academic treatments of Thoreau, but the concern with Thoreau’s ideas went beyond the walls of university class rooms and libraries. In a decade characterized by controversy, it is not surprising that Thoreau’s social and political ideas fascinated the popular imagination.

It would be difficult to over-emphasise how much Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” was in the air in the early 60s for those involved in protest groups or interested in them. In 1960 Thoreau’s name was not only in the air but also on the sea - a rowboat used to picket submarines in Groton Connecticut, was named Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” would have met with cold reception during the 1920s, World War II and the 1950s when challenging the government was frequently equated with disloyalty; but by 1962 there was so much interest in Thoreau’s social and political thought that the Massachusetts Review (1962) devoted almost an entire issue to Thoreau.

The interest in Thoreau’s social and political thought can be explained in broad terms. Americans were generally becoming more sensitive to social and political problems. the Kennedy administration helped to quicken in many Americans the reformist impulse that was mostly prominent in the 50s. As Americans looked to the future for new frontiers it was not surprising that some were borne back into the past in search of a voice commensurate to the vision. Several of the pieces in the Massachusetts Review attempt to measure how accurately Thoreau’s voice matched the reformist vision of the 60s. The collection is, according to its editor, John H. Hicks, “the first to have documented the immediacy of Thoreau’s relevance of intellectuals and strategies of the Negro revolution in America; and for those– in South Africa, Denmark, America and elsewhere– committed to the cause of civil liberties in the twentieth century turmoil of war, of the super state and police state, of vast changes social and political” (1).

Hick’s attempt to uphold Thoreau was particularly appealing and relevant.

He refused to declare outright that Thoreau ultimately did support violence. At one point Thoreau’s attitude towards violence was described as “ambiguous” (11) and yet he used it to reinforce Thoreau’s relevance for those who would use violence in the 1960s. Hicks seems to wish everyone would find Thoreau relevant.

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Had Hicks dealt more openly with the issue of violence, he might have found himself questioning Thoreau’s relevance for some of the writers in the collection. He might have felt it necessary to point out that the first piece in the collection by Martin Luther King Jr. refers to only one aspect of Thoreau’s approach to reform. He uses “Civil Disobedience” to characterise Thoreau and freedom rides and peaceful protests and bus boycotts, but he never mentions Thoreau’s interest in John Brown (John Brown, the first white American to attack slavery with force and violence on the soil where it existed and with a combined armed group of black men and whites). His Thoreau is a major embodiment of his own values.

Thoreau was constant in his inability to endure injustices patiently, but he was not constant in his assessment of the way in which evil must be resisted. King was not alone in this assumption; it has always been assumed that Thoreau meant “Civil Disobedience” more than he did “A Plea for Captain Brown” (1859) or “Slavery in Massachusetts” (1854).

One reason for this is that nonviolent resistance is generally a more socially acceptable and assimilated reform than violence.

The politics of 60s focused upon the Thoreau of “Civil Disobedience” and despite Thoreau’s own warning in the essay that “peaceful revolution” may not be possible, he was perceived by the majority of commentators as essentially nonviolent in his approach towards reform. William Stuart Nelson also discusses how the civil rights movement owes to Thoreau.

Nelson, then vice-president of Howard University, explains among other things what nonviolent resistance involves. He stresses nonviolence as a strategy and in this discussion there is a curious defense of Thoreau’s support for Brown.

Throughout the discussions Nelson points out that blacks have already waited too long for full citizenship and equal human rights in the United States. Although he expresses hope and faith that the country will right these injustices , he ends with a warning when he says that America must soon meet its responsibilities to all people because the “gods of destruction... must not be tempted too often. It may be the fire next time” (TSB, 1964:3). Two years earlier, Nelson had strongly emphasised Brown’s readiness to kill for it. In 1964, after two more years of the civil rights movement, a euphoric March on Washington that produced more good feeling than genuine reform, and the assassination of President Kennedy, Nelson suggests that it is America that must resolve the paradox of Thoreau’s support of violence. While Nelson presents Thoreau as a voice that civil rights workers would do well to heed in their efforts to 12

Thoreau: The Political Mind with a Difference

generate reform nonviolently, he also seems to offer Thoreau as an archetype of what they might ultimately have to resort to if the country is deaf to that voice. For Thoreau “passive resistance was not enough where wrong was rampant” (TSB, 1964:3).

Staughton Lynd, a well known activist and historian who was deeply committed to the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 60s, furthered Thoreau’s political reputation by stamping the New Left seal of approval.

In an article published in Liberation (1963) entitled “Henry Thoreau: The Admirable Radical” Lynd described him as primarily “pacifist, radical and libertarian in tone”. He introduces Thoreau as one who has become the patron saint of new radicals and of all unadjusted Americans. His aim, however, is not simply to cite the various individuals and groups that use Thoreau as “Gospel” for reform. His purpose is to examine the “nature of Thoreau’s dissent “because, from Lynd’s point of view, it is still misunderstood, since Thoreau is often regarded as a pacifist and an anarchist. Lynd discusses Thoreau’s support of Brown in order to demonstrate that he did not shun violence when employed in a just cause: “What Gandhi took from Thoreau was not pacifism – but the concept of disobedience” (21-26). Thoreau’s alleged anarchism is also refuted with references to his willingness to support better governments. Lynd argues that “what was central to Thoreau was neither nonviolence nor civil disobedience but direct action: the absolute demand that one practice– right now and all alone if necessary– what one preaches” (25-26).

Going to the Walden Pond was as much an act of social rebellion as civil disobedience or John Brown’s raid. Lynd is interested in gathering “nonaligned individuals” and their insistence as “the essential quality of the new radicalism”; the rest is peripheral: “Would it not be more truthful for the young radicals of today to say that they believe in nonviolence when possible, civil disobedience if necessary, but direct personal action in all cases whatsoever? That was Thoreau’s view...” (26).

Lynd sees no ‘hypocrisy’ or ‘inconsistency’ in Thoreau’s writing on these matters. If Thoreau was anything he was radically inconsistent.

So there were many scattered positive and negative assessments of Thoreau’s social and political thought during the 60s in the USA. Although the negative assessments of Thoreau’s politics make him an advocate of violent reform, it did not have any impact on his reputation. Throughout 13

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the decade and throughout the country he was famous for his non-violent civil disobedience. By the end of the decade Thoreau was associated with the antiwar movement as much as he had been linked earlier to the civil rights movement. Thoreau’s political mind is different in the sense that his ideas expressed in “Civil Disobedience” failed to bring opposing ends to a common platform from where a new urge for concern and compromise might be voiced. Yet it must be acknowledged that the positive and negative assessments on Thoreau made by different commentators can mark a grand beginning possible- to save people from the spatial and spectral disobedience of the Government - after which the course of action will spontaneously take its own turn.

Works Cited: Allien, Francis H. and Torrey Bradford., eds. The Journal of Henry David Thoreau: Vols1-14. Boston: Houghton Miflin, 1949.

Broderick, John C. "Teaching Thoreau". Emerson Society Quarterly. 18 (First Quarter, 1960).

Downs, Robert B. Books That Changed the World. New York: Mentor, 1956 Ernest, Ernest "Thoreau and Little Rock". Best Articles and Stories, 3 November 1959.

Glick, Wendell., ed. The Writtings of Henry David Thoreau: Reform Papers.

Princeton, N. J. Princeton University Press, 1973.

Harding, Walter. "On Teaching Walden" Emerson Socity Quarterly, 18 (First Quarter, 1960).

Hicks, John H. "Editor's Note" Massachusettes Review, 4 (Autumn, 1962).

Hicks, John H. Thoreau in Our Season. University of Massachusettes Press: Amherst, 1966.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. New York: Harper and Rowe, 1958.

Lynd, Staughton. "Henry Thoreau: The Admirable Radical". Liberation, 7 February, 1963.

Nelson, William Stuart "Thoreau and American non-violent Resistance" Thoreau Society Bulletin 88 Summber, 1964.

Sisk, John P. "Beatniks and Tradition". Commonweal. 70 (April, 1959).

West, Herbert F. "Young Generation's Response to Thoreau". Thoreau Society Bulletin 56 (Summer, 1956).

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HORIZON ISSN 2223-0556 Number- 4, March 2011. Published in June 2012 (p 15-32)

The Use of Bengali in English Classrooms in Bangladesh Sukanta Bhattacharjee* Abstract: There have always been contradicting views about whether or not to use the mother tongue of the learners in the foreign language (FL) classrooms. The history of the English language teaching reveals the fact that the GrammarTranslation Method that dominated foreign language teaching (FLT) during the nineteenth century aimed at teaching FL through constant and fast translation of sentences from the target language (L2) into the learners’ first language (L1), and vice versa. The idea that all uses of the mother tongue in the foreign language must be avoided stems from the advent of the Direct Method at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Attitudes to the use of students’ L1 in the L2 classrooms, however, have undergone a significant change fairly recently.

Among a considerable number of experts in the arena of the second language acquisition, there appears to be an increasing conviction that moderate and judicious use of the first language (L1) has a necessary and facilitating role in the second or foreign language (L2) acquisition. This paper focuses on the prudent use of Bengali(L1) in the English (L2) classrooms in Bangladesh and establishes the point that meticulous and appropriate use of Bengali in English classrooms is not an impediment to the teaching and learning of English; it rather facilitates and expedites the process of mastering the four core skills of English: listening, speaking, reading and writing.

It is a universally acknowledged truth that mother language is inalienably seated in our make-up; it is part and parcel of our mental health or consciousness. That is why the proponents of the Bilingual Method (which follows the traditional P.P.P structure, i.e. Presentation, Practice and Production) are of the revolutionary view that mother tongue of the

*

Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Chittagong.

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learners (L1) should not be considered as interfering with learning process in second or foreign language. The belief is that the teacher can banish the native language from the classroom but cannot banish it from the students’ mind. So L1 is used to gloss difficult words and not for translating the whole language as was done in Grammar-Translation Method. Referring to the psycholinguistic aspects of interlanguage (a term coined by Selinker to refer to the systematic knowledge of an L2 that is independent of both the target language and the learner’s L1), linguists attach enormous importance to the mental structures and processes involved in the acquisition and use of the target language and throws adequate light on a number of vital issues—L1 transfer, the role of consciousness, processing operations, and communication strategies. L1 transfer refers to the influence that the learner’s L1 exerts over the acquisition of an L2.

Pointing out the positive transfer or the facilitating influence of the L1 on the L2 acquisition, Rod Ellis asserts: The learner’s L1 can facilitate L2 acquisition … learners draw on their L1 in forming interlanguage hypotheses. Learners do not construct rules in a vacuum; rather they work with whatever information is at their disposal. This includes knowledge of their L1. The L1 can be viewed as a kind of ‘input from the inside’.

According to this view, then, transfer is not ‘interference’ but a cognitive process (2002: 52).

What is more, through a ‘contrastive analysis’ of L1 and L2, an L2 learner can identify the similarities and differences between the two languages and be aware of their nuances. The resulting list of differences can be used to make decisions about the content of teaching materials. There is, however, no denying the fact that foreign language learners need as much exposure to L2 input as possible during stipulated class hour, the only period of time in their day-to-day lives when they encounter the foreign language in this non-English speaking country. As far as our socio- cultural context is concerned, hardly does an L2 learner get a chance to be exposed to English except for the scant English class time. In this era of satellite television and the Internet, inquisitive learners, however, can have ample exposures to

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The Use of Bengali in English Classrooms in Bangladesh

English- input through viewing diverse English programmes shown on varied TV channels and visiting a sizeable number of authentic English websites. Due to English phobia amongst our school and college students, a vast majority of the learners largely depend on classroom activities with a view to mastering four skills of English: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Since a language teacher is the key figure in facilitating and expediting the learning of the English language, he/she should motivate the learners sometimes through ‘English- only’ or ‘English-immersion’ class or through bilingualism, positive transfer or code-switching (from the L2 to the L1, and vice versa). In this article, I have attempted to explore the fact that by making a meticulous, judicious and prudent use of Bengali in an English language class in Bangladesh, a well- trained English teacher can accomplish the mammoth task of motivating the students to brush up their English, who are, in most cases, resistant to learning English from ‘English-only’ classes. I have conducted research on the use of Bengali in English classes in a number of our educational institutes and distributed a short questionnaire amongst a good number of students and teachers with a view to clarifying some misconceptions about the use of Bengali and unearthing the fact that an apt use of our beloved mother tongue has a stimulating or facilitating effect on the teaching and the learning of English in Bangladesh.

As ours is a non-English speaking or monolingual country, the sociocultural context is not conducive for our learners to pick up English through interactions with others. Also, the family atmosphere, in general, is not congenial enough to provide sound knowledge of the fundamentals of English. As a result, students constantly suffer from a sort of English phobia and cannot follow the ‘English-immersion’ classes. So, if a proficient and trained teacher of English conducts a number of communicative activities mostly in English and partly in Bengali, the Bengali-speaking English learners, I do have the conviction, will feel more interested in and motivated to learning English, the only subject in their curriculum they fear most. In a provocative article titled “Reexamining English only in the ESL classroom” Elsa Auerbach gives a socio-political rationale for the well-judged use of the L1 in ESL classrooms: 17

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Starting with the L1 provides a sense of security and validates the learners’ lived experiences, allowing them to express themselves. The learner is then willing to experiment and take risks with English (1993:19).

There is, of course, no doubt about the fact that one’s sense of identity as an individual is inseparably bound up within one’s mother language. If the learner of second language is encouraged to ignore his/her mother tongue, he/she must feel his/her identity shattered. As a matter of fact, good command of L1 makes a learner creative and confident, and this creative faculty and confidence help one immensely master L2. Stern’s comment is worth-quoting here in order to substantiate the point that the knowledge of L1 is the gateway to understanding and picking up L2: “The first language is maintained as the reference system in the acquisition of the second language” (1983:455).

Interestingly enough, over the past two decades, research in L1 acquisition has had an enormous influence on the study of L2 learning, both at the theoretical and at the practical levels. At the theatrical level, researchers in L1 acquisition have been working with exciting new ideas about language and the learning patterns. Concepts such as imitation and habit-formation have been replaced by notions that stress the child’s own creativity in building his/her knowledge of the language. Similar ideas have stimulated language researchers in order to view L2 learning from a perspective of the same kind as well as seek out concrete evidence to support this view. At the practical level, L1 researchers have developed unique techniques to collect and analyze children’s speech. These same mechanisms have been adopted in the sphere of L2 learning, to gather data and accumulate evidence about the sequences and processes that are involved. By conceiving the similarities and differences of the L1 and L2, one can have a crystal-clear idea of the L2 and can truly be confident user of L2 by comparing and contrasting the L1 and L2 thoroughly. In his thoughtprovoking article “The Problem of Teaching English Grammar to BengaliSpeaking Students” Professor Sadruddin Ahmed has this to say

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highlighting the importance of the use of Bengali (L1) in English (L2) Classrooms in Bangladesh: It is often argued that in learning a foreign language the mother tongue acts as a hindrance and so we should avoid using it. It is important to immerse the students in the target language. The flaw in the argument is that in a non-native environment, where you do not hear English spoken and where the teachers mostly use the mother tongue in the classroom for obvious reasons, it is difficult, if not impossible, to keep the students immersed in English. I am not advocating using the mother tongue in teaching English. What I am advocating is that difference between the two language systems should be noted and the correct forms practised orally and in writing (1999:72).

In an English class, for example, an English teacher while teaching English grammar can focus on the formation of a sentence in the following way: In Bengali we say, ‘Ami Bhat Khai’ (Subject + object + verb) The English version is: ‘I eat rice.’ (Subject +verb + object) or `I have my meals'.

Then the proficient teacher can distinguish between ‘He/ She eats rice’ and ‘I suggest s/he eat rice’ by making a comparative study of simple present tense and the subjunctive in English and can make his pupils understand and use them in a variety of contexts. If the skilled English teacher opts for code-switching (from the L1 to the L2 and vice-versa) in teaching English tenses and contextualizes them aptly, then, I am sure, the students will understand them better and can use them both in their examinations and diverse real-life situations. A language expert, the teacher should, of course, extend the bilingual discussion from ‘sentence- level’ to ‘discourse- level’ adopting both ‘bottom- up’ and ‘top- down’ processes and make the entire linguistic process flexible and adaptive to learners’ needs and interests. Highlighting the importance of the L1 in the teaching of the L2, David Atkinson categorically remarks:

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It is not difficult to think of several general advantages of judicious use of the mother tongue. Such activities as grammar explanations, checking comprehension, giving instructions, discussing classroom methodology and checking for sense fall into this category. If teachers use the students’ language, these tasks will be expedited more efficiently (1987:242).

It should be borne in mind that an English teacher of Bangladesh who is well-versed in all four skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing can have an interplay of a little Bengali and adequate English in the class to expedite and facilitate the teaching of English so that his/her students can learn English in an easy, interesting and effective manner.

Also, our students may be allowed to use Bengali when they work in pairs or groups studying a reading text in English as they are using Bengali to further their understanding of English. If, on the contrary, students are doing an oral fluency activity, it is quintessentially pointless because one can attain the status of a fluent speaker of English by speaking it as often as possible. Also, learners need to listen to the speakers of the target language (L2) as much as possible in order to comprehend it easily, read English books extensively with a view to expanding vocabulary, picking up idioms and phrases as well as comprehending nuances of the English language. Peter Harbord attaches enormous importance to the use of L1 in the L2 classrooms. What he points out is that “The giving of instructions and many other teacher-student interactions are an ideal source of language for student acquisition” (1992:353).

Since dealing with the mother tongue is students’ hobby horse, practicing teachers cannot prevent our learners from using Bengali despite their frantic effort to resist it. Now the question arises whether or not we should try to stop it. According to Eldridge, it is of no use for there is no evidence to suggest that this prohibition would improve learning efficiency. He does claim that “most of the code-switching is highly purposeful and related to purposeful goals” (1996:303).

Seldom can we deny the fact that moderate use of Bengali is sure to quicken the learning of English. But most of our English teachers use L1 20

The Use of Bengali in English Classrooms in Bangladesh

more than is necessary while teaching the L2 in schools and colleges. If we observe the classroom teaching in most schools and colleges in Bangladesh we find almost all the English teachers (except for a very few urban school and college teachers) speaking Bengali throughout their classes—exchanging greetings and views, informing, instructing, questioning, answering, explaining and so forth. If asked, why they do so, nine out of ten of the practising teachers give the readymade answer that students utterly fail to follow English- immersion classes, and there is resistance both from the students and their parents or guardians. The understandable reason why our teachers speak all Bengali in English classes is that they themselves are not well-versed in using standard form of English. Thus the overuse of Bengali in English classes makes the essential practice of L2 skills unnecessary. But from the viewpoint of the linguists, it is obvious that between 10 and 30 percent of the class time may be utilized for the use of Bengali during teaching English so that it aids the comprehension of the unintelligible L2 inputs. Because of the excessive use of L1 in the L2 classrooms, students are deprived of adequate input in the L2, which is a dire need for the conscious mastering of the target language.

From a socio-linguistic point of view it is observed that when the learners discover their dear mother language used by the teacher, they feel singleness of spirit with him/her and this cultural sameness establishes a rapport between the learners and the teacher, which contributes significantly to the teaching and learning process. If the learners’ mother tongue is strictly prohibited in the class, they feel lost and degraded. Very naturally, they feel demotivated to learning the L2 because mother tongue is inextricably related to our psychological makeup. Pinpointing the necessity of the L1 in the L2 classrooms, Jinlang Tang boldly utters in the acclaimed article entitled “Using L1 in the English Classroom”: Moderate and judicious use of the mother tongue can aid and facilitate the learning and teaching of the target language.

Exclusion of the mother tongue is a criticism of the mother 21

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tongue and renders it a second-class language. This degradation of the mother tongue has a harmful psychological effect on learners (2002:36-37).

Another salient feature of the prudent use of the L1 in the L2 classrooms is that learners can decipher the ambiguous aspects of the linguistic components easily if bilingualism is brought into the classroom. While familiarizing the learners with the glorious Language Movement that occured in 1952, for example, if the teacher first narrates the history in Bangla and then present it in English, the students will get emotionally involved in the whole linguistic process and internalize the linguistic inputs enthusiastically, which will help them go for better outputs in necessary contexts. Various empirical studies as well as research findings explicitly refer to the fact that mother tongue materials enthuse the learners more and the original reason for introducing materials from the learners’ indigenous cultures is to help them overcome a block in motivation. Mike Baynham’s thought-provoking article “Mother tongue materials and second language literacy” throws more light on this point.

What is remarkable in his write-up is that the development of the teaching of English as a Second Language occurs “within an ideology of assimilation” (1983:312). He conducted a research on a number of Spanish-speaking communities learning English by using mother tongue or through bilingualism into the L2 classrooms and focused on motivation and pedagogical implications: They (mother tongue materials) transformed a rather unmotivated student, who performed tasks listlessly, into one who worked with interest and application, producing writing ranging from accounts of personal experience to quite abstract summaries, both in English and in Spanish, and, instead of taking the first excuse to stop work, stayed after class to finish an activity (Baynham, 1983:317).

For its strong motivational effect, the Bilingual Method is recognized as a modern communicative or eclectic approach. This Method seems to assume that foreign language can be mastered with the help of the 22

The Use of Bengali in English Classrooms in Bangladesh

already acquired language-- mother tongue provided it is not used as mere translation but as a means to achieve the communicative end. The rooted belief is that language is a way of making infinite use of finite means. In fact, necessary mother language equivalents are provided to prevent students from giving ‘empty’ responses.

Learning, thus, becomes a mental gymnastics and not a mechanical process as in earlier structural approaches. What is optimistic about learners’ communicative competence is that once the students have developed an impressive command of the target language, mother tongue is absolutely withdrawn and the approach becomes monolingual. The exponents of the Bilingual Method are of the view that meaning is conveyed through utterance equivalents and interferences of L1 are avoided as the teacher having high proficiency in the nuances of the L1 and L2 presents each sentence of the dialogue twice with L1 version sandwiched between the two.

It is a mysterious phenomenon that human beings are able to produce an infinite number of sentences with a limited set of grammar rules and a finite set of innate terms and they transfer their innate knowledge of L1 at the time of learning L2. Steven McDonough comments in his seminal book Applied Linguistics in Language Education: Researchers oriented more to education and sociology could argue that command of a first language demonstrated the maturity of all the universal grammar features that the LAD (Language Acquisition Device) was postulated to account for; the big remaining difference between the first and second languages was therefore the circumstances of leaving (2002:138).

So, it is obvious that when a Bangladeshi student starts learning English, he/she just tries to apply the rules and forms of Bangla into English. In fact, transfer is a significant factor in language learning at all levels.

Typically, learners start by transferring sound (phonetic transfer), meaning (semantic transfer) and diverse rules including word order and pragmatics. The more our learners gain linguistic proficiency in English the less their dependency on Bangla is discerned, and the role of transfer 23

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from Bangla to English gradually diminishes when learners have impressive command of the four modules of English such as listening, speaking, reading and writing. Although, contrastive analysis seeks to predict all learners’ errors embedded on language transfer, subsequent research in error analysis and interlanguage structure categorically shows that this is entirely pointless and most errors occur due to faulty inference about the rules of the L2 and not because of transfer from L1 to L2.

Some theorists emphatically maintain that very few errors are the result of L1 transfer. They go on to say more specifically that around five percent of the errors are the result of transfer. With the passage of time, language transfer is re-conceptualized within a cognitive framework and there has been widespread acknowledgement that learners draw on their L1 in forming interlanguage hypotheses. Rod Ellis’ insightful comment on the facilitating role of L1 in mastering L2 in his masterly book Second Language Acquisition is worth- mentioning : Transfer is yet another metaphor for explaining L2 acquisition.

In some ways it is an inappropriate one. When we transfer money we move it out of one account and into another, so one account gains and the other loses. However, when language transfer takes place there is usually no loss of L1 knowledge.

This obvious fact has led to the suggestion that a better term for referring to the effects of the L1 might be ‘cross-linguistic influence’ (2002:54).

I have cited all these with a view to strengthening the argument that our practicing teachers should not be too rigid regarding bilingualism or the use of Bangla in the English classes as moderate and judicious use of it facilitates the teaching and learning of English by motivating the learners who are, in most cases, reluctant to learn English from ‘English-only’ classes. Realizing the positive impact of Bengali on the learning and teaching of English, our teachers opt for moderate use of Bangla during teaching two skills: reading and writing for these modules can be learnt through cognitive process. To express explicitly, one has to have substantial amount of ideas in addition to grammatical knowledge in order to comprehend reading passages or write on a reflective topic. As 24

The Use of Bengali in English Classrooms in Bangladesh

code-switching or bilingualism expedites the learning of English, some grammatical structures can be stated explicitly with the help of Bengali equivalents. The following examples will make the point clear: Bengali English Bengali English

: : : :

‘Shedin ami ekti golpo boi porlam’ ‘That day I read a story book.’

‘Chhotokale Karim golpo boi porto’ ‘In his childhood Karim used to / would read story books.’

If the dedicated teacher having mastery over both Bengali and English discusses simple past and habitual past through code-switching, I do believe, Bengali-speaking students will be able to pick up these two permanently and use them in their day-to-day interactions. Also, these learners can benefit considerably from the phonetic symbols from their Bengali equivalents. Bangla Academy Dictionary (English to Bengali) edited by eminent professor Zillur Rahman Siddiqui is playing a vital role in familiarizing the Bengali-speaking English learners with the model English sounds. If a learner, for instance, knows the Bengali equivalent of the phoneme ‘ ʌ ’, he/she can refrain from mispronouncing quite a few English words such as won, son, company, onion, double, cover, etc. A scholarly English teacher having impressive command of phonetics and phonology can also amuse the students by giving some funny examples amalgamating L1 and L2.

Bengali : “Amar jonno ‘onion’ anian” English : “Bring me onions.”

It is a proven truth that students learn more from stress- free or funny classes. In fact, a Bengali-speaking learner can master around 33 phonemes out of 45 IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet/Association) symbols from their Bengali equivalents that are available in the aforesaid Bangla Academy Dictionary. However, a number of phonemes such as θ, ɜ:, ə , ɔ: , v , ʒ , r, and z cannot be transcribed in Bengali letters. These sounds can be drilled into learners by a phonetic expert or an original

25

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English CD. Moreover, sounds such as able (eɪbl), famous (feɪməs) and April (eɪprəl) can easily be picked up from the thorough learning of the Bengali equivalents of phonetic symbols. Comprehending the usefulness of interlanguage or bilingualism, Littlewood states in his monumental work Foreign and Second Language Learning: Often, our increased knowledge of first language acquisition has served as a back cloth for perceiving and understanding new facts about second language learning. In addition, many researchers see their long term goal as to produce a single ‘theory of language acquisition’, which would account for first and second language learning within one framework. After all, the two experiences are both manifestations of the general human capacity to learn and use language (1984:4).

Whatever the facilitating effect of L1 in mastering L2 is, never can we deny the importance of extensive exposure to L2 in the classroom through which learners can have the essential inputs of the target language. So our learners need ample exposure to English in the classroom, especially for picking up vocabulary, phrases and idioms and learning two core skills: listening and speaking. The more exposure students have, the more their foreign language improves. An efficient teacher, however, juxtaposes L1 and L2 when situation demands. In fact, he/she does so very tactfully with a view to motivating the less enthusiastic learners as well as facilitating and expediting foreign language learning process. But the scholarly teachers must know when and how much Bengali to use in our English classes. Linguists opine that L1 can be used in L2 classes on the following occasions: record keeping; classroom management; language analyses; presentation of rules of grammar; phonetics and phonology; morphology; negotiation of the syllabus and the lesson; discussion of cross-cultural issues; explanation of errors; assessment of comprehension; etc. In his thought-provoking article titled: “Using L1 in the L2 classroom” C. William Schweers, Jr. suggests particular uses for the L1 in the EFL classroom: 1. Eliciting language “How do you say ‘x’ in English?”

26

The Use of Bengali in English Classrooms in Bangladesh

2. Checking comprehension “How do you say ‘I have been waiting for ten minutes?’ in Spanish” (Also used for comprehension of a reading and listening text.)

3. Giving complex instructions to basic levels.

4. Co-operating in groups: Learners compare and correct answer to exercises or tasks in the L1. Students at times can explain new points better than the teacher.

5. Explaining classroom methodology at basic levels.

6. Using translation to highlight a recently taught language item (2003:35).

Of late, I designed and conducted a research on the use of Bengali in English classes at five schools, five colleges and two universities. Fifty students and five teachers took part in my project. I provided them with a short questionnaire which they duly filled out. Both the teachers and students ventilated their feelings regarding the use of Bengali in English classes in Bangladesh.

1. Should Bengali be used in English classes?

Students: yes 90%, no 10% Teachers: yes 95% no 5% 2. Would you like your teacher to use Bengali in the classes?

Students: not at all 0%, a little 50% on some occasions 27% a lot 23% 3. How often do you think Bengali classes?

Teachers: never very rarely on some occasions fairly frequently to aid comprehension

should be used in the English 0% 0% 50% 0% 50%

4. Do you believe using English in your classes helps you master the target language?

Students: no 14% a little 27% 27

HORIZON

fairly much extensively

25% 34%

5. When do you think it is appropriate to use Bengali in English classes ?

Students Teachers To introduce new materials 10% 00% To explain difficult linguistic concepts 80% 20% To make fun with students 8% 18% To check for comprehension 25% 15% To define new vocabulary items 20% 10% To assist students feel more confident and comfortable 80% 20% To conduct tests 02% 00% To carry out pair and group works 02% 00% 6. Why do you prefer the use of Bengali in English classes?

Students: It’s more comfortable 15% I feel less lost 70% I feel less nervous 15%

Finally, it is worth pointing out that English language learners desperately require as much exposure to English input as possible during limited class hours because in our existing socio-cultural milieu, English language learners have the only scope to encounter English during the class time only. However, it is widely accepted that judicious, moderate and prudent use of Bengali in our English classrooms can motivate our learners (who suffer constantly from English phobia) to learn English enthusiastically. Therefore, well- trained teachers’ friendly encouragement and persuasion during language learning activities play an instrumental role in facilitating and expediting the foreign language learning process.

Furthermore, through apt code-switching, bilingualism, universal grammar, LAD, language transfer or contrastive analysis, the teaching and learning of L2 can be made easy, more intelligible and interesting.

What is more, bringing limited amount of Bengali into the English

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The Use of Bengali in English Classrooms in Bangladesh

classes makes the learning of English less of a threat to our learners’ vernacular. A very warm and friendly teacher gives the learners a unique impression that errors in the L2 are not regrettable “but an integral and important part of language learning. Correcting them is a way of bringing the learners’ interlanguage closer to the target language”(Ur, 1999:111).

Thus a good and knowledgeable teacher tries his/her utmost to teach English effectively through raising awareness among enthusiastic learners about the similarities and differences between Bengali and English. Encountering their mother tongue used by the teacher in their classroom, learners feel emotionally and culturally drawn to the teacher, and they feel less lost or do not feel culturally alienated. The teacher also feels very much in touch with them. This rapport contributes significantly to the acquisition of the target language. On top of that, internalizing the linguistic mechanism of the L2 through mother tongue makes learners more confident, and confident learners enjoy taking risk with the L2 and ultimately become smart users of the foreign language.

This is very much true of the leading English teachers of Bangladesh, a vast majority of whom studied in Bengali medium schools and colleges up to the higher secondary level, and they brushed up their English through Grammar- Translation Method in which code-switching or language transfer is a pretty common phenomenon. Also, today’s most popular approach to teaching English known as Eclectic Approach is like a ‘melting pot’ that embraces a great variety of methods allowing practising skilled English teachers to absorb all the best techniques of the well-known language teaching methods into their classroom procedures, using them for the purposes for which they are most appropriate. Wilga Rivers, the key proponent of this flexible approach, encourages teachers to have an amalgamation of both Grammar-Translation Method (which makes learners grammatically strong and encourages the teaching and learning of L2 through translation from L2 to L1, and vice versa) and Direct Method (which strictly prohibits the use of L1 and makes the learners proficient in speaking L2 through extensive use of the target language as the medium of instruction). In ‘The post-methods era’, researchers love to go ‘Beyond approaches and methods’ perceiving the

29

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vital point that language teaching and learning cannot and should not be confined to a limited number of approaches and methods; it is rather considered “little more than a set of very general principles that can be applied and interpreted in a variety of ways” (Richards and Rodgers 2001:244). So, moderate use of Bengali should not be considered heretical or a punishable offence during the teaching of English in our socio-cultural set-up, since it facilitates and expedites the learning process aiding comprehension. Vivian Cook aptly states: It is beneficial to students to listen to authentic language consisting of judiciously chosen samples of unexpurgated native speech. Authentic speech evidently needs to be made comprehensible by one method or another if it is to be useful to the learner (1996:129).

It is, therefore, obvious that along with the wide use of L2, meticulous and appropriate use of L1 has often been encouraged as it aids the comprehension of L2. Never does it impede the learning of L2 except for oral fluency. That is why an efficient teacher of English should not allow his/her students to use Bangla during oral fluency activity. They may, however, be permitted to go for that while working in groups or pairs studying a reading text since they are using it to further their understanding of English. Because L1 plays a key role in L2 pedagogy, a ‘good language teacher’ has been defined as having “same L1 as students, or a sound knowledge of it” (McDonough and Shaw, 2003:256). By creating an English atmosphere in the class through audio-visual aids and making prudent use of Bangla in order for Bangladeshi students to dispel negative attitude towards English, increase receptivity and intelligibility, a prolific English teacher can motivate our learners to have impressive command of English, the most international of the international languages or lingua franca of today’s IT- oriented global village. As a matter of fact, students who come into close contact with a foreign language find some features of it pretty easy and others terribly hard. The linguistic components that are similar to those in their native language appear to be simple to them whereas the

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The Use of Bengali in English Classrooms in Bangladesh

elements which are different are quite difficult to them. Thus L1 plays a facilitating role in the teaching and learning of L2. This is what an avid reader discovers in Robert Lado’s acclaimed essay titled “The necessity for a systematic comparison of languages and cultures”: The teacher who has made a comparison of the foreign language with the native language of the students will know better what the real learning problems are and can better provide for teaching them. He gains an insight into the linguistic problems involved that cannot easily be achieved otherwise (1986: 79).

Works Cited: Ahmed, S. “The Problem of Teaching English Grammar to Bengali- Speaking Students.” National and Regional Issues in English Language Teaching:International Perspectives. Collected Papers of the International Conference held at the British Council from 31 January to 2 February, (1999): 72.

Atkinson, D. “The mother tongue in the classroom, a neglected resource?” ELT Journal 41, no. 4 (1987): 241-247.

Auerbach, E. “Reexamining English only in the ESL classroom.” TESOL Quarterly 27, no.1 (1993):.9-32.

Cook, V. Second Language Learning and Language Teaching. London: Arnold, 1991.

Eldridge, J. “Code-switching in a Turkish secondary school.” ELT Journal 50, no.

4, (1996): 303.

Ellis, R. Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Harbord, P. “The use of mother tongue in the classroom.” ELT Journal 46, no.4 (1992): 353.

Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching.. Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 2001.

Jr. Schweers, W. C. “Using L1 in the L2 Classroom. ”Forum 41 (October 2003): 35.

Lado, R “The necessity for a systematic comparison of languages and Cultures”.

Landmarks of American Language & Linguistics. ed. by Frank Smolinski.

Washington, D.C.: United States Information Agency, 1986.

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Littlewood, W.T. Foreign and Second Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

McDnough, J. and Shaw, C.. Materials and Methods in ELT. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2003.

McDonough, S. Applied Linguistics in Language Education. London: Arnold, 2002.

Richards, J. C. and Rodgers, T.S. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Stern, H. H. Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.

Tang, J. “Using L1 in the English Classroom.� Forum 40 (January 2002): 37.

Ur, P. A Course in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

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HORIZON ISSN 2223-0556 Number- 4, March 2011. Published in June 2012 (p 33-48)

Opposites Unreconciled: An Existentialist Reading of Macbeth Mah-E-Nur Qudsi Islam* Abstract: Relation of the opposites, specially, the binary opposites, lend this mechanistic world its active force. Albeit unreconciled, they complement each other by producing a strong and effective ‘social energy’ deriving from the friction of the opposite drives and energies of human life. This essay is an attempt to study the forked moments of psychological splits of Macbeth’s divided self in the light of existential theory, especially Nietzsche’s theories on dual personalities of man.

The unresolved absurdity of life pins man onto two un-reconciling opposites of human condition; the undying, perpetual human aspiration to live a life of one’s dream, one’s choice and the consciousness of one’s personal or individual morality, social responsibility, customs and norms which, in the words of Rousseau, chains man everywhere (Nicholas,126).

Generally, this absurdity helps man to embark on religion and other social conventions as means of attributing value to life. But by chance, if they cease to be enough for one to be meaningful for living a life of illusion, the point of fissure in his psyche is marked with the moment of disillusionment. Macbeth’s case is a blatant example of this plane of human reality. The most appropriate and striking feature that marks his existential inclination of personality is his divided self. The binaries that pervade his external and internal lives are as opposites as are the false and the authentic, the appearance and the reality, the essence and the existence, the emotion and the reason, the public and the private, and the traditional and the new, which are mutually supportive and reinforcing in building his complete personality, in other words, his self or complete existence.

*

Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Chittagong.

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Existentialism is an issue of dichotomy between the two faces of the mirror called ‘self’. These faces can be broadly termed as ‘the abstract’ and ‘the real’. One’s abstract being, in Nietzsche’s terms, is one’s Apollonian image that is built on one’s belief in traditional values, reasons, ethics and strong moral principles. One’s Apollonian self can also be termed as the ‘essence’ or the outer link of one’s existence. Existentialist philosophers use this term to explain its fakeness against one’s ‘real being’, or true existence. The other face of this existential mirror can be termed, according to Nietzsche, as Dionysian, that is, one’s true, inner self, which is sieved off all external factors like, social pressure, public image, ego, reason, values, and so on. Macbeth is at once a twofold combination of all the above mentioned dualities so that he, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide, not only distances himself from his other self but also throws challenge both to the fading medieval values of his own time and to his audience of twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The contradictions of his nature make him an interesting case study of existentialism.

The philosophy of existence is related with the concept of ‘essence’ in a dyadic relationship. The term ‘essence’ signifies the ‘What’ of a thing whereas the ‘existence’ signifies the ‘That’ of a thing. Paul Tillich says, Essentia thus designates what a thing is known to be … But whether a thing is real or not is not implied in its essence: we do not know whether there is such a thing by knowing “essence” alone. This must be decided by an existential proposition.

(Tillich, 47)

That is, what Macbeth is known to be to the members of his community is essentially his essence, which might be false and incorrect, but his existence is the total composition of his psyche and personality with all his mental faculties and emotional sways. The essence of Macbeth initially presents him to the peers and the public alike as a hero and a superman of unparalleled chivalry, valiance, high esteem, and remarkable allegiance to the sovereign and to the country. After the ‘bloody captain’ brings news in the second scene of the opening Act to the king from the battlefield about the cut-throat battle won by Macbeth’s lethal professionalism, the whole nation seems to celebrate his gallantry, lethality, bravery and heroism. But as Macbeth appears in front of the audience for the first time, he is swept off by the three weird prophesying sisters into a whirlpool of chaotic psychological state. To the readers’ utter dismay, Macbeth’s ‘imperial’ ambition is brought to the readers’ knowledge by the witches through his 34

Opposites Unreconciled : An Existentialist Reading of Macbeth

solemn and troublesome asides where he seems to be totally confused about how to react to the prophecies. His getting startled by the prophecies, his asides betraying his knocking heart−−−− all speak of a Macbeth who is not in control of his apparent superman image. Contrary to the essence of his reputation, the readers start taking an in-depth journey to the root of his existence, which, like the petals of an onion, will be gradually revealed to them, as well as to Macbeth himself. Macbeth’s first few asides betray his psyche and divulge to the readers his long- nourished secret ambition of possessing the crown and the scepter of Scotland. The idea of regicide has not been unfamiliar to him either. As he hears the prophecy ensuring his kingship, his imperial dream is instantly stimulated. After all the successes achieved in the battles, Macbeth is established as the de facto power holder of Scotland. The king, presented as the de jure ruler, himself says all that is in his power to give Macbeth is much less than what Macbeth deserves – “More is thy due than more than all can pay” (1.4.21). Now, ‘All’ coming from a king may hold an arbitrary meaning. Among many other things, it may also mean, the crown. On this issue of ‘the striking combination in that monarch of legitimacy and actual power’, Alan Sinfield writes, “At the start of Macbeth the manifest dependency of Duncan’s State upon its best fighter sets up a dangerous instability (this is explicit in the sources)” (Sinfield, 123). Macbeth’s source, Raphael Holinshed confirms that “Duncan is older and weaker, while Macbeth, though cruel, is assertive enough both to assist Duncan before his murder and to rule satisfactorily for ten years after it” (Gillespie, 246).

The question that bothers the modern readers troubles Macbeth himself since his appearance on the stage for the first time is why he would consciously risk everything he legitimately owns for something that may blow up his whole life’s achievements. Immediately after his first soliloquy, where Macbeth strives to draw a balance between his essence and existence by negating his earlier desire of becoming the king, he declares to his wife, We will proceed no further in this business.

He hath honoured me of late, and I have bought Golden opinions from all sorts of people, Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, Not cast aside so soon. (1.7.31-35)

Professor Stephen Greenblatt provides the answer to this apparently illogical, unlawful ambition of Macbeth in the light of sixteenth-century-

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philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli whose precept, ‘end justifies the means’ was swallowed hook, line and sinker by all the ambitious princes of the time. Greenblatt quotes from the thirty-seventh chapter of Machiavelli’s Discourses: …when men are no longer obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition, which passion is so powerful in the hearts of men that it never leaves them, no matter to what height they may rise…nature has created men so that they desire everything but are unable to attain it; desire being thus always greater than the faculty of acquiring, discontent with what they have and dissatisfaction with themselves result from it.

(Greenblatt, 786)

So Macbeth, as a product of renaissance aspiration, is almost expected to behave in this apparently illogical manner, just because naturally enough, he has to grasp more than he already has, and ‘more’ for him has to be the biggest star that nobody of his rank has achieved hitherto; as he mutters in the aside just as he hears Ross declare that they were ordered by the king to address him with the new title of ‘Thane of Cawdor’, “Glamis, and Thane of Cawdor. / The greatest is behind” (1.3.114-5).

But renaissance philosophy is not only about the unlimited, unbridled yet unquenchable human desire, it is also about human being’s natural adherence to natural philosophy and all social institutions upholding the Enlightenment movement of the late Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries, melting and blending the prevailing concepts of God, nature, knowledge, and man into a unified worldview. Paul Brian, in his web page, ‘The Enlightenment’, narrates that Enlightenment thinkers believed that human reason could be used to combat ignorance, superstition, and tyranny to build a better world. Their celebration of the human race and its capacities gradually trained the intellectual class of Europe to doubt any established dogma of faith or culture and accept that there is nothing called absolute superiority, be it of a race like Europe or of any ideology like kingship or Christianity or any individual like the Pope. Michel de Montaigne, a French renaissance humanist, asks a single question over and over again in his Essays: "What do I know?" By this he meant that we have no right to impose on others dogmas which rest on cultural habit rather than absolute truth. Brian maintains that Montaigne’s question, “Who are Europeans to insist that Brazilian cannibals who merely consume dead human flesh instead of wasting it are morally inferior to Europeans who persecute and oppress those of whom they disapprove?” instils this doubt in

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Opposites Unreconciled : An Existentialist Reading of Macbeth

the European minds “that there was nothing inevitable about the European patterns of thought and living: there were many possible ways of being human, and doubtless new ones could be invented.” It was becoming clear to people that “If we cannot be certain that our values are God-given, then we have no right to impose them by force on others. Inquisitors, popes, and kings alike had no business enforcing adherence to particular religious or philosophical beliefs.”

Therefore, Macbeth’s first soliloquy scintillates with the wonderful philosophical doubts that let the readers observe with great pride the intellectual beauty of an enlightened mind of European renaissance. The fictional Macbeth’s renaissance- trained mind takes an aesthetic approach to medieval virtues. Strong human reasons pour forth from his enlightened mind like cadence against the animal need of his secret self to kiss the zenith of power. But to the existentialists, reason, no matter however sound and logical, may prove to be impotent and helpless when it comes to the question of taking decisions. So, although Macbeth’s deeply philosophical mind takes a tour through all allies of good reasons, values and ethics, it only succeeds in providing him a wide range of possibilities but no decision. The soliloquy under discussion is one of Macbeth's great soliloquies and an extension of his confused asides. Professor Stephen Greenblatt shares an anecdote with his readers about this particular soliloquy in his essay, Shakespeare and the Uses of Power. In 2008, he had a chance to be at the Clinton White House to attend a poetry evening.

Later, about the day’s experience, he writes: … On this occasion the President gave an amusing introductory speech is which he recalled that his first encounter with poetry came in junior high school when his teacher made him memorize certain passages from Macbeth…

After the speeches I joined the inn of people waiting to shake the President’s hand. When my turn came, a strange impulse came over me … “Mr. President,” I said, sticking out my hand, “don’t you think that Macbeth is a great play about an immensely ambitious man who feels compelled to do things that he knows are politically and morally disastrous?” Clinton looked at me for a moment, still holding my hand, and said, “I think Macbeth is a great play about someone whose immense ambition has an ethically inadequate object.”

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I was astonished by the aptness, as well as the quickness, of this comment, so perceptively in touch with Macbeth’s anguished brooding about the impulses that are driving him to seize power by murdering Scotland’s legitimate ruler. When I recovered my equilibrium, I asked the President if he still remembered the lines he had memorized years before. Of course, he replied, and then, with the rest of the guests still patiently waiting to shake his hand, he began to recite one of Macbeth’s great soliloquies: If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly. If th' assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success: that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all, here, But here upon this bank and shoal of time, We'd jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgment here, that we but teach Bloody instructions which, being taught, return To plague th'inventor. (1.7.1–10) There the most powerful man in the world – as we are fond of calling our leader – broke off with a laugh, leaving me to conjure up the rest of the speech that ends with Macbeth’s own bafflement over the fact that his immense ambition has “an ethically inadequate object”: I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself And falls on th’other… (Greenblatt 1-2)

This moment of Macbeth’s ‘bafflement’ is the precise moment, when Nietzschean philosophy of dyadic pull of two selves of a single existence intervenes. This is the moment when Macbeth feels the pull of two equally strong opposing urges within himself. On the one hand his inner, existentialist thrust of ambition pushes him to snatch the biggest achievement, the greatest power within his vision, a renaissance trend of individualism in vogue, and on the other, his essence, his ego, the feudal loyalty of his medieval mind acutely reminds him that he is not the number one man of his country. These opposite pulls rip his knowledge of self into two bipolar constituents that apocalyptically thrust before him and the 38

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readers his two selves; challenging, and at the same time, complementing each other.

According to Nietzsche, self is an existence of an aesthetic phenomenon that derives its sublimity from the strife of the opposite elements inherent in it. Lucy Huskinson writes in her Nietzsche and Jung: The Whole Self in the Union of Opposites, “According to Nietzsche, opposites have an equal inherent value, so that one polar element cannot dominate and annihilate its counterpart” (Huskinson, 11). Rather, in his Will to Power, Nietzsche deduces “…in contrast to the animals, man has cultivated an abundance of contrary drives and impulses within himself: thanks to this synthesis he is master of the earth” (Huskinson 179). Macbeth’s ‘If it were done when 'tis done’ soliloquy unmasks this tug of war between his two selves, compelling them to face each other in a psychic combat, acknowledging the meeting, the crossing and the continuing of two opposite emotional vectors running in horizontal and vertical directions.

Macbeth’s clarity of vision in this soliloquy is unique, exceptional and unprecedented. His thought-speech gives the impression that Macbeth is watching from a safe distance two Macbeths; a Dionysian one, who is all action, like an unthinking, uncontrolled child – ready to stake his existence for the sake of his avaricious indulgence to acquire and cling to the most shining toy called ‘the golden round’, and the other, an Apollonian one, able to feel the pulse of social expectation and is guided by a clear acuity into reason, judgment, and an unbiased, unclouded farsightedness. Macbeth’s Apollonian self is under no illusion about the foolishness of the suicidal venture that his Dionysian self is rushing head over heels to undertake. For one, who has so far enacted only Apollonian experience, his new swerving towards Dionysian thrusts is bound to sweep him off balance. He is painfully cognizant of the futility and hopelessness waiting for him at the end of the tunnel as he follows his instinct, the ‘vaulting ambition’ with "an ethically inadequate object" – the venture of regicide. These two selves of Macbeth constitute his bipolar psyche.

On the one hand, the feud of the two opposite forces of the sane and the whimsical Macbeth wrestling against each other compels him to make endless existential choices like committing series of murders to fortify his own existence till his termination. On the other hand, as Stephen Greenblatt puts it, Macbeth’s “… dream of a ‘clean’ regicide proves psychologically untenable. The seizure of the crown leads to feverish sleeplessness, brooding anxiety about security and an overwhelming sense 39

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of defilement” (Greenblatt, 787). It is this feud of his dual personality that contributes to lend him his tragic grandeur. In Beyond Good and Evil part one, Nietzsche puts the question, “How could something arise out of its opposite? For example, truth out of error? Or the will to truth out of the will to deception? Or selfless action out of self-seeking?” Strangely, it is out of Macbeth's own internal terror, energies his external tyranny. He is terrifying because he is terrified. It is also only after Macbeth starts enjoying power that he fathoms the deception of the mirage he saw in happiness of power and the futility of holding temporal power against true honour to carry to eternity. It is only after executing the murders that he that realizes that “The sleeping and the dead” are, unlike the too simplified analogy drawn by Lady Macbeth, really not, rather far from being “as pictures” (2.2.51-52). Rather, the terror one feels from looking at the ghost of one’s murder-victims, leaves one’s cheeks “blanched with fear” (3.4.114) Appearance and reality gets intersected for Macbeth to such extent that the repeated breakdown of his mental balance begets in him an apathy towards life. With deep perspicacity he confesses: I have lived long enough. My way of life Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf And that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have, but in their stead Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath Which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not. (5.3.23-29)

These anguished words of wisdom manifest his failure to ‘trammel’ the consequence, and his failure to guarantee a secure tenure of kingship and the superman image for which he led himself from committing one crime after another.

The question of existentialism also includes the inherent human urge to protect and preserve oneself against all adversities of human condition. In his final two soliloquies among others, Macbeth is granted some beautiful philosophical lines on nihilism and a chivalrous attitude to his self in the face of his defeat that places him as an existentialist hero. Macbeth’s existentialism is mirrored in his acknowledgement of truth, even after all values of truth and honour collapse for him. He continues to fight and live when all meanings of existence cease to exist for him.

Macbeth is finally capable of seeing his life as a series of errors. Looking back into his criminal and scandalous deeds, he learns to value the 40

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everlasting achievements of life, like true, heart-felt ‘honour’, ‘friendship’ and ‘love’. His agonized craving for what could be his and what he has lost forces him to see the ‘golden round’ as nothing but a hollow and the temporal life as nothing but a non-existing ‘shadow’. The Macbeth who finds moral justification in mass killing at war-field, the Macbeth who feels the urge to say ‘Amen’ while listening to a prayer, the Macbeth who deeply believes that he should shut the door against the murderer of his guest, not bear the knife himself, is the one to whom the meaning of life is confined within the periphery of religious and social institutions, which the existentialists find as absurd. To Kierkegaard, this faith in all ethical and moral faculties of religion is the ‘ “virtue of the absurd” by which, he means that “only the absurd is the “reasonable” choice, since reason must be suspended and subjective passion embraced when dealing with issues such as faith’(O’Hara, 14). But according to Nietzsche, the world we live in is ‘human, all too human’, where the urge to live pushes one to go much Beyond Good and Evil. In his book Human, All Too Human, he explains, Philosophical theories and religious doctrines are human values writ large rather than reflections of a world beyond our individual experiences. History, on the other hand, offers through genealogical analysis the promise of affirming the world we live in by unmasking theories, doctrines and principles as conventions and aspirations for power. (Warrington, 268)

Macbeth exclaims in the ‘banquet scene’, Blood hath been shed ere now, i’th’olden time, Ere human statute purged the gentle weal; Ay, and since, too, murders have been performed Too terrible for the ear. (3.4 74-77)

Macbeth’s awareness of the history of human power and aspiration overtly verifies Nietzsche’s perception of human nature. His casual reference to the history of power acquisition also speaks of a new consciousness that has helped him earlier to make his existentialist choice. For Macbeth, the ‘existentialist moment of choice’ occurs on two occasions. First, in Act one, Scene five, in his aside that comes just after Duncan declares Malcom as ‘The Prince of Cumberland’, the heir apparent of Scotland, and second, in Act one, Scene seven, when, being completely persuaded by his wife, he declares, “I am settled, and bend up / Each corporal agent to this terrible 41

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feat (l.7, 79-80). Between these two scenes we have his beautiful soliloquy revealing his fears, doubts, moments of irresolution, his mind and his total existence oscillating between faith and ambition, between what he is and what he needs to be. Macbeth’s aside is particularly illuminating: The Prince of Cumberland – that is a step On which I must fall down or else o’erleap, For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires, Let not light see my black and deep desires; The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. (1.5.48-53)

He knows only too well that being an ‘A’ class soldier he deserves to hold the total universe in his own mighty fist. His whole existence demands him to distance himself from the common herd of followers of an inferior lord, and emerge as the occupier of the highest rung in the hierarchical chain of dignity and power. Nietzsche, in his Untimely Meditation pens his judgment on such kind of existential heroes: “The man who would not belong to the mass needs only to cease being comfortable with himself; he should follow his conscience which shouts at him: ‘Be yourself; [sei du selbst] you are not really all that which you do, think, and desire now’” (Nehamas, 75). Of course, making a decisive choice is far from easy for him. As he says to Lady Macbeth, “He hath honoured me of late, and I have bought / Golden opinions from all sorts of people, / Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, / Not cast aside so soon” (1.7. 32-35), a note of contentment and comfort is clear in his voice. An urge not to ‘disturb the universe’ like T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock or not to take a ‘sea of troubles’ like Hamlet and an urge to passively succumb to the undisturbed order of a comfortable, ordinary living reverberates in his tone. But this timid Macbeth is not his true self. According to Nietzcshe, one has to ‘become’ what one is’, that is, shedding off the false cloak of essence, the existentialist ‘Superman’ must emerge as he truly is.

Although in eleventh century, the feudal context of Macbeth’s time, this sense of strong individualism found little vent as a widely circulated practice of the social elites, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, belonging to the time of renaissance, has at the root of his fundamental belief the justification of self-gratification or self-exaltation. Nietzsche, in his Happiness Is Having Power maintains that for this kind of men,

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society is not allowed to exist for its own sake, but only as a foundation and scaffolding, by means of which a select class of beings may be able to elevate themselves to their higher duties, and in general to a higher existence: like those sun-seeking climbing plants in Java--they are called Sipo Matador,--which encircle an oak so long and so often with their arms, until at last, high above it, but supported by it, they can unfold their tops in the open light, and exhibit their happiness.

To fulfill one’s destiny to ‘become’ what one is, one has to abandon the doctrine of eternal truth or some constant moralities and act as Machiavelli suggests, both as a fox and a lion, combining fox’s cunningness and lion’s force. Machiavelli takes it for granted that man is incapable of good action, since he is morally evil. "Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws," he says in the Discourses, "must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it."

Upholding the Machiavellian philosophy of power acquisition, Macbeth also expects to carry out his crime successfully following the precepts of the usurpers gone before him in the history of human race using the ageold means of regicides and treasons for acquiring power.

At the banquet scene, Macbeth relates to Banquo’s ghost: Blood hath been shed ere now, I’th’ olden time, Ere human statute purged the gentle weal; Ay, and since, too, murders have been performed Too terrible for ears. (3.4.74-77)

The words, “Blood hath been shed ere now, i’th’ olden time, / Ere human statute urged the gentle weal;” state clearly that his choice of regicide was not a blind dice played on the board of life. It was based on theories of the makings of kings. So, if the primary premise of the theory is taken from the first words of his first soliloquy, “If it were done when ’tis done,” then its interpretation is, regicide is the only perfectly justified means of achieving absolute power.”

For example, establishing the relation between becoming and being, Nietzsche writes in On the Genealogy of Morals, “There is no such substratum; there is no “being’ behind doing, effecting, becoming: “the 43

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doer” is merely a fiction added to the deed – the deed is everything” (Nehamas, 75). This theory of Nietzsche explains how Macbeth ultimately overcomes his dilemma by finally being able to look at the murder objectively. Nietzsche further emphasizes that “… to become what one is would be to actualize all the capacities for which one is inherently suited; it might be inaccurate but not positively misleading…” (Nehamas, 77) For Macbeth, the process of transformation of his self from what he appears to be to what he actually is also happens in two phases, in the preregicide phase when he struggles to fix a balance between his image and his potentials, and in the post-regicide phase when he loses his grip more and more on his self and develops his nihilistic philosophy towards life and death. His first phase of existentialist choice is marked by the excruciating mental agony he experiences as he severely brings himself into task to justify his intention of regicide. His profound faith in providence is revealed in his imaginative first soliloquy where he imagines the angels whispering the story of Duncan’s merciless death in every Scottish ear while carrying the saint-king’s soul to heaven. His faith further pervades his imagination of Duncan’s departure evokes such mourning in people that their tears will drown the air. Macbeth, vacillating between resolution and doubt, rather reminds himself of the fact that Duncan is the apple of the nation’s eye, and naturally enough, this ensures the extraction of strong hatred form the public towards his cruel murderer. The fear that once the murder is done he will have to experience public hatred is Macbeth’s ‘intentionality’, meaning outstretch of his consciousness, running underneath Macbeth’s praise of Duncan. Macbeth’s intuition that the Scots will always mark him as the signifier, the cause, the malicious force to disrupt the perfect order of the organized structure of their country makes him shudder up to the roots of his existential cognizance.

The subjective reflection of the soliloquy on ethics, duty, religion, faith in natural judgment gives birth within him to a moment of seizure. Søren Kierkegaard explains this fluctuating movement of the mind between resolution and irresolution as the ‘fork in the road’ of one’s life, meaning, the ‘existential moment of choice’ one is compelled to or bring a profound change in the direction one takes in one’s life. Kierkegaard comprehends the fundamental condition of human existence as a dilemma of making choices. He asserts, “We are, at every turn, faced with the need to make decisions. Choice is our starting point, constant companion, and heaviest burden. In his Journals, Kierkegaard complains, ‘What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know…the thing is to 44

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find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die’ ”(Stokes, 144). For Macbeth, this moment of choice is the moment of conflict that will permanently ‘fork’ his personality, his self and selfknowledge.

Kierkegaard suggests that the conversion that an individual experiences is, ‘the decisive move’ not taken intellectually but as ‘a matter of will and feeling’ (Flynn, 10), marking a fundamental turning-point in his life. Of course, as Jean-Paul Sartre observes that this ‘excess individualism’ costs the existentialist his ‘social conscience’ (Flynn, 13). Macbeth's completeness as an existentialist individual is achieved by his acute awareness of the ‘nothingness’ he finds within himself contrary to what he took to be the substance of his life, the absolute power and the crown. The ancient Greek atomists held that void and being or substance constitute the universe. They also believed the nonbeing or the void, or nothingness supports the being to constitute and reconstitute itself for its existence.

Their theory of existence assignes a passive position to nothingness. But to Sartre, the nothingness is the ‘non-substantial absolute’. To him, ‘nothingness’ is the ‘signifier’ signifying one’s total existence. The wholeness of Macbeth’s grandeur as a complete, philosophical human being is achieved from the unity of this void and being. As Macbeth, in his famous ‘Out out brief candle’ soliloquy takes up the nihilistic line of philosophical argument to define life as ‘nothing but a shadow’, he negates all that he falsely valued all along his life, and it is this final realization about the futility of life and of the truth that death levels everything, that his dignity and tragic grandeur is restored. Sartre tells us that "Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being– like a worm" (p. 56). This observational statement painfully fits Macbeth’s condition. In his first soliloquy, the tone of ‘nihilism’ is already rumbling. The words, “Bloody instructions which, being taught, return / To plague th'inventor” entwines the twin ideas of energy and torpor.

Nietzsche, however, classifies nihilism in two parts, ‘a positive, yes-saying nihilism, in which people may come to recognize that the loss of Absolutes brings with it “a new and scarcely describable kind of light, happiness, relief, exhilaration, encouragement, dawn’ (Guignon, 6). This aspect of nihilism occurs in Macbeth’s life in the moment when he finds himself unable to repeat ‘Amen’ after the bodyguards of Duncan: “But wherefore could not I pronounce ‘Amen’? / I had most need of blessing, and ‘Amen’ / Stuck in my throat.” (2.2.29-31). This is the decisive moment of Macbeth’s recognition that God, from this precise moment, is truly dead 45

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for him. But this recognition is immediately followed by a new overflowing power and strength, with which, Macbeth goes on to create his own set of laws and instructions of life.

Although Macbeth’s nihilism starts with what Nietzsche calls ‘positive nihilism’ at the beginning of the play, it ends with ‘reactive nihilism’ at the end of the play. Reactive nihilism, as Charles Guignon explains in the introduction of the book he edits with the title, The Existentialists: Critical Essays on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre, “…springs from feelings of resentment and bitterness about the loss of something that seemed necessary to life”. Guignon further explains, ‘Reactive nihilism will be characterized by a “monstrous logic of terror”, a long “sequence of breakdown, destruction, ruin, and cataclysm”…’ (Guignon, 6). In Macbeth’s case this “loss of something” is the death of Lady Macbeth. As Lady Macbeth is Macbeth’s last tie with his purpose of existing in this death bounded doom, her death is absolutely necessary for Macbeth to break up with the last thread of life and humanity. Macbeth is fortunate enough to hear the death report of his wife, in a sense that he would no longer circle around the nihilistic hell of existence. Neither Macbeth nor the hellish circumstances are responsible, under any consideration, for Lady Macbeth’s withdrawing off the stage. It is the playwright himself, who is highly responsible for this and he has spontaneously done it from his excessive fondness for his hero. Shakespeare brings his hero too close to the verge of surrendering his impassive life and accepting defeat and then, in a moment, making him pull himself out of his double crisis: loss of wife and loss of faith manifest in the messenger’s announcement that Birnam Wood is moving, and Macbeth's declaration in the spirit of a true existentialist: “They have tied me to a stake. I cannot fly, / But bear-like I must fight the course.” (5.7. 11-12). Macbeth mentions in his soliloquy following the death of Lady Macbeth that a poor player struts and frets upon the stage as long as the play goes on and then is heard no more. So Shakespeare too keeps the final disillusionment of bringing a person who is not a woman born before Macbeth till the end of his life so that his hero takes this last part of the prophecy as the last straw of his purpose to fight, and of course, to act on the stage. By the time lady Macbeth’s death is reported to him, the process of Macbeth’s reaching the nadir of spiritual vacuum is also complete: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time. (5.5. 18-20) 46

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Macbeth gives his final verdict about life in the last words of this soliloquy: It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. (5.5.25-27)

These very words relate Macbeth to Nietzsche once again. Macbeth’s existential choice was a big leap in time to become a superman like Nietzsche’s Zarathrustra, who strives to create a balance between good and evil, moral and immoral without the intervention of religion. Lucy Huskinson comments: Zarathustra is thus seen by Nietzsche as having invented the opposites of good and evil and then as having come back to try to unite them. Zarathustra returns to improve on his former invention; in particular, to resolve the conflict between good and evil because Christianity cannot do it. In TSZ, we see the Christian point of view represented by the old man in the forest, who has no contact with the world and with humanity (TSZ, prologue, 2). Because Christianity is no longer in touch with the world, Zarathustra must be reborn; he must come back to show that God is dead and that there is no difference between good and evil. His aspiration is, therefore, to overcome the opposites of good and evil from a standpoint that is beyond the opposites: he seeks a unification of opposites. (Huskinson, 29)

During the initial stage of Macbeth’s criminal sojourn he also abandons religion and endeavors to unify the order of political stability and the disorder of usurpation. But his spatio-temporal condition compels him to accept his attempts as absurd and impossible. At the final stage of his life, it is his failure to socially establish the harmony and reconciliation of the opposites that he held within himself that drives him to his personal failure in life and pushes him into a fathomless boredom. In a world where ‘God is dead’, it is no wonder that life in this meaningless world will be equally meaningless. But the ‘idiot’ who can author and narrate his tale is exceptionally wise when he disseminates it. The final question to consider then is: Who is the target of Shakespeare’s text? Is it those who advocate Dionysian principle? Or is it mankind in general?

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Works Cited: Brians, Paul, www.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/enlightenment.html Dent, Nicholas. Rousseau. Routledge: New York, 2005.

Gillespie, Stuart. Shakespeare’s Books: A Dictionary of Shakespeare Sources.

Continuum: New York, 2004.

Greenblatt, Stephen. Shakespeare and the Uses of Power, http:// www.nybooks. com/articles/archives/2007/apr/12/shakespeare-and-the-uses-of-power.

Greenblatt, Stephen, Cohen, Walter, Howard, Jean E., Maus, Katherine Eisaman, eds. The Norton Shakespeare Tragedies. Norton& Company: New York, 1988.

Guignon, Charles (ed). The Existentialists: Critical Essays on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers: Maryland America, 2004.

Huskinson, Lucy, eds. Nietzsche and Jung: The Whole Self in the Union of Opposites. Routledge: New York, 2004.

O’Hara, Shelley. Kierkegaard within your grasp. Wiley Publishing Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2004.

Paul, Tillich. Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2006.

Stokes, Philip. Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers. Enchanted Lion Books: Brooklyn, NY, 2006. http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/montaigne/m-essays_contents.html

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HORIZON ISSN 2223-0556 Number- 4, March 2011. Published in June 2012 (p 49-68)

Moving between Academic Cultures: Looking through an Anthropological Lens Sarwar Morshed* Abstract: This is an ethnographic or intercultural discussion of the writer’s academic sojourning in London. Drawing upon oneyear-long in-depth subjective experience of my postgraduate study in a British university, I have explored different phases (e.g. the three-fold stress-adaptation-growth) of academic sojourning for Higher Education (HE) in a multicultural milieu by focusing the discussion on my lived experience in the UK. By juxtaposing the host academic culture with that of the guest’s, the writer pinpoints the differences between the two cultures.

These differences, by building intercultural competence, can contribute to increased intercultural and international understanding. Implications for how guest and host institutions (Education and Foreign Ministries of the two countries concerned, universities, British Council etc.) might work more effectively with International Students (ISs) and Non-English Speaking Background (NESB) students are discussed.

Prologue As I set pen to paper to write this article on my encounter with the academic and cultural Other in the UK, the opening paradox of Charles Dickens’s magnum opus A Tale of Two Cities comes to my mind with the spontaneity of reflex action-‘It was the best of time, it was the worst of time’. It was the best of time for me as I got myself admitted to a British university and was scheduled to attend classes from October, 2005. I, like the other Bangalis, am interested in the foreigners and their land(s). This xenophilia reinforced

* Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Chittagong

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by the imminent opportunity to actualize the Oak seed into a tree, caused adrenalin rush in my system. The reason is within the ken of anyone’s guess.

Only blue-blooded affluent people could afford to go to London from our part of the world to pursue higher studies in the good olden days. The catalogue of people from the Indian sub-continent who went to the UK with the noble end in view to pursue higher studies is seemingly endless. The super-nova among these distinguished personalities is, without an iota of doubt, Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian Nobel Laureate in Literature.

Naturally enough, I was elated when everything concerning my studies in London was finalised. I was literally throbbing with excitement. The almost infantile deductive logic ‘Rabindranath Tagore studied in London. I am going to study in London. So, I am a Tagore’ caused immense thrill in me.

Another name which has emotionally colonised me since my boyhood came to my mind automatically-Shakespeare, the ultimate celebrity of English literature. England to us in the Department of English, University of Chittagong, was the Shakespeareland. Moreover, the place of my study was London of which Samuel Johnson, the father of English lexicography, said, ‘‘Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, for there is in London all that life can afford. Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life” (Boswell, 2008: 233). Boswell records another saying of Johnson about London in Life “….. I will venture to say, there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit, than in all the rest of the world”. So, euphoria engulfed me as I was privileged enough to study in the City of Joy. The city of refinement, art, culture and enlightenment. The numero uno city of the empire of which it was said ‘where the sun never set’. My excitement reached fever pitch as my session approached. I was all desire to embark on the new journey. It was the reverse journey of EM Forster-not A Passage to India but A Passage to England of Nirad C. Choudhury. However, the feeling was not unalloyed. The second portion of the best-worst dichotomy of Dickens, at times weighed heavy on my mind. The thought of bearing the initial brunt (e.g. financial, cultural and academic) rendered the poetic spectrum of sweet imagination monochromatic and prosaic.

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Paradigm Shift: From Read Experience to Lived Experience With great expectations, I arrived in London in October, 2005. It was not a simple plane journey from the Orient to the Occident, from the Periphery to the Centre or speaking in terms of Braj Kachru (1990), from the ‘Outer Circle’ to the ‘Inner Circle’. Nor was it a journey from an impoverished land to an ElDorado with the mercenary end in view. It was not a case of migration from the Third World to the First World. My journey was much more than that. To me the journey was a shift from one academic culture to another.

I went to the induction class with sky kissing expectation and throbbing heart. The very first thing that arrested my attention was the tight security at the entrance of the university. This post-9/11 Zero Tolerance on security question in the British academic ambience called up images of the medieval castle. Without swiping the electronic card nobody could enter.

Swiping my ID card, I entered Tower Building, the main building of my new University. I was amazed at the manouvering of electronic data everywhere in the university. I felt like Alice in the Wonderland. From the manual-land to the automated-land. In the lift, I realised that the name of Tower Building is no misnomer- the towering height of the building may give this north London university the epithet of a Vertical University. The corridors were buzzing with students from all corners of the globe. With much difficulty I discovered the classroom. I felt like uttering Eureka, a la mode Archimedes.

The classroom was a pleasant surprise to me. It was a cosmopolitan class in the true sense of the word. There were students from Bangladesh to Brazil, Pakistan to Poland, Taiwan to Turkey. Anthropologically speaking, there were Caucasians, Mongolians, Negroes, and Dravidians in the class.

This diversity was unified under the umbrella of MA in TEFL and IELT. Unity in diversity, indeed. Precisely speaking, four continents and the three major oceans had their share in my class. This immensely interesting fact fascinated me to the n-th degree as classroom environment in Bangladesh is both linguistically and ethnically homogeneous. The read ‘melting pot’

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London emerged to me with her anthropological showcasing and cultural diversity in flesh and blood to be the lived London.

From the Textual to the Actual World It is a commonplace fact that a classroom is a binary unit, composed of teacher(s) and students. In Bangladesh a teacher is always at the giving end and students are at the receiving end. Apart from reading books, I had no idea about the academic culture of the UK. So, I was literally on my tiptoe to enjoy looking through an anthropological lens at the learning and teaching culture of the UK. The microcosm of the classroom and the macrocosm of the megalopolis of London were sites of interaction for us to encounter a social, cultural and linguistic Other. My academic sojourning took me to the dynamic ‘Actual World’ from the static ‘Textual World’ (Said, 1979). I started drinking the cup of enjoyment of encountering ‘the Other’, in Tennysonian terms, ‘to the lees’.

Friends not Masters My very first day at the university left indelible impression on my memory. The pedagogic trio, Drs. Tim Marr, Fiona English and Janet Enever were successful in giving us the impression that they were our friends, not masters. Each member of the pedagogic trinity was very articulate, friendly and extroverted. Their eloquence, mode of speech and sophisticated academic diction impressed me.

Culture Shock or Electric Shock?

In our part of the world we address male teachers as ‘Sir’ and female teachers as ‘Madam’. When Dr. Fiona told us that we had to call them by their first names, I came to realise the actual, real life force of the familiar term ‘culture shock’. No Sir, no Madam! I have to call my teachers as Fiona, Tim in the very manner I address my friends and peers! It took me much time and effort to adapt myself to this alien practice. But when in Rome one has to act like the Romans. In retrospect, I can vividly recall the ‘defining’ and ‘heavyweight’ moment when I uttered the proper noun Fiona in the seminar class. To pronounce the five letter-word, I had to 52

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engage Herculean efforts but even after that the sound that my vocal system produced seemed to be bizarre and unfamiliar to my ear-drums.

Languages lived and languages learned Cultural and linguistic issues featured prominently throughout my academic sojourning. Each encounter unfolded to me linguistico-cultural aspects which, if recorded, will dilate into a volume. The interactions taught me of real-life experiences which no ‘vernal wood’ of tomes can match. From the volume of experiences, I am going to single out a dogmarked page (dog-marked as this anecdote is cemented in my memory).

At the end of the first semester, in an intercultural discussion session led

by Dr. Fiona, the only student in the class from South Korea was describing her experience in the UK. The Korean student, a practising language teacher herself, told the class that from the very moment of her landing in Heathrow, to her queuing in the tube station to her shopping expeditions to the supermarkets, everywhere the customer care advisors asked her You okay? The omnipresence of this question vexed her. She reached the end of her tether at a supermarket when the on-duty customer care agent posed the same question to her again. Bursting into anger she threw counter-questions to the salesperson-Do I look nervous? Am I sweating? When the salesperson explained to her that by You okay (or Are you okay?) he meant and the Britons mean Can I help you?, she came to realize why she was being bombarded by this question everywhere. This is what Bhabha (1994: X) calls “the contradictory strains of languages lived, and languages learned”.

Apart from the contradictory strains of the English language ‘learned’ and ‘lived’, a host of extra-linguistic factors contribute to the swelling of the ISs and NESB students’ confusion profile. For example, the local context and cultural issues are an important part of the academic practice and the assessment regime. Tutorial or seminar discussions are sometimes based on exclusively Eurocentric discourses, TV programs, news articles and features, and contemporary issues. ISs and NESB students who do not understand the cultural context of their teachers and colleagues from host 53

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community are lost. Assessment questions in some tutorial sessions often have colloquialisms, acronyms and quotations from the British press and politicians in them. Academic sojourners, who naturally do not share the local context, often miss the relevance and significance of what they are given.

Even students with better intercultural knowledge and language skills remain confused in their discourse because of their prior experiences in a different academic system. Many of them take resort to adopting “a multivocal approach that fuses their native discourses with the conventions valued by the academy” (Canagarajah, 1997, cited in Canagarajah, 2002:37).

Because of this kind of exotic fusion and zig-zag learning strategy, their writing often ends up as a patch work of their ‘plagiphrasing’ (Biggs 2003; Wilson 2003 cited in Handa, and Power, 2005).

The classroom ecology By attending classes I came to realise that there is an unbridgeable gap between the classroom cultures of the UK and Bangladesh. Any attempt for juxtaposition of the classroom norms, practices and management of the two cultures brings the fact to the surface that East and West are poles apart in this core field of paramount importance. Some aspects of the classroom practices are discussed here. i) Teacher as Friend, Philosopher and Guide The two components in the binary unit of the classroom are the students and the teacher. So a healthy classroom ecology is dependent upon the mutual cooperation of the two parties concerned. The teacher is expected to shepherd the students effectively and properly. On the other hand, students are expected to cooperate with the teacher. However, it does not mean that the teacher teaches and manages the classroom impromptu, he manages the classroom at his sweet will. The teacher is given a clear guideline about how to teach and manage students. These instructions are given to the teacher during the pre-service and in-service teacher training courses. In addition to this, each institution has some specific rules and regulations of its own within which the teacher is expected to work.

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The first hurdle that a teacher has to overcome in all cultures is to make students maintain discipline and good conduct. It is virtually impossible to cultivate democratic practices in the classroom. Keeping this point in mind different cultures have adopted different sets of principles for the smooth functioning of the microcosmic world of the classroom.

The dictum that is blindly followed in Bangladesh to maintain discipline and good behaviour in the classroom at school level is the oft-cited and cliched ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ policy. His Majesty the Cane reigns supreme in the classroom. The teacher, who is the emperor of the classroom, rules his subjects with a heavy-hand. Any deviant or defiant behaviour is treated with the importance of rebellion or mutiny as this is viewed as a transgression and an attack on the sovereignty of the tutor.

Rebellion of this sort is subdued instantaneously, usually with sound caning. But we should not think that the teacher determines the mode of punishment off-hand. There are certainly some guidelines for the teacher to take action against a student who violates the codes of good behaviour and discipline. Some common classroom behaviour and discipline codes are: maintaining silence, paying unremitted attention to what the teacher says, wearing school uniform, submitting home task, maintaining decorum and so forth. If any student is found guilty of violating these generally accepted codes of behaviour and discipline, he or she will be awarded punishment proportionate to the crime. In addressing issues like this the approach that is usually followed in Bangladesh is the Reactive Approach.

The quintessence of this approach is that crime should be followed by punishment. It advocates the classical, millennium old ‘Crime and punishment’ theory-the concomitance of crime and punishment, indeed.

The students are punished for deviant behaviour in diverse ways. The most ready at hand punishment at primary and secondary levels is corporal punishment. The belief that is ingrained in the psyche of the teachers that to mend the ways of troublesome students there is no alternative to following ‘zero tolerance’ policy. It is deeply rooted in the pedagogic practice in Bangladesh to believe that if the teacher is, in Shakespearean terms, ‘too full of the milk of human kindness’ in dealing with the students, they are bound to go astray. So, teachers are academically pre55

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programmed to believe that they have to be cruel only to be kind to the students. Most of the teachers at primary and secondary levels are personification of terror. They are at ease to behave like Strict Martinet.

These teachers behave like authoritarian rulers in the classroom. To enrage them almost borders on invoking the wrath of the dragons. The classroom becomes a virtual inferno with the cries of the students when the tutor starts bringing them to the book of cane justice. The teacher when in a fiery mood does not hesitate to use both his physical and verbal prowess to browbeat the students. The stentorian voice and dragonian wrath of the teachers is reminiscent of Zeus and his thunderbolt. In case of the group violation of rules, the classroom becomes Tiananmann Square and the tutor subdues the rebellion with the tank- his cane in this case.

So far I have dwelt on school-level classroom control. The situation is a bit different at higher secondary and tertiary levels. These two levels are beyond the jurisdiction of corporal punishment. Students enjoy greater level of freedom here but when they take liberty as license, the authorities are there to put rein on their newfound freedom. Some institutions, specially private universities, follow zero tolerance policy to maintain congenial academic atmosphere in the campus.

If viewed through the ‘anthropological lens’, the British classroom presents a picture that is diametrically opposite to ours. The classrooms here are not authoritarian and teacher-dominated. No Confucian confusion is there. Students are imbued with democratic ideals from an early stage.

Teachers in the UK maintain egalitarian relation with the students. ii) Student-teacher relation based on symbiosis Teachers in the UK are institutionally trained and environmentally conditioned to behave as the friend, philosopher and guide of the students.

They are schooled in the fine art of treating students as individuals. This training and consciousness make the teacher accessible and thus meaningful interaction between teacher and students becomes easier. As teachers are not agents of inflicting corporal punishment, students stay mentally very close to the tutors. This makes the relationship between the 56

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two parties symbiotic. But that is not the case in Bangladesh. The student teacher relationship here is, in most of the cases, parasitic. It is something like one-way traffic. The tangible lack of mutuality between the two parties affects learning. iii) Peer observation Classes in the British universities are usually observed by colleagues of the teacher in action. At the beginning of my first semester, I was surprised when I saw for the first time the class of Dr. Tim Marr being participated in by Dr. Janet Enever and another visiting faculty. They entered the class with the paraphernalia of a student and took their seats with the students.

What was more appreciable was their seriousness. They even took notes and participated in the discussion which made the lecture lively and fruitful. The way they assimilated themselves with the students and engaged with the topic and the way they interacted with the colleague at the giving end, speak volumes in favour of the fact that peer observation is not meant for fear generation. Neither is it a routinized perfunctory academic practice. Rather it is an effective quality control tool.

All quiet on the academic front Domains of academic knowledge broadly fall into four categories: • • • •

Learning, Remarking, Creating Producing (Bernstein, 1996).

Among those mentioned above, learning is highly prioritised in our culture. But the remaining three do not get as much emphasis as they deserve. Consequently, students fail to achieve critico-creative skills.

Owing to visible absence of reflective skepticism development strategy, students are not aware of the ‘rules, routines and ruses’ of their subject discipline. They are not encouraged to brainstorm ideas and develop critical analytical faculty. The ultimate result is that, they become embedded in socially constructed discourses.

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Prior to my HE in the UK, I had hardly any remarkable idea about the learning and teaching culture of Britain. My mind was almost a tabula rasa state concerning the learning-style typology of diverse global national and ethnic groups but my academic sojourn in the UK opened for me windows to a new and unexplored world. i) Teachers and books: The thing that struck me as a student in a British University is the role of teachers and books. In our part of the globe, teachers and books are treated as the ultimate authority on any particular subject. Their authority is taken for granted. The verb that the Chinese use for ‘teach’ is jias shu, which literally means ‘teach the book’. Books are considered to be sine qua non of teaching. The opinions of books go unchallenged. The picture in Bangladesh is identical with the Chinese practice. If someone shows the courage to challenge a teacher, the teacher considers the ‘bravado’ as an attack on his wun lu (face). To save his own face, he spares no stone unturned; he uses every weapon of his armoury. Paradoxically enough, the Chinese equivalent for ‘knowledge’ is xue (to learn) wen (to ask). So, it is manifest that, the fact that inquisitive and questioning mind is the key to learning and it is theoretically recognised by the Chinese but not in practice. We are no exception either. The Chinese prioritize compliance and reinforce passivity in the process of learning and teaching. The philosophy behind this conception is that non-participative and passive learners will play compliant roles expected to promote conformity to socio-political system. This much is not expected in Bangladesh as we have some tradition of practising democratic values. But conformity to established values and an unquestioning acceptance of what teachers say and books ‘reveal’ is expected and appreciated. This is applicable to almost all levels of education- from primary to tertiary level. At all levels of education teachers have a tendency to emotionally colonise the students.

Unconformity to the accepted values metamorphoses them from pedagogue to demagogues− fiery, flamboyant and aggressive.

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Knowles (1978) distinguishes between ‘pedagogue’ (imparts knowledge) and ‘andragogue’ (facilitates learning). Teachers in my country are pedagogues with the exception of a handful of cases. They are not andragogues− not facilitators. Teachers in the UK are facilitators of learning. They play the role of moderators. ii)

All work and no exam makes Jack…

When Dr. Tim enlightened (and lightened as well) us in the induction class that there were no examinations in the British MA courses we were taken aback (relieved, though) and questions cropped up in our Asian minds regarding the seriousness of the programme. MA programmes in the UK are generally course-work, assignment, presentation, field project and researchbased. In addition to the submission of course works in the first and second semesters and a dissertation in the third semester, students have to present seminars and submit assignments on regular basis. The rationale behind this was explained by Dr. Tim in the class several times to ensure the participation of all the students in the activities. He informed us that one of the aims of British HE is to develop collaborative mentality among the students. This is achieved by incorporating diverse activities (like group work, pair work etc.) in the curriculum. Another core objective of British HE is developing criticality which is consummated through emphasis on research paper writing. These activities really develop the interpersonal skills of the students. As students do not have to compete for first or second places, which is the case with traditional examinations in our country, a sense of co-operation, amity and egalitarianism is instilled in them. iii) Development of skills-profile and Multiple Intelligences: The hallmark of Western educational system in general and British system in particular is that it is skills-based. Development of skills is emphasised in the educational system. The development of the following skills are targeted: • Technical skills (e.g. digital literacy, word processing) • Personal skills (e.g. capability of working as a team member) • Conceptual skills (e.g. problem solving) (English, 1999:10) 59

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Alongwith the afore-mentioned skills, the conscious and planned inclusion of Multiple Intelligences (linguistic, mathematical, musical, spatial, inter and intra-personal skills) make the students well-equipped to survive in the competitive world. Excepting the specialised Cadet Colleges, development of the skills and intelligences is not given due importance in Bangladesh.

Another striking point of dissimilarity between the pedagogic cultures of the UK and Bangladesh is activities. Because of heavy reliance on ‘mental photocopying’ or memorization student activities are very few in Bangladesh. There is absence of ‘student-initiated collaborative learning’.

There is virtually no group work or field project. The classroom constitutes the major portion of the learning environment. Seminars are very few even at tertiary level. But in the UK so far as my subjective experience is concerned, we had to attend three seminars (inclusive of two student presentations in groups of 10-15 students) each week. Field project, group work and presentations help improve the inter- and intra-personal skills of the students. For harmonious development of the students these activities, I think, should be encouraged in our learning culture. iv) Development of Appropriate Critical Literacy: MA courses in British universities are intellectually very challenging for overseas students as the focus of the courses are on developing criticality.

The thrust is more on relating and applying what the students learn, rather than memorizing and reproducing a body of knowledge. The theory and practice are balanced by the reinforcement of the earlier by the latter and students get ample opportunities to apply the theories that they learn.

The role of the assignment in a UK university programme is central to the process of knowledge transmission / knowledge acquisition and is the means through which the learning of that knowledge is measured within what could be considered a highly transactional context between student and institution (English, 1999). The assignments bear the stamp of teachers’ neat plan and brainstorming. This gives the students a good insight of what they learn and contributes to the development of criticality in the students.

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One curious fact drew my attention in the beginning of my first semester.

Our course tutors did not pay attention to the grammatical appropriacy of the students’ written productions. When asked about this, all of the faculty members enlightened us that the locus of British MA courses is to develop appropriate critical literacy among the students. Students are, though not solely but chiefly, assessed on the basis of their content knowledge, academically sound reflective skepticism and critical synthesis of extensive reading and research. However, special care is taken by the curriculum designers to improve the writing of postgraduate students at a macro level by making them aware of the various conventions of British academic culture, for example; essay structure, building arguments, referencing and critical analysis.

The Postgraduate course I pursued in Bangladesh is very prescriptive by nature. There is limited ‘learner autonomy’ and the focus was and still is on a fixed body of knowledge. The students have to write a four-hour paper on each course. Writing a dissertation to get an MA degree is not mandatory in the universities in our country. But in the UK, MA is only awarded after the student has submitted and passed in his dissertation. In retrospect, I see the gloomy faces (the lachrymose ones with the dew drops of tears even!) of some of my course mates, who were laurelled with a Diploma in place of an MA because they could not pass in their research paper. Contrarily, the thrust in Bangladeshi universities is on how the students reproduce what they learn and not how original and critical they are.

Digital Divide: The Haves and Have Nots Now comes the ultimate point− the ever widening gap between the haves and have nots. Information technology has revolutionised the field of education.

These days everything is going digitised. E-governance, e-commerce, elearning and what not? In this age of digital literacy and electronic books, virtual universities and digitised libraries, many universities in the third world countries do not even have ‘functional’ internet connection. Because of poor infrastructural facilities and resource constraint, the students and teachers of our country cannot reap the harvest of the technological boon. But in the 61

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British universities and libraries, I have seen to my utter surprise, the whole system is digitised− from entry point to the learning resource centre. Each classroom is equipped with projector and audio-visual aids. The lecture is not a unimodal production- it is multimode. The juxtaposition of ‘oral’ and ‘visual’ productions makes learning interesting and effective. But teaching in our country is still oral delivery based. However, the situation is a little bit different in the private universities where students only from affluent family background can afford to study. i. Graphokleptomania? Anti-plagiaristic software to strip academic pilfers: At the beginning of our first semester, the department of ELT & ALS organized a session for the students in which the demonstrator showed us how students addicted to ‘cut and paste culture’ are singled out and punished. Each subject discipline in the British universities has its own specialized software to deal and duel with plagiarism. The presenter briefed us about the ethics of acceptable academic practices and research in British universities. The way he presented the demo session showing the effectiveness of the anti-plagiarist software sent wake up call to the potential plagiarists. The skeptics in the session handed over some excerpts to the presenter to test whether the software was a paper tiger. To our utter surprise, we found that it was not! ii. England or PIN-land?

I had a novel experience when I used the university Xerox machine for the first time. I had to buy a pre-paid card from the machine. When I entered the card into the system, I was asked to enter a PIN. This was something very amusing to me. When I ‘dared’ use my Barclaycard in a Central London ATM for the first time in 2005, I was asked to key in my PIN. To activate my university library account, I had to use a PIN. PIN again. At the time of my filling the student discount form of TfL (Transport for London), I had to write a security word. This omnipresence of PIN made me soliloquise- ‘Am I in England or PIN-land’?

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Disapproving, Proving and Improving Disapproving: Insecure status of the ISs The differences between ISs and other expatriates in the UK are almost unbridgeable. ISs need to have strong financial muscles to complete their degree programmes within stipulated time. Excluding a handful of fortunate scholarship holders and exchange students, most of the overseas HE seekers are generally self-supported and live on a low income from their part-time jobs. Overseas students have given birth to a new term McJob, the inclusion of which in the Oxford dictionary in the sense of lowpaid menial jobs has been protested by the McDonald authorities. The derogatory term encapsulates the plight and labour exploitation of ISs by the British retailers.

Pressure keeps mounting on the students when time for the payment of tuition fees looms large. They have to start working extra-hours to accumulate the fees. Students even have to defer semesters to amass the required amount by working in chain superstores like TESCO, Sainsbury’s, Asda etc. Their time is so heavily consumed by their (odd) jobs that they come to their ‘dens’ only to sleep. I have heard one student introducing himself in a community gathering as a student of the University of TESCO! Many followed the suit, jokingly albeit, and introduced themselves as students of University of Sainsbury’s, University of Asda, University of NEXT and so on and so forth. This speaks volume in favour of the plight of ISs, mainly from poor countries. Furnham and Bochner (1986) have dealt with this matter in details and focussed on the financial insecurity of the overseas students in the UK. Whereas immigrants (HSMS, Working Holiday Makers, spouses etc.) come to the UK with entitlement to some privileges, ISs do not have access to any prerogative. Even illegal immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers enjoy some facilities which the students can only dream of. If we come to the domain of privileges from that of facilities, we see in the naked eye that it is the immigrant group that enjoy some boons of concrete value. Though students have legal stay permits, and they lend international aura to the host institutions, they have to pay (annual) visa renewal fees (a significant 63

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amount) to the Home Office, staggering tuition fees to universities and 22% taxes to the British government from their part-time meagre income.

No steps are seen on the agenda to ease diverse pressures on them. Many students specially from countries like Bangladesh live on minimum wages and their lives are quite miserable. This affects their academic performance and adaptation as well.

Proving From aid to trade: Differential fees for ISs Britain changed its fees structure in the universities for overseas students in the 1980s. This was a clear journey from the previous aid policy to trade or revenue generation for the government. Students in the UK are categorized as Home, EU and Internationals. This compartmentalization is not just nominal. While Home and EU students are entitled to some financial privileges, ISs have to pay exorbitant tuition fees- three times of the Home category. My Pashtu friend Khadija Gul made the key-note speaker in a seminar from Liverpool University blush by pointing out this discrimination. The professor was sermonizing on globalization, English language teaching and the benefits to be reaped by third world countries.

Cogently, my outspoken friend asked in the Q/A session, ‘How are you going to promote globalization by erecting insurmountable walls between EU and non-EU (Asians and Africans) students? While a Polish student has to pay £3000 for an MA in ELT, I have to pay £9000 (USD18000) for the same degree. Is it the promotion of globalization? Is it justice?’’

Improving Overseas students lend the much-vaunted ‘international dimension’ to Western universities. If we have a glimpse at the policy context of British universities, we shall notice that the very people, who impart ‘internationality’ and thus make almost tangible contribution (by generating huge revenue) to these institutions, are the most ignored group there. To improve the lot of the most important stakeholders in globalizing the British campuses, the following measures can be adopted:

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• • • • • •

Abolition of differential fees for ISs TA (Teaching Assistantship) to graduate students Credit access (Singapore offers this facility to ISs) Epistemological inclusion (Accommodating students’ prior knowledge and academic experience) Intercultural training Short-term Post-graduation residence permit/work permit

These measures will ease pressures (financial, cultural, and academic) on the ISs and will contribute to their better academic output. As the host country, the UK should consider these instrumental steps to improve the lot of these ‘mute outsiders’ (Handa, 2003).

Implications for Better Intercultural Adaptation: There are multifarious factors responsible for the poor adaptation of ISs in general and Bangladeshi students in particular in the British universities.

Training in language and intercultural skills would aid adaptation (Furnham and Bochner, 1986). Unfortunately, there is no training offered in Bangladesh for students before they go to the UK, though there is an exponential growth of students from Bangladesh to different international destinations, specially Britain. Host universities offer little of this kind of training for cultural and linguistic adaptation either. If the education ministry in collaboration with the foreign and cultural affair ministries offer country and culture-specific orientation courses, the outbound students’ initial shock and stress in the changed milieu can be minimized and the pace of their acculturation and adaptation can be accelerated. The host institutions, in their turn, can arrange special induction sessions for overseas students to acclimatize them to the new sociolinguistic surroundings. Investments in this in terms of money, effort and time will not go unrewarded as people convert the experience of transition into tangible benefits by minimizing the time for adaptation and maximizing the prospects for better grades and jobs, increased volume of interaction with people from the host culture.

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Conclusion Literature and research works on academic sojourning show a visibly upward trend in recent times because of unprecedented international student mobility. This exponential growth of the IS population has in turn contributed to the emergence of Intercultural Studies as a burgeoning academic discourse. This eclectic discipline exercises tremendous influence on academic and research fronts. The influence has become omnipresent because of the much-talked-about globalization and consequent flux of overseas students. Immigration, or I had better say, exodus of huge number of the public from different countries to the developed world has consummated ‘marriage of cultures’ and given birth to some cultural ‘melting pots’ in the western world. The development of these venues as hubs of academic sojourning and cosmopolitan cities has opened new avenues for delving deep into different cultures. Cities like London showcase the fascinating diversity of global cultures. The increased volume of interaction among the people of different cultural backgrounds in London, New York, Paris and elsewhere in the world has increased better understanding among different nations. My study in a great mega-city like London has given me the much-desired exposure to different cultures. This shift from uniculturality to multiculturality in the great anthropological museum i.e. London and my university have made me conversant with the pedagogic practices, learning typologies and culture(s) of the UK in particular and those of many other nations (as my class was an interesting mix of heterogeneous anthropological elements) in general. This encounter with ‘the Other(s)’ has, without a scintilla of doubt, contributed to my pedagogic insight and skills.

Besides developing cultural competence, exposure among the native speakers has enriched my ‘linguistic knowledge bank account’. The tutors have shown us how to make a production truly dialogic. The research literature, the polyvocal ethnographic writing, intercultural issues in education have updated my ‘cognitive capital’. I have benefitted from the input of British expertise in language pedagogy and research. Exposure to British methodological innovation has enabled me to make more pragmatic 66

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decisions on my teaching approach. In this age of glocalisation i.e. globalized education and localized teaching, my academic encounter with the ‘linguistic and cultural others’ has contributed positively to my pedagogic skills-profile. If measures are adopted to minimize the culture shock or disorienting experiences of ISs and NESB students and differential fees are abolished, guest and host institutions do whatever is required to check the shock effect of transitional experiences with concrete pre-emptive steps, overseas students like me will be able to complete their degree programmes with better academic output. This in turn will transform the ISs into human bridges between the two nations at international level and at personal level will make them well-equipped to survive in the shark infested waters of professionally competitive world.

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Works Cited: Bernstein, B. Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity. London: Taylor and Francis, 1996.

Bhabha H. K. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge Press, 1994.

Boswell, J. The Life of Johnson. London: Penguin Classics, 2008.

Canagarajah, A.S. "Multilingual writers and the academic community: Towards a critical relationship". Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1(2002) (1), 29–44.

English, F. "What do students really say in their essays? - towards a descriptive framework for analysing student writing." In C. Jones, J. Turner, and B. Street, (eds.) Students Writing in Higher Education-cultural and epistemological issues, Studies in Written Language and Literacy.

Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1999. 17-36.

Furnham. A and Bochner, S. Culture Shock: Psychological reactions to unfamiliar environments. London and New York: Methuen, 1986.

Handa, N. and Power, C. "Land and discover! A case study investigating the cultural context of plagiarism". Journal of Teaching and Learning JUTLP 'Academic Integrity' 2(3b), 2005.

Handa, N. "From literature to literacy: Some reflections on my personal journey and some thoughts for the future". In P. Zeegers & K. Deller-Evans (Eds.) Refereed Proceedings of the Biannual Language and Academic Skills in Higher Education conference. Adelaide: Flinders University, 2003.

Kachru, Braj B. The Alchemy of English: The Spread, Functions and Models of Non-native Englishes. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990.

Knowles, M.S. The adult learner: A neglected species. 2nd ed. Houston: Gulf, 1978.

Said, E. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979.

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HORIZON ISSN 2223-0556 Number- 4, March 2011. Published in June 2012 (p 69-78)

Test Usefulness: Diagnosis of a University Admission Test Ibrahim Hossain* Abstract: Test scores are generally considered to be an indicator of one’s ability in a particular subject. But do all the tests reflect the true ability of the test takers? What are the essential qualities of a test which make a test useful? University admission tests are one of the high stake tests which determine the future course of study of a student. The following essay is an attempt to examine the ‘usefulness’ of the English part of the admission test question 2008 for the Arts faculty of Dhaka University. The question will be evaluated by the model of ‘test usefulness’ postulated by Bachman and Palmer (1996).

Introduction: Access to tertiary education is very limited in Bangladesh. At present there are only 27 public universities. Admission to one of these public universities is a long cherished dream for many Bangladeshi students. But very few of them get the rare opportunity to materialize their dreams. One’s merit and previous excellent academic results are not enough to ensure a place in one of the departments of the public universities in Bangladesh. Passing the barriers of admission test is a mammoth task for the students. Besides the two main public exams like Secondary School Certificate (SSC) and Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) the university admission tests are one of the most important high stake tests in Bangladesh.

Description of the Test: Dhaka University (henceforth DU) is one of the oldest and largest public universities in Bangladesh. Every year thousands of students after passing

* Assistant Professor of English, Institute of Modern Languages, University of Chittagong.

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the Higher Secondary examination compete to get admitted to one of the departments under the eight faculties of DU. The Faculty of Arts is the largest faculty of DU with 16 departments. Students need to pass an admission test to get admitted to one of these 16 departments. Students’ choice of subject for undergraduate study is solely determined by this admission test score. The admission test is a one hour long MCQ test with 100 items in total from Bangla, English and General Knowledge. The total marks is 100 (Bangla-25, English-25 and General knowledge-50). Students are given 1 mark for each correct answer. The pass mark is 10 in each of these three subjects. However, to study subjects like English, International Relations, Journalism, and Public Administration students have to get higher marks in English section. For example, if a student becomes first in the admission test with a total score of 90 out of 100 but fails to get at least 15 in English part, he will not be offered subjects like English. So among the three parts of the admission test the English part requires special attention.

The DU admission test is a ‘norm referenced’ test where each of the test takers’ marks is compared with those of other test takers. A merit score is prepared by adding the admission test score with 4% from SSC and 6% from HSC results. The final score is arranged in a descending order and only the first few hundreds are selected for admission in different subjects.

The English part of the admission test has 25 items in total. There are 8 items on vocabulary, 6 on textual knowledge, 3 on thematic questions from reading paragraph, 2 on word family, 2 on the appropriate use of prepositions, 1 on grammar, 1 on literary terms, 1 on spelling, and 1 on translation from Bangla to English. The design of the test conforms to the psychometric-structuralist tradition. Here language is viewed as a set of different components like grammar, vocabulary and so on. Each of the items is tested separately in the form of multiple choice questions.

Critical Analysis: Bachman and Palmer (1996) expounded a model of test usefulness.

According to them, ‘simply using a test does not make it useful’. A useful test has to have six test qualities- reliability, construct validity, 70

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authenticity, interactiveness, impact and practicality. Their view about ‘test usefulness’ is quite comprehensive, which covers almost every aspect of a test. Is it necessary for each and every test to conform to all these six qualities in same proportion? Though they mention the six qualities, they have not mentioned anything about the appropriate proportion of these qualities. They have not mentioned the minimum acceptable levels either.

However, the proportion may vary according to test and test designer’s value judgment. If it is a large scale test and the test score determines important decisions about a large number of test takers, the test designer might want to achieve highest possible levels of reliability and validity. On the other hand, if it is a small class test, the test designer might put emphasis on the authenticity, interactiveness and impact.

Bachman and Palmer (1996) model of test usefulness provides very useful metric both for the test designers and for the test critics. While the test designers can follow the model throughout the test development process, the critics can use it as a yardstick to evaluate the usefulness of any test. As a high stake test how ‘useful’ is the English part of DU admission test? Bachman and Palmer (1996:18) describes the principles of test usefulness, In order to be useful, any given language test must be developed with a specific purpose, a particular group of test takers and a specific language use domain (i.e. situation or context in which the test taker will be using the language outside of the test itself) in mind.

The purpose of the admission test question in discussion is to select the appropriate candidates with better English language skills, who will be able to follow the academic reading and writing in English. The test obviously has a group of test takers, who are the admission seekers. The TLU domain is the academic study at undergraduate level.

Among the six qualities of a ‘useful test’ reliability and validity are regarded as essential measurement qualities because these two qualities provide the major justification for using test scores as a basis for making 71

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inferences or decisions (ibid). My appraisal of the usefulness of DU admission test will be limited to the discussion on reliability and validity.

As a high-stake test an admission test should have higher degrees of reliability. Henning (1987:73) viewed reliability as ‘accuracy of measurement. This kind of accuracy is reflected in the obtaining of similar results when measurement is repeated on different occasions or with different instruments or by different persons.’ Bachman and Palmer (1996:19) viewed reliability as ‘consistency of measurement’. ‘Reliability is a statement of the accuracy, consistency and fairness of a measuring instrument.’ (Banarjee, 2000).

If a candidate appearing at the same test on two different occasions achieves the same score, we can take the score as reliable. A reliable test score has to show consistency even if the test is scored by two different scorers. Finally, if a candidate obtains the same score by appearing at two different sets of questions with same purpose, we can take the score as reliable.

Bachman (1990:165) discusses three factors that might affect a test score and may cause reliability problem. The first factor is test method facets, which include Testing environment, Test rubric, input, expected response, relationship between input and expected response. The second factor is personal attributes like age, gender, cognitive style, background etc. The third factor is random factors like tiredness, emotional condition, random differences in the testing environment etc. In designing a test we donot have control over personal attributes and random factors but we can control a large portion of test method facets.

A quick glance at the DU admission test reveals that it has some systematic errors. In designing the test emphasis has been put on students’ textual knowledge. The test contains 6 out of 25 items which refer to the students’ textual knowledge. For example; question no 10; The last line of “To Daffodils” is-A) Ne’er to be seen again B) Vanish like summer’s rain C) Ne’er to be found again D) As quick a growth to meet decay. Why is it important for a student to memorize the last line of a poem? How does it test 72

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one’s language ability? As a proficiency test it should not focus so extensively on students’ textual knowledge. As Hughes (1989:10) asserts, Despite differences between them of content and level of difficulty, all proficiency tests have in common the fact that they are not based on courses that candidates may have previously taken.

As the test contains as many as six items from the text students studied in higher secondary level, a student with good memory can get a good score in this test. But this test score cannot be taken as reliable because the test score is not a true reflection of a student’s language ability. A student with a very good score in this test may fail to write a paragraph in English correctly. If the student is tested with a different test task, there will be inconsistent score. However, as an MCQ test the DU admission test of course will yield the same result even if it is scored by two or more different scorers. So on the basis of the reliability of the test score the present format of DU admission test cannot be said ‘useful’.

The second important criterion of evaluating the ‘usefulness’ of a test is its construct validity. ‘The purpose of validation in language testing is to ensure the defensibility and fairness of interpretations based on the test performance.’ (McNamara,2000). Validity makes sure that the interpretation of the test score is fair. Traditionally validity referred to the appropriateness of a given test as a measure of what it claims to measure ‘the degree to which a test measures what it claims, or purports, to be measuring. (Brown,1996:231). Validity was viewed in terms of face validity, content validity, criterion-oriented validity and construct validity.

However, because content and criterion-related evidence contribute to score meaning, they have come to be recognized as aspects of construct validity. In a sense, then, this leaves only one category, namely constructrelated evidence. ( Messick, 1989:20). The recent perspective of validity deals with the evidence that supports particular interpretations and uses of test scores. Bachman and Palmer (1996:21) defined construct validity as “meaningfulness and appropriateness of the interpretations that we make

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on the basis of test scores.” So to be appropriate and meaningful a test has to provide clear evidence that it measures only the abilities that we want to measure and nothing else. Hughes (1989:26) has the same view about construct validity, “A test, part of a test, or a testing technique is said to have construct validity if it can be demonstrated that it measures just the ability which it is supposed to measure.” A test loses its validity when it tests other things which it is not supposed to test. For example, a proficiency test for tourist guides should test primarily the test takers’ proficiency in speaking and listening and then to some extent reading and writing. But if the test is a multiple choice test with some questions on vocabulary and grammar, how can the test score give us any idea about the test takers’ proficiency in speaking and listening?

An analysis of the items of DU admission test reveals that the test lacks construct validity. By focusing on the students’ textual knowledge the DU admission test has turned to be a memory test rather than a language proficiency test. A test to be valid should test what it is supposed to test.

Though the test specification is not available, it is obvious that the TLU domain should be English for academic purpose. With the English language skills students should be able to follow academic reading and writing at undergraduate level. Though the DU admission test contains one reading task and some items on vocabulary and grammar, there is no task at all which can assess a students’ writing ability. It is evident that the test designer did not consider the TLU domain in designing the test items.

Hence, the test loses its validity as a proficiency test. The score one gets in this test does not really reflect his or her actual language ability required for the academic domain. So from the score of this admission test any kind of inferences or generalization about the test takers’ language ability for academic domain will be erroneous.

As students are allotted their undergraduate subjects of study on the basis of their admission test score, the test score has to be a true indicator of student’s actual language ability. Any erroneous outcome from this admission test has the potential for the wrong allotment of subjects of study. For example, a student, with poor language ability and excellent 74

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admission test score, placed in the English department, where very high level of language ability is required to follow the course, will struggle throughout his academic life and might end up getting poor results. On the other hand, if the measurement of the admission test were accurate and reliable the same student would be placed in another department where skills in English language are not as demanding as in the English department and would get good results.

So on the ground of reliability and construct validity the present format of the DU admission test clearly falls short as a ‘useful test’. It has the potential to give a wrong indication about the test takers’ language ability.

However, the ‘usefulness’ of the present DU admission test can be improved by taking care of different aspects of reliability and validity.

Reliability can be gained by shedding off the textual items from the test.

Validity can be achieved by incorporating some writing tasks in it.

Students can be asked to write at least one paragraph. Because ‘if we want to know how well someone can write, there is absolutely no way we can get a really accurate measure of their ability by means of a multiple choice test’. (Hughes,1989:2). One might argue about the practicality of incorporating writing tasks as thousands of examinees appear at the admission test. But can we really spare accuracy for the sake of economy?

Moreover, writing appropriate multiple test items is not so easy. In place of textual items more items on grammar can be added.

Works Cited: Bachman, L. Fundamental considerations in language testing. Oxford: OUP, 1990.

Bachman, L and Palmer, A. Language Testing in Practice. Oxford: OUP, 1996.

Banerjee, J. "Reliability". In Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning. London: Routledge, 2000. (pp. 513-515) Brown, J. D. Testing in Language Programs. New York: Prentice Hall, 1996.

Henning, G. A Guide to Language Testing. New York: Heinle & Heinle Publishers, 1987.

Hughes, A. Testing for Language Teachers. Cambridge: CUP, 1989.

McNamara, T. Language testing. Oxford: OUP, 2000.

Messick, S. "Validity". In R. L. Linn (ed.) Educational Measurement. London: Macmillan, 1989.

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Appendix: The DU admission test question 2008 (English Part) General English (Answer each question by choosing the best option) Read the paragraph and answer question 1-7.

English speaking people have never been really homogenous in their use of the English language. Today, if you travel extensively in the British Isles, you notice differences in pronunciation and vocabulary from shire to shire, or even if your ear is good enough, from town to town. In London alone you can find tremendous diversity in the varieties of English. In the United States, likewise, the language differs somewhat from place to place from one social “class” to another. Many New Yorkers don’t pronounce words as Chicagoans do, and in Denver people don’t sound like those in Chicago. In some parts of the Southwest, Spanish influence shows up in the vocabulary: elsewhere, Germans and others have affected the English language.

1.

Where can we find “Spanish influence”?

A. In the Southwest of the US B. in England C. in pronunciation D. elsewhere

2.

The word ‘extensively’ is A. a Noun C. an adverb

B. an adjective D. none of A,B and C

The word ‘Tremendous’ means A. terrible B. shocking

C. great

3.

4.

Choose a suitable title for the paragraph A. languages B. Dialects C. English in the U.K and the U.S.A D. accents

5.

The word ‘homogenous’ means A. diverse C. correct

6.

B. homely D. uniform

The words ‘from shire to shire’ stand for A. from country to country B. from province to province C. from state to state D. from county to county

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D. excellent

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7.

“The British Isles” are A. the United Kingdom C. England

B. the United States D. Scotland and Ireland

8.

In the sentence, ‘The man is a mad dog.” ‘mad dog’ is an example of a/an A. simile B. metaphor C. assonance D. alliteration

9.

In the line “Tossing their heads in sprightly dance”. The word ‘sprightly’ is an A. adjective B. adverb C. verb D. noun

10. The last line of “To Daffodils” is A. Ne’er to be seen again B. Vanish like summer’s rain C. Ne’er to be found again D. As quick a growth to meet decay.

11. The day- labourer depends --------his day’s earnings-----survival.

A. at,with B. on,for C. to,at

D. in,for

12. What lies half sunk in the sand in Shelly’s “Ozymandias”?

A. broken statue B. two trunkless legs C. an ancient place D. broken head of a statue 13. In the lines, “Here shall he see no enemy” taken from “Under the Green wood tree” ‘Here’ stands for A. nature B. the greenwood tree C. open space D. hunting ground 14. Your mood seems to be very meditative this evening. Here ‘meditative’ means A. gleeful B. desperate C. thoughtful D. stern 15. “ Much have I ----------in the -----------of gold.”

A. desired, area B. gone, stores C. looked, field D. travelled, realms 16. It is difficult to get rid------------all the ------------A. of, refuse B. from, animals C. by, rubbish D. with, filth 17. Global warming may have a -----------effect on life.

A. pollutant B. industrious C. disastrous D. destruction

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18. The phrase “by all means” means A. meaningful C. by hook or by crook

B. uncertainty D. certainly

19. Choose the translation of the sentence “-----------------------------------A. he has been suffering from fever for the last four days.

B. he had fever for last four days C. he has suffered from fever for four days D. he has fever for the last four days 20. Which sentence is correct?

A. He casted his vote for you B. He offered his vote for you C. He cast his vote for you D. He dropped his vote for you.

21. The automobile’s exhaust system-----foul smelling fumes.

A. attracted B. condensed C. neutralized D. emitted 22. Choose the correct spelling A. pneumonia C. nemonea

B. nemonia D. pneumonia

23. The word “jocund” in “ I wandered Lonely as a cloud” means A. comic B. merry C. ridiculous D. funny 24. The word ‘niche’ means A. statue C. humble

B. proper place D. confusion

25. According to your English text, Polynesian fire walkers A. are able to make a spectator also walk on fire B. teach the spectators how to use magic C. do not believe that they are under magical spell D. Cannot make any spectator walk on fire.

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Class Conflicts in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights Muhammed Rukan Uddin* Md. Mohib Ullah** Abstract: This paper proposes to study Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Brontë (1814-1848) as a class-conscious novel that highlights signs of class conflicts current in nineteenthcentury England. To start with, the paper concentrates on the views concerning the structure of history and the superstructure of culture and society to manifest how these ideas are instrumental to the making of Wuthering Heights. In this regard, our study intends to look into the socio-cultural scenario of the Victorian England that had had a great sway on the insightful faculty of Emily Brontë. Simultaneously, it underscores the crosscultural crises bolstered by financial disparity that manipulate different relationships, and contribute to the towering tensions between the two houses of the novel—Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. The two houses represent two diametrically opposed classes of the Victorian society, and have an influence on almost all of the characters in the novel. This paper, thus, examines the issues of class conflicts mirrored in the novel’s social milieu and specific forms dramatized in different layers of relationships in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.

Emily Brontë had published Wuthering Heights (1847) one year before Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friederich Engels (1820-1895) declared the historical ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’ (1848). Our study of the early Victorian period reveals that the proximity of time between the

* **

Lecturer, Department of English, University of Chittagong Lecturer, Dept. of English Language and Literature, International Islamic University Chittagong

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Brontë sisters and Karl Marx might lead to a similarity in thought born out of the identical socio-political issues of the Victorian England. Classbound social stratum, thus, has its trace in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights giving us enough space and scope to evaluate the novel from the class-conflict perspective. Our understanding of the novel relates to classconscious praxis to see through the age-old binary oppositions that exist in the society between the rich and the poor, the master and the slave etc.

More importantly, the updated form of this opposition which hit the Victorian society was between the ‘bourgeois’ and the ‘proletariat’ that made the society fall asunder. Very relevantly, Brontë’s novel deals with this social paradigm clothed in fictional realism.

Class division in society can be traced to the genesis of civilization, and it has been updating its course to cope with the passage of time. In all phases of history there has been a conflict between these two classes of the society. In ancient times, the conflict was between free citizens and slaves.

In the feudal society of the middle ages, it was between feudal lord and the serf; later on, between the aristocrats and the commoners. But in the Victorian age when Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights, there grew another society which was termed as the bourgeois who possessed the mode of production. In this period the conflict was, first and foremost, between the capitalists and the workers, or the proletariat. The oppressors who direct the mode of production, and thus own wealth and property often brandish their swords over the oppressed; on the other hand, the poor carry the yoke of production, and are in a world of economic alienation heading to eventual deprivation. Marx significantly emphasizes that all cultures serve the interest of the ruling or capitalist class that sets the norms which are the superstructure of the society for what is right and wrong. We get Marx’s stinging words from The German Ideology: The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of the society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of intellectual production at its disposal has control over the means of mental production. (qtd. in Lavine 1984: 294) 80

Class conflicts in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

This is Marx’s wake up call to all the working people to be united to tumble down the bourgeois from the ruling seats that control the means of production. It is to create an equal share of the wealth for the people with an ultimate view to building a classless society, which would make it possible to contribute according to their abilities and take according to their needs. In the concluding section of the Manifesto-‘Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties’-Marx declares that the working people’s ‘end can be attained only by forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions’, whereas in Wuthering Heights Brontë makes her hero speak to Hindley, a petty bourgeois: ‘I only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I will plan it out: while I’m thinking of that, I don’t feel pain’. (Brontë: Ch.VII) i Emily Brontë was highly swayed by her time. During her life Emily traveled many places, and witnessed socio-political upheavals from a very close distance which stamped a great effect on her mind. Living in a patriarchal society, she didn’t have an avenue for the unaffected expression of her rebellious thoughts, which were the direct outcome of her observation of a society infested with many ills and diseases. It is also a fallacy to assume that the Brontë sisters lived in a secluded cocoon on the edge of wild moors. Rather, the truth is, their natal place Haworth was not in fact a remote locality but a small industrial town near Keighley, in the industrial West Riding of Yorkshire. The Brontë family saw strikes and lock-outs in Haworth too, in which the Reverend Patrick Brontë, Emily’s father and the local clergyman, was inevitably involved. It is said that the Reverend Patrick, at one time, incurred the anger of the local employees by assisting the lock-out workers in his parish (Stoneman: 1998). It is also not completely true that Emily was confined within the boundary walls of her parsonage; rather she visited Leeds, Bradford, Keighley and Halifax and even spent a short time in Brussels, Belgium. Thus, the turbulent world of the 19th century was candidly exposed to her eyes.

In early Victorian England, Emily saw a society split between the rich and the poor, the workers and industrialists. She saw the worker could have a 12-hour working day in a freezing cold production hall. The pay was often 81

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so poor that children and expectant mothers also had to work which led to unspeakable social conditions. In many places women were obliged to supplement their earnings by prostitution. Their customers were the respected citizenry of the town. It infuriated Karl Marx and Emily – the outcomes were the ‘Manifesto’ of the former and Wuthering Heights of the latter. What was possible for Marx was not possible for Emily due to the patriarchal setting of the society that never allowed any woman to write about even fairy tales, let alone any revolutionary pamphlets for social change. The situation was such that when Charlotte Brontë, Emily’s elder sister, wrote to Robert Southey, the Poet Laureate, sending him some of her poems and asking his advice, she was replied thus: Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it, even as an accomplishment and a reaction. To those duties you have not yet been called, and when you are you will less eager for celebrity. You will not seek in imagination for excitement, of which the vicissitudes of this life…will bring with them but too much. (qtd. in Gaskell, 1855: Ch 8)

Elizabeth Gaskell, the biographer of Charlotte Brontë, shows us a brief picture of the Brontës that gives us an insight into the life of Emily, who chose to become a writer defying the injunctions of the male-run society.

A man could do whatever he liked; it was a matter of preference for him.

But a woman could not exercise her wishes; she just carried out the dictation of the society. Gaskell writes: When a man becomes an author, it is probably merely a change of employment to him… but no other can take up the quiet regular duties of the daughter, the wife, or the mother, as well as she whom God has appointed to fill that particular place: a woman’s principal work in life is hardly left to her own choice; nor can she drop the domestic charges devolving on her as an individual. (ibid)

Wuthering Heights was produced in a period when England and all other European countries were going through social and economic changes, 82

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industrial unrest and political instability. Emily grew up in the second phase of the Industrial Revolution when the great inventions of the 18th century—such as engine-driven power tillers and power driven machinerywere developed and consolidated into the factory system. The emergence of trade unions in the 1830s lobbied against the poor law and for improved factory conditions thus fueling class battles between organized labour and their employers. On the other hand, the rise of a broad democratic movement in the 1840s known as Chartism aimed at campaigning for reform by mass meetings and demonstrations provoked the government to severe policies of repressions. Emily’s Yorkshire was at the heart of these political conflicts and confrontations.

The Brontë sisters grew up near one of the sources of the Industrial Revolution in an English country divided between large landed estates and intensive manufacturing. And far from being mysteriously sequestered from all this, living only in their own private imaginative world, their fiction was profoundly influenced by it. In fact, Charlotte Brontë’s novel Shirley (1847) is explicitly set in a landscape of Industrial manufacturing, large-scale capitalist agriculture and working class unrest. Thus, the Brontës were not, then, three weird sisters deposited upon the Yorkshire moors from some metaphysical outer space. On the contrary, their lives were shaped by some of the most typical conflicts of the Victorian England–conflicts between rural and urban, colony and metropolis, commercial south and the industrial north, female sensibility and male power etc.

The years of the Brontë sisters’ childhood were, indeed, a time of ruination. Thousands of handworkers were scattered in hill-cottages throughout the region. Karl Marx described one aspect of that destruction of the handloom weavers as the most terrible tragedy of English history in The Capital (1867). The Brontë’s era also coincided with strikes, Chartism, struggle against the Corn Laws and agitation for factory reform.

One contemporary government official wrote that there was a ferocious civil war boiling in the district; and the Brontë’s own village of Haworth had several worsted mills and a more than century-old industry (Eagleton 83

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2005:126). In his All Alone: The Life and Private History of Emily Jane Brontë, Romer Wilson relates one of Emily’s poems to the turmoil and chaos of the Plug Riots (1843) in which desperate workers tried to destroy the steam boilers which were reducing them to starvation: Why ask to know what date, what clime?

There dwelt our own humanity, Power worshippers from earliest time, Foot-kissers of triumphant crime Crushers of helpless misery, Crushing down justice, honouring wrong: If that be feeble, this be strong. (qtd. in Stoneman 1998:136)

It is possible that, having visited Manchester in August 1846, Emily had had her eyes opened to the evils of industrialization. It was the decade of Chartism, Mrs. Gaskell’s novels of working-class life, and Friedrich Engels had, by the date of Emily Brontë’s brief visit, been working in Manchester amongst the slum-dwellers, and written his Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.

Brontë very skilfully showcases and sensationalizes the social divergences that are the hallmarks of the nineteenth century England in her novel. For example, the differences between the two houses of the novel are differences of both culture and class. But these differences provide a nucleus to the social distance between Heathcliff and Edgar Linton and Hindley. Heathcliff is a creature picked up by old Earnshaw from the Liverpool streets with an unknown origin. As a boy who is uncultured, uncivilized and black, he is in every way an antithesis to the Thrushcross Grange. He becomes a pariah both in the Heights and the Grange. The Earnshaw family can be called yeoman - a farming family as it is closer to the land and to agricultural labour; on the other hand, the Lintons are a bit more polished and refined, and have constructed a distance between themselves and the rural economy. The Grange stands in a park and its security is ensured by the boundary wall in a frontier between civilization and the wild nature. The house keeps security dogs as the bourgeois does 84

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to protect their ill gotten riches from the workers’ attacks. On the contrary, the Heights is situated on the moor which is frequently trodden by Heathcliff and Catherine’s random loitering, and is characterized by all the primitive roughness of a peasant life-style. Apart from this, the Grange has all the civilized luxuries of an aristocratic and sophisticated society.

Though apparently the two families are socially compatible and at least of equal status, there are inherent differences which put one house in contrast with the other at some levels. From within the Heights has a marvelous solidity and a clear distinction between the ‘house’ (main living room) and the kitchen, these rooms share at their worst a primitive lack of comfort and at their best a homely atmosphere centered on a glowing hearth.

Nelly, the narrator and the attendant of the house describes an interior tableau which captures the last moment of fireside in the years of unhappiness at the Wuthering Heights: […] we are all together- I a little removed from the hearth, busy at my knitting, and Joseph reading his Bible near the table (for the servants sat in the house then, after their work was done).

Miss Cathy had been sick, and Heathcliff was lying on the floor with his head in her lap. (Brontë: Ch.V)

Such physical and social harmony is absent in the Grange, and is contrasted absolutely with the empty elegance of the drawing room at the Grange: […] a splendid place carpeted in crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of glass drops hanging in silver chains from the centre, and shimmering with little soft tapers. (Brontë: Ch.VI)

The interior scene is obviously indicative of the 19th century industrialists’ house decour which the workers thought was painted red by their blood.

Brontë very cautiously uses two important class-conscious words: ‘landlord’ and ‘capital’ in the first chapter that foreshadows the forthcoming class conflicts in the novel. This also signals the class divergences that will soon take place between Lockwood, the southern 85

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dilettante who enters the bizarre and unfamiliar world of the remote northern farmhouse, and Heathcliff, the protagonist of the novel. Their social incongruence is well revealed in their conversation in the first chapter of the novel. Lockwood uses a conventional upper class language, ‘while enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-coast’ (Brontë: Ch.I); this type of refined language is really antithesis to the harsh dialect of the other characters and the unpolished domestic atmosphere of the inhospitable Heights where ‘guests are so exceedingly rare’ (ibid).

Lockwood, as a city dweller marks himself out as both stranger and intruder. Therefore, the first chapter of the novel doesn’t only show the meeting of two persons but also shows a cross-cultural conflict between an independent, sociable city-dweller and a strange territory of an impenetrably mystifying social landscape signified by Heathcliff with his ‘black eyes’ and ‘suspicious brows’.

When Lockwood visits the Heights for second time, he makes some mistakes which very much indicate that his culture is a different one. He compliments Cathy on her ‘favourites’, only to discover that they are dead rabbits. He assumes that Cathy will display the amiable and hospitable manners to him familiar in the ladies of his own social milieu; but he is quickly disappointed when the later flings the teaspoon back into the caddy. He thinks that Hareton, who is in reality the true heir to the estate, is a servant because of his worn out attire and behaviour. Moreover, Lockwood entirely gets the wrong idea about the systems and the relationships that are characteristic of the Wuthering Heights. Any searching reader would obviously comprehend that these mistakes and wrong ideas mark out a social distance between him, and the house he is entering. This distance suggests that the vicious conflicts that take place within the farmhouse have something to do with class conflicts.

As mentioned earlier, one of the main differences, obviously of culture, is seen in the crucial formulation of the two houses. In chapter VI, this difference takes a very pierce move leaving us to think of the bourgeoisproletariat relationship that is still topical in our time. When Heathcliff and Catherine are detected at the Lintons’ threshold they receive an inhospitable 86

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welcome. The Lintons react to a combat from outside with the instinct of the bourgeois, assuming the strangers to be working class people who are called ‘robbers’, ‘thieves’ and ‘rascals’ (Brontë: Ch.VI). They use guns and dogs to protect themselves from the imaginary enemies who are created by their own oppressive hands. The use of ‘dogs’ to thwart the advance of Cathy and Heathcliff, according to Terry Eagleton, is due to the bourgeois endeavour to protect ill-gotten wealth and to suppress the proletariat voice by using weapons (Eagleton 1975:106-7). Catherine is received with utmost care and cordiality because of her good attire while Heathcliff is driven out from the house as if a criminal, and ‘the villain scowls so plainly in his face, would it not be a kindness to the country to hang him at once’ (Brontë:Ch.VI). The description of the house of the Lintons narrated by Heathcliff gives us an imaginary picture of Capitalists’ aristocracy. In addition, the richness, splendor and luxury of the Grange which is ‘carpeted with crimson’, and the ‘ceiling bordered by gold’ are entirely opposed to the simplicity of domestic affair of the Wuthering Heights.

The ideologyii that the Grange shows is obviously a dominant ideology which is so much influencing that it has virtually deformed Catherine both physically and psychologically. She is transformed from ‘a hatless little savage’ to ‘a very dignified person’ that even her brother Hindley finds it difficult to recognize. Hindley’s comment to Catharine--‘You look like a lady now’ (Brontë:Ch.VI ) is important to note as the word lady reminds us of a superior class. The Grange has changed Catherine not only in dress, but also in behaviour, attitude and taste. She comes to her farmhouse as a girl redefined, and is inculcated in a high-class culture, which is very unlikely to suit the inmates of the Heights. Catherine’s fingers are ‘wonderfully whitened with doing nothing’ at all. Having been civilized by a superior house she now wants to civilize Heathcliff whose black attire and ebony complexion were sources of fascination for her. Heathcliff meets Catherine in torn dress and a worn out look which gives birth to a belief that the latter has been for six days in a superior house and has now come back to an inferior one. On the other hand, Heathcliff feels very much disgraced himself and is not ready to yield to Catherine’s dictation.

Class conflicts underlie the verbal conflicts when Heathcliff says: ‘I shall 87

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be as dirty as I please, and I like to be dirty, and I will be dirty’ (Brontë : Ch.VII). We might also note that Catherine’s civilizing process reminds us of Miss Watson’siii to Huck in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. To put it plainly, Catherine borrows a sort of dominant culture from the Lintons which ultimately takes her away from a person she was deeply attached to.

The novel’s central conflict is based, to a large extent, upon social considerations. This conflict matures in chapter IX where Catherine measures the love of Heathcliff and Edgar on the scale of social status.

Catherine’s regard for Edgar Linton is tainted with contempt for the paleness of his character, and yet she chooses him over the man she loves. Catherine here is a hapless victim of a society that gives value to social security over human integrity. A person raised in a democracy might consider this a bit implausible, especially in view of Catherine’s emotional nature, because in our relatively fluid society there would not necessarily be any permanent social distinction between Edgar and Heathcliff. That is, Edgar would not necessarily be considered ‘better’ than Heathcliff, an interesting man who might rise in the world eventually gaining wealth and position himself. One thing we should also consider that Heathcliff’s unknown origin cannot suffice the fact that his origin is much inferior to that of Hindley or Edgar. It is the mystery surrounding Heathcliff that his lack of personal history, his sullen uncommunicativeness, his almost magical capacity to reconstruct himself during his absence from Wuthering Heights makes him such a suitable focus for other’s projections. Heathcliff is the ‘cuckoo’ without history, an enigma so unsettling that Nelly is inclined, as indeed some criticsiv have been subsequently, to invent a past for him: Who knows, but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of them able to buy up, with one week’s income, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange together? And you were kidnapped by wicked sailors, and brought to England. Were I in your place, I would frame high notions of my birth. (Brontë: Ch.VII)

Though we are not sure of his being a pauper or prince before his reappearing at the Heights, one thing we are well aware of that Hindley’s 88

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incessant oppressions and repeated physical and mental injuries led Heathcliff to a servile periphery from where Heathcliff forms a granite determination to come to the centre.

Wuthering Heights reflects English society in the nineteenth century, and in that society Heathcliff could have scant scopes to become ‘respectable’ as the class structure was far too rigid. One was born into certain social stratum, and unless something extraordinary happened, one remained in that level on the social scale throughout life. An essential distinction was maintained between the servant and the master, the tradesman and the landowner, the commoner and the aristocrat: movement upward was very difficult, as it was ‘proper’ to remain in one’s own place. The value of the individual in that strictly classed society depends, to a large extent, on the class to which one belongs. Heathcliff with his obscure birth and slum background is a ‘low’ person as he is emphatically not well-bred. This is the Achilles’ heel of Heathcliff where both Edgar and Hindley are hammering. Though Heathcliff can now talk and act like a gentleman, he can never be on a par with Edgar Linton or Mr. Lockwood as the shadow of his unknown birth prevents it. When Catherine says it would degrade her to marry Heathcliff, she is stating a very important impediment, which might be impossible for Heathcliff to instantly overcome. The wife takes on the social status of her husband, and if Catherine had married Heathcliff she would have dropped several rungs on the social ladder, and lost considerable prestige in the barter. The Earnshaws are an old family; they own their land and farm it. Thus, though not of the gentry, they are not too far below that exalted plane, the gap between their level and Heathcliff’s is immense, especially now that Hindley has degraded him to servant’s status. Hindley’s brutal behaviour has pushed Heathcliff down the social rung where he was placed by his creator. The Lintons, on the other hand, are legitimate country gentry, minor aristocrats, who rent their land to tenants. Catherine, by marrying Edgar, becomes immanently respectable, a member of the upper classes, and wishes to be ‘the greatest woman of the neighborhood’ (Brontë: Ch. IX); whereas ‘if Heathcliff and I are married, we should be beggars’ (ibid). This is obviously a social belief which is constructed by the structure of the existing society of the nineteenth 89

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century England. For this reason, Heathcliff looks upon Catherine’s preference for Linton as a form of class discrimination, and Heathcliff’s verbal rebellion comes out of a sharpest pain: ‘Having leveled my place, don’t erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home’ (Brontë: Ch.XI). The class system manipulates the heart of Catherine, and constitutes the major conflict of the novel by making Catherine tempted to become a social climber at Heathcliff’s expense, which the writer presents as very much a social choice, not a personal one.

Heathcliff remains absent in the novel for three years after he overhears the conversation of Catherine and Nelly about the former’s cruel decision of marrying Edgar. Heathcliff makes use of his mysteriously earned money during his absence to establish power and possession over the Heights and Grange. He does so because these two houses have thrust him down the lower step of the ladder from where it is difficult for him to get Catherine who is in the upper step. It is notable that his desire for Cathy is obviously not physical, and none of Heathcliff’s actions and utterances proves it; it is rather an attachment far more deeply interlocked in a purpose sublime and sanctified. Through his union with Cathy, Heathcliff wants to turn it into a union between the two opposite rungs of the social ladder; the upper rung of which will never meet the lower one unless and until the ladder is broken in the middle. In the same way, Heathcliff thinks he will be able to reach Catherine only when the enemies who stand between them will be removed and demolished.

In the modern world, a bitter struggle between two ideologies--capitalist and communist is going on with an all-encompassing effect in society. In every stage, the former has tried to suppress and oppress the latter by ‘owning the economic mode of production and possessing economic, political, and ideological supremacy’ (Marxist-Leninist Philosophy 1987: 55). The novel also, more or less, shows these characteristics between the two conflicting classes that ultimately move to class struggles:

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Capitalist Class The Lintons

Working Class Heathcliff

are landowning gentry, enjoying mode of production

works under Earnshaws suffers tremendously by Hindley and Edgar Linton

establish superiority over Heathcliff through dominant culture

is denied of rights as a socially inferior person

fall in Physical confrontation with Heathcliff try to subjugate Heathcliff curving his liberty

takes revenge on the houses and their inmates who mercilessly oppressed him

by

at last give in to Heathcliff

at last takes over the houses

F.1. The above diagram shows the differences between Heathcliff and the Lintons that breed cultural difference as well making the class struggle inevitable in Wuthering Heights.

Heathcliff, by most of the readers, has been often conceived of as a diabolical character in the novel. What is left is to shower him with sympathy particularly at the beginning and at the end of the novel. At the beginning of the novel, he draws on our sympathy because of Hindley’s diabolical treatment on the former in the absence of Mr. Earnshaw. Early in the novel we pity him because of Catherine’s pitiless separation from Heathcliff, and her getting wed with Mr. Edgar Linton. At the end, Heathcliff keeps our sympathy because his revenge is not merely neurotic; it has an ethical force. He has been feeling the hoof beats in his heart ever since he was beaten physically by Hindley and Edgar and also emotionally

by Catherine. Heathcliff uses their own weapons against them with complete ruthlessness. The weapons he uses against the Earnshaws and Lintons are their own weapons of money and arranged marriages. He gets power over them by the classic methods of the ruling class, expropriation and the property deals. He buys out Hindley after he comes back to the Wuthering Heights and reduces him to drunken impotency. He marries Isabella, and then organizes the marriage of his son to Catherine Linton, so that the entire property of the two families shall be controlled by him. He systematically degrades Hareton Earnshaw to servility and illiteracy:

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I want the triumph of seeing my descendent fairly lords of their estates! My child hiring their children to till their father’s lands for wages. (Brontë: Ch. XX)

The end of the novel records the pitiless treatment of Heathcliff towards the inmates of the two houses by ill-treating Hareton, the rightful inheritor of the Wuthering Heights, curving the natural liberty of little Cathy, and creating a total ownership of the two houses, precisely the same way that Hindley and Edgar exploited him. Here too, readers may find it hard to defend Heathcliff’s actions later in the novel, particularly his cruelty towards the children and his expropriating their lands and properties and seizing them himself as the true ideals of the proletariat struggle; they may find Heathcliff’s systematic revenge remote from the philosophy of the proletariat revolutionary. In this connection, we should think about the two phases of communism: Raw communism and Ultimate communism—the former is obsessed with seizing all material goods from the capitalists, and it will take place after the ruling class is driven out of the power or when the situation will be pro-proletariat leading to an abrupt upsurge of pent up reactions often through bloodshed on the part of the long oppressed. Marx calls it the Reign of Terror which will be of a short time; after which there will commence the second phase: the Ultimate Communism ensuring classlessness, equality, justice, and after which ‘man will repossess, expropriate, regain, himself from enslavement and will live in unity with man and nature in the communist world to come’ (Lavine 283). Moreover, the reason behind Heathcliff’s cruel revenge on the two houses and their inmates can be found in Nicoly Astrovsky’s novel How the Steel was Tempered (1936). When Sergei, the protagonist of the novel starts killing the Polish soldiers, to placate the shocking readers Astrovesky writes— ‘and he, Sergei would kill in order to hasten when men would not kill one another any longer’. (qtd. in Mukhupaddhay 2006:67) Though issues of class conflicts mark the novel throughout, and all the characters are caught up in a whirling vortex of class consciousness, Brontë makes these conflicts evaporate towards the end of the novel through her adroit treatment of the characters. The whole thing can be 92

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comparable to the systematic progress of a society from capitalism to communism. Division into classes disappears under communism–this is heralded at the end of Wuthering Heights. It is topical to note that once V. I. Lenin noticed a poster in a hall where he was to make speech; the poster read: ‘The Reign of the workers and peasants will last forever’ (qtd. in Buzuev, Gorodnov 1987). V.I. Lenin explained to his audience the erroneousness of this slogan, and pointed out that the workers’ mission is not to immortalize themselves as a class but to liquidate the class distinctions to build a classless society. In the same way, the concluding events of the novel show a pattern of resolution and reconciliation through the tragic destiny acted out by Heathcliff and Catherine. When Mr. Lockwood returns to the Wuthering Heights after Heathcliff’s death, he encounters certain changes which were absent during his first visit to the Heights: ‘I had neither to climb the gate, nor to knock it- it yielded to my hand. That is an improvement! I thought.’(Brontë: Ch.XXXII) Early in the novel the gates and doors of the Wuthering Heights were locked but now they are open. Nature wears new attire. Flowers grow among the food trees signifying the arrival of a new era. In a sense, the sophisticated civilization of the Grange has moved closer to the primitive culture of the Heights. We notice a marked change in the relationship of Catherine and Hareton. They are passing through tender times reminding us of Heathcliff and Catherine’s sweet times on the moor. Separation is replaced by union, hatred by love, and animosity by a sagacity of integrity.

The long sad saga of Heathcliff and Catherine, which is painted by agonizing events and severance, give way to a narrative between the Heights and the Grange.

Wuthering Heights was published in a time when England was going through enormous socio-economic changes due to the rise of the Industrial Revolution. Division in the society was widening day by day between the two conflicting classes of the society namely the rising bourgeois and the proletariat. Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights (1847) houses these socio-cultural divergences that are, to a great extent, based on the class conflicts. Through her masterly delineation of the two contrasting cultures 93

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of the houses and the powerful construct of their inmates’ disposition and demeanor Emily Brontë not only shows the class conflicts that were plaguing the Victorian England but also shows, through the amalgamation of cultures of the two houses later in the novel, how these crises can be resolved and reconciled.

Notes i

All textual references are from A Norton Critical Edition: Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë. Fourth edition: Edited by Richard J. Dunn: 2005

ii

It is important here to understand the precise meaning of ideology. Ideology is not in the first place a set of doctrines; it signifies the way men live out their roles in class-society, the values, ideas and images which tie them to their social functions and prevent them from a true knowledge of society as a whole.

(Eagleton 2002: 15)

iii

In Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Miss. Watson wants to civilize Huck, but attempts back fire.

iv

See, for example, James Kavanagh in Emily Brontë (Oxford: Basil Blackwell: 1985) who suggests that Heathcliff has an Irish working class heritage.

Works Cited Buzuev, V,V Gorodnov. What is Marxism and Leninism? Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1987.

Eagleton, Terry, Marxism and Literary Criticism. New Work: Routledge, 2002.

---. “Myths of Power in Wuthering Heights”. New Casebooks: Wuthering Heights.

Ed. Patsy Stoneman. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993.

---. The English Novel: An Introduction. UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2005.

Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1857.

Lavine T.Z. From Socrates to Sartre: the Philosophic Quest. New York: Bantam Books, 1984.

Mukhopaddhay, Bimol Kumar. Marxiya Sahityatatwa. Kolkata: Deys Publishing, 2006.

Stoneman, Patsy (Ed.) Wuthering Heights: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism. Cambridge: Icon Books, 1998.

T. Vlasova, E. Evanob. Marxist-Leninist Philosophy. Moscow: Progress Publisher, 1987.

Wilson, Romer. All alone: The Life and Private History of Emily Brontë. London: Chatto and Windus, 1928. <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communistmanifesto/index.htm> 94

HORIZON ISSN 2223-0556 Number- 4, March 2011. Published in June 2012 (p 95-104)

Passage of Power: A comparative study of A Doll’s House and The Doctor’s Wife Rownak Jahan* Abstract: Control means to assert power or authority to direct, order or manage somebody or something. The indomitable impulse to control everything around is inherent in human being as one of the primeval instincts. In the history of mankind innumerable wars can be traced back where the mightiest wanted to gain control over the mightier, the mightier wanted to gain control over the mighty. If the list is opened with Alexander the Great and his grand army wreaking havoc on the whole world, many more blood thirsty commanders will get easy entries in the record over centuries. More or less this is the outline of the hierarchy of gaining control. But the application of power in national and domestic spheres is not always the same. In order to investigate how lust for power impacts domestic life and how it is exercised within the periphery of four walls of a house I have chosen two books from two entirely different literary contexts. These are Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Sawako Arioshi’s The Doctor’s Wife. In these two works I noticed that the characters, especially the women, have employed multifarious means to obtain control over others around them. In both texts, the characters use varied and effective tricks to pull the strings together to twist affairs in favor of them. This writing seeks to explore the application of power at family level and means that are employed to obtain it.]

When it comes to the question of defining power, we have to take one titanic figure from the nineteenth century and two colossal figures of the modern era of epistemology and their opinion on power into our careful considerations. One is Paul-Michael Foucault (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984), the French philosopher, critic and sociologist. The other one is Noam Chomsky, (the most important intellectual alive- New York Times), the American linguist, cognitive scientist and political thinker. These three

*

Lecturer, Department of English, University of Chittagong.

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consummately scholastic persons have extensively investigated and therefore have distinctly different views on the origin, growth and execution of power. Nineteenth century philosopher Nietzsche has an original and ingenious insight into human nature and its association with power. To him the search for knowledge and truth is also in reality a roundabout search for power. In an endeavor to define the theory of Will to Power he clarifies, that there is, however one basic spirit that does lie beneath all human beings and that is the eagerness to dominate over the environment. This innate thrust Nietzsche labels as Will to Power, which is not merely an urge to survive the adversities and to crush the contenders, emanates from nature or put by man made institutions, but a glowing tribute to all the life-affirming forces. Nietzsche says, “the strongest and highest Will to Life does not find expression in miserable struggle for existence, but in a Will to war. A will to Power, a Will to Overpower (374).” If we pay a close attention to this theory of Nietzsche then we can easily conclude that Nietzsche is equating our being born with our atavistic drive to secure control over our surroundings. This search for power and therefore knowledge has altered the prehistoric dark and primeval world into this enlightened and civilized one.

Chomsky has always deemed the power hunt of the super power as “illegitimate” though the superpowers always are very successful to advocate their case and to label it as things done only with an altruistic aim in mind. According to Michael Foucault the first systematic application of power came with the emergence of monarchy in the medieval age in order to prevent the widespread clash between smaller feudal power groups. In an interview conducted by Alessandro Fontana and Pasquale Pasquoni he observes, “The monarchy presented itself as a referee, a power capable of putting an end to war, violence, and pillage and saying no to these struggles and private feuds. It made itself acceptable by allocating itself a juridical and negative function, albeit one whose limits it naturally began at once to overstep” (Pg-63). Foucault believes that power is diffused throughout society and the aftermaths of it are not always predictable. The sources of power are not invariably the same either. Their relations depend on changing time and place and hence transitory. About the problem of power play of modern time among nations he articulates, “The way power was exercised-concretely and in detail-with its specificity, its techniques and tactics, was something that no one attempted to 96

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ascertain; they contented themselves with denouncing it in a polemical and global fashion as it existed among the “others”, in the adversary camp” (Pg-57-58). We have come across the personal and at the same time, universally acclaimed and accepted views of three towering figures and their sharply contrasted opinions on power play. Now let us concentrate on the thematic issue of power relation.

To have the strongest position in the family is indisputably one of the surest means of gaining control. In A Doll’s House, Nora is the protagonist and her life has been dominated and controlled by stronger forces than her.

When she was at her father’s home, her father used to set the rules (how the house should be run and Nora too) and she was obliged to comply with those rules. “He called me his doll child, and he played with me just as I used to play with my dolls” (Pg -327) - this is how Nora belches out her disdainful helplessness to her husband, Torvald. When she came to live at her husband’s home, the home was never a true home, but another dollhouse. She opens her mind when she in a few heart-felt words encapsulates their conjugal life together and its basic framework: I have existed merely to perform tricks for you, Torvald. But you wanted it like that. You and father have committed a great sin against me. It is your fault that I have made nothing of my life… Our home has been nothing but a playroom. I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was papa's dollchild; and here the children have been my dolls. I thought it great fun when you played with me, just as they thought it great fun when I played with them. That is what our marriage has been, Torvald (Pg -328).

She has no right or freedom to voice her inmost thoughts since she is a middle class nineteenth century daughter and wife who is supposed to have no voice at all. Rather than an individual she has always been treated as an object, a showpiece on the mantelpiece to add to the beauty of the house.

The male members of her two homes have controlled Nora invariably because they are men and she is a woman. The simple fact of being males has invested them with privileged positions in family and in society. Nora has to conceal the truth from Torvald that she actually has been compelled to borrow money from Krogstad during his sickness because he is armored with the seemingly invincible pride of male superiority. Nora knows it will be “painful and humiliating for him” (Pg -274) to discover that he owes to 97

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Nora this favor. It will hurt his “manly independence” (Pg-274) .So she lies to her husband by telling him that the source of the money is the fortune bestowed on her by her father.

On the other hand The Doctor’s Wife, a work of completely different setting and characterization, deals with a Japanese peasant family that rises to the summit of fame and fortune with the passage of time. Gender in the family means a great deal in Japan. To bear the expenses of Seishu’s medical career, his sisters, Okatsu and Koriku, have exhausted their whole lives. Instead of saving money for their own marriages, they drain off the last dribbles of their life force, and most importantly, worn out their youth for their brother’s uninterrupted academic life. Since Seishu is a male heir, his success and establishment receive top priority in the family. With their poverty stricken lives they have bought their brother’s smooth life and desired fortune. Even the newly wed bride, absolutely unaccustomed to weavers’ hard work looming devotes her days in weaving clothes to sell and to sustain the supply of money for Seishu’s medical study regular. In exchange neither she nor the sisters receive any recognition for this invaluable contribution and sacrifice. The author observes, “Umpei never wrote a single letter to Kae, nor did he ever thank his family for the money” (2003:41-42). Since custom and tradition has taught him to accept this aid as his natural birth right. Giving birth to a male heir is therefore an infallible and fail-safe route to attain power and ensure respect. A woman who has not given birth to a male child is not worth of receiving any importance. A bride can look forward to enjoying a respectable position in the household of her in-laws only after giving birth to a male heir.

Although Seishu is well aware of the existing feud between his mother and wife, he is so selfish that he always has overlooked the friction between them. But for both Otsugi and Kae to spread out the snare influence on Seishu and securing the first place in his good book is of paramount importance since he is the dominant male member of the family.

Physical appearance also plays a decisive role in the attainment of power play. In A Doll’s House, Nora is not a devoted wife from a conventional and conservative viewpoint. Sometimes she is even flirtatious. She knows very well that Dr. Rank is in love with her and yet pretends ignorance. The idea of having a secret admirer is very gratifying for her feminine self. She delights in the supremacy that her attractiveness and sexuality gives her.

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When Helmer seems reluctant to fall in for her wishes, she tries to wheedle the decision she wants out of him by applying her art of playfulness and coquettry. Therefore, in Nora’s case her physical appearance is a medium of gaining control over her male counterparts. Though Nora is superficially injudicious, it is her flawless physical appearance that makes her a lovable wife to Helmer. When she divulges the secret of borrowing money from an acquaintance to Mrs. Lindse, she is naturally surprised and she asks how Nora did manage that. Her clue is, “Perhaps I got it from some other admirers. When anyone is as attractive as I am…” (Pg-273). She has always used this irresistible means to gain little favors from the males around. She is thoroughly aware of this weapon that nature has adorned her with and never hesitates to ensure the maximum use of it.

In contrast, in The Doctor’s Wife Otsugi’s most potent and enthralling way of gaining control over others in the family and in the society is also her captivating physical appearance and sexual beauty. Her keen, sharp intelligence and assertive demeanor are her next weaponry. Otsugi is the daughter of a very rich businessman but the turn of the wheel of fate makes her to marry someone much beneath her social station. A mother of seven children, she very sincerely and tactfully devoted her entire life to make the best use of her limited means to establish her children socially and economically. The strongest among these limited means is her beauty, which has always cast a spell not only on her family members but also over the villagers around. We can take Kae’s reaction as she saw her during her grandfather’s funeral as a case in point, “To Kae she seemed divine, like the Kannon Bosatsu with an azure halo over her head. Kae’s gaze was fixed on her alone and could not be diverted” (Pg-12). If this is the response of a small girl we can easily gather the effect of her beauty on the men. Though Kae does not have any share in the unmatched physical beauty of Otsugi but at one point she is an alter ego of her mother-in- law.

That is her dedication to her family. Unlike Otsugi, Kae is simple, credulous and ignorant of the ways of the world. Her motivation behind being the daughter- in- law of the Hakanokas is not the bright and dazzling future awaiting the bridegroom rather it is the long revered and ardently adored beauty of her mother in law. This study has so far concentrated on the control of power at the psychological level. Now we can turn to linguistics sphere to gain and maintain power.

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In order to attain control careful choice of words is also much needed and it is evident form both texts. In A Doll’s House sanctimonious Helmer gains control over Nora by means of using playful words such as “skylark” and “little squirrel” or “precious little singing bird”, or “Miss Sweet Tooth”. Towards the end of the play, when Helmer finally comes to know the clandestine transaction of Nora with Krogstad (presently his subordinate) and her forgery, he just pounces on Nora. All the terms of endearment with which he used to indulge Nora have suddenly has changed into, a hypocrite, a liar and a criminal. He accuses her of immorality and impiety. He even cannot trust his children under her care, “I shall not allow you to bring up the children: I dare not trust them to you” (Pg-324). But after receiving Krogstad’s second letter containing the IOU, he changes his stance right away and forgives her. As soon as he receives the letter he starts behaving in such a manner that there has been no hurricane devastating the house a few moments ago. He is all warmed up to assume the role of a most reliable husband to shield Nora from the cruelty and rashness of the world, “Be at rest and feel secure: I have broad wings to shelter you under” (Pg-326). But Nora refuses to be forgiven. She leaves home to discover the world around her independently and without being patronized. She says, “when all the danger was past…I was your skylark again, your little doll, exactly as before” (Pg-331). At that point, Helmer tries to stop her by reminding her about her duty towards her husband and children, “To desert your home, your husband and your children! And you don’t consider what people will say” (Pg-329). So watchful and timely use of words has been a confirmed and unmistakable route to expand power over Nora. Bad luck for Helmer this time, it doesn’t work out.

On the other hand, Otsugi in The Doctor’s Wife extends control over Kae’s father through her eloquence and convincing power that Kae would make the best wife for her son, the potential future doctor. She uses carefully selected words to explain in crisp and concise language why she desires Kae to be her daughter-in- law. She knows it very well that the marriage proposition of an unsuccessful and impoverished village doctor’s son to the distinguished and aristocratic Imose family ( in charge of the local headmen and samurai and host of the tenth lord of the Kishu province,) is nothing but an outrageous transgression of sense of propriety. A doctor even does not belong to any of the four honored and respectable social 100

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classes, namely, samurai, farmers, artisans, and merchants. She doesn’t hesitate to be very candid and utterly honest and at times in lowering her own position in her persuasion of Imose Sajihei, I feel that as his mother I should find the proper wife for him, someone who will encourage him to develop and blossom into a fine doctor. I owe this much to the Hanaokas since I didn’t live up to their expectations (Pg-18).

However there is a tinge of palpable flattery in the fashion she structures and presents her arguments. Adverting to Imose Sajihei’s conservative upbringing of Kae she continues, I know that she has had a traditional upbringing and that her health is excellent. From every aspect I am positive that she would make a good wife for my son (Pg-18).

Only with her gift of splendid eloquence she wins Kae for her son Seishu.

She takes resort to whatever means possible ranging from coaxing, conspiring, threatening to emotional blackmailing to procure and make sure the paramount position in the family as the absolute head. She implements the same base and astute articulacy in ear-poisoning her son against her daughter- in- law and to debilitate Kae’s position.

To be affluent is the surest and safest means of obtaining control. In A Doll’s House, when Nora has her first appearance in the fastidiously furnished room, choked under the messes of wrapped gifts and parcels, she stands for the epitome of a perfect bourgeois wife who takes immense pleasure and pride at having enough money to buy anything she wills. She is hopefully looking forward to the happy and flourishing future, which will be translated into reality in the upcoming April. Then Helmer will become the manager of his office and receive a better salary. Therefore she no longer needs to be economic. Helmer, the nineteenth century model of a respectable husband treats Nora as nothing more than an animate thing incapable of sound and sensible thinking. When he asks Nora what she would prefer as Christmas gift, Nora without giving a second thought demands money. He loves to engage in a playful deception with Nora yet cannot resist the feeling of pride which Nora’s dependence on him financially confers, “It is a sweet little spendthrift, but she uses up a deal of 101

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money. One would hardly believe how expensive such little persons are!”(Pg-265). He has bought this dependence of Nora on him with money.

Although he apparently takes his wife to task for being so wasteful, secretly he delights in his ability to provide her money as gift. One of the most obvious ways via which he asserts dominance over Nora lies in the simple fact that he is the only breadwinner of the family. This also confers on him the supremacy to set the rules and regulations that run the house.

Earning money can bequeath such a marvelous and miraculous freedom that Nora exclaims, “It was almost like being a man” (Pg-275). This statement of Nora is sufficient enough to highlight the thin line of distinction that money erects between men and women. Women in those times were consciously discouraged to earn money so that the men could exercise power on them though their financial dependence.

In comparison to A Doll’s House, The Doctor’s Wife differs widely when money is the issue. A Doll’s House is set in the background of nineteenth century and The Doctor’s Wife is at the backdrop of eighteenth century.

During that period in Japanese family interpersonal relationships between family members meant much more than money. Hanaoka Seishu’s sisters are not self-seekers. They have spent their youth, more importantly their whole lives to bring together money for their brother’s smoothly charted career path.

It is not that they did not earn money. In actuality they earned money enough to provide their dowry. They could have got married and had families of their own. But they preferred the precious and prestigious medical degree of their brother to getting married. The Doctor’s Wife illuminates the truth that to a nineteenth century Japanese middle class family, family ties mean more than pursuit of personal happiness. Though at the later part of his life Seishu becomes enormously successful he never uses money as a means to dominate his family. With money he purchases happiness for his loyal and devoted wife whom he used many a times as the guinea pig for his medical experiment and ultimately caused her permanent blindness.

Sex can also play a key role in establish control over someone. In A Doll’s House, after the tarantella dance, Helmer is sexually aroused when he observes his pretty and appealing wife. He decides right away to postpone all his important works for some intimate time with Nora. At this point Nora has full control over her husband. She can right now assume the role of a puppet master who can play with her slave toy Helmer or make him 102

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do whatever she wants. However in The Doctor’s Wife, Kae is in a more advantageous position than her mother- in- law because of her status as a wife. This asserts on her the unique opportunity to soothe Seishu both mentally and physically. Otsugi can never prevent the feeling of jealousy and disappointment as she realizes that this advantage of Kae is the only weak point of her war strategy, which may trigger her defeat.

A Doll’s House and The Doctor’s Wife are two different stories of the worlds of western and eastern cultures respectively. These two works are set in completely different hemisphere and time. Yet means of gaining control are quite similar in both texts. We have seen that money is the most certain and safe method of dictating others. But it is tenuous and vulnerable. The simple minded and always dependant-on -Helmer Nora in A Doll’s House, when cornered and hurt, easily shakes off her financial dependence on her husband. She grows bold enough to step outside the threshold of Helmer’s shielding roof to find out the true meaning of her life independently. On the other hand control achieved by selfless devotion and undaunted dedication proves to be the most durable one. In A Doctor’s Wife, Seishu was there consistently beside the blind Kae till her last breath whereas he had many chances to forsake Kae and procure a lovely wife. A Doll’s House offers a reverse picture. Helmer is devastated and ruined because of his lack of respect and true feelings towards his wife. Their conjugal life comes to a standstill because marriage for both of them has always been more of a matter of compromise and getting accustomed to each other rather than a blissful tie of mutual understanding, care and respect.

The present researcher’s readings of the two texts in the light of the theories of power relations formulated by three eminent thinkers have reinforced one idea. Power play is as indispensable in human history as the breathing of living bengs.Right from the genesis of human civilization man has felt an unquenchable thirst to bring things surrounding him under his rein. Over time he has devised out institutions like religion or society or state only to armor and to solidify his power play and give it a legitimate look. At times this game can be really immoral and unethical. We can always refer to history to support our argument. Both Hitler and Stalin have consolidated inordinate power, but few now accept the entitlement they offered. Though man and his man made institutions can always come

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up with excuses to validate their actions, the subterfuges are not always universally acceptable.

Families are very small arenas to exercise power. From this assessment of these two skillfully crafted texts it is evident that both men and women are engaged in a ceaseless primal war for obtaining control over their surroundings. Application of power is not the same at national level and in domestic life. From the exploration of these two different literary contexts from two different hemispheres the finding is that the exercise of power is surprisingly homogeneous across cultures. Use of power at domestic arena is simply a desperate attempt on the part of the members to rescue and retain dignity, honor and position. Nora in The Doll’s House is cornered and compelled to apply her dormant strength to remind her husband, society and above all herself that she is a human being. On the other hand, true- story- based fiction The Doctor’s Wife is a manifestation of fierce rivalry between two major protagonists over the possession of Dr. Hanaoka. An upshot of application of power is not always tragic. Nora has been able to discover herself. Kae is a winner even without executing power; she wins her mother-in -law’s love and her husband’s respect. If it is difficult on certain occasions to avoid exercise of power, on other occasions love prevails. Kae can very aptly serve as our role model.

Works Cited Ariyoshi, Sawako. The Doctor’s Wife. Trans.Wakako Hironoka and Ann Siller Kostant. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2003. Print King, Judine. Goethe to Ibsen. New York: Macmillan, 1969. Print.

Stump, Samuel Enoch. Socrates to Sartre: A History of Philosophy. New York: McGraw, 1975. Print.

Rabinow, Paul, ed. The Foucault Reader: An Introduction to Foucault’s Thought.

London: Penguin, 1984. Print.

Mitchell, Peter R. and Schoeffel, John, ed. Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2003. Print.

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Journal writing: A silent kit for improving writing skills Samina Nasrin Chowdhury* Mohammad Aminul Islam** Abstract: This article explores how dialogue journals can be used as a silent kit to improve writing skills. Sixty-five primary school teachers with limited English proficiency wrote dialogue journals in a teacher-training course during nine weeks. Data were gathered from their journal entries and post-study questionnaires. Dialogue journal was found effective to foster the development of descriptive writing using correct syntax and vocabulary, to enhance critical thinking skills and finally to raise learnersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; confidence level in writing English. This article presents findings with necessary literature review and concludes with a number of recommendations on how EFL practitioners/teachers can use dialogue journals effectively to improve writing skills.

Keywords: dialogue journals, writing skill, accuracy, criticalthinking

Introduction Dialogue journal is a tool that a teacher can use to make a private, written conversation with students over an extended period of time. It strikes a balance between a diary with its focus on self-discovery and the class notebook which concentrates on academic learning. By using dialogue journals, the teacher can engage in multifaceted interactions with students.

Ideas, feelings and concerns can be shared in a private way. The journal provides the opportunity of improving writing by modeling language use.

Another benefit of dialogue journal is that it serves as a bridge between conversational and written expressions with its participants. Moreover, it allows students to develop self expressions and personal voices.

Usually dialogue journals are used in teacher training programmes to reflect learnersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; new experiences with their professors1. In this study,

*

Lecturer II, Centre for Languages, BRAC University, Bangladesh Lecturer, Centre for Languages, BRAC University, Bangladesh 1 Brinton and Holten 1989; Roderick 1986;1 Roderick & Berman 1984; see also Dialogue, September, 1988 (cited in Peyton and Reed 1990:11). **

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students wrote on teacher-generated topics most of the time in journals with the purpose of developing their writing fluency with confidence.

This article is divided into three parts. The three parts of this article review existing literature in support of journal, explain the study and present findings of the study. The article concludes with some recommendations on how EFL practitioners can use journals effectively to promote writing fluency of their students.

Literature Review Definition Journal writing is a practice of recording collection of thoughts, understandings, and explanations about ideas or concepts, usually in a bound notebook. Teachers ask students to keep journals, with the understanding that students will share their journals with the teachers. A dialogue journal is a composition book in which each student carries on a private written conversation with the teacher for an extended period of time. To define dialogue journal, Peyton and Reed comments, ‘A dialogue journal, put very simply, is a conversation between a teacher and an individual student (3). However, this conversation differs from all others they may have, in or out of the classroom; it is written, it is completely private, and it takes place regularly and continually throughout an entire school year or semester’.

Shrum and Glisan define dialogue journal as ‘….a written conversation in which students communicate individually with the teacher (248). It can also be used to engage students in interaction with one another or in small groups.’

Dialogue journals can be exchanged in web. Dialogue journals are interactive, functional, mostly written on self-generated topics, and deeply embedded in the continuing life of the classroom. Both the persons write to each other in an informal, direct style about topics of mutual interest, usually on a daily basis at elementary level two or three times a week for older students.

Reasons of Using Journals Journal writing is gaining popularity as a technique in adult EFL classroom. Its usage varies greatly, depending on the purpose of instruction and the confidence level of the learners (Orem, 73). This article examines the use of journal as a technique to develop free writing with confidence among a group, with limited English proficiency. Some pointers, prompts, guiding questions, and suggested frameworks for journal writing were provided to the students with the focus of improving fluency in writing (Lee, 328). Topics and language structures were selected covering social, 106

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personal, professional and academic issues considering the language proficiency of the learners.

Students compile their own experiences, thoughts and ideas and read teachers’ responses and get encouragement in journal writing. The total process helps students to develop self-esteem and gain confidence in writing. Dialogue journals are effective because it helps students create personal meaning, increase their motivation to write, facilitates writing skills, provides support to those in transition from oral to written communication, and creates opportunity for students to become author. It can improve students’ writing, enhance critical thinking skills, encourage observational skills, and develop creative skills. (Shrum and Glisan, 248; Dyment, “Journal writing in experiential Education, ericdigest.org”) Journals in the discussed study were instructed to be written twice a week as proposed by Peyton and Reed (4) and length of writing was decided to be almost one page. Here languages were not checked, only ideas were shared which could be termed as communication. Brown and Sorrell recommend the importance of structured criterion as a guide for students writing journals (16-19). So, journals in this study were completed within set criterion to achieve the objectives.

The study Aim In this study the main aim of journal writing was to develop the learners’ confidence of writing in English. It was an effort to increase writing skill indirectly. Seemingly, primary objective was to encourage students to express their thoughts, beliefs, experiences and reflections in written English.

Data Collection and Analysis The learners in this course were primary school teachers with limited English language proficiency. There were sixty-five students in the course and everybody participated in journal writing. Two entries were done each week and the total duration was nine weeks. Post- study questionnaires were used to know students’ opinions. Entries from the journal without any change are also presented as evidences in the finding part. In addition, some teachers, who supervised the tasks, checked the journals and gave necessary feed-back, were interviewed. There were seven teachers involved in the process.

Procedure For doing this writing practice, a note book was given to each student.

With the note book for journal writing on their lap, the blank look given by the students implied “What to write?” It was natural at their level. So,

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some topics, prompts and some guided questions were written in their journals as teachers’ responses. Presumably, at the outset, many learners lack confidence in their own writing. In addition, to dispel their apprehension of the task they were told that this activity was a part of their language learning and it would not be evaluated.

Before deciding on what topics or issues to be used for journal writing, learners’ ability was considered and each student was given separate topics to write. It was done to compel everyone to write something on their own.

To make the task easier, the topics were selected either from the learners’ day-to-day life, or from their surroundings or from the familiar events (e.g. memory, food habit, culture and festivals of the particular person where they come from). Even, course delivery plan was followed while giving the task for the resonance of the participants’ everyday learning from the training. In this way, the participants were drawn into a frame of writing journal twice a week according to Peyton and Reed, who comment, ‘If it is not possible to write and respond daily, it is crucial that writing takes place regularly, at least twice a week.’ (4) Students were encouraged to come-up with their own ideas and languages.

Shrum and Glisan suggest that the response of the teachers to the content of each journal entry is important rather than correcting grammar, vocabulary and spelling (249). They were made to understand that journals will be neither graded nor corrected; only the content, neither grammar nor any other errors, will be considered.

After the initial hiccup, students were found interested in communicating through journal and they were eager to know about the teachers’ responses and evaluation2. Furthermore, from the teacher’s point of view, it was interesting to note how students react after getting the feedback. Thus, journal helped the two parties build up a relationship and students started to talk about their lives at home, at workplace, and in the community.

Findings According to Nunan, journals are ‘important retrospective tools in language research, because dialogue journals are an acknowledgment of students’ linguistic and cognitive development' (118). Following are the outcomes found in the study, where journal-excerpts are drawn and presented from the actual writing of students and teachers without any change to grammar, spelling or punctuation.

2

Ferris (33-53)

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Writing Done on Various Topics The writing is varied in terms of topics. Students were allowed to write personal topics although non-personal topics were initiated most of the time to write. They wrote descriptions, narratives, comparisons, likings, dislikings, complaints, arguments, and even suggestions. In a word, students were given opportunities to be engaged in reflection about their experiences and to think about their choices, problems, and ideas (Staton, “Dialogue Journals”, ericdigest. org) Accuracy Gained By creating a dialogue setting, teachers support students’ reading and writing competencies and the acquisition of more complex reasoning skills (Kreeft, 141-150). Therefore, with truly individualized practice, each student benefits in a different way. In the said study, language improvement was remarkable, though no direct input for linguistic development was given. Since students were all adults, they had grammar knowledge but they could not use those in their writings. Journal writing made them aware of using language correctly. Therefore, in the post-study questionnaire, 87% respondents reported about grammatical improvement.

Following entries present those problems with subject-verb-agreement, inappropriate use of modal-verbs, sentence structures and so on.

On June 6, 2009, Poly wrote: (a) I should be a student goes to school regularly. I should be a student alwase read and write. I will be a student quaite and polite.

I has to be a student alwas trouthfulness .I should be a student alwas her homework. I will be a student alwas her read made.

On June, 11, 2009, Poly wrote again: (b) A good house wife should everyday clean her house. She should always take care her family members. She should always cook good food. She should always look after her children for health, clean and study. She should help to her sometimes…

(Appendix-1)

In the above two entries (a and b), usage of modal verbs is remarkable.

On April 13, 2009, Sultana wrote about Savar TARC (a training centre, situated at Savar): © Savar TARC stand in the Savar at Ashulia. There are many big building, a library, trees, garden , a guard room a kitchen.

There are two big field, three computer room in the TARC. There are two water tank in the TARC. Many people come here and learning different thing....

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After six days (on April 19, 2009), Sultana again wrote about Bogra TARC (a training centre, situated at Bogra): (d) There are many big buildings and some flower gardens, one kitchen, one dining, one culchural room in the Bogra TARC. There is a field in front of the TARC. Many people come here…..

The syntax used in examples c and d is noteworthy.

L1 interference is another hurdle in a monolingual atmosphere that L2 learners have to overcome. Students got support to eliminate L1 interference through the process of journal writing. A critical review of entry e and f, written by Rokeya on March 31, 2009 and May 5, 2009 gives evidence: (e) I am Rokeya. I am a BRAC School teacher and a house wife. I live with my husband, son and brother in law. We live in village.

My husband is a besnessman. He get up early in the morning and she is an honest man. He get up early in the morning and she is a hardworker. My brother in law is our family member. We help her. He is an honest man and her education is M.A…… I love my family very much. (f) My husband’s name is Abdus Satter He is 37 years old. He is a shop keeper. He is 37 years old. He gets up early in the morning and goes to shop regularly. He comes back home afternoon. Then takes showr and eat lunch. After he did homework. Again he went to shop. He comes back home at night….

Correct usage of tense also has been improved. Following entries (g & h) can be examined: Momtaz wrote on May, 20, 2009 about the best friend of her life. (g) Moktar is my best friend. Because he is very helpful, polite and honest. …….He always help me different subjects. Spacialey English and mathmatic. If I don’t know any word mean he told and worte me. If I am sick he looked me. But five years ago he go abord. At first he worte three letters to me . But he forget me now. I think my friend Moktar is a selfish man.….

Momtaz, furthermore, wrote about her experience when teachers went to observe her classes on August 10, 2009: (h) When I have heard about the BRAC University teacher will come to my school then I felt very nervous. Because they are English teacher of BRAC University. But I am a teacher of BRAC School …I was very happy to see them. They talked to me in English.

They sat down on the mat. They saw my English class .How did I

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take my class in English. I took my class in English. Then they had very happy to saw my class. I felt very happy to saw my class. I felt very happy too because I thought never the BRAC University teacher will come to my school. ( Appendix-2)

Student-generated Writing According to Peyton and Reed, students get the opportunity to express themselves openly and in private without being embarrassed about anything in dialogue journals (14). Again, Orem comments, ‘…..teacher must be prepared to deal with some sensitive issues in the lives of their students.’(75). It was found that sometimes students shared joys and sorrows of their lives in the journals with their teachers. One student shared the story of her life. She documented: One day I went to a relative’s house. There was a very smart and handsome boy. He worked in a sugar mill. He liked me but I don’t know. He proposed me and married with me. Only four year I lives with his. One day, suddenly he died to an accident. I became upset and shouted crrying. I had two little boys that time. Now they read in class ten and seven. They are very polite. So I think if he alive now, he becomes very happy. So I remember him still. So it was a bad and very biggest surprise of my life.

One student wrote about how her son missed his father, when she was asked to write about herself: …I love my child. My child is my son. I have only one son. …I fell very proud that time he speaks some English, like Mamone Can I go to toylet? May I come in? ….. My son’s have not stay with his father, because he is a low mind man and a addact person. So we have saparated with him. We dislike him.

Sometime my son remember his father, become she is very sad. I am also sad for my child… (Appendix-3)

Another student shared about her husband: …I dislike my husband, he is not a good man. Permanently I have separated with him I did a very big mistake when I was young. Now I totally forget him. Now I decided that I will develop my life. If my Allah stay with me, I will must be successful. That is my main ambition. The sosiety of the people will see that a helpless woman is never helpless… I see many dream of my life. I don’t know that when my dream will be true…

Changed Attitude Students’ attitude towards language learning was changed after journal writing. Some of the students complained why they were over-burdened with journal writing when they already had packed schedule. According to 111

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Shin, one of the advantages of writing journal is that the increased awareness of writing imparts students their own writing style and habit (310). This was evident in the study. 100% respondents report their preferences for writing journal as a tool to improve writing.

One of the teachers responsible for journal checking stated, ‘They now have the ability to transfer their thoughts onto pages in English and also can translate words into English to use in their writings.’ Another commented, ‘At the beginning it was hard to write even five sentences by them on one topic but now they can write at least a page though they have not gained the perfection’

Critical Thinking The participating students’ interest and gradual development of their writing encourage the teachers to initiate some thought-provoking topics to write. Thus, a shift from descriptive and narrative writing to critical writing was found in all most all entries. Along with this, the change of reticent learners to an expected level was remarkable in this study. Here are two more examples: Women are unwanted persons in our society. They are very hard worker but get poor salary. In fact male and female both equel.

Without women don’t improve our society. The present society women are working in garments, factory, houses, schools, college etc. But they get poor salary.. If we don’t respect the women we don’t success in society

A reflection like this from a woman of underprivileged society is remarkable and it proves her ability to express her thoughts in target language.

In another excerpt, a student wrote about herself, when she was asked to.

Teacher’s comment: What do you think about yourself? - Smart, genius or average? Why or Why not?

Student: I think, I am not smart, because if any person is smart than the person should be careful, polite, litearaty, honesltly, confident, Handsome, gentle and smilling face etc. Otherwise the smart person should be clean and neat and hard worker. If these qualities has not within any person, he cannot be a smart person. So I think, I am not smart and genious because these qualities have not me. ( Appendix-4, 5) Teacher’s comment: I don’t think so. I think you are smart and genius.

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Confidence Gained Hancock points out that frequent writing in journals will assist students, whose first language is not English to develop confidence in writing English (37-40). When the entries of the journals are examined it is found that the later entries are comparatively longer and better organized, which proves the development of confidence and fluency among students.

Following entries by two students, Nurbanu and Firoza also support this: (a) This training is the best training for all BRAC Primary school’s teacher because we did not know how to teach English little children. After this training I will teach my students very carefully. I have got many method and tagnic from this training If I can use this method or tagnik, the students will understand very easily the lesson…. Really I am very happy for this training. These micro teachings help me to teach BRAC students or other students. I am practicing different tipes of dialogue. This dialogue help me for real life. When I have come 1th phase training nothing understand English speaking. So I am feeling very good form 4th phase training. (Appendix-6) (b) I am Firoza. I am from Shatkhira. Now I can speak more English. No I make lesson plan. I take the class and presentation.

Now I am writing drama, story, lesson for book, but before I cannot write drama, story and books. Now I am very helpful to the students and my teaching method is very pleasing and nice. for this reason the students always respect me.

Challenges and Recommendations Krishnan and Hoon comment that, if learners are forced to keep a diary and use a language that is not their native language, they may not find the task simpler (227239). At the beginning, initiating journal was a daunting task. Participating students were not only reluctant in writing journal but also were found copying from other sources. There was a sort of fossilization with their thinking capacity as well. Residential teachers at the training centre helped to overcome the problem.

Learners could ask the residential teacher to give them ideas about the issues.

Sometimes, learners wrote their first draft in a separate paper and submitted the second draft in the journal, but gradually they gained confidence and could write in the note book directly. They did it for reducing mistakes from their writing and apparently, in the end, the learners’ mistakes were overlooked or less rigorously corrected by the teachers to encourage them to come up with their thoughts.

As Peyton and Reed comment, ‘… students' writing should not be overtly corrected. The teacher may model some of the words and structures used 113

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incorrectly by the students…. However some students are concerned about the correctness of their writing and want correction in their journals’ (65).

Initially frustration was found among the students as journal writing was thought useless since they were not corrected. Some students met the teachers and asked whether these journals were read at all. We explained the objectives and showed the link between their writing with teachers’ comments to convince the learners.

Another disadvantage of journal writing is the amount of time teachers have to spend for reading the journals and responding because of largesized population (Peyton and Reed 64). There were seven teachers and the evaluation task was properly divided among the teachers to make it easier.

Since, learners had tendency to copy others’ writing, teachers were very careful deciding the topics or assignments given to the learners and teachers had to make sure that the topics related to the writings of the students were not listed earlier but improvised by teachers instantly.

Moreover, each student was given different topics to write on. Finding prompts, questions or topics was also another challenge for the teachers. A lot of peer discussion among the teachers took place while checking.

During the whole period (nine weeks), only eighteen entries were made by the students. But if students were given a task of daily journal writing, as teachers believed, more improvement could have been discerned.

Conclusion Effectiveness of journal writing in enhancing writing fluency has been examined in this research. Whatever proofs, journal entries, teachers’ comments presented in this article are testimonies of students’ enhanced abilities. The total process of journal writing is described and literatures are discussed to support arguments presented in this article. It is also shown that journal writing makes students aware of their linguistic development, makes them confident and widens their areas of thinking.

Therefore, journal writing could be introduced as a silent tool along with regular curriculum of an English language course to promote writing fluency with others skills.

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Works Cited: Brown, Hazel N, and Sorrel Jeanne M. “Use of clinical journals to enhance critical thinking.” Nurse Education 18.5 (1993):16-19. Print.

Dyment, Janet E, and O’Connell, Timothy S. “Journal Writing in Experiential Education: Possibilities, problems, and recommendations”. ERIC Digest.

(2003). Web. 09 October 2009 <http://www.ericdigests.org/20052/journal.html > Ferris,Dana R. “Student reactions to teacher response in multiple-draft composition classrooms”. TESOL Quarterly. 19.1 (1995):33-53 Print. .

Hancock, P. “Reflective practice- Using a learning journal”. Nursing Standard 13.17(1999):37-40. Print.

Kreeft, Joy. “Dialogue writing: Bridge from talk to essay writing”. Language Arts.

61.2(1984): 141-150. Print.

Krishnan, Lakshmy A. and Hoon, Lee Hwee. “Diaries: Listening to ‘voice’ from the multicultural classroom.” ELT Journal. 65.3 (2002):227-239. Print.

Lee, Icy. “Preparing pre-service English teachers for reflective practice”. ELT Journal. 61.4 (2007): 321-329. Print.

Nunan, David. Research Methods in Language Teaching. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Print.

Orem Richard.A. “Journal writing in adult ESL: Improving practice through reflective writing” Adult Education: New Direction for Adults and Continuing Education 15.1(2001): 69-77.Print.

Peyton, Joy Kreeft, and Reed, Leslee. Dialogue Journal Writing with Nonnative English Speakers: A Handbook for Teachers. USA: Teachers of English, 2002. Print.

Shin, Sarah. J. “The reflective L2 writing teacher”. ELT Journal 57.1 “2003”: 310. Print.

Shrum, J. L., and Glisan, E. W. Teacher’s Handbook: Contextualized Language Instruction. 3rd ed. Kentucky: Thomson Heinle, 2005. Print.

Staton, Jana. “Dialogue Journals”. ERIC Digest.1987. Web. 09 October 2009 <http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-926/journals.htm>

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Backwash Effects of Examinations upon Teaching and Learning of English: A Case Study Mohammed Humayun Kabir* Abstract: This article explores the notion of washback and discusses the reasons why positive and negative washback occur. Furthermore, it discusses how the participants are affected by washback. In this study Advanced English testing (a language course designed for the undergraduate students of International Islamic University Chittagong, Bangladesh) as a sample and attempted to find out its impact on teaching and learning. The findings of the study indicate that the testing system of this course affected English language teaching and learning at International Islamic University Chittagong, Bangladesh. This study also offers with some recommendations to achieve beneficial washback.

1.1. Introduction: The phenomenon of how tests influence teaching and learning is commonly described as ‘backwash’ in general education or as ‘washback’ in language instruction. The notion ‘washback’ is a frequent concern ‘in the language teaching and testing literature, and tests are held to be powerful determiners of what happens in classrooms’, Alderson and Wall (1993). Bachman & Palmer (1996:30-32) take the ‘washback’ as an aspect of impact, which is, according to them, one of the criteria of test usefulness. They define ‘washback’ as the direct impact of testing on individuals and claim that it is widely assumed to exist. It has long been believed that tests have power to influence educational processes in

*

Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, IIUC

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various ways .Washback is generally perceived as being either negative (harmful) or positive (beneficial). Shohamy (1992) states, ‘the results obtained from the tests can have serious consequences for individuals as well as for programs, since many crucial decisions are made on the basis of test results’(p-299).

Advanced English is the only English language course which is taught to the students of different departments (BBA, LLB, CSE, CCE, ETE, EEE, Pharmacy, Qura’nic Science and so on) other than English Language Literature at International Islamic University Chittagong (IIUC) in their academic life. It is believed that this course will prepare the students for the courses which they are going to pursue to achieve the graduation degree. As I had to teach the course several times, I noticed that we, the teachers who take the course (there are 4/5 teaches for the course who are teaching in different faculties and campuses) are preparing our class lectures in line with the question pattern of previous semesters. We sensed that we should have cut short our syllabus contents and made a short list of the so called important (in terms of exam’s necessity) items which greatly restrict our teaching. We further observed that students were also concentrating on some contents of the prescribed syllabus instead of the whole. We assume that as a direct consequence of this practice students’ learning is also being limited within certain items. So our research interest lies in whether the backwash effects of examination have any impact upon teaching and learning English, especially, on the graduate students of International Islamic University Chittagong (IIUC), Bangladesh. Below an outline of the above said course Advanced English, is given: 1.2. Aims and objectives of the course: Although the existing syllabus of the course Advanced English does not contain aims and objective of the course , the most senior English teacher of the Center for University Requirement Course (CENURC) and the director of this center has stated that : The objective of the course Advanced English is to prepare the students for the courses which they are going to pursue to achieve the degree, as these courses will be conducted in English medium and the students will also have to appear at exams using English as medium of answering .The course also aims at preparing the students for future career.

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Backwash Effects of Examinations upon Teaching and Learning of English: A Case Study

1.3. Needs of the students: From the aims and objectives of the course and from the syllabus structure (see below), we assume that the needs of the students are to acquire a communicative and linguistic competence to deal with the real-world situations. However, they have an examination-oriented need i.e. in the examination students basically take Reading and Writing tests. In the present examination system they do not need to take any Speaking and Listening tests(which is really absurd).Students of this course want to achieve good grade in the examination in order to make sure their places in the merit list to get financial benefit/scholarship or to impress the job provider in future.

1.4. Advanced English syllabus: It is a 2 (two) credit course with three contact hours (per week).It consists basically of three components− Grammar, Writing and Reading.

Grammar: Tenses, subject-verb agreement, modal auxiliaries, passive voice, reported speech, preposition, infinitive, participle, gerund.

Writing: Paragraph, comprehension, letter, dialogue.

Reading: Jane Eyre, The Pilgrim’s Progress, A Tale of Two Cities, Bacon’s Essays, Six Tales from Shakespeare. (Abridged version).

1.5. Marks distribution for Advanced English: Mid-term=30 marks (Each of the assigned teachers sets questions, no moderation is required for those questions) Final-term=50 marks (2 senior teachers set questions and moderate them).In final 25 marks are allocated for Grammar portion, 15 marks are allocated for Reading while 10 marks for testing Writing skill.

For Class tests, and attendance 20 marks are allocated.

In this study we will consider only final term testing, because, for midterm there is no uniform syllabus and testing system. Even the CENURC office does not preserve midterm question papers.

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1.6. Implications for the research: During my stay (over 9 years) at IIUC I have noticed that neither the teachers, who are conducting the English courses in different departments consider it as a major course, nor the respective departments value it as a vital course, nor do the students take it seriously. We have also observed that students’ prime interest is to obtain a higher grade. They hardly bother about classroom teaching. They are pleased if they get a suggestion of probable questions. They never want their teachers to cover the whole syllabus. Rather, they insist on their cutting the syllabus as short as possible. It is true that because of this attitude the purpose of designing the course has never been achieved. Both teaching and learning are hindered here. Davies (1990:1) emphasizes, ‘language testing is central to language teaching. It provides goals for language teaching, and it monitors, for both teachers and learners, success in reaching those goals’. Of course, it is related to ‘washback’ effect. Our observation and study convince us that the testing system of this course is influencing both classroom teaching and learning. For this reason I have chosen this area of research. We expect this study will discover the prevailing problems i.e. the examination - classroom washback cycle. It will be interesting and useful study for those who are involved in teaching and writing tests for the course.

Moreover, the university authority will also have an opportunity to rethink about the testing method and teaching activities in the classroom. They can even consider redesigning this syllabus.

2. Literature review 2.1. Exploring washback: Washback is used to denote the effect (positive/negative) ‘of examinations and other tests on classroom teaching and learning’, Allison (1999:236). The effect ‘may be beneficial, for example, when a test leads to improvement of syllabus and teaching. Negative backwash may occur when the test inadequately reflects course objectives, but exerts an influence on what is taught’ Johnson and Johnson (eds) (1998:270). Washback is accepted as the direct impact of testing on individuals. Hughes defines washback as ‘the effect of testing on teaching and learning’ (1989:1). Cohen (1994:41) discusses the effects of washback more broadly, in terms of ‘how assessment instruments affect educational practices and beliefs’, cited in Bachman & Palmer (1996:30). It is understood that backwash is a complex phenomenon. The relationship 124

Backwash Effects of Examinations upon Teaching and Learning of English: A Case Study

between a test and succeeding changes in instructional practices is really complex. Shohamy et al (1996) suggest that beneficial washback depends on several factors such as the importance of the test, the status of the language being tested and the purpose and format of the test, etc. Alderson and Wall (1993) raised doubts about the sufficiency of washback as an agent for change in a study curriculum development in Sri Lanka. They concluded that the introduction of new classroom methodology requires concurrent developments in teacher education, materials and tests: changing only the test does not give teachers the means to re-orient their classroom methods for preparing students for the new tests, (cited in Kabir (2007); Buck (1988)).

Bailey defines ‘washback’ as a natural tendency of both students and teachers to tailor the classroom activities to the demands of the test when especially the test is particularly important for the test takers.

Alderson and Wall (1993) think that ‘washback’ is itself a neutral one, and can be related to ‘influence’. If the test is ‘poor’, then the washback may be felt to be negative. But if the washback hypothesis holds, then good tests should have good effects rather than negative effects. In this article they also say that a ‘poor’ test could conceivably have a ‘good’ effect if it made teachers and learners do ‘good’ things that they would not otherwise do: for example, prepare lessons more thoroughly, do their home work, take the subject being tested more seriously, and so on. And indeed, teachers are often said to use tests to get their students to do things that they would not otherwise do: to pay attention to the lesson, to prepare more thoroughly , to learn by heart, and so on .To the extent that these activities are in some sense desirable, hard work is presumably more ‘desirable’ than no work at all, and extrinsic motivation might be better than no motivation at all. Then any test , good or bad , can be said to be having beneficial washback if it increases such activity or motivation.

From the above discussion it can be perceived that although there is general agreement about the existence of ‘washback’ effect, different experts describe it in diverse ways. Some take it in a narrow sense and some take it in a wider sense and claim that ‘washback’ is the effect of tests not only on learners and teachers but also on society in general.

2.2. Participants in ‘washback’: The literature on ‘washback’ denotes that ‘washback’ is not confined to the effects of tests on language learning and teaching .Furthermore, it 125

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undoubtedly influences the content of teaching , teaching methodology, ways of measuring achievement. Hence we are convinced that learners, teachers and test users are the chief participants in ‘washback’. i) Learner ‘washback’: It is understood that learners are the key participants whose lives are most directly affected by tests. According to Bachman and Palmer (1996) test takers can be affected by three aspects of testing procedure i.e. a) experience of taking and preparing for the test, b) the feedback they receive about their performance on the test and c) the decisions that may be made about them on the basis of their test scores (p-31). Learners have to spend reasonable amount of time and money to prepare and practise for the test they sit for. Students plan and involve themselves with rigorous practice of those probable items which most of the times they find in the previous test papers. Say, if it is ‘Advanced English’ at IIUC , students will practise only those items similar to the ones in the test, like studying grammar items taught in the class, reading the short listed stories from the prescribed syllabus and memorizing some paragraphs, letters and dialogues taught by their course teachers. They study only those items which their teachers teach because they know that they will be tested on those items only. ii) Teacher ‘washback’: Teachers are also directly affected by washback. They cannot teach beyond the prescribed syllabus if it is an achievement test. It is a generally accepted fact that teachers do accommodate their teaching based on the examinations that students are going to sit for. They have to design class lecture and lesson plan keeping the testing method in their mind. It is perceived that test will influence teaching, will influence what and how teachers teach, the rate and success of teaching, degree and depth of teaching and also will influence their attitude to content and method of teaching and learning (Alderson and Wall (1993) cited in Bailey (1999)).

Students are also unwilling to read those elements which are not generally found in test papers. Teachers are under pressure and they have to keep in mind this reality. Not only students but also administration and guardians expect that students should be taught only those items which are important for examinations. Bachman and Palmer (1996) claim that teachers may 126

Backwash Effects of Examinations upon Teaching and Learning of English: A Case Study

find ‘teaching to the test’ almost unavoidable although they may personally prefer to teach certain materials in a specific way. They further added that the term ‘teaching to test’ implies doing something in teaching, which may not be compatible with teachers’ own belief, values and goals.

At IIUC we notice that teachers are only teaching some selected materials (especially in language class) as those are found in the examinations, although they have some interest for some items like Jane Eyre, The Pilgrim’s Progress, A Tale of Two Cities, Bacon’s Essays rather than Six Tales from Shakespeare. iii) Other participants in ‘washback’: Even though students and teachers are key participants in ‘washback’, we cannot deny that parents, policy makers, scholarship awarding bodies (SDSWD of IIUC), educational specialists, and materials are all affected by ‘washback’.

3.1. Data collection methodology: In this study, I tried to make clear that I am looking for washback effect in testing. McDonough and McDonough (1997:41), quote ‘Research is systematic and is based on data’. The reference to system city ‘means the use of a more or less meticulously planned method for carrying out the research’. Marshall and Rossman (1989:42) advise, ‘Researchers should design the study according to the research questions they seek to answer’.

Also here, I present research questions (see, section –3.2) which have led me to designing my research methodology. I also agree that ‘knowing what you want to find out leads inexorably to the question of how you will get the information’ Miles and Huberman (1984:42), cited in Silverman, (2000:88).

3.2. Research questions: i) Does testing have any impact on teaching and learning? ii) Is it harmful or beneficial? iii) If harmful washback exists, who is responsible for this?

Our inquiry has necessitated some relevant data and I have used following data instruments: 127

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1. Questionnaire for the course teachers (Appendix I).

2. Interviewing students (Appendix II).

3. Analyzing previous questions.

4. Interviewing Director, Centre for University Requirement Course (CENURC) (Appendix III).

4. Data analysis 4.1. Questionnaire analysis: In the questionnaire both present and previous teachers of the course Advanced English were the participants and they are mentioned as T1, T2, and T3……..for the sake of anonymity.

From their reply we learnt that in midterm examination course teachers enjoy unlimited freedom. They are not monitored and they do not have any specific syllabus for midterm examination. When asked if there is any chance of bias: T1 replies: ‘Yes, I think, because the teachers are the question setters and markers’ T2 replies: ‘I do not set any items which I have not taught in the class.

Sometimes questions are very much predictable’.

Question 4, asked; is there any influence of testing on teaching?

Almost everyone replied ‘yes’.

When asked, ‘Do the students insist you to teach only those items which are found common in the previous tests?’

The response was: T1: Majority of them want that we should only teach those items which are set in the examinations.

T3: Students react if I go beyond the syllabus.

T5: Students are very pleased with teachers if they are to study less and find the questions set in previous tests.

Question 5, asked Why don’t you cover all the items mentioned in the syllabus specially the READING PART? 128

Backwash Effects of Examinations upon Teaching and Learning of English: A Case Study

All of them replied that it is the practice of the department .In addition, they cannot complete because of time constraint.

Question 6, enquired, Does it restrict teaching?

All of them replied ‘yes’.

Question 7, enquired, Does it restrict the learning of the students?

All of them replied ‘yes’ as students do not require to cover all of the items’.

Question 8, enquired, Do you believe that question patterns influence classroom teaching?

All of them replied ‘yes’.

But T1 stated: Classroom teaching and teaching methods depend on concerned teacher. A teacher can devise his method of teaching without depending on the content of syllabus. Whatever may be the content of syllabus or method of examination a teacher can provide students all four skills by his well devised method.

Question 9, enquired, Do you become worried if students do not do well in the examination?

Some replied ‘No’ Some replied ‘Yes’.

T5, replied, ‘I am worried because I am serving at a private university where students are the second God. So students’ satisfaction is first.’

From this questionnaire analysis we found that teachers do not take the risk of teaching items which are not usually found in examinations, though those items are part of the syllabus. Teachers are more concerned with what grades students are getting rather than how much they acquired from the course.

4.2. Interviewing students: We have interviewed 20 previous students and 25 (male/female) existing students who have registered for this course.

Except a few students most of the students wish to achieve impressive grades in this course. They are not worried whether the teachers are teaching the whole syllabus or cutting it short. They think this Advanced English is 129

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not a major and important course. They are happy if they are not to study all of the bits and pieces of the syllabus. They earnestly expect that their teachers will discuss only those items which are necessary for the examinations.

4.3. Interviewing the CENURC Director: The interview exposed that the teachers who are working under him enjoy absolute freedom. They are not accountable to anyone. They are not supervised by any higher authority. Even they do not report him the number of classes they are taking in a semester, though they are supposed to do it. When asked whether the teachers are covering the whole syllabus he is found uninformed about it. But he feels that supervision is required.

He suggests that relevant departments’ Heads should supervise those English teachers. He also observes if these teachers worked under the Department of English Language and Literature this irregularity might have not occurred. When asked why teachers cannot cover the syllabus, ‘they all are taking extra loads like 6/9 contact hours. Though they are not forced to do it’, he replied. ‘For monetary benefits they are taking extra courses and cannot finish the courses’. He also expressed his helplessness as he does not belong to English department.

4.4. Analyzing previous questions: I have considered 11 questions of different semester final examinations in between 2004 to 2009.Those questions are set according to the prescribed syllabus. The marks allocation is like:

25 20 15 10 5 0 Grammar

Reading

Writing

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4.4.1. Testing Grammar: When carefully examined questions are found to be set in such a way that higher marks might easily be achieved. The grammar items are very easy and simple in comparison to standard of Honours level. These grammar items are tested in such a simple way that it does not suit the standard of their rank. It appears as if the questions have been set for school children.

Some are cited belowSome citations from the questions for Spring 2007 and Autumn 2007 are presented below: Spring 2007 Change the voice : i. Isn’t he painting a picture? ii. My book has been lost. iii. Who can do the work? iv. Where have you found the book? v. Does he help you?

Appropriate preposition. i. The girl takes ---- her mother. ii. You should abstain ------- smoking. iii. The Bay of Bengal is ------ the south of Bangladesh. iv. He agreed -------- my proposal. v. It appears ------- me that he is honest. vi. The Padma abounds -------- fish. vii. The old man died --------diarrhoea viii. My father was endowed -------many rare qualities..

Autumn 2007 Voice change: i. Will you help me? ii. Whom do you want? iii. The students have submitted the assignment.

Appropriate preposition: i. Fish abound …….Padma. ii. He will appear ……..the HSC examination. iii. None should be proud …….. wealth. iv. Take care ……..your health. v. He is known …….me.

Narration: a. I said to him ‘Who are you?’ b. The patriot said ‘Long live Bangladesh’. c. You said to me ‘I have done my duty’.

Writer whether Gerund / Participle: a. They started doing the work. b. He has a pleasing behaviour. c. He was punished for committing crime.

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Change the following speech: a. My friend said to me, “Good bye”. b. I asked him if he would stand by me. c. He said to me, “Have you finished your home work”? d. The patriot said, “Long live Bangladesh”. e. My father said to me, “Go home at once”. f. The teacher forbade the students to make a noise in the class. g. He said, “Hurrah! We have won the match”. h. I shall help you if you seek my help.

Write whether the following underlined words are Gerund or present participle. a. He surprised us by going without saying good-bye to none of us. b. We saw the boys swimming in the pond. c. We look forward to hearing from you d. He narrowly escaped being run over. e. There are people who can’t help laughing when they see someone slipping on a banana skin. f. I could not help overhearing what you said. g. I caught him climbing over the wall. h. They have engaged some hardworking men to plough the land.

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5. Use the verbs in the brackets: a) He forced me (tell) the secret. b) I shall get my house (clean). c) His strange behavior made me (laugh) d) The bonsai is not allowed (grow) too high. e) Are you having your assignment (copy) f) I shall help you (do) the work.

It is deplorable that these grammar items have been repeated for several times.

If items are so much simple and easy and repeatedly set we can assume that students will never work hard to improve their linguistic competence and will restrict students’ learning. Furthermore, we presume that teachers’ class lecture will also be in line with the setting of question papers. As teachers are under pressure from the students, they always try to please the students and tend to discuss those points which are generally found frequently in the examination. In the questionnaire data teachers write: ‘I am serving in a private university where students are the second God’ ‘I also believe that a good result is more necessary for future career’ ‘In a private university students desire that question will be familiar to them. Teacher should teach only those items which are given in the exam.’

From above statements and question paper analysis we perceive that present testing system has a negative (harmful) impact on teaching and learning.

4.4.2. Testing Reading: The reading tests consist of three test techniques i.e. short answer questions, MCQ and True /False (dichotomous test) .After examining previous questions we noticed that there is no other item at all in the testing. The testing lacks novelty. Hence it is too much predictable. It is 133

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surprising that evens these short answer questions, MCQ and True / False have repeatedly been copied from the previous test papers ‘Whenever the content of a test becomes highly predictable, teaching and learning are likely to concentrate on what can be predicted’, (Hughes, 1989:45).

From the question patterns it appears to us that the reading test is basically a memory test. In the interview when I asked ‘Why do you take a memory test instead of engaging students in narrative/creative/descriptive/critical writing?’

She replied ‘We want to make sure that students are reading the texts thoroughly.’ But this statement appears to us contradictory. It is not intelligible to us why the questions are repeated on regular basis. Will it not restrict students’ range of reading? Will the students be not encouraged to memorize the answers of some probable questions instead of reading the texts thoroughly? From these doubts we presume that this testing method will have adverse impact on classroom teaching and learning.

4.4.3. Testing Writing: It is expected that students are engaged in writing different types of tasks.

Text type: Validity and reliability of writing test have been found to be increased by sampling more than one task/text type appropriate to the students writing needs. ‘The more samples of a student’s writing in a test, the more reliable the assessment is likely to be’ Weir (1993:134). ‘In general it is felt advisable to take at least two samples’ Jacobs et al.

(1981:15).

Topic: Raimes (1983:266) has strongly recommended that choosing topic be the teachers’ most responsible activity. ‘It is necessary to ensure that students are able to write something on the topic(s) they are presented with’ Weir (1993:134). In the task ‘common background information’ needs to be provided, cited in Islam (2003).

Amount of time allowed for each task/size of output: These are very practical and realistic issues for testing. Sufficient time should be allowed so that students can produce a coherent text. It should be long enough to be marked reliably. ‘If we want to establish whether a student can organise a written product into a coherent whole, length is obviously a coherent factor,’ Weir (1993:135). ‘Both time and length need to be stated’.

However, Kroll (1990) reports that there is little significant difference in 134

Backwash Effects of Examinations upon Teaching and Learning of English: A Case Study

quality of writing done either under time pressure or over a longer period (in terms of language and organizational skills).

In Advanced English the task type and length of tasks are extremely limited.

Students attempt only two types of tasks (letter and dialogue writing).So it is worrisome that this testing fails to test the students reliably.

After analyzing the 11 sample questions we have found that the paragraph PRICE HIKE has been set four times, LOAD SHEDDING is set three times, DESCRIBE YOUR HOME set three times, POLITICAL SYSTEM OF BANGLADESH is set three times.

It is very annoying and embarrassing that these few items have been repeated so many times. We feel that there is no supervision and the moderation committee does not work at all, Question setters are not working sincerely either. So once more we find that this type of testing will have a damaging impact on both teaching and learning.

4.5. Findings: We found that the testing of the course Advanced English has harmful impact on teaching and learning. We have ascertained that the testing method and departmental policy and syllabus designing are to be blamed for this.

4.6. Recommendations: i. Bachman (1990) asserts that positive washback would result when the testing procedure reflects the skills and abilities that are taught in the course. So we should test the abilities whose development we want to encourage. ii. Teachers and question setters should be provided with professional development opportunities. iii. A moderation committee with an expert from English Language and Literature department should function to ensure credible question setting. iv. Progress of classroom teaching should be monitored by the relevant head of the departments.

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v. It should be ensured that the test is known to, and understood by, students and teachers. If students and teachers know what the test will be like, what the test demands of them, it is quite possible to have a beneficial washback. Keeping this in mind, Hughes (1989) suggests that test specifications and item samples should be made available to everyone concerned with the preparation of the test. vi. Marks allocation should be revised with special focus on ‘writing’.

5. Conclusion The term “washback” has various implications as many as people who wrote about it. Some take it as the effect of a test on learning and teaching and some take from wider-ranging sense and claim that it is the effect of the test on various participants like test takers, teachers and test users. In this paper this term is analysed and subsequently in the light of the discussion we tried to examine the existence of washback effect on teaching and learning by selecting the test of Advanced English as a sample and measuring the result of the study. Lastly, a recommendation is made so that beneficial washback might be achieved.

Works Cited: Alderson, J. C., & Wall, D. "Does washback exist?" Applied Linguistics, 14, 115– 129, 1993.

Allison, D. Language Testing & Evaluation. Singapore University Press, 1999.

Bachman, L. Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing. Oxford: OUP, 1990.

Bachman, L. & Palmer, A. Language testing in practice. Oxford: OUP, 1996.

Bailey, K.M Washback in Language Testing. TOEFL Monograph Series.

Retrieved March 31, 2006 from the website. http://ftp.ets.org/pub/toefl/ToeflMS-15.pdf, 1999.

Buck, G. Testing listening comprehension in Japanese university entrance examinations. JALT (10), 1988.

Cohen, A. D. Assessing Language Ability in the Classroom. (Second edition). New York: Heinle and Heinle, 1994.

Davies, A. Principles of Language Testing, Basil Blackwell, 1990.

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Huges, A. Testing for Language Teachers. Cambridge University Press.

Cambridge, 1989.

Islam, Z. Bridging the Gap: Curricular Innovation and Teacher Preparation Perspective in Bangladesh. Dissertation done in the University of Essex, 2003.

Jacobs, H. L.; S. A. Zinkgraf, D. R. Wormuth; V. Faye Hartfiel and J. Hughey English Composition Program. Testing ESL Composition: a Practical Approach. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House, 1981.

Johnson, K. and Johnson, H. (eds.) Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics.

Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1998.

Kabir, H. ‘Investigation into the Validity and Reliability in testing Reading and Writing at HSC in Bangladesh’ Dissertation done in the University of Essex, 2007.

Kroll, B. (ed) Second Language Writing. Cambridge: CUP, 1990.

Marshall, C. and Rossman, G. B. Designing Qualitative Research. Newbury Park: Sage, 1989.

McDonough, J. & McDonough, S. Research Methods for English Language Teachers, Edward Arnold Ltd., London, 1997.

Miles, M. B. and Huberman, A. M. Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanding Source Book (2nd edition), Thousand Oaks, Sage Publication, 1994.

Raimes, A. ‘Anguish as a Second Language? Remedies for Composition teachers’. In A. Freedman et al (eds.), Learning to Write: first language/second language.

London: Longman, 1983.

Shohamy, E. Beyond proficiency testing: A diagnostic feedback testing model for assessing foreign language learning. Modern Language Journal 76(4), 513521, 1992.

Shohamy, E. Denitsa-Schmidt, S. and Ferman, I. Test impact revisited: Washback effect over time. Language Testing 13(3), 298-317, 1996.

Silverman, Doing Qualitative Research: A Practical Handbook, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2000.

Weir, C. J. Understanding and Developing Language Tests. UK: Prentice Hall International Ltd., 1993.

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Appendix-I Questionnaire for Teacher / Examiner: Please provide the following information: i.

Your name (optional): ……….....…………………………………

ii.

Name of the department where you teach / taught the course Advanced English: ...............................................................……

iii.

Length of your teaching experience: ………………………………

iv.

How long have you been involved with marking Advanced English exam scripts:

Questionnaire [**This questionnaire is based on the syllabus of Advanced English for the students of IIUC] **Please use a separate sheet of paper for any explanation/comment you want to include. It would be appreciated if you please write your response after the first reading of the questionnaire provided. Even you are free to write in either language you wish – Bangla or English. ] Q1.

What is the objective of the course Advanced English?

Q2.

Is it in line with the previously taught English courses at SSC and HSC levels?

Q3.

Why is it different?

Q4.

Is it in line with the existing Degree General English syllabus? How is it different?

Q5.

Is there any fixed syllabus for mid-term examination for this course?

Q6.

How many teachers teach the course Advanced English?

Q7.

How many of them set questions? Are they permanent question setters?

Q8.

Are you involved with question setting?

Q9.

Who set / sets mid-term question for this course?

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Q10. Who set/sets final term question for this course?

Q11. Is there any external question setters? Why or why not?

Q12. Who moderate the question?

Q13. Do you cover all of the contents mentioned in the syllabus? If not, why?

Q14. Which contents do you usually drop? Why? Q15. Does it (the exclusion of items) restrict teaching?

Q16. Does it (the exclusion of items) restrict the learning of the students?

Q17. Do you believe that there is influence of testing on your teaching?

Q18. ‘Why do you take a memory test instead of engaging students in narrative/creative/descriptive/critical writing?

Q19. Do you believe that question patterns / testing method have any influence on classroom teaching / teaching method?

Q20. Do you think students read only those items which are frequently set up in the exams?

Q20. Is the allocated time for the course sufficient?

Q21. Do you become worried if students do not perform well in the examinations?

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Appendix-II Questionnaire for students:

[**This questionnaire is based on the syllabus of Advanced English for the students of IIUC] Please provide the following information: i. Your name (optional):………………………………………… ii. Name of the department you belong to:……

Questionnaire Q1.

Is there any fixed syllabus for mid-term examination for this course?

Q2.

How many teachers teach the course Advanced English?

Q3.

Do your teachers cover all of the contents mentioned in the syllabus? If not, why?

Q4.

Which contents do they usually drop? Why?

Q5.

Does it (the exclusion of items) restrict teaching?

Q6.

Does it (the exclusion of items) restrict the learning of the students?

Q7.

Do you insist your teachers to teach only those items which are important for the exams?

Q8.

Do you believe that there is influence of testing on your learning?

Q9.

Do you believe that question patterns / testing method have any influence on classroom teaching / teaching method?

Q10. Do you think students read only those items which are frequently set up in the exams?

Q11. Is the allocated time for the course sufficient?

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Appendix-III Questionnaire for the Director, CENURC:

Please provide the following information: i. Your name (optional): ……………………………………....…… ii. Length of your teaching experience: ……………………….…… iii. How long have you been in charge of CENURC:

Questionnaire [**This questionnaire is based on the syllabus of Advanced English for the students of IIUC]

Q1.

What is the objective of the course Advanced English?

Q2.

Is it in line with the previously taught English courses at SSC and HSC levels?

Q3.

Why is it different?

Q4.

Is it in line with the existing Degree General English syllabus? How is it different?

Q5.

Is there any fixed syllabus for mid-term examination for this course?

Q6.

How many teachers teach the course Advanced English?

Q7.

How many of them set questions? Are they permanent question setters?

Q8.

Who set / sets mid-term question for this course?

Q9.

Who set/sets final term question for this course?

Q10. Is there any external question setters? Why or why not?

Q11. Who moderate the question?

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Q12. Do the teachers cover all of the contents mentioned in the syllabus?

If not, why?

Q13. Which contents do they usually drop? Why? Q14. Does it (the exclusion of items) restrict teaching?

Q15. Does it (the exclusion of items) restrict the learning of the students?

Q16. Are the English teachers over burdened with classes?

Q17. Why do the English teachers fail to cover he syllabus?

Q18. Who monitor the English teachers under CENURC? Q19. Do you believe that there is influence of testing on your teaching?

Q20. Do you believe that question patterns / testing method has any influence on classroom teaching / teaching method?

Q21. Do you think students read only those items which are frequently set up in the exams?

Q22. Is the allocated time for the course sufficient?

Q23. Do you have any suggestion to make the course more effective?

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Paradox of Identity in J. M. Coetzeeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s In the Heart of the Country Mohammad Shahidul Islam Chowdhury* Abstract: J. M. Coetzee (1940 â&#x20AC;&#x201C;), who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2003, has written about post-colonial ideology and struggle in some of his novels. In the Heart of the Country (1977), Coetzeeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s second novel, presents its narrator Magda trapped in a dilemma of her post-colonial surroundings and her own self. The first person narrative of this novel shows the strife of a girl, who is the daughter of the master of a farm-house in South Africa, yet who becomes a psychic victim of her social identity. Magda is a girl who, for the lack of proper human communication, depends on the servants in the house. Still, she surrenders to the male servant, who tries to reveal her identity as a mere sex object. Besides, lack of discourse makes her face a dilemma. Her ambiguity takes shape in the novel through its queer narrative, which is based on units. The ambivalence of master/servant relationship and biological/psychological dependence brings Magda to the point of alienation and isolation from her surroundings. This paper tries to illustrate how Magda becomes a victim of post-colonial separation from her community and how this separation leads her to the world of fantasy, where her femininity overpowers her.

In the Heart of the Country is a diary-like novel that is divided into interrelated worlds or spheres or realms: reality and fantasy. Its central character Magda lives in Agterplaas in South Africa. She narrates everything she confronts in and around the house. But her first person narrative is unlike any other narrative as the incidents in the novel are

* Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Premier University

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presented in 265 units. This schemata of units is perplexing, for some of them portray the same incident in different ways. Moreover, her presentation shows that many of the incidents take place not in her real life but in her fantasy. The novel begins with a repellent description of the second wife of Magda’s father, who is the owner of the farm-house and who passes his days idly and lavishly, and Magda planning and executing the murder of the two, because she does not approve of the second marriage, nor does she tolerate the new wife. Ironically, this presentation of the family relationship in the novel is far from reality; rather she creates the existence of the second wife simply because she is torn between her father’s illicit relationship with Klein-Anna, wife of his servant Hendrik and her sense of post-colonial ideology. Magda, the only girl in the house, finds herself neglected by her father, who is obsessed with his own carnal desire. This makes her a subject to gender discrimination. As a white, she is humiliated by the black mistress of her father; as a girl she is irked at her father’s behaviour. So she withdraws herself from the regular household affairs, particularly from the chores for her father’s comfort. But as she cannot do anything directly, she is to go for revenge, “My father pays no attention to my absence. To my father I have been an absence all my life.

Therefore instead of being the womanly warmth at the heart of this house I have been a zero, null, a vacuum towards which all collapses inward, a turbulence, muffled, grey, like a chill draft eddying through the corridors, neglected, vengeful” (Coetzee: 2). It is the negligence of the father that prompts Magda to build the second world, where she spends much of her time. This negligence pushes her to look for a normal human relationship, which she finds in the black servant Hendrik and his wife Klein-Anna.

This new development in her life has yet another type of ambivalence. She must not be dependent on them, still she cannot help it, for there is no one else to continue a logical discourse. She is in between two harsh realities of life. As Frantz Fanon explains, “the juxtaposition of the white and black races has created a massive psychoexistential complex” (12). Magda’s alienation from her origin and dependence on what is alien for her plunge her to this complexity. But her sense of revenge brings the servants inside the house. She creates a parallel relationship with the black servant against her father’s relationship with the black servant’s wife. She finds a duality in her father, and maintains the same duality in her own life in her post-

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colonial environment. She becomes a masochist. Magda, as David Attwell narrates, “rebels against both his duplicity and the duplicity of the conventions into which she has been socialized” (63). This socialization creates a dark impression on her and she feels not only helpless but also deceived by her father. Magda is deprived of a normal family life and normal human relationship. As a result, she turns to her inner self as well as her fantasy. Her fantasy prompts her to establish a sexual relationship with her black servant Hendrik, “The colonial and imperial context was one which was sexually coded and redolent with sexual meanings: the exotic is a particular example of the way in which the colonial context is imbued with sexual fantasy” (cited in Jackson: 100). She is inclined to this new development as she offers the servant-couple to stay inside the house.

Coetzee presents Magda in a state of dilemma where she becomes miserable in the presence of Hendrik. He, being a black native, is already subjugated. But as he realizes that his wife is forced to maintain an illicit relationship with the “baas” and as he finds no money in the post office, he is enraged and poised to take revenge on his “Miss,” who is the only scope of revenge for him. He kicks and rapes Magda. She, being a double victim of his rage and humiliation, feels herself more humiliated than Hendrik because after the first rape she is forced to copulate with him every night.

Not only this, he brings her down to the identity of an animal, “He turns me on my face and does it to me from behind like an animal. Everything dies in me when I have to raise my ugly rear to him. I am humiliated; sometimes I think it is my humiliation he wants” (Coetzee: 122). Hendrik has to do this, “The colonized had to ‘insult’ and ‘vomit up’ the white [wo]man’s values” (Boehmer: 175) for claiming his social position, for rising above what he is: a black, colonized man. The discourse that follows between these two during night shows Magda’s desperate attempt of establishing a sensible relationship with the only human beings she finds around her. For her, if this physical relationship leads to a normal behaviour among them, she may be relieved of an isolation attributed to her from the community. Already it is noticed that they never expect any visitor. She concentrates on Klein-Anna, her pseudo-rival in an organic relationship. Magda is also eager to know how women tolerate the smell of male seed. Hendrik is much different from Magda in every sense. For him, the primary concern is revenge. He is eager to feel protected in his action

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by his “Miss.” Thus, he is in a dilemma of identity. He knows he is black and so cannot cross his limit. “Ego-withdrawal as a successful defensemechanism,” writes Fanon, “is impossible for the Negro. He requires a white approval”(51). For him, this approval comes to him through Magda’s degeneration. But she is not disinclined about this forbidden relationship. She gradually becomes attached to him. She waits for him at night to come to her. Her eagerness about his body, her curiosity to see him naked at night is restrained by his conscience of post-colonial inferiority, which wants to play the role of a superior male. Hendrik invents a process which lends him an opportunity to dominate Magda both physically and psychically. This domination creates in him a sense of freedom from his being colonized and a sense of colonizer, like his “baas”, “Male sexual domination is a material system with an ideology and a metaphysics. The sexual colonization of women’s bodies is a material reality; men control the sexual and reproductive uses of women’s bodies.

The institutions of control include . . . systematized physical aggression against women . . .” (cited in Freedman: 64). This is how Hendrik finds momentary peace of mind about revenge scheme.

Coetzee draws Magda as a sympathetic character towards Klein-Anna. She does not consider Anna as a rival, rather as one who has been deceived by her social position. She now realizes Anna’s feelings after her father’s abusing her sexually. Out of pity, she tries to develop a discourse between the two victims of masculinity in the house. Anna, for her, is doubly maltreated – by the master and the husband, “native or subaltern women were . . . disadvantaged on the grounds not only of gender but also of race, social class, and, in some cases, religion, caste, sexuality, and regional status” (Boehmer: 216). Magda begins a friendly discourse with her, for she realizes that they are equally deprived of their rights – cultural, social, and sexual. She further brings Anna by her side, caresses her, holds her hand, makes tea for her, yet fails to break the bar that divides them eventually.

This triangular relationship makes each of them vulnerable to their individual self. But it is Anna who suffers the most of the three. She has the feeblest voice as well. Magda is parallel to Anna. The colonizer is to enjoy all the facilities, but here she becomes a prey to the lust of Johannes, her father. Thus Coetzee presents two sets of parallel characters: on the one hand there are Johannes and Hendrik, on the other hand, there are Magda and

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Klein-Anna. The two male characters are master-servant, yet the servant acts like the colonizer himself. This covert identity is revealed only to the colonizing woman, who, being physically subjugated by the servant, becomes colonized and thus is forced to debase herself to the status of the black native Klein-Anna. These female characters are given their new identity by their male relations. They are forced to have a new way of life. A patriarchal society limits these women. “Women are denied the right to create their own images of femaleness,” explains Toril Moi, “and instead must seek to conform to the patriarchal standards imposed on them” (57).

Yet, Magda shows an unyielding frigidity to Hendrik. She knows his limitations and so is not much dependent on him for her individual quest for a sensible relationship. Magda’s loneliness is different from that of the other characters. Even she is lonelier than Hendrik or her wounded father, whose personalities she studies earlier through Johannes’ penis, “The sex is smaller than I thought it would be, almost lost in a bush of black hair straggling up to the navel: . . . Hendrik is embarrassed by . . . my woman’s hands and eyes wandering so near this pale unprotected manhood” (Coetzee: 75). Her relationship with both the males does not give them any idea about what she really is. Feeling unprotected both by the post-colonial society and by the young Miss, Hendrik retreats from the sexual affair and decides to depart from Agterplaas. He is preoccupied with his ego. Magda is flabbergasted at this decision because she feels that her loneliness would now be more depressing once the servants are gone. She implores Hendrik to stay. But her plea brings to light another aspect of the post-colonial environs, where she maintains her superiority, which shows that even sex is less important to her than her colonial grip over Hendrik. She can excuse herself to the point of equating them with her own position in the society, but lowering herself than this would be a cultural shock, which she can never accept. “The duplicitous woman is the one,” Moi elaborates, “whose consciousness is opaque to man, whose mind will not let itself be penetrated by the phallic probings of masculine thought” (57). Magda can live without the physical presence of Hendrik or Anna or Johannes, but her mind’s bottom is something which is open to her alone.

Once out of the grip of Hendrik or Anna, Magda can begin another phase of her lonely existence, that is, her fantasy. In this parallel life she grows old and offers a boy to educate him on female sexuality. The boy retreats.

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But this is no amusement for her. She is almost overcome by her loneliness. Taking care of the wounded father and imagining a world of Spanish language help to pass her time to some extent, but that lack of discourse, that lack of human communication is at the bottom of her anguish. She keeps maintaining her diary-life. Magda, all through her solitary life, “reproduces in her account the ways in which a settler-invader colony education elided destructive imperial and local white involvement in conquest and colonization” (King: 149-50). She is all women, the lonely woman, who faces the previous dilemma of isolation in a post-colonial environment. She desperately runs from one end of the veld to the other end where she arranges stones to draw attention of the flying planes, obviously in vain. This is so because things happen in her second world, which is ambiguous but decisive. “The girl’s feelings of helplessness, rage, rejection and loss which have been repressed,” writes Rosalind Minsky, “may re-emerge in her subsequent life in the form of hysterical symptoms in response to the threat, or perceived threat, of rejection or loss of a significant other . . .” (59).

Coetzee in this way elucidates a strong sense of femininity in Magda’s character. She tries to become self-dependent, and she has to; there is no one else in the house to look after Johannes or herself or the household. The daughter, earlier neglected by the father, cannot but take care of the father because he is helpless, and her female instinct cannot ignore her responsibilities. Unlike Hendrik she is unable to leave. This difference between the father and the daughter, between Hendrik and Magda, between male and female realization, between masculinity and femininity, between colonizer and colonized is the key to understanding the true identity of Magda. She longs for communication, yet her responsibilities impede her to fulfill her desire. She is split into two selves – two Magdas: one in the real world taking care of the real, post-colonial life, the other in her fantasy destroying all the bars in her way of life and trying to refuse such a life in whatever means possible, one destroying her desire and the other nurturing it. Her desire for sexual relationship is a distorted outburst of her longing for a sensible relationship with others in a place where she is nowhere, where her very self faces an existentialist question as a suppressed feminine, where she is made subaltern by the counter reality of male domination. Shooting her father, threatening Hendrik or frightening the errand-boy is a protest

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against that domination. As Moi explains, “If patriarchy oppresses women as women, defining . . . all as ‘feminine’ regardless of individual differences, the feminist struggle must both try to undo the patriarchal strategy that makes ‘femininity’ intrinsic to biological femaleness, and at the same time insist on defending women precisely as women” (81).

Magda comes out of her shell by hiding herself in that other, invisible world, where she finds a solution to her binary self. Being a colonizer, she is deprived of her father’s care, any normal human relationship, even of her sexuality. Being colonized, she develops a series of affairs, experiences sexuality and develops a sense of responsibility. But being a colonizer she enjoys a sense of superiority, which she misses after being colonized. She does not want to surrender that hierarchical status; that is her last stand.

Here is what Magda is: a female imbued with post-colonial ideology. This is her naivety. She does not hold herself responsible for being born and brought up in this background. Since her candid attitude towards life may not be supported by others, she secludes herself in fantasy, where she creates everything on her own. Femininity, masculinity, sexuality, postcolonialism, discourse, everything she interprets from her own point of view, which is none of these. Rather, she decries that neither her father nor the servant-couple can understand her. She mourns her candid approach towards life, “Why will no one speak to me in the true language of the heart? The medium, the median – that is what I wanted to be! Neither master nor slave, neither parent nor child, but the bridge between, so that in me the contraries should be reconciled” (Coetzee:145). That is where the true Magda can be found, that is where the authenticity of Magda can be verified. Magda’s is a self that demands freedom, only to be disappointed, in a desert where she is all but free. Unfortunately, there is no rescue team for her. She must be her own saviour.

In order to free herself from this dilemma of post-colonial femininity, Magda constructs an equivalent realm. This realm, which is as vast as the veld itself, helps her find her true self, her true voice of discourse. Her voice may not reach others, but she is conscious of it, as she is conscious of her father’s negligence, Hendrik’s assault on her or Klein-Anna’s sufferings. Magda does not sink in that abysmal chasm of her identity crisis; that question has already been answered. She survives any existentialist attempt on her life. Her world is horizontal. But the worlds 149

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she finds around her are all vertical, substantial. “The premisses of realism, which have to do with consolidation or metonymy,” writes King, “are inadequate to express the voice of the periphery, of a vision shaped by two ontologies. Hence the counter-realism, the fantasy, and the magic realism to straddle the worlds of the referential and the speculative” (208).

Magda’s creativity, self-respect and simplicity are her weapons of survival.

But this survival is hard-earned. She has to sacrifice all her dependence for attaining self-dependence. This is an achievement that eclipses all her previous sufferings. May be there is nobody now to continue a discourse with her, still her present level gives her freedom of voice, freedom of life.

As a colonizer, Magda’s freedom is limited. As a colonized, she cannot enjoy the freedom of life. Now that she could transport herself into fantasy, her real world becomes that fantasy, and the shadow world turns out to be the reality of life. Once torn to pieces, she now feels united, even though this unity is fragile. This is how Magda realizes herself. This is how she becomes an embodiment of the dilemma of post-colonial femininity.

Works Cited Attwell, David. J. M. Coetzee: South Africa and the Politics of Writing. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993.

Boehmer, Elleke. Colonial and Postcolonial Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Coetzee, J. M. In the Heart of the Country. London: Vintage, 1999.

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1967.

Freedman, Jane. Feminism. New Delhi: Viva Books, 2002.

Jackson, Stevi and Jackie Jones. ed. Contemporary Feminist Theories. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998.

King, Bruce. ed. New National and Post-colonial Literatures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Minsky, Rosalind. ed. Psychoanalysis and Gender: An Introductory Reader.

London: Routledge, 1996.

Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics. London: Routledge, 2002.

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Demystification of Children in Goldingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lord of the Flies Mohammed Solaiman Chowdhury* Abstract: Demystification of children is one of the chief purposes of Golding's Lord of the Flies. Here children are taken as central characters to record his idea about human nature, which is discovered through their alienation from the society. Evil, inherent in human being, can deform the entity of mankind when it is unfolded. It can be a threat to both civilization and the individual. All these ideas are set forth through the portrayal of children in this novel. The knowledge we possess about children in general is that they are harmless, innocent, and mysterious in nature. But this general idea about children is negated in a quite unconventional way as the novel presents the children's cruel nature. Here, in this novel, children are no longer mystified as they are unpredictable to what to do, think, and imagine. They are rather demystified through the unmasking of the inner self. Golding's novel is significant in the sense that it has revealed the true nature of children in a certain situation, which, in a word, can term children as demystifying agents. This is what the paper seeks to assess.

The portrayal of children and the developmental stages they undergo remain a common theme in literature. All great writers and poets, more or less, have dealt with child psychology, sometimes as angels, sometimes as diabolic characters and sometimes as mere human offspring. William Golding has masterfully approached this theme and touched the hearts of the readers. He has demonstrated children as demystifying agents in his Lord of the Flies. Generally the word 'demystify' refers to the simplification of any idea, which appears to be difficult to understand.

According to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, the word

*

Lecturer, Department of English Language and Literature, Premier University, Chittagong.

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'demystify' means to make a difficult or complicated subject easier to understand by explaining it in simple language. In Lord of the Flies, Golding presents children as demystifying agents. His children are, in the beginning of the novel, like other children in general very much innocent.

They enjoy their freedom which is reflected in Ralph, the fair boy's saying ''No grown-ups!'' (Golding, 1954:12). But in course of time they have become blood thirsty. The writer presents the cruelty of children overtly without mystifying their activities. He points out that children can also be murderers like the adults. So demystifying children means presenting children in their true nature in the backdrop of the novel Lord of the Flies.

An uninhabited island where a group of children are marooned during the time of the Second World War is the setting and background of Golding's Lord of the Flies. Since children are playing the pivotal role in the matrix of the novel, the psychological metamorphosis of the children from the beginning to the end is remarkable. In portraying the children of Lord of the Flies, many ideas are brought into focus such as societal breakdown, exposure of innate evil in human being, craving for power, influence of nature on existence, formation of society of order and law, primitivism, island as a miniature of so called society or civilization, man's bestial nature, loss of identity, conflict between the savage and the civilized, blind emotion and prudent rationality, inhumanity and humanity, and evil and good and so on. All these ideas help us to understand how the children function as demystifying agents in this novel.

We find the novel is, as our reading reveals, divided into three parts. The first part opens with Ralph, the fair boy's searching for his companions and eventually his discovery of Piggy, the spectacled boy. Then we get an elaborate description of the arrival of the other boys in the island. The world in this part of the novel is the world of the children where they enjoy unlimited freedom. Instantly the concern of being rescued is unfolded when Piggy says, ''We may stay here till we die'' (20). He thinks so because he realizes his helplessness. Earlier, in the civilized society, he has not experienced such kind of helplessness. In fact, it reflects his worried

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and unsettled frame of mind. Within a very short time, many children of different ages appear: Signs of life were visible now on the beach. The sand, trembling beneath the heat-haze, concealed many figures in its miles of length; boys were making their way towards the platform through the hot, dumb sand. Three small children, no older than Johnny, appeared from startlingly close at hand where they had been gorging fruit in the forest (24).

Later an assembly is formed. Now Piggy realizes the importance of a meeting as he opines, ''We ought to have a meeting'' (16) for the early decision about what to do. Everything, within this part of novel, is within law and rule. Here Golding very purposefully focuses on the character of Ralph. Ralph, conscious of obligation by nature, takes the responsibility of making houses for the little boys, who are scared of beasts and snakes. He is found methodical in nature, who realizes the importance of being rescued from the island. He gathers everyone for the meeting by blowing a conch, a symbol of authority. He even calls for an election where lies the beginning of forming a government. He further suggests keeping signal fire on so that they can be rescued by any ship passing the island. At this critical moment, Golding, very intentionally, introduces the idea of group to clarify characteristics of Ralph and Jack. The idea of making groups comes first in the mind of Jack when he decides to take the charge of keeping signal fire on with his own group. Then Jack appears as the leader of his own group. It is very important to note how Golding presents Jack.

Jack's exposure indicates that he is a born leader who says, ''I ought to be chief'' (29). In an arrogant outburst he further says, ''because I'm chapter chorister and head boy. I can sing C Sharp'' (29). Thus from the very beginning we find Jack very much interested in having an authoritative power and this tendency is shown by him till the end of the novel.

Adventurous in spirit, he desires to hunt pigs and becomes obsessed with it. This desire results in the negligence of essential tasks such as building the huts and tending the signal fire. Of course, as readers we should not forget the fact that these boys are not adult enough to comprehend the

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outcome of the negligence. One day eventually it so happens that a potential chance of being rescued is missed as sailors cross them when the fire remains extinguished. This infuriates Ralph. The conflict between Jack and Ralph starts which afterwards will further develop over the issue of greater importance between food and shelter. Now they are no longer working together. It can be said that collective interest is replaced by personal interest when the question of individual power arrives. Thus the two boys' relationship gradually turns antagonistic. Golding relates the idea as, ''Now the antagonism was audible'' (65). Jack, being successful in his hunting expedition, wins the support of the majority of big boys known as 'Biguns'. Here we should bear in mind that Jack, at first, has not been able to kill a pig ''because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood'' (41). Many children support Jack's hunting because it is the result of the primitive question of 'food', which ensures existence. Later hunting becomes Jack's and his group's preoccupation. Jack says proudly, ''I cut the pig's throat'' (87). It indicates a transformation in Jack that becomes apparent in Piggy's questioning when he says, ''What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages? What's grown-ups going to think? Going off-hunting pigs-letting fires out-and now!'' (113). Now at this point of the novel, the children create an atmosphere of rivalry and division. It is here, in fact, a gradual process of demystification of the children's behavior starts as they are gradually becoming conscious of their position in the island, getting more and more exposed to the reality. Golding mainly focuses here on the characters of Ralph and Jack. Truly, they are gradually demystified as they unfold their true nature.

In the second part of the novel Golding purposefully uses the idea of fear.

It has become instrumental as it brings changes in the boys' minds. Here how the thought of fear demystifies children's activities is important to note. It appears that Golding, a schoolmaster for many years, ably penetrates the juvenile psychology by introducing 'fear' in abstract form.

This part of the novel begins with the threat, which takes on physical reality when the dead airman arrives. The threat is nothing but self-made threat of fear by one of the 'littluns'. He describes his dream: "Last night I 154

Demystification of Children in Golding’s Lord of the Flies

had a dream, a horrid dream, fighting with things. I was outside the shelter by myself, fighting with things, those twisty things in the trees" (105).

Here the 'twisty things' refers to snakes. Again Sam and Eric share another experience of fear. On their usual duty to keep the fire alive, one night they report Ralph about a beast on the mountain top. They say, "We've seen the beast with our own eyes. No− we weren't asleep […] (124). In this connection it can be said that Golding is creating a sense of fear not from external world but from inside. Now the news of beast moves everyone.

Ralph and Jack, along with his group, start searching for the beast and they have found nothing but the dead body of an air pilot entangled in the strings of a parachute. It is important to note that though the two boys share polarity in their mentality, they work together because fear of beast is common to them. Instantly the fear is crystallized and all the boys are affected by the news. Discussion goes on to give way to action. Here it can be said that the boys are not aware of the fact that they have created the fear by themselves. It is because they are not accustomed to the way of living in this wilderness. This lack of knowledge leads the characters to be demystified in the later stages.

The third part of the novel shows the climax of conflict between Jack and Ralph. Jack criticizes Ralph's inabilities in hunting. Finally, Jack bursts into tears of self-pity. In this propaganda, everyone supports him and joins his tribe leaving Ralph alone with Piggy, Simon and the twins. Then Jack kills a pig and wants to offer its head to the 'beast' as gift. He says, "This head is for the beast. It's a gift"(170). Simon is highly influenced by this scene. He considers the head of the hunted pig as the Lord of the Flies. He has an imaginary conversation with the head that tells him that evil is a part of all boys. It says, "You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close! I'm the reason why it's no go? Why things are what they are?"

(177). It further says, "This has gone quite far enough. My poor, misguided child, do you think you know better than I do?" (178). Here 'misguided child' refers to the children. Actually it is Simon's hallucination and here it can be said that he is very much right in his way of thinking. Simon's realization is further justified when he thinks, "The beast was harmless and

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horrible; and the news must reach the others as soon as possible" (181). By this time jack's group adopts a primitive method by painting themselves with red clay and dancing for hunting pig. They are chanting like the savage people, "Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! "(188).

Simon wants to share his feelings about the harmless nature of the beast with the other boys and is returning from the forest by crawling like animals. But the boys, frenzied with the excitement of hunting, take Simon for the beast and kill him ruthlessly. Thus Simon becomes the victim and scapegoat of the society. Interestingly enough, Piggy and Ralph show their sympathy and feel sad for Simon but Jack and others do not at all show any feeling for Simon. Here the use of paint is a symbolic rejection of society that demystifies children. When they put on mask of paint indeed they take off the mask of society and reveal their true nature signifying savagery. Thus we can say that complete moral degeneration is revealed through Simon's murder. Here lies the beginning of de-humanizing process of the children, which also marks the idea of demystification. Earlier they have worked together to be safe from the fear of beast but now they turn to beast through killing Simon being unaware of what they are doing. Further de-mystification of their nature occurs through the ensuing fight between Jack and Ralph. Golding records: With ludicrous care he embraced the rock, pressing himself to it above the sucking sea. The sniggering of the savages became a loud derisive jeer.

Jack Shouted above the noise.

"You go away, Ralph. You keep to your end. This is my end and my tribe. You leave me alone "(217).

Then the fight takes place with uncontrollable ferocity: They met with a jolt and bounced apart. Jack swung with his fist at Ralph and caught him on the ear. Ralph hit Jack in the stomach and made him grunt. Then they were facing each other again, panting and furious, but unnerved by each other's ferocity. They became aware of the noise that was the

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background to this fight, the steady shrill cheering of the tribe behind them (221).

Immediately after the fight Piggy makes a series of comments over the fighting. He says''Which is better⎯to be a pack of painted niggers like you are, or to be sensible like Ralph is?''

A great clamour rose among the savages. Piggy shouted again. ''Which is better⎯to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill?''

Again the clamour and again⎯''Zup!'' Ralph shouted against the noise. ''Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?'' (221-222)

In this speech Piggy draws a comparative picture of being sensible and insensible, having rules and killing and establishing law and hunting. What Piggy realizes is that their dream of establishing a lawful, orderly society is shattered through Jack's over obsession with pig hunting. In fact, he delivers the speech addressing Jack but it has not produced any effect on him. Further debates take place between Jack and Ralph. Piggy supports Ralph even after the final breach between the two leaders. Finally, Piggy's only left lens is stolen, which is a parody of the traditional fire theft for providing light and warmth for mankind. For this he makes a final plea as he reasons always and receives a strike on the head by a rock thrown by Roger and falls.

Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back on that square, red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and turned red. Piggy's arms and legs twitched a bit like a pig's after it has been killed (222-223).

Ralph is now alone in grave danger as the twins are too threatened to join Jack's tribe. Jack, along with his savage group, now searches for Ralph.

Later, he sets fire everywhere to kill him. Thus the world of game, to be embodied in rule and order, is destroyed without anyone's sufficient awareness.

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A comparison between Ralph and Jack, will reveal more disquieting truths.

We find that Ralph lacks in the development of a heroic insight. Rather he is a failure figure since he wants to act reasonably like an adult. He forgets that he is not in the so called society; he is in the jungle. He even extols the adult world when he refers that his father is a naval officer. Through this he tries to hide the beast in himself. He does not understand it till the end. Rightly he represents the idea that we conceal the true nature of man. Like him Piggy is too unaware of it. But Jack is totally different from them. At least we can say that Jack represents the truth about evil nature in human being. He is heroic in his insight.

Golding's Lord of the Flies can also be dubbed as the influence of primeval nature on human being, an important issue in this novel, which helps us to understand its characters. We can also term this influence of nature as ecocriticism, an issue, at present widely discussed in the World Literature.

Since ecocriticism involves a work in which the landscape itself is a dominant character when significant interaction occurs between author and place and character and place. Therefore, it is reasonable if we think of Hardy's The Return of the Native where Egdon Heath is the controlling force of the novel's entire dynamics. Human beings are not the determining element in The Return of the Native, but it is the very setting where the action occurs, the surroundings of Egdon Heath that serves as the crucial determinant. Likewise the characters of Golding are highly influenced by the landscape of the island in the sense that before their arrival they were civilized but after their arrival they experience a metamorphosis, which has made them brutal like animals. But there is a difference between Hardy and Golding. Hardy creates his characters born and brought up in Egdon Heath whereas Golding brings his characters from civilized world to this marooned islandic landscape. Again Hardy's Egdon Heath is inhabited by all (except Eustacia) and it is also civilized as people live here, while Golding's island is completely a virgin primitive land which is eventually populated by children with an effort to form a society. In this connection, we can also think of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Defoe also takes his character from civilized world to an uninhabited island. It is Robinson who finds himself alone in the island like the children of Golding. He, like 158

Demystification of Children in Goldingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lord of the Flies

Golding's children, has fear about being attacked by beast. Finally, he gets Friday whom he rescues from cannibals. He even kills cannibals for protection. The idea of protection is a recurrent concern in both the novels.

For Defoe killing cannibal is justifiable but for Golding killing Simon and Piggy cannot be justified. Rather their activities become like the cannibals.

Again Defoe's Robinson enslaves Friday whereas Golding's children enslave themselves to the gratification of brutal side of human being through killing. Thus demystification occurs and the true nature of children is revealed.

Golding finds inspiration to write in islandic setting from Ballantyne's The Coral Island. In both R.M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island and Golding's Lord of the Flies, children are the heroes. In both the novels, boys are away from the control of adults. Evil informs both the novels but Ballantyne's one is not attributed to the boys. Here evil comes from outside as the island is invaded by pirates who have captured Ralph. Battle takes place between cannibals and pirates and pirates are killed and cannibals are converted to Christianity, a medium to disperse evil. But Golding's boys are not like that, rather they become blood-thirsty of man and animal. It is a kind of transformation from good to evil because the children being divided into two groups immediately after their arrival are engaged in power conflict. Finally, killing occurs. About the treatment of children we can say that Ballantyne keeps his children from the beginning to the end innocent but Golding keeps his children no longer innocent, rather they turn to be cruel at the end. Here we can also think of physical landscape of the two islands. It can be said that Ballantyne's one is full of bounties and children are happy there. But Golding's island, though endowed with natural bounties, causes diarrhoea and other diseases among children when they take fruits. Children also here suffer from storm and scorching heat.

In fact, rough weather makes the children aggressive in nature. Again, Ballantyne's children work unitedly but Golding's children show confrontation, disharmony and intolerance and so they have to suffer.

The novel bears some significant gradual changes among the characters from the beginning to the end with the development of the plot. As the novel 159

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advances, Golding shows how children feel the influence of the instincts of civilization and savagery to different degrees. Piggy, for instance, has no savage feeling, while Roger seems barely capable of comprehending the rules of civilization. Jack epitomizes savagery by hunting pigs, playing central role in murdering Piggy and finally, having direct involvement in murdering Simon along with others. Here we can recall Jack's earlier utterance when he says, "I agree with Ralph. We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English; and the English are best at everything. So we've got to do the right things" (55).

In fact, the utterance is ironical as far as his activities are concerned. But Ballantyne's portrayal of Jack is not so. Ballantyne's Jack is compassionate at heart to his fellowmates when he says, after shipwreck, ''Speak to us my dear Ralph, whispered Jack tenderly. Are you better now?'' (Ballantyne, 1993:13) Rather than being cooperative and compassionate Golding's Jack is cruel by nature. At the end of Golding's Lord of the Flies Jack, with his followers, chases Ralph to kill so that he can rule the island alone. In fact, he wants to rule the island absolutely. The tendency of Jack is to attain power with sole authority. When power is the ultimate goal rationality is suspended there. This recalls Machiavelli's The Prince where he preaches for attainment of power by any means as far as ruling is concerned. In this process nothing is wrong. Similar is the case with Jack and Ralph. We can say that both of them are conscious of attaining power. This consciousness leads them to confrontation and one wants to outdo the other through fighting. In fact, according to Machiavelli, Jack is a prince who ''must not worry about the reproach of cruelty when it is a matter of keeping his subjects united and loyal'' (Machiavelli, 1979:55). Again Jack's inherent evil can be explained from Frued's 'Tripartite Theory of Personality' as interpreted by Lavine in From Socrates to Sartre: A Philosophique Quest (1984). To LavineThe id is the seat of the sexual and aggressive instincts as well as of the self-preservative instincts; the superego is the seat of the conscience, which places harsh restrictions upon the gratifications of the instincts; ego is the seat of intelligence,

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Demystification of Children in Golding’s Lord of the Flies

which mediates between the id's unrealistic demands for immediate gratification and the punitive superego's constraints upon them (52).

Here we can think of Jack's murderous tendency as 'id'. Piggy serves the role of 'superego' as he constantly reminds Ralph to make fire to control Jack. He knows that Jack hates him as he stands between Jack and his pleasure. Again as 'superego' must employ the 'ego' to control 'id', Piggy cannot control Jack alone. He relies on Ralph to do so. Finally, 'ego', that is Ralph, the conscious mind, mediates between 'id's demand for pleasure and 'superego's effort to control over gratification of instincts belonging to 'id'. Consequently Ralph engages Jack to tend the fire. Through Jack Golding gives the idea that once the psyche is penetrated and the 'id' comes into conscious mind, the evil often overcomes the good available in people.

In the beginning of the novel we find the children working in unison to form a society, which reflects the idea of civilization. Though their efforts collapse, the attempt of forming society in the light of civilization can be interpreted from Freud’s idea of civilization. Mary Klages in Literary Theory: A Guide for the Perplexed (2008) analyses thus Freud’s idea of civilization as: When Freud looks at 'civilization' (which he does in Civilization and its Discontents), he sees two fundamental principles at work, which he calls the 'pleasure principle' and the 'reality principle.' The pleasure principle tells us to do whatever feels good; the reality principle tells us to subordinate pleasure to what needs to be done, to work. Subordinating the pleasure principle to the reality principle is done through a psychological process Freud calls sublimation, where you take desires that can't be fulfilled, or shouldn't be fulfilled, and turn their energy into something useful and productive (Klages, 63).

Thus Freud’s ‘pleasure principle’ can be linked to Jack’s killing of pigs and ‘reality principle’ to Ralph’s work for the betterment of the children.

The novel also shows that the ‘reality principle’ is about to be wiped out

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by the ‘pleasure principle’ as the children’s activities are concerned. Now Freud’s idea of ‘sublimation’ can be questioned, as it must be directed to something ‘productive’. Apparently Golding shows nothing ‘productive’ done by the boys in the novel but a careful look reveals us that the boys finally realize their wrong doings.

Golding, in his treatment of children, is strikingly unromantic. William Blake, an early Romanticist, finds in children innocence that he narrates in his Songs of Innocence. Blake in his poem ''A Cradle Song'' sees 'Holy image' in the face of a child. In the poem ''Holy Thursday'' the poet refers to 'innocent faces' of children. Wordsworth, another Romanticist, also relates children to innocence. In the poem "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood'' Wordsworth envisions childhood clad in 'celestial light'. He addresses children as 'ye blessed creatures' with whom 'the heavens laugh'. According to him children possess 'visionary gleam', they are 'best philosopher', 'Mighty prophet! Seer blest!' But Golding hardly finds innocence in children in The Lord of the Flies. Golding, interestingly enough, in the final chapter of the novel introduces the Naval Officer, the representative of the adult, who is shocked to see Jack and his tribe as barbarians with a sadistic delight in hunting Ralph. In fact, the officer represents the novelist's own sense of shock and outrage about human being. Golding acknowledges: Man is a fallen being. He is gripped by original sin. His nature is sinful and his state perilous. I accept the theology and admit the triteness; but what is trite is true; and a truism can become more than a truism when it is a belief passionately held (Bloom, 2007:1).

Again in the final chapter of the novel we come across further demystification of children from Ralph's realization of the total activities: And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy (248).

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Demystification of Children in Goldingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lord of the Flies

Ralph's phrase, ''the darkness of man's heart'' establishes a link with Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Like Conrad's character Kurtz, Jack becomes savage and immoral. In the forest of Africa, Kurtz has become obsessed with ivory when he says, "My ivory" (Conrad, 1983: 85) and as it has increased, his morals and power of self-restrain have declined. Conrad says, "They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restrained in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was in him [â&#x20AC;Ś] " (97). Kurtz even resorted to killing native Africans and stealing their ivory. It is also important to note that the sense of alienation from the civilized society bears a great impact on him which is substantiated in "Men who come out here should have no entrails" (51) and "He had been wandering about that river for nearly two years alone, cut off from everybody and everything''(91). On the contrary, in Golding's Lord of the Flies, Jack has become obsessed with hunting pigs with his own group. His own group is the counter society opposed to the chosen leader Ralph. Jack's group, painted like the savage at one stage, has become frenzied that results in killing of Simon. Thus both Kurtz and Jack lose a certain amount of restraint that leads them to a savage lifestyle. According to Conrad, in every man, there is darkness that he must discover. He must see and control it, or it will dominate him. The ignorance of this fact of evil results in destruction, which is realized by Kurtz before his death when he says, "The horror! The horror!â&#x20AC;? (121) In a compelling treatment of children, Golding systematically puts his character in real-life situation to bring out the idea of inner self of human being. It may appear to us that he is misanthropic but at the same time it is a kind of self-discovery through the demystification of the children. He reduces the status of human being to the level of animals and alerts us about the consequences. Indeed the novel bears a thought-provoking message for all.

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Works Cited Ballantyne, R.M. The Coral Island. Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1993.

Bloom, Harold. William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Chelsea House Publishers; 1st Indian Edition. 2007.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. London : Penguin Group, 1983.

Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. London : Penguin Group, 1965.

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. London : Faber and Faber Limited, 1954.

Hardy, Thomas. The Return of the Native. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1969.

Klages, Mary. Literary Theory: A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2008.

Lavine, T. Z. From Socrates to Sartre: A Philosophic Quest. New York: Bantam Books, 1984.

Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Stevenson, W.H. William Blake: Selected Poetry. London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1988.

The Norton Anthology of Poetry (3rd Edition). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1983.

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HORIZON ISSN 2223-0556 Number- 4, March 2011. Published in June 2012 (p 165-184)

Analysis of the Students’ Errors in Punctuation: An Empirical Study Kohinoor Akther* Abstract: This paper is a cross-sectional study showing how intensive classroom instruction on the rules of punctuation helps change students’ faulty notion and use of the symbols of punctuation. The participants in this diachronic study, one hundred and twenty three in number, are Banglophone freshers in the graduation course at the Department of English Language and Literature in Premier University, Chittagong. They are from two different intakes at the university entry level (January—June, and July—December, 08). The participants in this study attended my classes on punctuation three times a week that I conducted for four weeks for a course entitled Foundation Course II. Data were collected from students’ written and oral productions like scripts and in-depth interview sessions. Data were also collected from the contributions of the practising teachers of tertiary level through questionnaires and interviews. The statistical analysis of the data pinpoints the vulnerable and strong points of the participants on punctuation. The study reveals that appropriate instruction followed by drills, tests and subsequent corrective feedback contributes to dispelling students’ wrong notion and use of the symbols of punctuation.

Introduction Punctuation marks are the symbols, which are used in the written forms of every language. Etymologically speaking, the word ‘punctuation’ originates from the Greek word “punctum” (meaning “pause” or “point”). It is a quintessentially important ingredient of the Graphic Conventions

*

Lecturer, Department of English Language and Literature, Premier University, Chittagong.

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(orthography, punctuation, capitalization etc.). Punctuation makes language comprehensible on the paper and renders it into intelligible chunks in the oral form. Without punctuation a language is like a speechless movie. Actions, characters, and movements– all these are there, the only missing thing is the life in it. It is compared to good manners, very much close to the “courtesy designed to help reader understand a story without stumbling” (Truss, 7). They serve us to understand the structure and arrangement of writing and in this way help the readers comprehend intonation and pauses that should be observed in reading.

The paper looks into the findings from a study that attempted to see how process approach in the ESL or L2 writing classroom changed students' views of using of these symbols. It also attempted to see if they could apply this beyond the language classroom, that is, if they were capable to use the symbols for their courses based on literature. The study has pragmatic value.

Not merely teaching laws was the focal area, but also their application in the students’ write-ups was taken into consideration. This discipline (ESL in tertiary level of Bangladesh) requires students to read a good number of texts on English literature. Any language learning and teaching can become effective and productive if the procedure goes through reading literature.

Reading diverse texts of different courses helps them get exposure to the communicative as well as the structural factors of the language. Students can acquaint themselves with a variety of structures of L2 through the act of reading. Therefore, knowing proper use of these symbols helps them understand the messages clearly and thus assimilation of information can happen purposefully. This is how students in this level of academic life can develop a pragmatic sense of using this language suitably. Of any language punctuation is the most integrated and essential part.

Punctuation symbols are not merely the elements of the language, but also a good umpire for the reader and the writer. Upon them clarity and readability of any text depend so much that we can understand it very easily from the following example:

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Analysis of the Students’ Errors in Punctuation: An Empirical Study

“A woman, without her man, is nothing.

A woman: without her man is nothing.” (w.w.w.blog4quotes.com, 10.06.08)

In the above examples, for the variations of the using of the marks, the senses are being changed. A single sentence can give different messages if it is punctuated differently. In the first sentence, we understand the position of a woman—that, if she does not have her partner, her life is nothing. Again in the next line we find a dissimilar message because of putting the punctuation marks differently. So proper learning of correct usages of these symbols is manifest.

Here I chart the development of the knowledge of punctuation marks of two groups of the L2 learners of a Bangladeshi tertiary institution. They were two fresher groups consisting of the students whose age limit was approximately between eighteen and twenty years. Learners’ age is one of the most important variables of ESL classroom. It shows learners’ involvement and attachment with the target language (TL). It also helps the instructor continue his/her strategy of teaching with the target group (TG). The study was conducted in an extended academic writing classroom. The activities included summarizing, presentation and discussion. The methodology was strategic to make them clear about the role of punctuation in literature and in their writing.

Literature Review Paul Robinson, who is the pioneer in attaching emotion with these symbols, has fused philosophy with these symbols. Through his seminal essay on the “Philosophy of Punctuation” he has integrated them as an essential part of the anal folks who want perfection everywhere. These people are very fond of the exactness of anything. He has thus given universality to every individual mark: “What we must instill, I’m convinced, is an attitude toward punctuation, a set of feelings about both the process in general and individual marks of punctuation. That set of feelings might be called philosophy of punctuation.” (pg. 1).

These marks are culturally possessed by the grammarians and the grammar books, the writers and the printers throughout the ages and generations. They 167

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are followed as set of rules to communicate with the reader and the listener sensibly. He comments that rules for punctuation alter on the basis of language, location, time and it is continually evolving: “A single page of Thomas Carlyle, or any nineteenth century writer reminds us,…” for example, “a comma between subject and verb…”—which was once accepted, but this time, it is very improper and unacceptable (pg.2).

Lynne Truss has very interestingly compared the punctuation symbols with the traffic signs, which regulate a system in the entire trafficking system. In her discourse she views, “…they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.”(85). Truly so, when we see the red light, we like to bring our vehicles to a full stop; when yellow light, we proceed with caution; when green, we proceed. That means, writer’s psychic constitution in terms of expressing things in literature is reflected in the application of the punctuation marks. The rules of punctuation marks are created and manipulated by the writers to make their writings more effective. At any point of time, a particular punctuation mark means what the writer wants to mean; when agreement shifts, its meaning also shifts.

Now, I would like to hold my discussion on methodology of some pragmatic analysis on the basis of number of scripts collected from the target group (TG). The discussion focuses on participants, materials, procedures, research questions, data analysis and discussion.

Participants: The study presented here used a number of beginners of tertiary level. They passed twelve years of academic life with particular levels of cognitive factors. After that, I integrated linguists and teachers of SLA both in public and private universities of the city. They discussed their views on the usage of punctuation marks and their observation about the lack of willingness of the students to learn and use this part of language. I provided them a questionnaire (Appendix 02) and had a very in-depth interview session with them to understand the real phenomenon of the application of this particular area of language.

Materials: Students were given, as worksheet, one selected excerpt of Maupassant’s “The Umbrella” (Appendix 03) to punctuate properly. The extract that I copied from the text had no punctuation symbols. It was prepared 168

Analysis of the Students’ Errors in Punctuation: An Empirical Study

in such a way that allowed me to browse both the wanted and unwanted misuse of some very common punctuation symbols. Written records of interviews, students’ write-ups, especially their area of confusion, their lack of interest about the issue—these all constituted my collected data.

Procedure: I have given students classes on the uses and abuses of punctuation. They have learned the laws, practiced them in the classroom. The worksheets were prepared for three terms of activities with focus on different marks along with their different uses. For example: First part of the study was conducted for assessing the mistake on the areas of comma, semicolon, point and colon.

Second one was to assess the problem with apostrophe, quotation mark, dash and hyphenation. And the last part was to evaluate the mistake of using of the signs of question, exclamation and again of apostrophe.

In their worksheet, I have asked them to comment on the particular characters of the text they became acquainted with by reading the extract, so that I was able to scrutinize their capacity to place the marks properly in their writing.

Discussion and correction were given on the first work sheet. The same work sheet with the same focus was given after one week. An interview session was held and a very optimistic approach came out from the students. The questionnaire was prepared for the language teachers and experts to share their views and experience in this field. These data were also collected and tugged here to show how these data from both the students and the teachers complemented each other. Finally, a number of experts’ (on applied linguistics of L2) comments were addressed, readdressed and listed in this study.

Interviews with the same first group were conducted once again sixteen months later on the same issue. The aim was to see whether there were changes of the utilization of these marks in their writing or there was a return to their previous track.

Research Question: The study aims at examining how students develop their consciousness 169

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through processes of instruction. The study starts with two research questions: •

How do students behave with these symbols?

•

Do we really need formal learning of these symbols in the institutions?

Students’ understanding and the way of utilizing these marks were the focal point of the study. Moreover this study spotlighted the responses of the students to the varieties of the usages of the symbols as reflected in their copies.

Data Analysis In order to understand the emerging changes, it would be interesting for readers to see what kind of views and opinion were found through the interview sessions after the first lesson. All participants in their earlier academic endeavors did not take the matter of punctuation seriously. One very astonishing fact came out from the second phase of the study that I have done after six months. Some of them had not even heard of the name of punctuation in their twelve years’ long span of student life. To them the word means something that is related to the word “punctual”. When they were asked about the meaning of punctuation, they very openly said that “...the word relates to the quality of being regular, on time and good.” An exchange of views is given below: T S1 S2 S1 S3 T S3 S2

: : : : : : : :

Don’t you think punctuation is important?

Yes—for all writing—yes.

Yes, important. But we did not care.

We did not think about it earlier.

Teachers also not told us before.

You know, a sign can even communicate with you?

No idea. I did not practise.

I think we must learn it properly.

(Major ideas are in bold.)

T=tutor, S= student A writer, through the act of writing, transfers his ideas and makes bondage with the readers of the texts. These student-writers, in making their transactional and interactional delivery, kept themselves limited to only certain 170

Analysis of the Students’ Errors in Punctuation: An Empirical Study

few punctuation symbols. They had only academic writings so far, as they said, to give answers on questioning. They memorized everything for passing the tests and thus tried to upgrade the scores. Since students’ concern about using these marks were very limited their perceptions even after three classes did not make any initial change of usage of these marks in their writing. One student opined after the third class: “Most of the students can use only three or four punctuation (signs). We don’t know that there are more punctuation (signs) to use. Even we don’t feel the importance of reading proper use of Punctuation marks. We don’t think that it is important.”

(Taslima-one of the participants of the study)

They were very open to speak about their limitations—their carelessness and unwillingness about this element of the language. All the subsequent observations are given in the following table and in the Appendix: 01. Before entering into the analysis, I would like to present the collected data which I got through interview and opinion writing sessions on this field along with their worksheets. I have attached their write-ups here to help reader discern the observable facts of the situation.

Let me start with Appendix: 01. In the preparation of this, sequencing of the symbols of punctuation has been done in the descending order. Weight has been awarded to the symbols on the basis of percentile calculation of students’ errors detected from the worksheets and their write-ups.

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The analysis of the collected data projected three dimensions. To understand the real phenomenon clearly, Table-1 would be of some use: SYMBOL

ERRORS

PERRCENTAGE

APOSTROPHE

93

77%

SEMI COLON

89

76%

COMMA

89

76%

POINT

76

63%

COLON

67

55%

DASH

52

43%

HYPHEN

50

41%

QUESTION MARK

35

29%

EXCLAMATION

33

27%

QUOTATION

30

25%

Table-1: Projection of the collected data in percentile calculation.

An illustration of the collected data is given below: •

Almost 77% of the students showed their inability to make proper use of apostrophe. They were so confident to use this symbol in their writing that they never mentioned about any problem of its use in their writings.

They never realized the mistake before, so alarmingly, as it was projected in their worksheets.

•

76% of them made mistake to use comma and semi colon. Of the students 75% came to the consensus that semicolon was a useless one in the matter of writing. Comma and points could have served the purpose.

•

Usages of colon and dash, dash and hyphen were other areas of confusion for them. As both the signs look alike they faced certain problems in dealing with them in the writing. 25-27% of them showed 172

Analysis of the Students’ Errors in Punctuation: An Empirical Study

problem in using question, quotation and exclamation marks.

•

32% of them could have realized the emotional attachment of these marks. These student-writers helped me understand their learning process and background knowledge as well. All the activities were done in the classroom; these were classroom discussion and involvement in the process of knowing, learning and using them in their proper places.

In-depth interviews provided further evidence to support this process of learning and utilizing these symbols in their writings.

The most encouraging thing of the survey was that, these students, lacking confidence at the beginning, became critic afterward of their own earlier writings. They became clear about their misconception of this element of grammar. They dared to be very critical even about some grammarians and teachers for becoming too rigid to the laws. Anyway, they showed a very humanistic approach toward these symbols. They were very aware of their limitations: “It is clear that, I have some weakness in my study. But I have no clear idea to tackle them in my writing… when I read, it seems to me that I have got all the clear ideas of the chapter. But, when I try it, I can’t understand what I have to do.”

(Debobroto-one of the participants of the study)

They believed that their teachers in the schools and colleges demanded correct use of these symbols in the writing, though 50% of them were not sure whether these teachers had specifically asked them for proper learning and utilization of these symbols. They realized that their teachers were very careful to scrutinize proper placement of these symbols, not proper teaching of them in the classroom that spanned for almost twelve years. So mistake in the usage made them suffer a lot to lose proper grade in the particular subjects of the national curriculum of the country. These in-depth interviews pointed three interrelated issues: • Despite these facts of avoidance, teachers expected correct presentation from the students. These issues made learners more reluctant to be engaged and involved with these marks.

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• They found their learning merely an inadequate self-learning.

• Students found their knowledge limited and thus lacking self confidence to utilize these marks.

The change that was surfaced did not happen at the beginning of the study.

These student writers projected the change gradually, as they were becoming more involved with these marks. As the instructor, I wanted to know if there was any difference about the utilization of these marks (especially in the understanding and presentation of literature) outside language classroom.

Discussion In answer to the question: “Do you think, it (the rate of mistake in punctuation) differs between the universities, (public and private)?”, a Bangladeshi linguist (L2), Professor Chowdhury Mohammad Ali states that punctuation is a grave area of confusion among the students both in public and private universities in Bangladesh. He opines that teaching and learning punctuation should be given more importance in the schools.

According to him the alarming area of mistake, regarding this, is “apostrophe”, which has been rated by him as an “error” not a “mistake”.

Error is defined in the Webster’s Third International Dictionary as “an act of ignorant or imprudent deviation from a code of behavior” and the word mistake is defined as “misunderstanding of the meaning or implication of something.” Almost eighty percent of the users, according to him, confuse with “its” to put-up with -- “It’s color is blue” or “Its not mine” (apostrophe mark is not properly given). Similar is the observation of other experts and teachers in this field. They scrutinize the same phenomenon of this symbol’s usages in the students’ and users’ copies.

Error in the use of Apostrophe(from students’ writings): Let us have a glimpse at students’ worksheet regarding the mispunctuation of apostrophe: “For two year’s he has always come to his office with the same old patched umbrella, to the great amusement of his fellow 174

Analysis of the Students’ Errors in Punctuation: An Empirical Study

clerk’s.”

Here no apostrophe is needed. Students fail to understand the difference between plural marker s and apostrophe s. Apostrophe is for possessive (Kareem’s pen), or to make letter or numerals plural (e.g. “Dot your i’s…”).

About apostrophe the problem is not always deliberate, it sometimes happens as a slip of pen. And the punctuation error in this field is not common only with the non-natives; it happens with the native speakers as well (Truss, 39).

Error in the use of Comma: In using comma and semicolon, the basic problem has been created by the mix-ups, which, according to the students, sometimes are caused, by the similarity of both the structures: “Mme.Oreille, was a very economical woman, [;] she knew the value , of a centime, and possessed a whole store house, of strict principles,with regard to the multiplication, of money…

(From students’ copy)

In the place of semicolon comma has been used by them and the above work sheet (like many others) of one of the students bears a number of useless commas. The fusion of comma and semicolon, the action of comma splice in most of their copies are very frequent. Comma splice happens when one puts comma in place of semicolon. The same line punctuated by two different students, for example: “Oreille, utterly rebelled at such an idea.”

“Oreille utterly; rebelled at such an idea.”

In the use of semi colon, comma was the best option for the students. That is, in place of semi- colon, they were very bold to use comma.

Error in the use of Semicolon: They were confused: “The use of both comma and semi colon seems same to me… Can I use comma (,) in the place of semi colon (;).” The mix-ups between comma and semi colon, after apostrophe, was very acute. Both 175

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comma and semicolon work as the way to pause, so they fall in dilemma whether to put comma or semicolon, “I think I can use comma instead of semicolon”-- also an observation of a student supported by her other classmates. For them, comma is just to dissect long sentences, they feel very free to use comma as a separator of words of long sentences. They felt comfortable with comma rather than semicolon and thus failed to make the relationship: sentence, conjunction

sentence

Semicolon glues two meaningful sentences and paves the way to the understanding of two ideas: sentence

;

sentence

A semicolon with reserved and representative look comes between two related sentences without conjunction that students failed to understand.

Error in the use of Colon: Students made mistake to use both colon and comma, “I have problem in putting colon, [;] make confusion with comma and colon. Why? I don’t know.” To write, for example, a direct narration, students use comma with double quotation marks: “My father says, ‘Don’t waste your time.’”

On the other hand, while quoting, students must use colon, for example: "Bacon says: ‘Reading makes a full man, writing an exact man, speaking a ready man.’”(Wren & Martin, 314)

A comma acts as a separator whereas the colon discloses what to come next. A colon follows the careful and broken bit of sense. It introduces any thing: a word, a phrase, a sentence, a quotation, or a list. It gives an announcement and places itself between two opposite pieces of information: “Man proposes: God disposes.” (Truss, 119) Students followed properly, but sometimes they slipped the pens to use them as they should be.

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Error in the use of Question,Quotation,Exclamation sign: Along with this came the problem of quotation marks. About using single and double inverted commas, they felt very uncertain which had created problems in their work sheets as well. They were confused to use double quotation mark in a direct speech and made dislocation of this mark everywhere in their writing.

The mix-ups of question and exclamation signs, as found in their copies, are given below: “You, you have- burned your umbrella? [!] why? You must be mad, [!] do you wish to ruin us outright. [!]

Concerning the question and exclamation marks, students made confusion in the usages, as for example, when ‘wh’ words were used as relative pronouns ( I don’t know what his name is?) students fail to understand that in indirect question they could have used point, but instead the question mark was used.

In addition to this a dislocation of this mark was noticed with the optative sentence. For the usage, ‘May I come in, please?’ they used this question mark sometimes with ‘May you be happy?’ --instead of using point at the end.

Again in writing unreal wish ( ‘If I were a king!’), students failed to use the exclamation sign. Sometimes with an extended clause an unreal wish (e.g. ‘If I were a king I would have helped you!’) bore exclamation sign instead of the point. When they learned the rules of exclamation sign, they forgot or sometimes were unwilling to use the point; similar problem was detected with their learning process of the utilities of the question mark as well.

Error in the use of Dash and hyphen: “I have problem in dash and hyphen. Even knowing the difference, I can’t put them in the right place. I should know them properly.”-- A very open declaration and utilization can surface the validity of this comment. The dash, two hyphens, is used to connect groups of words to other groups. It separates words in the middle of a sentence, or it leads to material at the end of a sentence. To show emphasis on the component, commas can not serve the purpose, from students’ copy: “You,[--] you,[--] have[--] burned[--] your umbrella! Why,[--] you

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must be[--] mad ?[!] Do you wish to ruin us outright?”

Dashes are not often used; they are included in the writing scarcely. They are used only on the occasions when one wishes to give special highlighting; that is, to communicate effectively in certain situation. Their use of these marks was not alarmingly noticeable, but dislocation was visible.

Error in the use of Point: Students showed confusion to use even points. As they were taught to put semicolon after meaningful part of a complete sentence, they mixed it up with the point that ends a sentence. They mixed it up with colon also.

These unwanted and improper usages create disgust and antipathy on the part of the teachers and the scrutinizers. What, then, is responsible for this error?

The followers of the School of Behaviorism claim that error happens as a result of “non-learning rather than wrong learning” (Ellis, 22). This very much echoes the observations of the quoted experts on L2. We have traced the fact, so far, of students’ disinclination and heedlessness in learning and using them.

The habit of non- learning is more evident than their habit of wrong or careless learning. More than that, in our country, it is also an indisputable fact that this part of grammar is not integrated in the syllabuses of the syllabus designers or in the lesson plans of the teachers. So the learners are not to be blamed alone; the other side of the coin should be taken into consideration. Our stake-holders should take on some responsibility. Our policy makers, syllabus, curriculum designers and last but not the least the classroom practitioners have not paid enough attention to this important aspect of grammar.

What I can say from my experience of conducting this study is that if the learners are exposed to the laws of punctuation (through the incorporation of this component of grammar in the language curriculum) with adequate time, drills, tests and effective instruction, they will significantly overcome the problems in this area.

Rationale of the study Error analysis of punctuation is not very common in Bangladesh. This particular

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area of L2 pedagogy has always been neglected. We are taking the issues of learning and teaching ESL, or EFL very seriously, but not showing carefulness to the basic elements of the language. The way data were collected, for this study, both from students and teachers, can be of use to the policy makers, syllabus planners, curriculum designers, educators and above all to the teachers.

Pedagogical implication of the study • Teachers-instructors can be benefited There are three important variables in a teaching procedure: teacher, learner and text. Through text the instructor and learners get connected with each other. We cannot ignore the social role that punctuation plays in our conversation (Yule, 216). In our greetings, partings, we definitely use certain expression which can be symbolized by these signs. The study reveals that the educators and above all the teachers have avoided this part of language. It is very usual that a teacher is always under some constraints namely time constraint, constraints from policy makers and syllabus designers, students’ lack of capacity, and above all infrastructural restrictions. But teaching punctuation is not time consuming. It needs only the will to benefit the learners. We sometimes can go beyond the syllabus for the benefit of the students.

• Learners learn what they have to learn In our country language syllabi are not based on learner’s needs analysis. They are being taught according to the direction of the policy makers and syllabus designers. As this top-down policy implementation strategy is powercoercive, the present study reveals that the gap between reality and assumption (of the curriculum designers) is unbridgeable. This empirical study shows that we should give a second thought to the issue of teaching punctuation symbols for the betterment of the students.

• Syllabus designers and policy makers can be benefited No language is ever static. It changes, it must go on changing. Technology can avoid the role of these symbols, but not the academicians. This study can benefit these sections of academicians of the country. They can consider this 179

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issue and give it a systematic expansion. The target group of this study is not only the students but also the policy makers, syllabus and curriculum planners to benefit both the learners and the instructors.

Conclusion The study reveals the fact that, we should develop literacy behavior of the students in the tertiary level. In this level of education-- a transitional period, students need to construct their own knowledge. Experience shows these selflearners found that their teachers did not highlight this issue of language properly. This experience of changing beliefs about learning and utilizing these marks in the writing helped me feel the change. The progress was commendable. They were to develop critical eyes, on which they did not put emphasis initially.

As teachers, we may need to take our students to new ways of scholarship and to the way of using the knowledge (experiential, social, cultural, and institutional) in a novel context. Laws for punctuation should not be made abstract on the pages of some particular grammar books and copies, unexplained and unused. Rather, they should be something which we can use instead of “something which will use us” (Barry 8). For, theories and laws need applications – they are to be used where they should be.

In Mind the Stop, Carey opines about punctuation that they are being governed “two-thirds by rule and one-third by personal taste” (cited in Truss, 27). On the pages it executes grammatical ventures but in the mind of the reader it lasts for long with its multifarious activities to make the ground to play fair game.

In matter of punctuation there is no “Fair is foul”, or “Foul is fair” game. But the game is always on. In the game of language, evolution is a continuous process. Language should evolve --it goes on changing as it is a continuous ‘flux’. The notion of communication, which a language serves, is nothing but the transformation of feelings, of moods and of attitudes (Truss, 27). It is enthusiastically presented by the communicator to the addressee. These punctuation marks can facilitate the way of our communication through language.

Because of the negligence from the diverse stake-holders like syllabus designers, teacher trainers, text book writers and teachers themselves, most of the students are, euphemistically speaking, underachievers in punctuation. It is 180

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undeniably important to see how far the students have learned but it is even more important to avoid, “You, even at this stage, commit these silly mistakes!”-- type of approach. Change in the mindset of the teachers, as this study implies, will help improve the situation. Apart from the incorporation of punctuation in the language syllabus with the importance that it deserves, teachers have to transform themselves from pedagogues into andragogues-facilitators of learning. As there is no Apostrophe Protection Society (which exists in England) or no National Punctuation Day (as observed on 24th September in the USA)* in our country, the andragogues should motivate the students to develop the ‘will’ to use punctuation symbols properly – the right punctuation symbol in the right place. *(Source, www.nationalpunctuationday.com, 5/22/09). * All references from students’ write-ups are given in italics.

Works Cited: Barry, Peter Beginning Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002 Brown. G & Yule. G. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988 Ellis, Rod. Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Oxford University, Press,1987.

Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. New Delhi: East West, Press,2004.

Hariston, Maxine & Keene Michele. Successful Writing. Fifth Edition. London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004.

Olson. F.Judith. Writing Skills. India: Goodwill Publishing House, 1988.

Paul. A. Robinson. “The Philosophy of Punctuation”. www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/721833.html.

Schmitt, Norbert. An Introduction to Applied Linguistics.

Publishers,2002

London: Arnold

Truss, Lynne. Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. London: Profile Books, 2002.

Wren & Martin. High School English Grammar and Composition. India: S. Chand & Company Ltd., 2002.

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Appendix 1: Areas of Confusion (from the most to the least): Sl no

Punctuation Symbols

1

Apostrophe ( ’ )

2

Semicolon (;)

3

Comma (,)

4

Points (.)

5

Colon (:)

6

Dash (_)

7

Hyphen (-)

8

Exclamation Marks (!)

9

Question Marks (?)

10

Quotation Marks (‘’/ “ ”)

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Analysis of the Studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Errors in Punctuation: An Empirical Study

Appendix 2: Questionnaire for Assessing the Problem of Punctuation.

Section: A 1. What is your opinion about punctuation? i) very useful ii) useful iii) no opinion iv) not useful v) not very useful 2. Your attitude toward the mistakes done by your students. i) not annoying ii) annoying iii) can be overlooked iv) very annoying v) not very annoying 3. What is the rate of the mistake, you think? i) alarming ii) not alarming iii) never rated iv) very alarming v) not very alarming 4. In which area, you think, mistake is very alarming? i) comma ii) semicolon iii) none iv) period v) apostrophe 5. What factor is responsible for the mistakes? i) too much carefulness ii) careful carelessness iii) no comment iv) carelessness v) lack of knowledge Section: B 1. By learning, one can avoid doing the mistakes? i) Yes .................................................................. ii) No .................................................................. iii) Other opinion ................................................

2. It is no more necessary â&#x20AC;&#x201C; do you think so? i) Yes ................................................................. ii) No ................................................................. iii) Other opinion ................................................

3. Do you think, it differs between the universities,(public and private)? i) Yes ................................................................. ii) No ................................................................. iii) Other opinion ...............................................

4. Does it have any relationship with the emotions of human beings? i) Yes ............................................................... ii) No ............................................................... iii) Other opinion ...................................................

5. Using punctuation symbols properly should be taught in the schools.

Do you agree with this? i) Yes............................................................... ii) No ............................................................... iii) Other opinion...................................................

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Appendix 3: Put punctuation symbols properly and Answer to the following Questions: Mme Oreille was a very economical woman she knew the value of a centime and possessed a whole storehouse of strict principles with regard to the multiplication of money so that her cook found the greatest difficulty in making what the servants call their market penny and her husband was hardly allowed any pocket money at all They were however very comfortably off and had no children but it really pained Mme Oreille to see any money spent it was like tearing at her heartstrings when she had to take any of those crown pieces out of her pocket and whenever she had to spend anything no matter how necessary it might be she slept badly the next night Oreille was continually saying to his wife You really might be more liberal as we have no children and never spend our income You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know what may happen she used to reply it is better to have too much than too little He was one of the head clerks in the War Office and only stayed on there in obedience to his wife s wish to increase their income which they did not nearly spend. For two years he had always come to the office with the same old patched umbrella to the great amusement of his fellow clerks She took it unfastened it and remained dumbfounded with astonishment and rage in the middle of the silk there was a hole as big as a six penny piece it had been made with the end of a cigar What is that she screamed Her husband replied quietly without looking at it What is it What do you mean She was cooking with rage and could hardly get out a word You you have burned your umbrella Why you must be mad do you wish to ruin us outright 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

What type of woman was Mme. Oreille?

Illustrate the personality of Mr. Oreille.

What things did amuse his fellow clerks?

Describe the umbrella.

What fate did await it, at the end?

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HORIZON ISSN 2223-0556 Number- 4, March 2011. Published in June 2012 (p 185-192)

Prospero’s play, or The Manifesto of a "Deformed Slave”?: Shakespeare’s The Tempest from a Post-Colonised Perspective Sumit Chowdhury* Abstract: The Tempest more than any other Shakespearean text has interested contemporary scholars- both at home and abroad. The debate on whether it encapsulates the ideological underpinnings of the early phase of English colonization seems to be an unending one. There have always been attempts to safeguard the text from such political readings provided mainly by the New Historicist critics. This article proposes to demonstrate that The Tempest is not politically innocuous and it has a very uniquely political/cultural significance for a colonial country like Bangladesh.

I shall first turn to two of the eminent intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth- century Bengal and the ambivalence they reveal in responding to The Tempest. Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay in his “Shakuntala O Miranda” published originally in Bibidha Prabandha in 1876, comments on Shakuntala and Miranda: mgvR cª`Ë †h mKj ms¯‹vi kKzšÍjvi Zvnv Av‡Q ...... wgiv›`v ms¯‹viwenxbv, wKš‘ wgiv›`v †mœnkvwjbx ...... wgiv›`v j¾vkxjv K~jevjv b‡n ...... wgiv›`v e‡bi cvwL|

[Shakuntala has imbibed all the social conventions… Miranda is free from them, yet Miranda is affectionate… Miranda is not a bashful daughter of the clan… Miranda is an unfettered bird of the forest.] (204-07)1 In this essay, Bankim evaluates Miranda’s character in the context of the culture she belongs to. The social convention to which Shakuntala is subjected is clearly absent in the case of Miranda. Instead, Miranda has a

*

Lecturer, Department of English Language and Literature, Premier University, Chittagong.

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strong affinity with the natural world and its benevolent ruler Prospero- the “rajarshee” (a saintly philosopher king) of the “topoban” (a holy orchard in nature, where peace reigns for all and an ideal place for meditation).

What is significant about the reading is that Bankim believes in and admires a certain code of conduct subscribed to by Miranda, and in doing so, he privileges Miranda’s cultural norms over those of Shakuntala.

Bankim’s apotheosizing Miranda and Prospero, in particular, and of the text in general, reflects the deeply entrenched British cultural ethos in the educational minds of the colonial sub-continent. In fact, the British educationalists allied with the colonial administration felt the urge to transmit Shakespeare, in particular, and English literature, in general, to the native elite with a clearly discernible goal. They wished to formulate a dominant ideology, the imperatives of which would be instrumental in dismantling the indigenous structures of beliefs and customs (Viswanathan, 2-26). The blind admiration and veneration for the bard on the part of the Bengali elite over the years bear testimony to the enormous success of the colonial state apparatus. The Bengali intelligentsia failed to offer much resistance to the British colonial policy, and on many occasions they welcomed English culture- a fact that gave a certain moral justification to colonial rule itself (Bagchi). Indeed, a large section of the indigenous elite claimed English studies in particular, and the British rule in general, to be only civilizing force for the “fallen” natives (Viswanathan).

However, it would be a mistake to assume that there was a whole-hearted consensus in accepting the unchallenged supremacy of the colonial Shakespeare. Although pathetically marginalized, there were some significant instances of resistance. They grew towards the end of the nineteenth century when Shakespeare had already become the dream of the Bengalis and a very powerful institution in the field of the emerging bourgeoisie (Bagchi). One such attempt to resist the infiltration of the alien bard can be found in Rabindranath Tagore’s reading of The Tempest vis-avis Kalidasa’s Shakuntala (1902): †U‡¤ú÷-G ewntcÖK…wZ Gwi‡q‡ji g‡a¨ gvbyl AvKvi aviY Kwiqv‡Q, wKš‘ Zey †m gvby‡li AvZ¥xqZv †_‡K `~‡i iwnqv‡Q| gvby‡li mwnZ Zvunvi Awb”QzK f…‡Z¨i m¤^Ü| †m ¯^vaxb n‡Z Pvq ..... wgiv›`vi bvix ü`qI Zvunvi cÖwZ †mœn we¯Ívi K‡i bv ..... †U‡¤ú÷-G cxob, kvmb, `gb; kKzšÍjvq cÖxwZ, kvwšÍ, m™¢ve|

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[In The Tempest, the external nature is embodied in the person of Ariel, yet he is denied human companionship. His relation with man is that of an unwilling servant. He wants liberty… Even Miranda’s feminine heart fails to extend its affection to him.. In The Tempest, there is repression, dominance and chastisement; in Shakuntala, we have love, peace and good will.] (662:21) Tagore continues: †U‡¤ú÷ bvU‡K gvbyl ..... wek¦‡K Le© Kwiqv, `gb Kwiqv, Avcwb AwacwZ nB‡Z Pvwnqv‡Q| e¯‘Zt AvwacZ¨ jBqv Ø›Ø-we‡iva I cÖqvmB †U‡¤ú÷-Gi g~j fve| †mLv‡b cÖ¯úv‡iv ¯^iv‡R¨i AwaKvi nB‡Z gš¿e‡j cÖK…wZi iv‡R¨i Dci K‡Vvi AvwacZ¨ we¯Ívi Kwiqv‡Q| [In The Tempest, man tries to establish his authority over the world by humbling and subjugating it. Indeed, disputes and attempts to establish dominion are crucial in The Tempest where Prospero, deprived of his kingdom, establishes his unbending authority over the natural world through his magical powers.]

(662:23)

These excerpts highlight Tagore’s approach to The Tempest. In his reading, Bankim indiscreetly idealized Miranda which becomes harshly unsympathetic towards the natural world represented through Ariel and Caliban. The “rajarshee” of Bankim’s “topoban” becomes a tyrant and Miranda is very much an active and consenting endorser of that tyranny.

There is hardly any mutual relationship between the natural world and the human world. On the contrary, nature is forcibly tamed and captured in order to serve certain selfish human interests.

If deeply looked into, Tagore’s observations (especially on man-nature relationship) may be deduced as attempts to unmask the problematic power relations between the ruler and the ruled, generated by his unambiguous abhorrence of the very base of that repressive association. Further extension of this argument would hint at Prospero’s position as an imperial voyager who constructs a power narrative with the ominous mechanism of his magic, though deprived, fortunately or unfortunately, of his motherland. This is Tagore’s rejoinder to Bankim’s sheer deification of Prospero and Miranda: in the entire essay Tagore does not address Prospero as a “rajarshee” even once, nor does he describe the deserted island as a “topoban”. At the same time, he also does away with traditional notions regarding The Tempest and its cultural signifiers. In a cultural 187

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condition rendered paralytic by the ghastly strokes of imperialism, his undaunted preference for Shakuntala and her cultural norms makes us aware just how radically he has deglamourized the colonial Shakespeare: ÔÔkKzšÍjvi gZ Ggb ..... bvUK †k·wcqv‡ii bvU¨ewji g‡a¨ GKLvwbI bvB|Ó [There is not a single play in the Shakespearean canon which can match Shakuntala.]

(662:29). More important, he questions the uncritical acceptance of the supremacy of the Western cultural values transmitted through English colonial texts. The obvious equation between culture and imperialism, which Edward Said has criticized with such conviction, was perceived by Tagore long before and hence his powerfully articulated critique of the English claim to cultural ascendancy, particularly in this essay, becomes clearly pronounced. Unfortunately, we in Bengal, have shown little enthusiasm in responding to Tagore’s insightful analysis of The Tempest.

In reality, the academic practice for us is not to read The Tempest as a colonial/colonialist text until some Western criticism directs us to ponder over its political implications. Even subversive reading must await green signal from the occident; this is nothing but an extension of the implicit consent, which we have always given to Western literary/cultural dominance in our readings of English canonical texts.

There is no denying the fact that conventional criticism has for decades tended to legitimate and validate Prospero’s usurpation of power. Based on the premise that Prospero’s project is a civilizing mission, criticism of this sort recounts that Prospero travels to the island to educate and emancipate a “savage and deformed slave, a monstrous ugliness, ignorant of gentleness, humanity… capable of all ill… born to slavery, not to freedom, of a vile and not of a noble union, and his parents represent an evil natural magic which is the antithesis of Prospero’s benevolent art” (Kermode, xxv). This neat comment from Kermode’s lengthy “Introduction” to the play unambiguously iterates the unscrupulously colonial bias (if not racist or anti-human) in his evaluation of Caliban’s position in the text. Yet ironically the Arden text enjoys more popularity than any other edition. In reality, in formerly colonized countries like ours, one has to be extremely conscious and critical in using Kermode’s edition as it desperately tries to justify the ideological framework of the colonized mission dramatized in the text and outside.

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Shakespeare’s The Tempest from a Post-Colonised Perspective

Since the 1980’s, radical critics, sometimes labeled against-the-grain, have been taking on the conventional reading of The Tempest by exposing the fractures in Prospero’s civilizing mission and by unearthing the deeply political/colonial implications embedded in the text (Greenblatt, 1986; Greenblatt, 1988; Hulme and Barker; Brown etc.). They have sought to validate Caliban’s “significant counter-claim to Prospero’s authority” (Orgel) and have endorsed the ideological underpinnings of the possible subversion of Prospero’s colonialist discourse manifested through Caliban’s unwillingness and occasional threats to Prospero’s hegemonic control over the island. Consider, for example, the following excerpt of Peter Hulme and Francis Barker: The play then proceeds to recount or display a series of actual and attempted usurpations of authority. …. However, these rebellions, treacheries, mutinies and conspiracies, referred to here collectively as usurpation, are not simply present in the text as extractable themes of the play (as Kermode puts it). Rather, they are differently embedded there, figural traces of the text’s anxiety concerning the very matters of dominion and resistance. (199)

This extract bears striking resemblance to the passages cited earlier from Tagore’s “Shakuntala”. Apart from Caliban’s counter-attack, Hulme and Barker have also noted the attempted threats of Prospero’s authority coming from his countrymen. But at the end of the play, all such attempts, including Caliban’s, remain unrealized because they are appropriated and chastised by what Hulme and Barker call Prospero’s Play (199).

Another interesting aspect of the decolonizing discourse of Caliban is very aptly pointed out by Paul Brown. He has argued how in dreams the colonized subject constructs his pre-colonized motherland and when dreams desert him he pines to dream again (Brown). The analogy can be extended further to the crises of cultural identity that the colonized intelligentsia (especially in Ireland and India) had to face during the heyday of British imperialism. A group of poets, artists, dramatists in such a colonial situation often tended to construct a pre-capitalist, pre-colonized nation by an act of imagination (the rise of capitalism and colonialism complemented each other in the case of England). Imagination for them became a power to transcend colonial indignities. For instance, Tagore especially in his early writings did talk of an India that had existed before 189

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imperialism took over (Said). Of course, this issue opens up many new horizons in the field of post-colonial studies which are beyond the scope of this article. But my contention a la Brown is this: although Caliban is taught the colonizer’s language and culture, he puts all of his imaginative efforts (dreams) together to dislocate himself from Prospero’s colonized island.

Nevertheless, amidst all these powerfully structured political critiques of The Tempest, one has to come to terms with the fact that the conventional critics can also be defended on some valid points because they are complemented by the text itself. In other words, political readings of The Tempest need to be far more cautious as far as the glamourisation of Caliban’s resistance is concerned. On most occasions, Caliban’s protest is merely rhetorical and therefore, politically easily containable: You taught me language, and my profit on’t Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you For learning me your language. (1.2.366-68)

In fact, Caliban is forced to subscribe to Prospero’s power-narrative- an attempt which cannot be termed as a decolonized strategy- as it is a more unpleasant way of submitting to Prospero’s awesome magical prowess, which ultimately helps the colonizer to control the means of production and thus delay the actual process of decolonization. The most striking feature about the text is that at the end of the day Caliban is made to believe that he has been an ignorant brute to misunderstand the sage-like Prospero: I’ll be wise hereafter, And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass Was I take this drunkard [Stephano] for a god, And worship this dull fool [Trinculo]! (5.1.298-301)

When the actual play ends, the ominous effect of Prospero’s play/narrative looms large in the life of the former colony and leaves Caliban alone, perhaps to contemplate whether he had understood the English civilizing mission.

One needs to consider therefore, these rather unsettling aspects keeping in mind how the obvious Other of the white Europeans is represented on stage through The Tempest. Excepting some rare occasions in the play Caliban 190

Prospero’s play, or The Manifesto of a "Deformed Slave”?

Shakespeare’s The Tempest from a Post-Colonised Perspective

remains a victim of the cultural politics of British imperialism. In the stage direction itself he has been depicted as “a savage and deformed slave” by the greatest of all Renaissance liberal humanists (Kermode, 2). The name Caliban might have something to do with the uncanny construction of cannibalism- thanks to the Renaissance travel literature that attributed this invariably to non-European/non-white primitive communities. One is really amazed at the ease with which Shakespeare makes Caliban embrace the drunken butler Stephano as his new master and thus produces the best clownish effect of the play. Again, Shakespeare scarcely cares to provide a definite genealogy of the play’s counter point. Unlike Miranda’s case there are very few references to Caliban’s parents (especially to his father).

Instead, Caliban is fated to be interpreted as a bastard, barbaric and consistently inhuman, as if, the only epitome of goodness, nobility and legitimacy is Miranda, along with what she represents.

Keeping in mind these contesting binaries, where the dominated is taken for granted as inferior, a glorification of Caliban’s position would actually challenge the dramatist’s role vis-à-vis the play, and that might invite a considerable amount of culture crises especially in pre-colonial countries.

The Tempest ultimately legitimizes the imperatives of the dominant ideology (colonialist) by readjusting and redefining it against the subordinate ideology (colonized) and hence it justifies the objectives of the civilizing mission of English colonialism to make its stake more viable.

Therefore before making any such attempt to glorify Caliban as the hero of the oppressed/suppressed, the play needs to be thoroughly re-written possibly inserting a very powerful narrative consisting of the history, geography and culture of the Other of the text (Lamming, 108-11).

Articulated in this way the narrative would easily override Prospero’s play/narrative in the play thus completely subordinating the dominant discourse of colonialism held by Prospero. Endeavours of this sort would not only challenge the hegemonic control of the Western literary canon but would also question the ideological position of the dramatist vis-à-vis the text− is Shakespeare really concerned about the play’s cultural Other? Or, does his play The Tempest justify Prospero’s narrative and in turn, unite the parts of all other imperialist narratives of the time? Tagore’s discussion of Shakuntala could provide a starting point of some of the answers.

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Notes 1.

All translations are by the author of this research paper.

Works Cited Bagchi, Jasodhara. “Shakespeare in Loin Cloth: English Literature and the Early Nationalist Consciousness of Bengal.” Joshi, Rethinking English: Essays in Literature, Language, History, New Delhi: Trianka, 1991. 146-59.

Brotton, Jerry. “ ‘This Tunis, sir, was Carthage’: Contesting Colonialism in The Tempest.” Loomba and Orkin, Post-Colonial Shakespeare, 1998. 23-42.

Brown, Paul. “ ‘This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine’: The Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism.” Dollimore and Sinfield. Political Shakespeare, 1994. 48-71.

Chattopadhyay, Bankimchandra. Bankim Rachanabali. Vol. 2. Kolkata: Patraja Publications, 1983.

Drakakis, John, ed. Alternative Shakespeares. London: Methuen, 1985.

Hulme, Peter and Francis Barker. “ ‘Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish’: The Discursive Contexts of The Tempest.” Drakakis, Alternative Shakespeares 191-205.

Greenblatt, Stephen. “Learning to Curse: Aspects of Linguistic Colonialism in the Sixteenth Century.” Chiapelli, First Images, 1986. 561-80.

Greenblatt, Stephen. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988.

Kermode, Frank, ed. The Tempest. By William Shakespeare. Arden edition.

London: Methuen, 1954.

Lamming, George. The Pleasures of Exile. London: Allison and Busby, 1960.

Orgel, Stephen, ed. The Tempest. By William Shakespeare. Oxford edition.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage, 1994.

Tagore, Rabindranath. Rabindra Rachanabali. Vol. 13. Kolkata: West Bengal Government, 1962-63.

Viswanathan, Gouri. “The Beginnings of English Literary Studies in British India.” Oxford Literary Review 9.1-2: 2-26. Northampton, 1987.

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