Giving voice to the Alter-/Native: A Critique of Edward Brat
Giving voice to the Alter-/Native: A Critique of Edward Brathwaite's The AncestorsEven though Edward Brathwaite's poem The Ancestors, as its title suggests seems to be about our ancestry and the reclamation of it, the overall structure of the poem itself reveals insights into the struggles of the poet and delves into issues of identity. Central to the issue of identity is the question of language and how it gives voice to the "other". Language, in this poem, also represents one of the ways in which Brathwaite attempts to give voice to the fragmented and scattered people of the New World.The poem is divided into three main sections, with the first two sections seemingly structured within a narrative framework. Both sections are divided into two stanzas that provide us with the bulk of information about the persona's ancestors as represented by his grandfather in Section one and his grandmother in the second section.In section one, the persona openly acknowledges and accepts his relationship to his grandfather, who symbolically represents the Eurocentric, colonial "English" gentleman, by the use of the personal pronoun "my" in reference to him. This image of the persona's grandfather as a "black English country gen
Even the ending of the poem is suggestive of this continuity with the final lines ending with an ellipsis, which suggests more that is not said. It is therefore an attempt to reunite the divided peoples of the West Indies. This section seeks to answer the question of identity by presenting the traditional folk forms as a "viable alternative". In Rites of Passage, Brathwaite explores the themes of dispossession, exile and alienation, Masks represents the physical and psychological journey of the poet into the landscape of his ancestral homeland and focuses on the convergence of time and space with Brathwaite's merging of the past and present. This reference removes all personal attachment from the persona and places it firmly on that of the grandfather. When the persona describes his grandmother as singing in a "Vicks and Vapour Rub-like voice", the mood of the poem changes thus setting the tone for the engagement into the oracular singing traditions of the blues. This contrasting of the images of nature being eroded by the process of industrialization is also symbolic of the history of the black man in the New World. The poet's preoccupation with voices remains sustained throughout the poem as he attempts to give voice to the voiceless. Through the auditory images, we can hear the noise of nature - "the nightwind man go battering through the canes, cocks waking up. The underlying tone of this stanza however, seems to suggest a moving away from this type of identity into a recognition of a fuller, more rounded one in which the New World man is reconnected with his African home as well as his European ancestry. thus making a contribution to the discovery and creation of an authentic identity for the West Indian. It is in this stanza that Brathwaite attempts to show the process of industrialization and its effect on post-colonial society.
Common topics in this essay:
Edward Brathwaite's,
Arrivants Trilogy,
Standard English,
Vapour Rub-like,
Passage Brathwaite,
World Caribbean,
Indian Literature,
West Indies,
Blackman Caribbean,
Abena Busia,
auditory images,
enduring nature,
grandmother section,
convergence space,
brathwaite attempts,
west indies,
arrivants trilogy,
west indian,
attempts voice,
english gentleman,
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