Exile As Motif In Lenrie Peters English Literature Essay

Exile As Motif In Lenrie Peters side writings EssayChristopher Babatunde Ogunyemi is a PhD research fellow at the Department of face, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife. He was educated at the University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State in Nigeria. He holds a Master degree in Comparative Literature from Dalarna University and he lectures English and Literature at Joseph Ayo Babalola University Ikeji Arakeji, Osun State in Nigeria. He is the author of Male Autobiographical Narratives and Gender Imperatives, Topical Issues in Literature and Globalization and Narratology and Contemporary manufacture which were all published by VDM-Publisher and Lap-Lambert Academic Publishing in Germany. He has leading papers in international journals of high repute.Dr. Niyi Akingbe teaches Comparative Literature, African Literature and Protest studies at the Joseph Ayo Babalola University, Ikeji-Arakeji, Osun State, Nigeria.He has written two little works Social Protest and the Literary Imagination inNiger ian Novels and Myth, Orality and Tradition in Ben Okris Literary Landscape.His articles have appe bed in leading journals on African Literature.Abosede Adebola Otemuyiwa is a lecturer in the Department of English, Joseph Ayo Babalola University, Ikeji- Arakeji, Osun State, Nigeria. She has published some articles in some critical journals.Living Anonymity Exile as Motif in Lenrie Peters He Walks AloneChristopher Babatunde OgunyemiDepartment of EnglishJoseph Ayo Babalola University, Nigeria.emailprotectedandNiyi AkingbeDepartment of EnglishJoseph Ayo Babalola University, NigeriaemailprotectedAbosede Adebola OtemuyiwaDepartment of EnglishJoseph Ayo Babalola University, Nigeriaemailprotected psychiatric hospitalExile is strangely compelling to think nigh but terrible to love.It is the unhealable rift forced between a valet de chambre being and a internal place,between the self and its true stand its essential sadness can never besurmounted. And while it is true that literature an d history contain dauntless romantic, glorious, even triumphant episodes in an conveyanceslife, these ar no more(prenominal)(prenominal) than efforts meant to overcome the achievementsof exile permanently undermined by the loss of something leftbehind for ever. (Edward Said, 2001137)Edward Saids submission in a higher place best explains the fundamentals about writings on Exile which portends either self-identity or collective identity of a group of people who live in a continuum. This kind of writing either informs, educates or entertains but the major motive here is to criticize and to mordaciousally inform the people within the literary ethos about the exigency of exile, its mental effects, socio logical effects and even its political effects on African people. Exile writing visualizes issues that bother on frenzy and the quest for freedom. Writers throughout the ages have been using their literary works of arts to show various reactions that bother with exile. nigh x-r ay physical exile others psychological exile which grossly affects the psyche of the writer or the spirit in question.Migration and forced migration are panacea to alienation and exile. Writings emanating from such(prenominal) feelings are wishful and thought provoking. Many writers have used their works to buttress the feelings of exile in time and space. The experience of exile literature in Lithuania is predicated on the apocalyptical second coming of the soviet armies in Lithuania. This threw away many intellectual and professional away into exile. Poets arose to react critically to these plights. Examples of such poets are Kazys Bradunas (b.1917), Jonas Mekas (b.1922), Algirdas Landsbergs (b.1924) among others from all split of the world. Our concern in this paper is to examine exile as motif in Lenrie Peters rime that is entitled He Walks Alone The poem explains various reasons Africans go on exile and their impressions when they feel nostalgic. Feelings for their roots, their families and their grows give rise to some sensitive impressions in their works of arts. However, the work uses textual analytic thinking to explain how Lenrie Peters uses badinage and allegory to portray the image of exile politically, psychologically, economically and physically as recurring motifs in his poetry. His wealth of imagery is situated within the axis of literary industry in rank to explain what informs migration literature in Africa. This paper is visualized in six movements the first being the introduction throws a searchlight into the concept of migration and its meeter example in Lithuania and Africa. The second probes into what constitutes the textual analysis snuggle the third views exile as motif in African poetry the fourth delves into Lenrie Peters assimilation of exile the fifth movement conceptualises the application of the textual analysis to the poem in question and the sixth, being the last movement concludes the work. The paper conceptualise s the textual analysis approach to demonstrate the intrinsic value of migration and exile in the body of the text. Daniel Chandler has done some excellent application of the textual approach to the skunk media. This approach allows cover insight into the dread of poetry as it moves in time and space.The textual Analysis ApproachThere are two main forms of the textual analysis of popular culture artefacts interpretive and content analysis. This paper shall employ these two variations in its corpus.Interpretive textual AnalysesThis include semiotics, rhetorical analysis, ideological analysis, and psychoanalytical approaches, among many others. These types of analysis seek to get beneath the surface (de nonative) meanings and examine more implicit (connotative) social meanings. These textual analysis approaches often view culture as a narrative or story-telling process in which particular texts or cultural artefacts (i.e., a pop song or a TV program) consciously or unconsciously lin k themselves to larger stories at play in the ships company. A key here is how texts create subject positions (identities) for those who use them. meaning analysisis a more quantitative approach that broadly surveys things homogeneous how many instances of violence occur on a typical evening of hot flash time TV viewing, or how many Asian American women appear in a days worth of TV commercials. This information, especially when linked to more qualitative kinds of analysis, can be very valuable in moving beyond the analysts always somewhat subjective observations (http//culturalpolitics.net/popular_culture/textual_analysis).According to Jan Ifversen in Text, Discourse, Concept Approaches to Textual Analysis, he explains the textual theory using the Foucauldian discourse analysis and Begriffsgechichte which can be fruitfully combined to develop a textual analysis in any literary work, he takes into cognizance and demonstrates that account both pragmatic and semantic dimensions of l anguage is the task of source criticism to establish this claim. HoweverTextual analysis, on the other hand is concerned with the linguisticforms of past representations. It must get to grips with the representationalchain that links memory to testimony and testimony to writing. Someapproaches are applied to textual analysis of diachronic documents.they touch aspects within textual analysis that particularly concernhistoric material and literary vista (KONTUR nr. 7 2003 60)Meaning-oriented content analysis and interpretive and critical text analysis approaches share a subjective ontological status of human action and demeanour and a methodological commitment to capturing the actual meaning and interpretations of organisational actors involved in corporate narrative reporting. Corporate narrative documents are regarded as a intermediate for meaning construction for organisational actors. However, text analysis approaches from the interpretive and the critical perspectives acknow ledge the researchers subjectivity. Literary works provide overview of the research perspectives and corresponding text analysis approaches which are further in literature. It shows the choice of text analysis approach to be determined by the research paradigm in which the researcher locates him/herself, which, in turn, consists of a specific combination of the researchers epistemological stance and the belief regarding the ontological status of human action and behaviour. (Merkl-Davies, 2009 5).We shall apply the textual approach to the poetry of Lenrie Peters in order to understand its evaluative interpretation in migration literature.Exile as Motif in African PoetryPoetry usually employs the use of epigrammatic statements, lyrics, concrete images which graphically delineate incontrovertible truths in life and social justice (Maduka and Eyoh, 200014). Based on this, poets such as Williams Wordsworth, John Keats, Shakespeare, Yeats etc use their poetry to make grow various motifs from innocence to experience, nature and love, unbridled quest for social justice and so on. Exile is an example of such subject matter that poetry axiomatically lends its credence on because it deployed terse intelligence informations and encoded metaphor in the illumination of thematic preoccupation. Poets could successfully communicate their feelings without been harmed or without been intimidated by the societal good example or instrument of power that lacks literary imagination. Similarly, poets easily call the economic aid of audience to the plight of exile in order to bring about raw(a) life and new experiences. It boils down to what is exile.According to Jacqueline Corness in a paper entitled Alienation and Freedom- A study of Dostoevskys Notes From Underground as it relates to the Theme of Exile, she defines exile from the perspective of Said when she opines thatExile is not, after all, a matter of choice you are born into it,or it happens to you. For this reason, exile is often thought to be the roughly psychological difficult state of removal from, for example,ones country. While some people are separated fromtheir homeland because they have freely chosen to liveelsewhere, exiles are considered to be at mercy of externalforces (2).Exile is a serious human condition that makes many poets to show their concern and to a fault demonstrate how they feel. Wole Soyinkas visit Conversation is a capsule presentation of psychological exile experienced in England when he was refused an accommodation simply because he is a black man. Arthur Nortjes Autopsy is a poem that visualises the evil effects of exile on children who were instinctively born into it, they feel isolated and perverted. Buhadur Tejanis Leaving the Country is a poem in Africa that showcases the evils behind political exile and alienation. The spirit of nothingness, hollow expectations and practical dislocations are the feelings that emanate from people. African poets reflect exile situat ion as motif in their poetic canon.Lenrie Peters and Exile Preoccupations in PoetryAlthough, Lenrie Peters is not a victim of political exile, his exile motif in poetry is predicated on the psychological exile and alienation he experiences in Britain. The same feelings Soyinka experiences which makes him to write the Telephone Conversation Before 1965, Peters studies and lives in Cambridge, after the independence of Gambia his country, he came home to help restructure the political and economic situation. His poem He Walks Alone is a typical example of exile and alienation people throw in foreign land. His biography shows thatLenrie Peters was born in Bathurst (at the time a British colony), now Banjul, Gambia on September 1, 1932. Poet,narrator, publisher, medical surgeon and opera singer. Author of the poetry books Katchikali Satellites and Collected Poems and the novel The Second Round, 1965. All his works were published by Heinemann, in London, in the collection African writers series. After making his first studies in Bathurst and in Sierra Leone, he travelled to Cambridge to study Natural Sciences at Trinity College. In England, he was the president of the Union of African Students. He also worked as a publisher for one of the earliest Gambian newspapers, The Gambia Echo. As well as Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and other writers, he belongs to the first generation of the Anglophone West African Writers in being recognized as such and being published abroad. He is an enthusiast defender of the panafricanism. A cosmopolitan poet, his densely packed, minimalist stanza structures upheaval in the broad universal spectrum of human experience aging and death, the risks of love, the loneliness of exile. In his book Satellites (1967), the poet-doctors detachment is a metaphor for the uprooted individuals painful existential closing off his scalpel penetrating at the cutting chaotic edge of things an image for the imaginative piercing and spiritual penetration wh ich are the real goals of the poets quest. Although he gets furious with the thwarting of the African under study, he reflects about blind and sickening models of progress that do not show a continuity with the past and destroy more than what they preserve. In his only novel The Second Round, a physicist sort outed in Great Britain and victim of the so called massacre of the soul brought by horse operaization, returns to the capital of his homeland fill up with noble ideas about the progress of Africa, but ends sustaining a job in a remote jungle hospital and therefore pickings roots in the traditional experience (xvii International Poetry Festival of Modelling)He Walks Alone is a poem that shows degree of alienation African students suffer in Europe. As a result of this alienation in their system, they feel exiled and Peters asks them to go home. The poem is a rich experience from the poet who having studied abroad is critical of the hypocritical behaviours which is sometimes f ound in Europe. An African student is given quality education but refused employment by the system that educates him. The poem is sarcastic because it tries to ridicule the harsh weather and the harsh behaviours Africans face in diaspora. As a result of alienation, some Africans have lost their roots. They want to behave like the Europeans but it is not possible because their physiological traits were not tailored towards the European individualism. Africans are collective in nature, so when they demonstrate Eurocentric feelings, the Europeans could not accept them, the Africans quickly run back home in order to eat in unison, speak in one accord, love themselves and struggle together in African commonism.Textual Analysis of Exile in He Walks AloneThe poem is written in seven stanzas of unequal five lines. The poet addresses exile as motif because man is an integral factor in society- Exile has caused many untold pain, closing off and rejection. The first stanza reportsHe walks alo nehead bowed with memoriesExiled in the parksome playful thing of long agoglues him to a shop windowThe poet creates an image of an African man in Europe who is facial expression for an identity. He is not accepted into the system though he is a legal resident. He cannot vote and be voted for he cannot seek employment in choice places. He walks alone thinking about home, thinking about his family. Most times he goes around with his head bowed to the colour and psychological differences that exist between him and his host community. At the park, he is always given some distance as if he is a mini-human. The situation on the train is the worst, nobody sits beside him. He feels exiled and alienated. The choice of words here shows that Lenrie Peter employs some coded meanings with words like head bowed in memories. The exile is confronted by a denial by the host communitys culture. But also there is a feeling of belonging to a different but alien culture that has no recognition, and whi ch does not accord him any relevance in the colonial metropolis of London. Hence, his head is bowed with memories and longing for African warmth usually underscored by communal gathering, scores of festivals, the warmth of comradeship and shared labour, joy of harvest and a recollection of the sparkling African blue weather of the dry season. An underlining feature of the exiles minx with memory is his concern for warmth and tenderness sufficiently present in Africa, a memory which unobtrusively can not be obliterated by a stretch of distance from Africa.In the second stanza, the issue of exile seems more manifestFaded suit sharp linedloosely held by his proud heartshoes scaled with polishcannot comprehend as well muchto tell of harsh experiencesThe African tries to emulate the European but he cannot really fit into the system. The exiles consciousness is sharpened against the backdrop of the drudgery of everyday life in London, reverberated by faded suit, shoes scaled with polish which betrays an instalmental musical accompaniment on the fringes of English society. This is a description placed at the disposal of an exceptional sincerity and a compelling purpose of coping with the debilitating English weather. The choice of being cladded in faded suit and a pair of shoes scaled with polish is bewildering to the exile. But how is the exile in English society expected to cope with isolation, harsh weather and cultural shock? How is he to describe and set his experiences within an historical condition which can only be understood by himself? The exile realises that only memory can be employed as a weapon of liberation to break through the walls of isolation and racial discrimination ineluctably grounded in English social milieu. Memory constitutes a bastion of recollection of negative experiences for the exile in the poem. The applications of concrete images such as proud heart shoes scaled with polish are contrasting. As an immigrant he is proud to have journe yed to other part of the world, but in the end cannot fit into the new environment. Irony is another instrument the poet uses to make his poem satiric in nature. Maduka sheds more light on this conceptThe word irony means so many things to many peoplethat its no longer very useful as a critical idiom.The protean consultation of its use has resulted in anarray of terms associated with it. Thus, one frequentlyhears of such expressions as Verbal Irony.Irony of Situation, Sophoclean Irony, Irony of Life,Euripi dean Irony, Tragic Irony, Cosmic Irony, striking Irony, Irony of Things, Irony of Circumstances,Irony of Character ( 139, The Intellectual and Power Structure)Peters complicates dominant racial renditions of African exiles life in Europe by challenging oversimplified historical facts. The poem problematizes a disturbing emotional turmoil to produce a poetic effect in which racial narratives are recognised as the stereotypical occurrences, but have been complicated to the point w here it can no longer be definitive. Migration breeds alienation, wherein contentious ideological perspectives of the racism are organised into a runny and recuperative narrative, which urges the reader to apprehend the ways in which ambiguous representations of the exile which yield a more nuanced and complex literary vision of the African racial condition than that rendered by historical documentations.In this poem, many of these ironies are applicable. The most important are irony of situation, irony of life, dramatic irony, irony of circumstances and irony of character. This is because exile explores all these feelings in the life of the African whose character is very critical in the poem. Stanzas three and four explain moreNo coward herespository of rejected talentsan ounce of earthsilted weightily in his heart.the good luck point is looking backIn this stanza, Peters commences a poetic evaluation of the significance of western education to contemporary African students. Ins pite of the difficulties generated by the racially stratified England, the persona does not disintegrate with the threats of racism. But has to maintain a stoical fidelity to his pastime of western education, whose immense reward entrust translate to the transformation of his African society. And more so, he can not afford to pack his bags and return to Africa, because the breaking point is looking back. But has to cope with the social, psychological and economic stress of England as to acquire western education at all cost. This necessitates that he deplores heroism as a tool of postmodernist sensibility, towards surmounting these travails. The treatment of a sensitive socio-political issue of racism in this poem underscores James Reevess observation that, what poetry does to the mass of everyday experience is to make permanent and memorable whatever in it is vital and significant(88). Peters in this poem ostensibly criticises racial discrimination, and amplifies the plight of African students in their determination to confront this social malaise.Crossed the RubiconRace, nationality, ideology, religionarrowed from earth to moonfounder of a new brotherhoodan hero he not of our nation bornHere, the character in the poem is undergoing some rejections. He is grossly isolated, crossing the Rubicon is a metaphor for Atlantic Ocean. The poet is calling an attention that this character who flew across the Atlantic is now been exiled physically and psychologically. He battles racism, nationality stratification resulting into modern slavery, religious differences, ideological divergences, post-nationalism and globalization. Language to this poem is very crucial to the understanding of exile and its attendant evils. Peter concurs that African students must embrace alienation as it is transitory yet mandatory for the pursuit of western education. This reverberates Jacques Derridas explanation that reality, and historical representation of events that attempts to doc ument reality must be inscribed in contradiction and ambivalence. Derrida insistsIf we have been insisting so much since the beginning on the logic of theghost, it is because it points toward a thinking of the event thatnecessarily exceeds a binary or dialectical logic, the logic that distinguishesor opposes effectivity or actuality (either present, empirical,living-or-not)and ideality (regulating or absolute non-presence). (italics maestro 78)Suffice to say that Derridas logic of the ghost explicates the ways in which He Walks AloneArticulates a similar contradiction that bifurcates binaries of racism to establish a more problematic historical representation of exile.The poet chooses both the connotative and denotative language to portray the colourful images and metaphors which he explores in the handling of exile as motif in the poem He Walks Alone Stanzas five, six and seven substantiate this assertion. Lenrie Peters mastery of the English language allows for an unbiased evalua tion of communities imagined through language, which neither obscures specificity nor emphasise notions of fixed identity. Such evaluation succinctly foregrounds the questioning and critical evaluation of the disadvantaged position of the exile.Known no tendernessskin a arial mosaic of scarsheart in fixed depositsafe from ridicule, decomposingMarionette-strings linked with starsExile go homeunder your bed a bowl of tears ensue back streetsnightmares evenings kneeling in pewsbrassy noises of homely firesDream and waitcoarse cauctus of desert wastesperhaps tomorrowsunflowers fading in the heatwill lie insensate at your feetIn this poem, the choice of both connotative language and denotative language is to present the motif of exile in its natural state. The poet wants to prevent ambiguity by using everydays language as connotative and implied language as denotative. The image of poverty is too conspicuous in the poem. The character lives in isolated area, some areas are exclusively r eserved for immigrants and some jobs are also exclusively reserved for immigrants. Such jobs include cleaning, flushing of toilets, etc. Lenrie Peters is highly critical about the use of language in the poem. Although he sounds very harsh, maverick and mechanical when he says exile go home. The poet seems to be worried about frustrations, psychological intimidation people in exile go through. Although this is self exile, he admonishes the Africans that they should seriously start thinking about home for the sake of development and posterity.Similarly, the arrays of metaphors which are situational make the motif of exile interesting to study. Though exile is a social factor, the poet is calling attention that instead of constant endurance and travails, bear on persons can make it good at home. Although man is powerless in the face of uncontrollable phenomenon, the poet achieves success in his artistic craft and the handling of the story of exile as motif in He Walks AloneThe title of the poem is symbolic because it expresses the exile experience and it emphasises individualism which is not part of African culture and tradition. Above all, it is a contribution to African literature because African literature, indeed the literature of black civilization, in modern times, has moved from the literature of remonstrance to the literature of assertion and emancipation, which also indicates self-examination (Black Aesthetics, ix). Of paramount significance is the musical theatricality which the poem employs in its structure, which gives the poem an aesthetic bravura and imaginative splendour. The significance of this steadfast patterning is to show that exile is a continuous phenomenon in the life of people. As African people move from one place to the other, other people too may consider relocation from one locale to the other. They would begin to consider balancing with the socio-geographical factor of the environment they find themselves in. In the course of thi s, nostalgia, pain and acceptance problem sails in. The end rhyme employed by Lenrie Peters could be considered original because it neither conforms to Elizabethan nor the English type.The tone of the poem is melancholic. That is the situation exile encourages. The poet is exhibiting a practical manifestation of what it is to be in exile. The expectations are usually very high but the system is not accommodating to satisfy all the yearnings revolving in the mind. The audience would perceive He Walks Alone as a didactic poem. A didactic poem is a poem that teaches and explains the rudiments about human society and predicament. The motif of exile is an over- riding factor in this poem. The poem exegetically breaks down and overturns the European jaundiced understanding of African cultural milieu, by resisting a widely accepted, and otiose depiction of the African students sojourn in Europe as blissful, celebratory and quintessential. But Peters through a complex externalisation of hi s experience in London, depicts the thorny convolutions of exile.ConclusionThe motif of exile is the main preoccupation that Lenrie Peters examines in exhaustive chunk. He uses rich imagery to demonstrate this, head in mind that Africans are people of historical evolution in the word of Boyin Svetlana. This poem is very sensitive to the plight of exile and identity. The use of ordinary language is to denote clear image of understanding so that the issue of ambiguity would not arise. To sum up, Lenrie Peters He Walks Alone is an exemplification of exile experience coupled with the question of identity and how these factors have dire consequences on the people. The rich artistic creation is a contribution to African literature.