Lecture, Session 9

School Days by Patrick Chamoiseau

Like Zobel in Rue Cases Nègres, Chamoiseau credits his belated introduction to Caribbean writers with rescuing him from his boredom with French, European images and literature as well as with inspiring him to become a writer.  His writing style captures the orality of Creole.  He demonstrates love of the word, particularly through proverbs and storytelling.  In addition, he shows how reputations are built on verbal performance.  In his introduction, Creole takes on an aesthetic expression of cultural resistance.  Creole is interpreted as "the other language," as it was unwritten until fairly recently. 

Consider the following quote from p. 61: "However do you expect to travel along the path to wisdom with a language like that!  This po'-nigger talk gums up your minds with its worthless pap!"

The narrative style demonstrates the typical call and response antiphonal style of solo and chorus.  As we have seen, there is no such thing as a passive audience in Creole.  There is great appreciation and use for the language's dexterity.  In rural areas, verbal performance is a major source of entertainment; admittedly, there are few other diversions.  People sit around and perform with words.  In addition, storytelling and riddles have didactic function too.  They teach morals and demonstrate for their listeners an honorable method in which to see the world.

Typically, narratives are interspersed with verses of a chorus.  Consider the following examples:

p. 112

Notice how the narrative style sounds like speech and/or conversation.  It exhibits storytelling by recounting, unfolding realistically and capturing accurate speech style and the (often quite comical!) thoughts of a child.  For example, on p. 110, a description of inspections of students by a doctor.  Note how the state is using the school setting to discipline citizens; this makes comical the ritual of being prodded and poked by the public doctor or nurse.  Another example can be found on p. 131 with a battle with stiff boots and stinking feet.

French colonialism

Unlike the British, who assumed that black and white groups were too different to justify their mixture and promoted segregation, the French demonstrated a different type of ethnocentrism.  They believed themselves to be the only ones with culture.  They assumed blacks had no culture, and therefore needed to be acculturated.  The “gift” of a French education was used to justify colonialism, and so the French education was offered to all.  But, the problem was that the language of instruction was a foreign language for the masses.  It became a huge barrier--most fail to master either the language or the subject matter.  The social hierarchy was classed using the French language.  Children were physically and mentally punished if they spoke Creole.

Parents, in turn, used French performatively.  For example, after Papa made a rum punch he “unfurled a French that was less a language than an esoteric tool used for effect” (p. 47). Children used French to maintain respectful distance when addressing grown ups. French didn’t even have a name before--it was some object fetched when needed from a kind of shelf, outside oneself, but which sounded natural in the mouth, close to Creole.  The teacher's French, in contrast, was unnatural and distant.  His language wasn’t inviting; "it floated above them with the magnificence of a ruby-throated hummingbird hovering in the breeze." (p. 48)

From the point of view of Martinique, French is a language and a culture. As Fanon writes, one takes on a language and a culture; one can acquire it through education, learning, studying.  Martiniquans thought of themselves as French.  Likewise, Fanon thought he was French.  But, when he got to France, he was told he was black.  He saw that French nationality means a nation and a race. He couldn’t be black and French at the same time in France.  This leads to hypercorrection; in this, Antilles migrants both abroad and at home desperately try to speak an over-correct French to compensate for feelings of inferiority.

Fanon's satire

France is the Tabernacle.  When Fanon returns, he pretends not to know Creole or Creole ways.  He tells the folktale of the young man who grew up on a farm.  He returns from France and asks his father in the most formal French, “Father what is the term for that implement?”  The man drops it on his foot.

In response, the locals are hypercritical.  He must throw off his Parisianism or die of ridicule. Fanon, chapter 3, says that the Martiniquan becomes like an abandonment neurotic; he only sees adverse sides of intimacy. Even when a white woman seems genuinely to love him, he cannot make a commitment.  He rejects her before she can reject him.  Also, he shows mimicry of Frenchness--particularly in his posture and gestures (p. 43).  Further, his hatred of Creole boys shows a displacement of their own insecurity.

The teacher in the story had an incomplete mastery of French.  Still, the teacher is consistently grasping for upward mobility in a caste-like system.  His insecurity is displaced most prominently on the Creole students.  So, in frustration, the teacher loses control over French, and the Creole intrudes into his speech.  The angrier he gets at his pupil's refusal or inability to master French, the more Creole betrays his own failure to master the colonial language (p. 63): “In his frustration.." The Children are paralyzed by speaking.  If they speak, they expose their Creole identity. "Speech became a heroic feat (p. 63)"; “opening your mouth had become a risky business.”

The children are persecuted not only by the teacher but by fellow students, too.  Notice how the systematic transformations of French sounds into barbarian Creole frustrate the teacher. (For example, adding "z" at the beginning of a word, dropping of “r”, absence of front, round vowels, “u” becomes “I”, eur becomes ère.).