When I first read What Is the What?, the grammatical strangeness of the title continued to haunt me. What did it mean? How does one invest meaning in such an unstable signifier? But instead of seeing it as a static unit of meaning, thinking about it lead me to understand how the symbolic significance of the What constantly evolves throughout the novel. At first, the What is described as the key element in the Dinka creation myth. In the creation myth, God offers a Dinka man and woman two choices; they may either choose the cow, or they may choose the What, an unknown. In the first version offered to the reader, the Dinka choose the cow as they would be “fools to pass up the cattle for the idea of the What” (Eggers 62). As Valentino’s father tells the story, he says, “They knew that they would live in peace with the cattle, and that if they helped the cattle eat and drink, the cattle would give man their milk, would multiply every year and keep the monyjang happy…And God has proven that this was the correct decision. God was testing the man. He was testing the man, to see if he could appreciate what he had been given, if he could take pleasure in the bounty before him, rather than trade it for the unknown” (Eggers 62). Here the What is associated with Dinka superiority precisely because they chose correctly. They chose what was before them rather than the unknown.
However, the What is re-characterized throughout the novel in a number of ways. As the What is unmoored from its association to Dinka prudence, it functions less as a negation than as an affirmation of Dinka possibility. I’d like to add that the What comes to ultimately symbolize agency and possibility, the hope that the Dinka will make better choices, that they will no longer balk from unknown futures. The very evacuation of a specific meaning in the What points toward its function as an empty placeholder for possibility and agency.
Throughout the novel, Eggers decribes Valentino as trapped within systems of dependency in the refugee camps. The children are educated, but the hope in using this education remains dim when it does not directly translate into an (eventual) material change. In this way, they are victims of not only the civil war, but of the system of foreign aid itself in relegating them, as Valentino notes, as “helpless humans” (xiii). Moreover, the What’s meaning shifts in response to Dinka agency. In the beginning, the What possesses a stable meaning. It is the symbol of Dinka prosperity and prudence, and this is reflected in the peaceful village of Marial Bai. However, as the novel progresses, the What becomes ambiguous. Valentino first questions this when he encounters the mysterious man in the forest during his long walk away from what was a world of security and meaning. He asks, what is the what? The mysterious man asks for his ideas. Valentino suggests the What could be the horse (the symbol of the Arabs), the Ak-47 (war), airplanes (modernization), or education (Western liberal discourse of development). Valentino’s suggestions subtly refer to the possibility that the Dinka may have made the wrong choice of the creation myth. Valentino’s failed bike ride further suggests a fear of the unknown (since what is more terrifying to a child then their first bike ride without the help of an adult, of pedaling into some unknown future?).
However, the passage I really wanted to talk about was the one where Valentino speaks to Daniel of the importance of being brave, of taking risks in the hopes of claiming a better, albeit unknowable future. “I told them that the mistakes of the Dinka before us were errors of timidity, of choosing what was before us over what might be. Our people, I said, had been punished for centuries for our errors, but now we were being given a chance to rectify all that. We had been tested as none other before had been tested. We had been sent into the unknown once, and then again and again. We had been thrown this way and that, like rain in the wind of a hysterical storm.
But we’re no longer rain, I said, - we’re no longer seeds. We’re men. Now we can stand and decide. This is our first chance to choose our own unknown. (531 -532)
The What then, in momentarily occupying a negative space, emerges as a sign of agency. Valentino alludes to the creation myth as the “mistakes of the Dinka before us were errors of timidity”. He argues that choosing safely was a false choice since after all, the Sudanese have been “sent into the unknown once, and then again and again”. In other words, to exercise one’s agency is to be able to make choices and not be controlled by the choices themselves. His reference to their status as grown men also indicates a final iteration of the What as the choice to “choose our own unknown.” As such, the What functions as an evolving symbol that assumes meaning depending on its context – it is identified as a symbol of timidity, but it also emerges as a trope for boundless possibility precisely in its lack of stable meaning.
In this way, attempting to answer the question of the novel – what is the what – implicitly refers to the quest for agency, a solution to the seemingly overwhelming problems. In other words, the phrasing itself demands a substitution of signifiers – what is the answer to the Dinka’s problems? What is the meaning of hope itself? – in deciphering its resistance to meaning. Moreover, the grammatical instability of “what” further emphasizes its purposefully ambiguity; according to dictionary.com, “what” can be a: pronoun, noun, adjective, adverb, interjection, conjunction, and lastly, idiom. The very instability of what as a signifier clarifies why it is so difficult to locate its signified; “what” can essentially mean anything, but I think Eggers specifically chose this strange syntactical construction to refer to the multiplicity of forms hope can take. This has particular salience to human rights literature since this form of hope becomes critical in sustaining hope itself. However, this points not to the debility of human rights, but to an approach that privileges a sentiment and momentum for change while acknowledging concrete specificities remain a challenge in realizing the oftentimes ambiguous of hope of human rights.
This inclination towards sliding down the chain of signifiers is again reflected in Valentino’s attempt to answer it with the mysterious man of the forest. The prevention of Valentino to exercise agency fosters a sense of despair that haunts the entire novel; indeed even Valentino seems to note how loyally calamity follows him. This parallels the numerous other scenes where Valentino denies the likelihood of change, such as when Noriyaki successfully orders the laptop, or when Tabitha derides Valentino for lacking the courage to run away, to make a better life for themselves. Yet the previously quoted passage’s allusion to the significance of the What however prepares the reader for the great hope of the novel, which is to grant Valentino agency not in the power to produce material change, but in the power to hope again.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Why I Love William K. And Why You Should Too
One of my favorite books is Dave Eggers' What is the What. Not only is it one of the most honest and fair portrayal of the victim of human rights caught in the process of global commodification (as bargaining chips, or even as books in a literal sense)and politicization, but it has some of the most compelling characters who make us wish we were better versions of ourselves.
There are many reasons why I love this book, but I have to start with the effervescent William K.,Valentino’s boyhood friend who journeys with him towards Ethiopia. The friendship between Valentino and William K. is perhaps one of the best portrayals I’ve read of young boys who, as Eggers writes, “expected to always be boys and friends” in their village (217). William K. is introduced to the reader as a regular boy with a penchant for wild stories, particularly those which end with someone’s eyes popping out. In the village, William K. is portrayed as the trouble maker who occasionally bullies others, like when he stomps on Moses’ carefully made clay cattle. But what I specifically enjoy about his character is his (minimally referenced) hatred for his Other, William A., and the reckless, almost delusional hope he comes to represent on their treacherous walk towards Ethiopia.
William A. is never present, but as his Other, he represents all that William K. is not. He becomes that which William K. cannot identify with, an invisible antagonism which compels William K. to constantly address him in his jokes, teasing, and lies, an Other whose (imaginary) presence reiterates to the reader how individuals in fact detest sameness. William K. hates William A. because he represents a threat to his individuality. This suggests how although people may locate a celebrated commonality in the same, the human impulse is to instead locate identity in difference. William K.’s age as a young boy re-emphasizes how even at a young age, children realize the pitfall of sameness.
In the village, William K.’s fanciful stories are described as bothersome, but his capacity to tell stories, fictitious though they may be, is shown to be a valuable survival mechanism on their treacherous walk. Valentino knows that their families will not be waiting in Ethiopia, nor will food be plentiful, but William K.’s exaggerated stories balance out the extreme despair of the trip and serve as a delusional, if not stabilizing image of hope. In one instance, William K. assures Valentino that his wounded leg will heal quickly and that nobody gets sick in Ethiopia. William K. attempts to corroborate his story by saying he overheard it from Dut, but Valentino realizes the fantasy and appreciates it nonetheless. He thinks, “William was a hopeless liar, but it pleased me” (209). In this way, William K comes to represent a fierce intensity that is unafraid to dream and re-imagine the future. In a way, he symbolizes an alternative to the “safe” choice that the Dinka made in the creation myth. They chose the cow, which was the known choice and thus the cautious choice. William K, however, creates a space for re-imagination and risk taking that remains absent in the novel. Upon his death, Valentino says, “I did not want to leave William K. I wanted to die with him. ..But then I thought of my mother and my father, my brothers and sisters, and found myself invoking William K’s own mythic visions of Ethiopia. The world was terrible but perhaps I would see them again. It was enough to bring me to my feet” (213). William K’s “visions of Ethiopia” not only enable him to persevere, but more importantly, it enables Valentino to continue living even despite the hollow promise of hope, even knowing that this vision is false. William K symbolizes a bold embrace of the unknown, of the imagined.
I also wanted to share some videos that I found of Valentino and Dave talking about What is the What:
This video is of Valentino showing his village in Marial Bai. He shows the tree where he and his friends would play under (like the tree him and William K would look out from in the novel), the direction where the murahaleen rode from, his father’s compounds, and his parents and family.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjqD3WWbs9s
Valentino tells his story at a Google Talk. He talks about how he wanted the book to not only show the horror and intensity of the conflict, but to show how life was beforehand, how people lived.
http://www.youtube.com/user/AtGoogleTalks#p/search/0/2V7MeewG_MU
Lastly, this video was made last year and is an interview between Dave and Valentino. I like this one the best, as it provides a great update about Valentino’s life after the book, how he saw a woman reading What Is the What on an airplane (which he says was struck by lightning), and his life with a new wife and his child.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgbfBQc_ExM
There are many reasons why I love this book, but I have to start with the effervescent William K.,Valentino’s boyhood friend who journeys with him towards Ethiopia. The friendship between Valentino and William K. is perhaps one of the best portrayals I’ve read of young boys who, as Eggers writes, “expected to always be boys and friends” in their village (217). William K. is introduced to the reader as a regular boy with a penchant for wild stories, particularly those which end with someone’s eyes popping out. In the village, William K. is portrayed as the trouble maker who occasionally bullies others, like when he stomps on Moses’ carefully made clay cattle. But what I specifically enjoy about his character is his (minimally referenced) hatred for his Other, William A., and the reckless, almost delusional hope he comes to represent on their treacherous walk towards Ethiopia.
William A. is never present, but as his Other, he represents all that William K. is not. He becomes that which William K. cannot identify with, an invisible antagonism which compels William K. to constantly address him in his jokes, teasing, and lies, an Other whose (imaginary) presence reiterates to the reader how individuals in fact detest sameness. William K. hates William A. because he represents a threat to his individuality. This suggests how although people may locate a celebrated commonality in the same, the human impulse is to instead locate identity in difference. William K.’s age as a young boy re-emphasizes how even at a young age, children realize the pitfall of sameness.
In the village, William K.’s fanciful stories are described as bothersome, but his capacity to tell stories, fictitious though they may be, is shown to be a valuable survival mechanism on their treacherous walk. Valentino knows that their families will not be waiting in Ethiopia, nor will food be plentiful, but William K.’s exaggerated stories balance out the extreme despair of the trip and serve as a delusional, if not stabilizing image of hope. In one instance, William K. assures Valentino that his wounded leg will heal quickly and that nobody gets sick in Ethiopia. William K. attempts to corroborate his story by saying he overheard it from Dut, but Valentino realizes the fantasy and appreciates it nonetheless. He thinks, “William was a hopeless liar, but it pleased me” (209). In this way, William K comes to represent a fierce intensity that is unafraid to dream and re-imagine the future. In a way, he symbolizes an alternative to the “safe” choice that the Dinka made in the creation myth. They chose the cow, which was the known choice and thus the cautious choice. William K, however, creates a space for re-imagination and risk taking that remains absent in the novel. Upon his death, Valentino says, “I did not want to leave William K. I wanted to die with him. ..But then I thought of my mother and my father, my brothers and sisters, and found myself invoking William K’s own mythic visions of Ethiopia. The world was terrible but perhaps I would see them again. It was enough to bring me to my feet” (213). William K’s “visions of Ethiopia” not only enable him to persevere, but more importantly, it enables Valentino to continue living even despite the hollow promise of hope, even knowing that this vision is false. William K symbolizes a bold embrace of the unknown, of the imagined.
I also wanted to share some videos that I found of Valentino and Dave talking about What is the What:
This video is of Valentino showing his village in Marial Bai. He shows the tree where he and his friends would play under (like the tree him and William K would look out from in the novel), the direction where the murahaleen rode from, his father’s compounds, and his parents and family.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjqD3WWbs9s
Valentino tells his story at a Google Talk. He talks about how he wanted the book to not only show the horror and intensity of the conflict, but to show how life was beforehand, how people lived.
http://www.youtube.com/user/AtGoogleTalks#p/search/0/2V7MeewG_MU
Lastly, this video was made last year and is an interview between Dave and Valentino. I like this one the best, as it provides a great update about Valentino’s life after the book, how he saw a woman reading What Is the What on an airplane (which he says was struck by lightning), and his life with a new wife and his child.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgbfBQc_ExM
The appropriation of language in Beasts of No Nation
Some thoughts after reading Beasts of No Nation
I found Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation particularly compelling in his use of language. Our young protagonist, Agu, narrates his divorce from childhood through the stilted use of English in the present tense. An effect of this version of English is that of dis-identification with the reader. Typically, the reader’s identification with the characters is seen as a measure of a novel’s success; Lynn Hunt’s work argues that the novel conditioned people’s ability to sympathize, to identify with the discontents of others, which thus enabled the development of the invention of human rights. Iweala’s novel, however, aims to distance the reader from the character. The language alienates the reader in its decidedly foreign (non-English) accent. In the opening pages, Agu says, “Footstep is everywhere around me and making me to think that my father is coming to bring medicine to stop all of this itch and pain” (2). The elements which render this iteration of English as foreign sounding (or Other to “proper” English), are grammatical – such as disagreement between plural/singular subjects and verbs, run on sentences, and lack of correct punctuation. The language sounds foreign in its failure to adhere to grammatical structures of English.
The syntactical breakdowns of Agu’s language, however, further suggest his youth and straddle a fine line between illustrating his youth and becoming incomprehensible. In regards to referring to Agu’s youth, the language is reminiscent of a child’s, of the mistakes a child would make in forming complete sentences. The child makes mistakes precisely because he or she is coming into language, of being subjected into this (foreign, that which is outside themselves) system of signification. The grammatical errors then further imply a failure of signification, of assuming and pre-supposing those linguistic relations which come to figure human relations altogether (which echoes Lyotard’s explication of the child within the interlocutory circuit). Iweala cleverly uses language itself to signify the failure of subjection into the Symbolic Order. In this way, Iweala’s novel seems to lie in tension between entrance into the Symbolic Order and a constant referral to the Real Order, of pure emotions, desires, that which resists symbolization at all. Agu, as a child, is himself a bundle of desires and emotions which he cannot always fully articulate. His use of language to situate himself in the world (in relation to others) becomes onomatopoetic, such as when he describes the world around him through sounds like “KNOCK KNOCK”, “PING PING” or “KPAWA!” (2).
In this sense, Iweala accomplishes a remarkable feat of mimicking the grammatical breakdowns of a child, and the disruption between entrance into the Symbolic from the Real, without jeopardizing comprehension of the supposed audience of fluent English readers. As such, I don’t feel that Iweala is distorting English in his portrayal of Agu, but instead it seems he is cleverly appropriating English for the needs of a child soldier, of using language to dis-identify his character from the reader in order to show the limitations of the novel in “knowing” the other.
I found Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation particularly compelling in his use of language. Our young protagonist, Agu, narrates his divorce from childhood through the stilted use of English in the present tense. An effect of this version of English is that of dis-identification with the reader. Typically, the reader’s identification with the characters is seen as a measure of a novel’s success; Lynn Hunt’s work argues that the novel conditioned people’s ability to sympathize, to identify with the discontents of others, which thus enabled the development of the invention of human rights. Iweala’s novel, however, aims to distance the reader from the character. The language alienates the reader in its decidedly foreign (non-English) accent. In the opening pages, Agu says, “Footstep is everywhere around me and making me to think that my father is coming to bring medicine to stop all of this itch and pain” (2). The elements which render this iteration of English as foreign sounding (or Other to “proper” English), are grammatical – such as disagreement between plural/singular subjects and verbs, run on sentences, and lack of correct punctuation. The language sounds foreign in its failure to adhere to grammatical structures of English.
The syntactical breakdowns of Agu’s language, however, further suggest his youth and straddle a fine line between illustrating his youth and becoming incomprehensible. In regards to referring to Agu’s youth, the language is reminiscent of a child’s, of the mistakes a child would make in forming complete sentences. The child makes mistakes precisely because he or she is coming into language, of being subjected into this (foreign, that which is outside themselves) system of signification. The grammatical errors then further imply a failure of signification, of assuming and pre-supposing those linguistic relations which come to figure human relations altogether (which echoes Lyotard’s explication of the child within the interlocutory circuit). Iweala cleverly uses language itself to signify the failure of subjection into the Symbolic Order. In this way, Iweala’s novel seems to lie in tension between entrance into the Symbolic Order and a constant referral to the Real Order, of pure emotions, desires, that which resists symbolization at all. Agu, as a child, is himself a bundle of desires and emotions which he cannot always fully articulate. His use of language to situate himself in the world (in relation to others) becomes onomatopoetic, such as when he describes the world around him through sounds like “KNOCK KNOCK”, “PING PING” or “KPAWA!” (2).
In this sense, Iweala accomplishes a remarkable feat of mimicking the grammatical breakdowns of a child, and the disruption between entrance into the Symbolic from the Real, without jeopardizing comprehension of the supposed audience of fluent English readers. As such, I don’t feel that Iweala is distorting English in his portrayal of Agu, but instead it seems he is cleverly appropriating English for the needs of a child soldier, of using language to dis-identify his character from the reader in order to show the limitations of the novel in “knowing” the other.
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