Orientalism in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North

William Usdin ENGL 157 – Exam #1 8.15.12 Orientalism in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North â€Å"Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. Underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, that is the way you have forced me to see myself, I detest the image! What’s more, it’s a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well.† Caliban, in Aime Cesaire’s â€Å"The Tempest† In his Introduction to Orientalism, Edward Said asserts that the â€Å"Orient has helped to define Europe as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience,† (71). Therefore, in Season of Migration to the†¦show more content†¦Sa’eed’s aptitude for the English language, and western thought in general, inspires envy on behalf of his schoolmates. He is ostracized and thought of as different. His intellect â€Å"would fill† the other students â€Å"with annoyance and admiration at one and the same time. With a combination of admiration and spite we nicknamed him ‘the black Englishman.’† Sa’eed’s transition to the â€Å"other†, to a lighter gradation of â€Å"blackness†, began even before he traveled to England. â€Å"Isolated and arrogant,† he spends his time â€Å"alone† (43). There are many intertextual references within Season of Migration, the most apparent being Salih’s a llusions to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Where Conrad’s novel centers around a westerner traveling to Africa in an attempt to realign himself with emotion, Salih’s book is a reversal—a story of an African venturing into the heart of Europe in an attempt to buffer raw impulse with philosophy. In his interview with Phillips, Chinua Achebe asserts that â€Å"Africa is presented to the reader as the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization [†¦] a place where man’s vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality,† (40). Africa is used as a â€Å"backdrop,† devoid of any â€Å"human factor,† it is a â€Å"metaphysical battlefield [†¦] into which the wandering European enters at his peril,† (404).Show MoreRelatedImperialism In Frantz Fanons The Wretched Of The Earth1424 Words   |  6 Pageshybridity among the colonized and the colonizers — reflecting that homoge neity is nonexistent in post-colonial societies; yet, homogeneity was highly emphasized upon colonized societies by the colonizers through their colonial power discourse of Orientalism that allowed the establishment of Western imperial hegemony over the Orient. In his book The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon specifically articulates on the â€Å"nervous condition† of native intellectuals and their struggle to cope with their hybrid