'The Education of a British-Protected Child'

'The Education of a British-Protected Child'

Introduction

Achebe's latest publication, 'The Education of a British-Protected Child', is a compendium of seventeen skilfully written non-fictional pieces in which he walks his readers down memory lane. In the title story (p3-24), he writes: 'In 1957, three years after my failed Cambridge application, I had my first opportunity to travel out of Nigeria to study briefly at the BBC Staff School in London. For the first time I needed and obtained a passport, and saw myself defined therein as a 'British Protected Person.'(p4) Achebe paints a vivid picture of himself, an African child growing up in Nigeria under British rule, and having to straddle both worlds. Ill at ease with his ambivalence he adumbrates his aversion for colonialism and attendant ills in these terms: '…I will state simply my fundamental objection to colonial rule. In my view, it is a gross crime for anyone to impose himself on another, to seize his land and his history, and then to compound this by making out that the victim is some kind of ward or minor requiring protection. It is too disingenuous.'(p7)

Thesis Statement

The main theme of this paper is to critically analyze the texts of the essays: “The Sweet Aroma of Zik's Kitchen” (pp25-38) and “Traveling White” (pp47-53) in Achebe's The Education of a British-Protected Child.

Discussion Analysis

Chinua Achebe's characteristically measured and subtle voice is ever-present in these seventeen, beautifully nuanced pieces. The Education of a British-Protected Child offers a vivid portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria. Achebe recalls both his happy memories of reading novels in secondary school and the harsher truths of imperial rule. In “African-American Visitations,” he allows us to witness the terrifying nature of the African diaspora and what it means not to know “from whence he came.” Politics and history figure in “What is Nigeria to Me?,” “Africa's Tarnished Name,” and “Politics of the Politicians of Language.”

Achebe's book is an acerbic lampoon on the propagation of colonial stereotypes via the medium of literature in a bid to justify the subjugation of Africans. He singles out Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' as an epitome of such disingenuous works of literature stepped in racial undertones and bigotry. He observes that Conrad, the Polish-born French-speaking English sea captain and novelist recorded in his memoir his first experience of seeing a black man in these remarkable words: 'A certain enormous buck nigger encountered in Haiti fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days. Of the nigger I used to dream for years afterwards.'(p158) Achebe describes this sort of literature as 'poisonous writing, in full consonance with the tenets of the slave trade-inspired tradition of European portrayal of Africa.'(p87-88)

'The Education of a British-Protected Child' is captivating in several respects but the quality that grips the reader's attention is the writer's continual recourse to the literary device of intertextuality. He often resorts to cross-references in a bid to prove ...