The Novel as a Medium of Global Expression - Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart
The Novel as a Medium of Global Expression
It is difficult to contain novels such as Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart “within territorial boundaries.” Novels such as these have specific settings making it seem like they are contained by geography. Nevertheless, the readers are able to relate to characters in any novel in various ways. The Stone Angel and Things Fall Apart, for instance, both contain a life story of tragic heroes that appeals to a diversified group of readers. Laurence’s Hagar is a proud and stubborn old woman who lives in a quiet Canadian prairie town of Manawaka in isolation. Through the course of recounting the past, Hagar is able to find self-identity. Okonkwo, in Achebe’s novel, is also portrayed as a proud man who clings to the traditional values of his clan so much that it leads to his ruin. Readers are able to relate to these characters through unifying themes such as the influences of characters and time on an individual. A novel’s themes not only help focus on specific issues in the setting of the novel, but they allow readers to view these issues from a wider scope that is, to be compared and contrasted to the rest of the world - making the novel a form of “global expression.”
The main characters in The Stone Angel and Things Fall Apart, Hagar and Okonkwo, both share similar characteristics in that both arrogant and isolated because they take excessive pride in the old ways of life in the family and clan. Hagar, as a child, has been taught to be proud of her family by her father, Jason Currie, a conceited, “self-made man.” Mr. Currie would make his children recite the name of the family’s Highland clan and their war cry, “Gainsay Who Dare!” She also adapts her father’s habit of romantising stories about the Highlanders and so on. Her father’s influence on her sets off a chain reaction, which greatly affects her and loved ones. Through most of the novel, Hagar focuses on reliving through past glories of the Currie name by telling her son, John, about their ancestors, such as Sir Daniel Currie. It is through clinging to the past that leads Hagar to judge others harshly. Hagar, being the narrator, is able to elevate her status by putting others down, for instance, she says Telford’s father isn’t ”very highly regarded” and Daniel, her brother, is “always delicate, and he knew very well the advantages of poor health”. She even judges her own dead mother with contempt, calling her a “meek” woman. Hagar completely fails to see the gentleness in her mother as a valuable quality. She sees Mrs. Currie’s meekness as a sign of weakness. Hagar is ruled by her mind, not her heart. This does not mean she is cold-blooded; in fact, Hagar is very capable of feeling but has great difficulty in expressing emotion because she has grown up with the assumption that being emotional is a weakness. Hagar’s negative altitude ultimately hurts herself and those around her. She wants “above all else” to comfort her dying brother by wearing their mother’s shawl but cannot because she is “unable to bend enough” since she detests the “frailty” and meekness of her mother and even in Dan. She claims that since her own son, Marvin, is slow in speech and lacks natural charm, it was reasonable to deny him the love he craves from her. Hagar also has difficulty expressing her love for Bram. She keeps her physical attraction to Bram a secret. This only causes Bram to think that Hagar does not love him and sets forth to become more rebellious to Hagar’s attempts to change him into a “prospered, gentled, learned cravats and grammar”. Hagar eventually comes to realise how her coldness has caused others pain but it is too late, for Dan and Bram have died and Marvin has long given up in appeasing his mother.