Point of view in two West African novels : a comparison of Armah's The beautyful ones are not yet born and Sembène's Les bouts de bois de Dieu

Abstract

This study is an initial experiment which attempts to examine African novels in French and English with the aid of a number of critical concepts connected with point of view. It will however use these concepts to a special end: the examination of point of view will focus primarily on the relationship of the author with the fictional world he creates, and more especially with his characters; and it is hoped that from the study of his relationship with his fictional world it may be possible to make certain deductions about the relationship of the author with the real world that fiction represents. To attempt such a parallel between the creative novelistic process and the relationship of the author to the real world would hopefully be of special interest in the case of the African novel, given the somewhat special position of the African novelist vis-a-vis his society at present. 'Special position' refers of course to the fact--now a cliche--that he is in most cases a member of a Western-educated elite, and will therefore presumably stand at some distance from the majority of his people. The degree of that distance, and how capable and/or desirous he still is of bridging it, will surely manifest itself in his creative activity. And it is precisely with distance, in its many different forms, that a study of point of view attempts to deal. We might, then, when we consider a novel, ask ourselves the following questions: How wide is the author's range of characters? Does he offer us a panoramic view of society, embracing among other things both his own 'elite' class and the 'masses'? If so, are the representatives of the different layers of modem African society presented with equal depth? Is the author capable of imaginative penetration into classes and layers of society to which he himself no longer belongs? In other words, is he capable in his novel of imaginatively reducing the social distance between himself and others, or does he on the other hand tend to limit himself to his personal experience, in which case he will concentrate in his novel on the Western educated elite, and offer us less intimate insight into the workings of the rest of society?