Road and Bridge in Joyce Cary's African Novels

Abstract

145 ROAD AND BRIDGE IN JOYCE CARY'S AFRICAN NOVELS P. R. Moody P. B. Moody (A.B., Wofford; B.S., United States Military Academy; M.A., Duke; Ph.D. Cambridge) was head of the English department at the United States Air Force Academy untä 1965 when he was appointed vice dean. He served in that capacity until 1967. He recently took the position of vice-president for instruction at Eastern Illinois University. From 1961 to 1963 he was in England and Nigeria, where he did research on Joyce Cory's African experiences and novels. The symbol of early twentieth century civilization's impact on ancient African culture in Joyce Cary's Nigerian novel, Mister Johnson, is the Fada road, the road which means many things to many people. The great road becomes for District Officer Rudbeck not only an excuse to neglect the office work which he detests, but a symbol of progress , trade, and prosperity. For Clerk Johnson, die road means personal glory; but it is also his love-offering to Rudbeck and to the white man's civilization. To the foreman Tasuki and the work gangs, the road is a game but it also means achievement and triumph over die bush. The villagers who come to work on the road feel themselves no longer isolated; for the first time their world expands beyond the tribe. Rudbeck 's predecessor, the conservative veteran Blore who hates change, "considers motor roads to be die ruin of Africa, bringing swindlers, tiiieves, and whores, disease, vice and corruption, and the vulgarities of trade, among decent, unspoilt tribesmen."1 The Emir and Waziri of Fada also hate the road because they recognize it as a symbol of freedom for their people, the breaking down !Joyce Cary, Mister Johnson. London, Carfax edition, 1952. p. 46. of tribal organization, a threat to tiieir own authority, and the introduction of meddling traders. In an uncharacteristic intuitive moment, Rudbeck feels that the road means all these things, but he is unable to answer the important question which the road asks him. The road itself seems to speak to him. 'Tm smashing up the old Fada—I shall change everything and everybody in it. I am abolishing the old ways, the old ideas, the old law; I am bringing wealth and opportunity for good as well as vice, new powers to men and therefore new conflicts. I am the revolution, I am giving you plenty of trouble already, you governors , and I am going to give you plenty more. I destroy and I make new. What are you going to do about it? I am your idea. You made me so I suppose you know?"2 Twenty years before the publication of Mister Johnson and indeed thirteen years before Cary published any novel, the question which the Fada road asks must have occurred to District Officer Joyce Cary as he finished building a road in the northern Nigerian district of Borgu. As the sole English officer in a remote district he has described his duties: As an acting district officer, in almost the humblest rank of the service, I was in charge of two Emirates, stretching over a region bigger than Wales. There was no telegraph. A letter to provincial H.Q. took three days or a week, according to the state of the roads and the Niger floods. I could not expect an answer in less than a week. My orders were to do what I thought necessary and take the consequences if I did wrong.3 One of the first needs Cary recognized , an enthusiasm he had caught Vbid., p. 168. SJoyce Cary, The Case for African Freedom . London, revised edition, 1944. p. 59. 146 RM-MLA Bulletin December 1967 from his superior officer, H. S. Edwardes , was diat for communications, for roads. He believed, he wrote later, that: The first need in Africa has always been communications. Trade, order, peace, the intercourse which comes from trade and which is the very beginning of civilization and the education of peoples, all start from the free and safe harbour, the open river and the cleared road. Africa had never had them and could make no progress without...