A Deconstructive Reading of Peter Abraham’s Mine Boy

Citation: Amir MUHAMMAD & Aliyu Haruna MUHAMMAD (2021). A Deconstructive Reading of Peter Abraham’s Mine Boy. Yobe Journal of Language, Literature and Culture (YOJOLLAC), Vol. 9, Issue 1. Department of African Languages and Linguistics, Yobe State University, Damaturu, Nigeria. ISSN 2449-0660

A DECONSTRUCTIVE READING OF PETER ABRAHAM’S MINE BOY

Amir MUHAMMAD

Aliyu Haruna MUHAMMAD

Abstract

This research paper offers a deconstructive reading of Peter Abrahams’ Mine Boy. A deconstructive reading or approach subjects a text to different meanings and interpretations. One of the objectives of this study lies behind the quest to explore the textual unconsciousness and textual meanings (textual autonomy and narrative form) of its chosen work (Mine Boy). This is because most of the Abraham’s critics approach the work from either Marxist or biographical criticisms, paying less attention to text’s linguistic structure. This is, perhaps, why they see no difference between the content of the story and the life experiences of the author. Thus, the present study can be seen as a deflection from dominant author based approach on the text and its author, to a more rigorous textual analysis- hence, as the paper argues, the work would be most appreciated when subjected to various meanings and interpretations.

Keywords: decostructive, marxist, biographical, unconsciousness, textual

1.0 Introduction

In the academic discourses on Peter Abrahams’ writings, efforts have been made by literary critics such as Posgrove (2009), Wade (1972), Ogungbesan (1979), Jones (2012), Dunn (2011) and Masilela (2004) to interpret his works from an author-centered approach. These critics argue that Abrahams involved himself in a series of vocations before becoming a writer. Thus, for them, all Abrahams’ works including fictional and non-fictional ones, have a direct bearing on his life experiences. In these discussions, opinions expressed by characters in Abrahams’ works are often portrayed as the author’s own. In this way, his characters are seen as representations of the social and historical Abrahams, the man. These kind of criticisms limit Abrahams’ works from receiving critical criticism such as the present one. It is against the foregoing that this study sets out to investigate Abrahams’ politics as portrayed in his work from a deconstructionist theoretical framework via exploring the inherent conflict between what Abrahams supposedly intends to say (authorial intention) and what his work itself could be saying (the textual meaning).

2.0 On the Text

Mine Boy is an early novel by Peter Abrahams which narrates the story of Xuma (protagonist) a countryman, in South African large industrial city. The author writes of Xuma as a man in transition. He uses him as an instrument to describe and demonstrate the lives and ways of the people who live in South Africa.

In Mine Boy Abrahams asserts his vision, that of ‘man without colour’, a world in which every man will be judged as an individual and where color will be irrelevant (Ogungbesan, 1979). This theme is continued in his subsequent novels where he places freedom of the mind above that of political independence. Abrahams sees Westernization as the only valid destiny open to Africans, believing that in order for the Black man to stand up and consider himself an equal, he must do so on White ground (Ogungbesan, 1979). According to Ogungbesan (1979), this explains the emphasis placed on interracial love in his earlier novels – it is a symbol of the freedom of the mind from hatred and fear.

As Nnyagu and Udogu (2018, p. 75) put it:

Peter Abrahams aptly x-rays the reign of apartheid in South Africa.  A careful reading of Mine Boy gets the audience abreast of the “sorry” experiences of the blacks in the hands of their white counterparts. Whites appropriate to themselves everything good. They live in elevated places; do anything they wish to do without fear of any kind.  Blacks on the other hand live in the slum. They work for the whites who believe that blacks are perpetual slaves.

Nnyagu and Udogu (2018) also comment that, although there is every possibility that the story Abrahams tells in Mine Boy actually happened as he tells the tale, the aesthetism applied by the author in narrating the story makes it a fiction not minding that we are aware that the work simply chronicles Abrahams’ experience as a black in South Africa. They, Nnyanu and Udogu (2018, p.162), quoted David Ker when he notices this ingenuity of Abrahams in Mine Boy, he says:

Mine Boy was the first South African novel written in English to attract international attention.  After the ambitious attempt or song of the city, Abrahams seems to have realized the limitations of his capacity.  Xuma’s story is almost a duplicate of Dick Nduli’s, but Xuma is a more credible creation, precisely because Abrahams has devoted more time and effort to him.  Unlike Song of the City, Mine Boy is a unified piece of work, both in conception and execution; even a strong character like Leah cannot make us forget Xuma, in spite of the considerable amount of space devoted to her.  The setting is the same as in Abrahams’ earlier books; the coloured location of Vrededorp, where the author himself grew up and some of the characters who got honourable mention in Song of the City take the centre stage here as in the case of Ma Plank, or Daisy, thinly disguised as Maisy.

3.0 Theoretical Framework: Deconstruction

The emergence of Deconstruction is largely attributed to the work of the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida. The term “Deconstruction” was first coined in the 60s and it began to gain international recognition after Derrida’s paper presentation entitled "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” at a 1966 conference on “Structuralism” at Johns Hopkins University. Deconstruction, at its core, is an attempt to open a text (literary, philosophical, or otherwise) to several meanings and interpretations. Its method is usually based on binary oppositions within a text, for example, good and evil, inside and outside, male and female, or literary and non-literary, to mention but a few. Thus, deconstruction is that philosophical operation, as Derrida (1982, p. 195) describes, which must:

     through double gesture, a double science, a double writing, put into practice a reversal of the classical opposition and a general displacement of the system. It is on that condition alone that deconstruction will provide the means of intervening in the field of oppositions it criticizes.

Deconstruction, then, argues that such oppositions are culturally and historically defined, even reliant upon one another, and seeks to demonstrate that they are not as clear-cut or as stable as it would at first seem. On the basis that the two opposed concepts are fluid, this ambiguity is used to show that the text’s meaning is fluid as well (Derrida, 1976).

 It could be deduced, from the foregoing discussions that formed the basis of the theoretical framework of the paper that, deconstruction is grounded in the following arguments: that a text is embedded with incongruities; that reading cannot transgress the text toward transcendental signified; that meaning does not emanate from the author, but a product of differences/signifiers, hence, a text is not a definable code, for the writing continues to signify in the absence of the writer.

Therefore, for these reasons, deconstruction does not subscribe to the idea that there is difference between fictional and non-fictional texts nor will it accept any distinction between factual and fictional narratives.

3.0 Authorial Intention and The Interpretation of Mine Boy

Most of the critics of Mine Boy dwelled on racism/apartheid as the central theme subjugated in the text. The forgoing elucidation is also applicable to its author’s intention. It is because of this unification that modern theories like deconstruction go beyond their anticipation. Rather, the text is an agent that reproduces meaning(s) by itself. This study deflates from this, hence, meaning does not reside within the consciousness of a text's author nor its context, as Derrida would say. Thus, Deconstruction holds that meaning is an exploratory creation which is only produced by close textual engagements as will be demonstrated below.

It is notable and worth mentioning that a vast number of external criticisms come perhaps, as a result of reducing Abrahams’ works to merely one or two interpretations: Marxist and biographical. In this regard, the critics of this view are, Jones (2008), Oneya (2012), Jackson (2007), Wade (1972), Ogungbesan (1979), among others.  Nevertheless, these extrinsic approaches of analyzing the text tend to establish a mutually consistent and interconnected meaning between the literary work and the life of its originator or what he says about his work. It is in this view consequently, critics of Mine Boy analyse it based on its authorial projected connotation. For instance, according to Jones (2008), Mine Boy “is a novel of cross-racial solidarity along class lines”. likewise, in the words of Oneya (2012), Mine Boy “is a country come to town story” that takes on the transition of Xuma who comes with his very own romanticized ideals and holds thorough the view that the Whiteman is his enemies. In the same view, Jackson (2007) focuses on the way characters confront and deal with somatic, psychological, and psychosomatic diseases in ways that highlight the racist society of colonial South Africa.

In addition, Abrahams’ theme in Mine Boy, Ker (2004) states, is the black man’s attempt to regain his manhood and self-respect, which alone can help him to achieve true freedom in a world dominated by the white man.  According to him, “Abrahams believes that until this is done it will not be possible for the black man to mix with the white man on a personal level and with easy relaxation”. Ker (2004, p. 106) holds that:

Abrahams’ vision is, as he puts it in Mine Boy, ‘man with colour,’ a world in which every man will be judged as an individual and where colour would be irrelevant.  This is why in his earlier novels; he set the freedom of the mind over and above political independence.  True freedom is of the spirit and is more difficult to achieve than political freedom. ‘Only the liberation of the heart and mind from fear are real’.

Likewise, one member of Goodreads said in his book review, Mine Boy is "a charming, early novel by Peter Abrahams, "conscientizing" the world about (erstwhile) discrimination in South Africa, and its ravages on society, blacks in particular". Correspondingly, African Book Club reviewed it and wrote: "This is a melancholic story that paints a picture of resilience in the face of numerous setbacks and unfair law”.

Despite the aforementioned fact, every work (text), for Deconstruction, is subject to different interpretation. Furthermore, in Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences (2001), Derrida submits that ''we need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things.'' This implies that even these interpretations given by critics and authors about their text are equally subject to more interpretations, analyses and elucidations.

Thus, on the basis of deconstructionists’ notions, it is worth saying therefore, that the consensus of literary scholars/critics in arguing, based on the biographical records that Abrahams’ Mine Boy is considered as the central book that draws attention to the discrimination and racism of South Africa (Abrahams’ country), is neither stable nor secure interpretation of the text. Nonetheless, this work of fiction (Mine Boy), according to Deconstruction, is sufficient enough to account for its meaning(s) without any interference, intrusion or imposition from its writer/author. That is to say, deconstruction is an opponent of any authorized/authoritarian text, the text that tries to tell it like it is, including Mine Boy.

4.0 A Deconstructive Reading of Abrahams’ Mine Boy

From the foregoing standpoint, Abrahams is seen as the sole authority on the meaning of his works. Moreover, as highlighted in the previous section, such a way of looking at Abrahams’ work imposes closure on the analysis and reduces the work to mere historical archives, meant to state only facts. In contrast, Abrahams’ work has the potential to undermine its author, to thwart his intended meaning, to say more or less than what he intended to say, or completely at variance of what he wanted to say.

Though we cannot deny the fact that, the major strength in Abrahams' writings derives from his profoundly-felt personal experiences. It is obvious that the person in question depicted almost in his early novels the interpretation of the history and ways of the people of South Africa. That is the panoramic view of South Africa. One gains a partial insight into his method of writing from a short story in Dark Testament (1942, p. 152), where he says: "With my pen and my burning heart I built canvas after canvas. The words became pictures. The pictures became stories. The stories became people". It is perhaps for this reason, and for its misinterpreted qualities, the characters of the text are assumed to be constructed around a single idea or quality, which make most of the critics of the novel label them from the authorial anticipated meaning of the story.

Whereas on the contrary, deconstruction is beyond that ideology, this is the case, because we are dealing with literary work produced in a “language” which is by itself slippery, subjective, indiscriminate, biased, unstable, unfixed, unpredictable, changeable and unreliable. This is, for deconstructionists, uncalled for simply “a text says one thing and does another” (cited in Muhammad, 2017).

Abrahams' debut novel, Mine Boy, like Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958), can be regarded as one of the classical works by African people with hope of living like a Whiteman in all affairs. This idea is relevant to Jahn’s (1961) on Mine Boy and Wild Conquest (1950).  Jahn (1961) makes very general and sweeping statements concerning these works. He asserts that these works merely assimilate European elements and do not portray any African stylistic features, pattern and expressions, even though they are written by Africans.

Thus, it is obvious that the most social character in Mine Boy is Paddy, a Whiteman. However, he lives sumptuously in the city and has Xuma as a head-boy working for him in the mine. On one occasion when Xuma comes to the city and storms at Paddy’s apartment, Paddy who is at the moment, in company of his girlfriend Di, invites Xuma to his house. When he tells Xuma ‘This is my home,’ Xuma is amazed. He looks around for he had never seen a place like that before. For some time, Xuma’s mind thinks about many things.

Consider the excerpt below:

Xuma thought:  now I understand what Eliza wants.  But these things are only for white people.  It is foolish to think we can get them.   He looked round the room.  Yes, it was fine.  Carpets on the floor, books, radio.  Beautiful things everywhere.  Fine, all fine, but all the white man’s things.  And all foolishness to want the white man’s things.  To drink wine and keep the bottle on the table without fear of the police, how could a black person do it.  And how could Eliza be like this white woman of the Red one (Abrahams, 1946, p. 65).

Furthermore, Paddy, the Whiteman, is all the time friendly with the blacks also called the natives. He stands solidly behind blacks, totally against humiliation of blacks. As a result of his association with Paddy, Xuma begins to think of people independently of their colour, thus:

People were people. Not white and black people…And one could understand a white person as well as a black…The vision carried him along. He could see himself and Eliza and Paddy and Paddy's woman all sitting at a little table in one of those little tea places in the heart of Johannesburg and drinking tea and laughing and talking. And all around them would be other people all happy and without color. (Abrahams, 1946, p. 174)

In this connection therefore, it could be right to posit that Abrahams portrays the excellent and superior life of the Whiteman in reversed to that of black. In another way, he depicts his loyalty to the colonial masters, adoption and admiration of their culture and values. The following statement buttressed this point, in the case of Paddy, a Whiteman, who is loyal to the black man. He takes him to the hospital for medication and later paid the debt the man owed.

Go to the doctor,’ Paddy said. ‘We will come and everything will be all right.’…Paddy stood talking to Chris for a minute, then he called Xuma and they went to the hospital. Xuma waited outside with the man while Paddy went in and spoke to the doctor…The doctor wrote out a slip and gave it to Paddy…Paddy exclaimed. ‘Now we will go and get the money and then you can go home.’ The man’s lips trembled when he smiled. They got the money from the cashier, Ten pounds and a full month’s wages, three pounds five. That made it thirteen pounds and five shillings. They also got a free railway warrant to the man’s home and a pass to show that he was not escaping from the mines. Paddy gave him all this…You are a good man, Red One…The great One will look after you. The man said (Abrahams, 1946, p.109-110).

In the same way, Abrahams tells a simple tale of love affairs between a black, Xuma and a black young woman Eliza who, though a black, wants to live like the whites. She keeps telling Xuma that she wants him and does not want him. Eliza says "I love you…I love you, Xuma" (87). She admits she loves Xuma but because Xuma is a poor black, uneducated and not as sophisticated as the white, she does not want him. It is highlighted that, since the first meeting of Eliza and Xuma, Eliza is found smoking a cigarette like a white woman. Thus, "she gave him a cigarette and lit one for herself. She looked at his face and laughed. 'Is it the first time you've seen a woman smoke?' 'I've only seen the white women smoke.’ Xuma declared" (Abrahams, 1946, p.24).

By summing up therefore, this shows vividly her interest to the whites. In other words, she is attracted to the westerners. This happens aptly to show how Abrahams rave about western way of life. Consider the below suggested passage.

Leah tells Xuma:

That one likes you…It is going to school. She likes you but wants one who read books and dresses like the white folks and speaks the language of the whites and wears the little bit of cloth they call a tie. Take her by force or you will be a fool. (Abrahams, 1946, p. 31).

Abrahams himself has a more sensitive, sympathetic understanding of Eliza's plight in the text. She is in the unfortunate position of being caught between two worlds particularly of been black. She tries to explain herself to Xuma:

Inside me there is something wrong. And it is because I want the things of white people. I want to be like the white people and go where they go and do the things they do and I am black. I cannot help it. Inside I am not black and I do not want to be a black person. I want to be like they are, you understand, Xuma. It is no good but I cannot help it. (Abrahams, 1946, p.60)

On the other hand, there is a cultural transition between African and that of European. South Africa in particular, for Abrahams, is an environment that had an emasculating effect on African men that created dependence on things like women, alcohol, and most notably, on whites. This is clearly depicted in the course of Daddy, the eldest man, because he is always drunk and not a sober. For that, it shows the dissolution of cultural borders revealed in the text. Also, Upon Xuma's arrival at Malay Camp in Johannesburg, he is taken in by a group of fellow Africans. With Leah a woman at the helm of this pseudo-family, Xuma becomes a part of a household that is strikingly different from the traditional male-dominated African family that according to Albertyn (2001) was the norm both before and after the coming of European colonization. This traditional structure, however, seems reversed in the story of Mine Boy, as Leah has several men who are dependent on her for their livelihoods. Hence, "Listen Xuma, I like you, I can make you powerful. I am powerful here" (Abrahams, 1946, p.5).

In addition, deconstructive reading to a literary text is an “open-ended”, with many holes, the characters of the text in question are created like binary oppositions. That is their characterizations have been swapped. Leah for example, has been described in many places in the text as a strong woman and can also fight with even a man. "A strong woman, he decided, and those eyes can see right through a man" (3) Xuma thought about her. It is because of her strength she "went and stood over Daddy, then she bent and picked him up as one would pick up a child and carried him out of the room. Easily, with the strength of the strong" (82). Moreover, she later said "…if anyone, man…wants to fight or see a fight in front of my house, I am here. She beat her chest with her fist. 'Come and fight me'" (9). This representation shows Leah as a strong woman who controls the entire pseudo-family of her own; meaning she is greater and superior than any man in that surrounding. That is why she takes on many of the gender roles traditionally reserved for men, such as protecting them from the police and providing them food to eat.

In this regard therefore, as it is noted previously, the text is produced with language and the language is not stable. As Derrida would argue, the language in which Mine Boy is written not, as structuralists assume; depends on a correspondence between established codes and the fixed meanings attached to it, but that language exists in an unstable, “free play” of signifiers. For this reason, Abrahams walks away from his intended meaning; as to get a hold of black's freedom who are suffering under the whites.

This is relevant to the statement of Wade (1989) on the author:

Abrahams is immensely -- sometimes extravagantly -- fair in his treatment of them. Inevitably, he often works from stereotype -- but he always works away from it, in the direction of a fuller realisation of his character's possibilities. Thus Maisie, the domestic servant, develops in the course of the narrative from an unremarkable, though pretty, presence in the entourage of the magnificent shebeen queen, Leah, into a source of folk wisdom and political support, and a symbol or the stamina of the masses.

This implies that the meaning of this literary text under study cannot only be restricted to the psyche or the mind of its author, rather the meanings can only be inferred via close and textual reading of the text, since according to Derrida, there is no discourse that goes straight to the truth (without a discursive intermediary). In that case, every text, in favor of deconstruction, is subject to different interpretation and elucidation.

It is worth summing up therefore, that, the Whiteman, whom he intended to portray as the antagonist, an oppressor, and a dictator, end up being celebrated a good leader, a good friend, a philanthropist, who wishes to make society prosper but ends up being betrayed, detained and sent to jail because of the black man. In addition, the traditional culture which he intends to privilege against the western or modern culture has turned to be placed under it. This reveals the instability of the binary he intended to fix.

For this reason, it is comparable with Holland’s statement:

Hence, along with the immediate message the text gives out on its surface, it also projects conflicts, which bring out the immanent gaps in the text. Such conflicts eventually unsettle any attempt to fix textual meaning to any single point. Derrida affirms that, one should focus these gaps, which according to him can be found in the margins of the text. He says that in reading he deconcentrates on those points that appear to be the most important, central or crucial and instead focus the secondary, eccentric, lateral, marginal, parasitic, borderline cases. (Derrida, p.44-45)

With this background, it is important at this juncture to state that, it may be argued that in Mine Boy, Abrahams creates a protagonist/antagonist binary that can be deconstructed by examining the paradoxical space of meaning that makes all words, concepts, and contexts interdependent. The close reading of the novel reveals the instability of these binary oppositions. Therefore, Mine Boy will be read in this discourse as the story of black people, including Eliza and Daddy who want to live like white men and accommodate all their lifestyle. In addition, it is a story whose characters’ roles are created binary; that is why Leah takes on many of the gender roles traditionally reserved for men, such as protecting them from the police and providing them food to eat.

5.0 Conclusion

This paper has demonstrated that a text as an entity shapes its meaning by itself without any intrusion either from its originator or from his contextual forces. It has equally succeeded in deconstructing the general assumption that Abrahams create definite, stable and fixed meanings in the work by demonstrating how the assumption raises more questions than answers. The paper has further highlighted that such interpretation will only limit the potential for the interpretation of the text and reduce his literary analysis to factual commentary.

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