Language and les Répondeurs

While it is not my job here to like or dislike the text, the truth of the matter is that I am in love with Chamoiseau’s brilliant, powerfully evocative work, and in the following I will highlight two of the incredible craft strategies I witness him employing which provokes me into such a strong feeling about School Days.

1) Drama of Language

On page 106, Chamoiseau, writes, “The bottom line: a story is a lie only if you tell it

badly. That’s the tradition I follow.”

Here, and in a number of other moments in the text, Chamoiseau makes visible his active encounter with the shifty nature of memory, and demonstrates that his work is a self-reflexive act of reconstruction.

“…and now see, memory, how I confront you no longer, I inhale your shimmering spindrift hanging motionless in soaring flight… O silent tumult of a life going by… Did you laugh to see me attempt an embrace, like some mooncalf drooping over his own shadow?

…the idea is to remain anchored in oneself, in that esteem first praised by the poet, attentive not to one’s self but to its incessant movement, always imperceptible.” (19)

Throughout School Days he mobilizes an incredible deftness and creativity with language that signals precisely the profound work of reimagining inwards that School Days required. I would argue that it is through this maneuvering around with language that Chamoiseau hits deeply into an emotional core of truth, which develops trust in his fluctuating narrator, and in the narrative he is drawing itself.

Through the specificity of his word choice and the construction of rich imagery that

is both complex and uniquely childlike, the intensity of the world as it courses through the little body and the large, voracious, vivid, imagination, consciousness,

and perception of the little boy Chamoiseau, are set centre stage. Everything is high stakes. Everything is do or die. Everything is unparalleled drama. Everything is the beginning or the end of the world. Everything is a myth being constructed or destroyed. We are guided to recall our own calamitous reactions in childhood, our own flailing, and curiosity. The largeness of the language maps the largeness of the feeling, the foreignness of the world. Chamoiseau courts to the adult reader into this experience through the juxtaposition of word choice with the age of his protagonist. He gives language to what perhaps resided most as visceral physical feeling and emotion. He gives us a key back in.

So the little boy is the, “apocalyptic dust cloud.” (12)

And, “The day before the first day of school dragged on forever. Sun took its time to rise, then set out on a lackadaisical stroll.” (23)

“And to win such a gem, more than one player would have pawned his guardian angel, his First Communion cross, and probably his mama’s love as well.” (97)

The kinds of decisions the little boy is faced with, and the magnitude of impact they are afforded, demonstrates a powerfully developed characterization of the childlike mind.

“There were also silent dramas: should he save the last bit of chalk for his next masterpiece or eat it right up? So hard to choose!” (19)

Chamoiseau’s language choices also reflexively comments on the conflict that takes place in the site of language itself in the centre of this work. Language here functions as a symbol for culture, identity, belonging, the imagination, the self, the community, and illuminates the struggle to resist the violence of French colonial values and social order. The act of re-membering and expressing the depth of a childhood consciousness which was steeped in the Creole language and cultural system, through the vehicle of complex, unique, and imaginative French language, seems to assert a challenge in and of itself to the racist assertions about Creole language and culture that the little boy, and his peers faced. The abundant language is like a testimony of the survival of imagination and freedom, an act against erasure. It is an act of re-humanization. Documenting what it to preserve one’s imagination, one’s ability to speak, to fight against the forces that left the little bot, “No longer trusting and open with others, he fluttered his lashes over the treacherous innocence of his eyes, learning to leave some space between what his heart felt and what his mouth said. It meant surviving, and I say, dying at the same time.” (74)

2) Les Répondeurs

And just briefly, I am interested in the way in which Chamoiseau mobilizes les Répondeurs within this work as a mechanism to superimpose a musical pattern of call and response into the work.

Stolen from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_and_response_(music)

“In music, a call and response is a succession of two distinct phrases usually played by different musicians, where the second phrase is heard as a direct commentary on or response to the first. It corresponds to the call-and-response pattern in human communication and is found as a basic element of musical form, such as verse-chorus form, in many traditions.

In Sub-Saharan African cultures, call and response is a pervasive pattern of democratic participation—in public gatherings in the discussion of civic affairs, in religious rituals, as well as in vocal and instrumental musical expression. It is this tradition that African bondsmen and women brought with them to the New World and which has been transmitted over the centuries in various forms of cultural expression—in religious observance; public gatherings; sporting events; even in children's rhymes; and, most notably, in African-American music in its myriad forms and descendants including: gospel, blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, jazz and hip hop.”

In the case of this work it seems to me that the rhythm of conversation – between past and present, between the limited context available to the little boy, and the broader social dynamics at play in the world around him, are played out through the relationship with les Répondeurs who in different moments as function as the equivalent of the court jester, peanut gallery, the provocateur, the definer, the adult Chamoiseau, the heckler poking fun and at times jeering, ass the ghost of Christmas future foretelling events to come, elevating themes, emphasizing words, feelings experiences, offering comic relief and energy, ultimately heightening the dramatic and playful tone of the work even as it documents profound violence. I think a key element from the Wikipedia definition is the piece around democratic participation and the way in which Les Répondeurs within this work signal the multiplicity of voices implicated in these stories.

Voice, Language, and The Teacher

Patrick Chamoiseau’s School Days has a ridiculous amount of things that could be said about it. First off it reads to me like an epic poem, like the odyssey. It feels that way because of the structure of the book. The long sections that seemingly bleed into each other make it difficult to put the book down. Also the repeated sections of the “repondeurs” made it seem like a course coming in during a Greek tragedy.

Chamoiseau’s command of language and his voice really drives the work forward. His humor and dramatization in sections really make the text flow. Hyperboles are a huge part of this humor from the beginning to the end. They are also laid with beautiful imagery, “Then he would whimper at the window sill, watching them disappear without him, draining the bitter cup of abandonment to the very last drop.” (17). Also “She bestowed the same welcome on each of her young charges, but the little boy felt he was her favorite. Then tragedy struck….Mam Ninotte had left him!... She had vanished down the hall!...Gone down to the river!.. Crossed back over the bridge!...Gone!...Gone!.. Gone!.. Most certainly forever!”(25). These two scene show how Chamoiseau does the coming of age memoir in a completely different way. He takes the feelings we have has children, the deep feelings of abandonment and flips them through a lens of humor that, for me, shows how simple our child-like minds are at times. It was just refreshing.

One thing that wasn’t refreshing was the abuse that the children at the school received. I’m not talking about the physical abuse, I’m talking about the self-hearted that they were taught by their teacher. I was surprised at how Chamoiseau was able to make me sympathize at times with the teacher even when I wanted to hate him. I sympathized with him be Chamoiseau was able to show very subtlety that this was a cycle of self-hearted. The teacher is Creole himself and wants the children to abandon the language and become less “bardic” in part because he has failed to do this himself fully, “In his frustration, the Teacher himself might relapse into Creole. He would also, in the occasional moment of fatigue, skimp on his rs or lose his us. But he’d catch himself in a flash. His wary self-command would then become intense, unremitting, strained to the highest pitch. His flickering language would grow even more painstaking, guarded, distrustful of itself, threading its way among sounds while anticipating hazardous pitfalls where the dreaded Creole lurked near at hand. In his desperate desire to be articulate, he embellished his speech by slathering on the France-white accent, multiplying his rs, sticking out his lips as though they were sharp blades meticulously chiseling the sounds tripping from his tongue,” (63-64). I had to put the whole quote to make my point that the teacher is overcompensating when he punishes the children from the language miss-haps. I feel a small sense of sympathy for the teacher because of Chamoiseau use of the word “relapse” in the beginning of the quote. This to me indicates that this is something that has been, if you will, beaten into him and now he is repeating the process.  

It is also subtly indicated that  it is not just the little boy’s teacher but other teachers as well, “A few Teachers cursed in Latin; others, truly undone, fell back on their native Creole” (82). Even the teachers slip back into who they really are when they are afraid or surprised, unable to keep the guard up.

This eventually breaks down the boys to where they are afraid to speak even in Creole, “Time-to time, the home-grown Teacher would give in to our massed silence. All right if you really must, say it in Creole! But we’d still sit there tongue-tied. The permission to speak Creole suddenly made us feel ashamed, like a confirmation of our hopeless failure, a willingness to be kicked aside into the gutter. Repondeurs: What/had Creole become/deep down inside us,/crushed?”(130). Here the same cycle has come full circle. Freaking colonization.

Best,

CF

All the things the tongue can tell us

Even without contextualizing his memoir with explicit description of war, political control, or displacement Chamoiseau paints an intimate portrait of colonization in Martinique through the policing of language.

Chamoiseau's "little boy" narrator describes his inner conflict and shrinking into silence in the strict school environment where French is revered and Creole is derided as "barbaric", "worthless", and "brutish". The young boy learns quickly that French is considered"the language of wisdom, wit, and intelligence" while Creole is a "rank weed" for "bad guys, thugs, and delinquent crazy buggers" (64-65). Chamoiseau uses this juxtaposition to subject readers to the suffocating terror of classroom humiliation, of shame in one's native ways, an intimate and accessible way to feel the impact of oppressive authority and meditate on its large scale impact.

Likewise, Chamoiseaut invites the reader to delight in those rare times when the students leave the classroom for their homes or to pick fights and play marbles and they are at last free to speak their native tongue in an un-policed environment. Chamoiseau demonstrates the relief and exhiliration of this shift by describing the easily flowing Creole as "charged with hidden powers" and freedom to use it as indulgent as "pigs at a trough"(91-92).
Chamoiseau also cleverly reveals the enforcement of French-speaking at the school as strained (even among the enforcers) when the teacher breaking up the fight between the boss bully and Big Bellybutton lapses into an explosion of Creole as his most instinctual response.

The shifting narrative voices invite the reader to sometimes observe "the little boy", sometimes huddle in among the rest of the "we", or get called on directly to learn how to play marbles by "pretend(ing) you know the ropes" (99). The effect of these changes is a consistent engagement with the narrative from varying angles. In this way we travel from a society grappling with the confinement of their authentic expression, to children learning both humorously and tragically how to navigate their surroundings, to a private moment alone with a boy who is in love with words. In this way we reap meaning that is both universally pertinent and uniquely intimate.

Chamoiseau's Répondeurs

Patrick Chamoiseau’s memoir, School Days is a very invigorating read because of the various elements and stylistic techniques that stood out. Also, the brutality of the “Teacher” character was painful at times to read. For most of the novel, Chamoiseau speaks in limited third person, calling himself “the little boy” or “the little black boy” throughout the text, but there are various places where the author deviates from that perspective. Twice, he writes from first person, and this jolts the reader into a different frame of mind. In another section, he writes from second person, near the end of the story.

The first place where the narrator switches from third person to first is near the beginning. The author writes: “…and now see, memory, how I confront you no longer, I inhale your shimmering spindrift hanging motionless in soaring flight…” (19) and this text seems to be from the perspective of the author himself, rather than the third person narrative of the “little boy.”
This can also be seen when he writes, “You make a detour in silence, withdrawn into yourself, on the alert inside yourself, attentive to yourself. Taking a detour is like examining one’s conscience: in unfamiliar and more or less disquieting surroundings, one can only rely on oneself” (95-96). Many of these switches have a mythical quality to them. They seem to relate to the “Répondeurs” sections by a removed sense of contemplation and alacrity. Those sections reminisce on the authors own detached perspective on his life growing up in Fort-de-France, Martinique. The “Répondeurs” sections are like Muses or a Greek chorus in a call-and-response mode that includes the reader’s participation by breaking the forth wall.

(There are fifteen “Répondeurs” sections in the first section called: “Longing” and twenty-two “Répondeurs” sections in the second section called: “Survival” with thirty-seven in all.)

There is this continual dynamic between the French language, and Creole, which the students are taught to suppress their native language. Chamoiseau is successful with including various Creole slurs in the text through asterisks and footnotes at the bottom. On page 90 this is evident when the character Big Bellybutton and one of his bullies have conflict with each other. On this page, Chamoiseau lists two long paragraphs of text in the native language, and then translates it beneath it. Many of these slang-words are offensive, if not all of them. Fighting with one another is the only way the students can tolerate school and the suppression of the Creole language by the Teacher and by Monsieur le Directeur. Those two strict, if not cruel, authority figures cannot tolerate anything that is not French in history or speech. The slurs that the students yell at one another is a way to eliminate the repression of their native language/what they speak at home with their families. This suppression of Creole is harsh and unnecessary.

There is also great description and attention to detail in the memoir and it reads like a fairy tale or myth with “the little boy” as the protagonist. (I wish there was an additional section that focuses more on Chamoiseau’s home life and his family/siblings.) One section that is memorable is when Big Bellybutton finally gets revenge of his bully and brings a dried snake head to school, which freaks out even the Teacher. Another section that is memorable (and even a little uncanny) is the part when the students are given powered milk to drink from France. The narrator states, “Live anoli lizards, it was said, were dumped into the milk as an unusual remedy for asthma. More than one wildeyed witness claimed to have found his mug rare furry caterpillars to improve the intelligence of sickly children. Others swore they’d seen the eggs of blotchy toads. The afternoon milk began to teem with Creole horrors: molocoye tortoise sweat, bamboo hairs like ground glass, crud from a he-mule’s ears, feathers from black curlytailed chickens…” (108). It is fascinating how the author seamlessly weaves Creole superstitions with a more modern French teaching structure in the school systems in Martinique.

Race Identity in School Days

For me, Chamoiseau's novel was hard to get used to at first, but once I did, I really enjoyed the language and the details of Chamoiseau's narration. What stood out to me, however, was the race/cultural identities that were threatened during his school days.

The students in Chamoiseau's class were constantly criticized for their use of Creole and Creole is viewed as backwards by the teachers. Chamoiseau and his fellow classmates ignore the rules about speaking only French, and still speak in Creole when interacting with each other. The desire for the students to learn and speak French comes from the idea of "whiteness" being the ideal to strive for. "Whiteness" is associated with European ideals and mannerisms, so in taking away Creole from the children, the teachers were taking away part of their culture and their identity.

The introduction to French in the classroom is a direct intrusion to the narrator's lifestyle and his culture, and those around him. The stability of Chamoiseau's world is threatened by his Teacher demanding he gives up Creole, a part of his identity and culture, for French, something that is seen as superior because it is a language based in Europe. The students are belittled for not speaking the dialect of French that is seen to be academically "superior". Chamoiseau states that "-really speaking-to say something, give vent to an emotion, express yourself, think things over, talk for any length of time- required the Mama-tongue that...was proving useless in school" (48), and this is the first glimpse into Chamoiseau's younger self's struggle between his identity and what is expected of him.

The Teacher, the man who is responsible for enforcing this attitude, comes from the same societal structure as Chamoiseau himself. Creole is in his roots, yet he demands all of his students to focus on becoming more like educated individuals, or more like white people- in his mind. His merciless bullying focuses on the narrator's schoolmate, who calls himself Big Bellybutton, and his name itself is a direct violation to the Teacher's teachings. Big Bellybutton is his Creole nickname, and in not calling himself by his given name, Big Bellybutton is demonstrating his ignorance- in the mind of the Teacher. Big Bellybutton represents everything that is wrong and backwards about the narrator's culture. That is why it is so surprising to the Teacher when Big Bellybutton is mathematically a genius. Chamoiseau states that the Teacher couldn't believe Big Bellybutton's intelligence "-because that gift for figures didn't jibe with the rest, with his hayseed air, his blackblackblack skin, his kinky wool, his flat nose, his Creole accent...-" (78), and in Big Bellybutton being so mathematically intelligent, he is proving everything the Teacher was saying wrong. Big Bellybutton overcomes the stigma surrounding his culture and social construct to rise as high as the lighter-skinned boys who are the Teacher's favorites and who represent what is seen as the "ideal student" in the eyes of the Teacher.

The lighter-skinned boys, the ones who have had the opportunity to speak and learn French, are not just the favored ones in the eyes of the Teacher. The whole academic institution values the European ideal over their own culture, and enforce their opinions on the students. The lighter-skinned boys are put on a pedestal and are safe from the same punishments that their classmates must go through. Their stakes are not as high and they do not have to work as hard to survive in the classroom setting. This favoritism in the classroom is also teaching a different lesson to the children- that the lighter-skinned boys are the ones who will succeed, while the darker-skinned boys are the ones who will fall because of stereotypes surrounding skin color and how European ideals have blinded members of their own society, so not even in their own homes will darker-skinned boys be seen on the same level as their lighter-skinned classmates.

The third person point of view allows Chamoiseau to remain somewhat distant from the erasure of his racial/cultural identity as a child. But there are some instances where Chamoiseau's narration slips from third into the first person, and at one point, even second person. The second person creates even more distance between the reader and the prose, but Chamoiseau himself is directly in the narrative. The reader is distanced from the sprawling streets Chamoiseau (the narrator) finds himself walking, but in distancing the reader from the prose, Chamoiseau is able to reconnect with his roots that only he is familiar with. The switch to "you" on page 95 signals Chamoiseau's attempt to reconnect with his childhood and to keep his identity to himself.

Best,
Dani

Language and Silence

Throughout Patrick Chamoiseau’s School Days’s language plays a crucial role in the development of the narrator and supporting characters like Big Bellybutton and the Teacher. In young Patrick’s life language becomes both something he loves and cherishes and something to be feared. Language is able to inspire him to enjoy reading and try to learn to read new things but it also acts as a form of domination by the Teacher to make the children feel inadequate.

From the very first time we see the Teacher he mocks the children’s way of speech, as Chamoiseau put it “The Teacher, merciless, would zero in on them: I beg your pardon?”(36). This is young Patrick’s first experience being judged for his manner of speaking and it terrifies him into silence almost immediately. When it is his turn to be called upon he can barely get the word “present” out before sitting down quickly and trying his hardest to remain unnoticed. From this moment onwards Chamoiseau notices the Teacher judging and oppressing the students based on the way they talk. He likes the “Fresh-From-France” who could “proudly rise and rattle off the proper accent” (62) and despises the natural Creole speakers. Their forms of speech label them in the Teacher’s eyes as either intelligent or an imbecile. In the case of Big Bellybutton who is incredibly good at math and numbers, the Teacher refuses to call on him in these instances already having labeled him as incompetent. Chamoiseau also points out that the kids the Teacher liked were not ridiculed for wrong answers, merely thought to be having an off day or having heard the question wrong while the others were immediately jumped upon for their mistakes. This entire behavior by the Teacher creates a hierarchy of students that are being labeled simply for their ability to speak and not at all by their behavior, further oppressing students who probably need more help and nurturing those who may have been able to learn on their own.

These practices created an atmosphere of fear in the classroom and an atmosphere of silence. It killed the language the boys had grown up with a language filled with meaning for them.  Young Patrick was silenced in all his creative ways, even at home he stopped being the bubbly little boy he once was and became withdrawn. He could no longer express himself because he did not understand French and could not speak in Creole. “Baffled, the little black boy realized that he did not know this language. The chatty li'l voice in his head used a different language, his home-language, his Mama-language, the language he had not learned but rather absorbed with ease as he eagerly explored his world” (48). The language he cherished the one that took him on adventures and helped him to understand the world was taken away from him. Language is such an important part of childhood development it is what first allows us to put names on the world to understand things previously kept from us.  When this is taken from Chamoiseau he is affectively crushed by his lack of ability to understand the world the way that is deemed ‘correct’ by the Teacher. Similarly Big Bellybutton who was once eager to learn and loved numbers slowly loses his bouncy nature and becomes resigned to being what the Teacher thinks he is.

This is a major problem is public schools in America even today. Children are told from a young age that they are less capable either because of race, or behavioral issues, or learning differences. These children who enter the school system full of life and ready to learn and grow are beaten down and eventually many succumb to the low expectations put upon them. There have been numerous cases of children who are told they are stupid or lazy over and over eventually accepting this idea of themselves and giving up on school. The kid who then missed one or two assignment starts to never do work and the kid who learns differently starts to disregard work and then falls into a cycle of never learning. It is just fascinating how this book written in another language, at another time, in another place, so accurately describes a problem that American schools face every day because of bad teachers and un-bending curriculum. It just shows that what we may think of as a terrible ‘third-world problem’ is actually a lot closer to home that we may realize. 

Race Pride and Child Agency in School Days

So, I absolutely loved School Days by Patrick Chamoiseau. I don't know if it was because Elmaz predicted I would love it or if I was just utterly charmed by the humor and tragedy of the narrator's childhood. (Probably a combination of both.)

But enough of whether I liked or did not like a text. Let's get to the meat of my discussion.

I was enthralled by Chamoiseau's depiction of race. The narrator's introduction to school was also his introduction to race relations and racism in Martinique. From day one, The Teacher dedicates himself to transforming his students into more respectable black folk, which is really just a white person's idea of what is respectable. But The Teacher's interaction with his students is more complicated; on the first day of class he addresses race pride when Big Bellybutton doesn't know his legal name: "You should be prroud to have a name, you thoughtless boy, you should shout it out loud, because not too long ago, let me tell you, we were slaves and had no names at all!" (pg. 36-7). I know that Big Bellybutton's legal name is probably a name that comes from colonization, but I think it would be disservice to completely write off The Teacher as brainwashed. Another example shows thatThe Teacher believes that only through education can his students escape slavery: "He urged those with the good fortune to be sitting there to appreciate this extraordinary advantage: a golden opportunity, hard-won, not to be wasted. Or else--the cane fields. Sweeping gutters and thumping drums. Lugging sacks of beke goods around the waterfront, raking shellfish from the mudflats of Terres-Sainville, dredging the canals of La Levee. Or worse: winding up in the streets, fretted by ignorance and stupidity. The bestial darkness in which one lost forever the idea of Man" (48-9). There's a lot going on in this quote. I needed to include it all because Chamoiseau gives readers an encompassing picture of what daily life is like for a person of color in the French world. He is also giving readers powerful slavery images: black folks working the fields, cleaning up after the whites, beating drums--all for what? To support the beke's way of life. And the bestial darkness--folks not like whites are more animalistic because whites symbolize what it means to be civilized.

A moment on pg. 45 made me think of Granville from June Jordan's Soldier: "What do I hear--you're speaking Creole? And what do I see--shameless monkeyshines? Just where do you think you are?! Speak properly and behave in a civilized manner". Like Granville, The Teacher wishes above all else to save his students from racism and poverty, and the only way he knows how to do this is to teach them to internalize the racism that is directed toward them from whites. If only his students could act more like white folk then they could rise above the limitations of their race and become successful like the lighter French folks.

In a lot of ways, the educators could be considered race traitors, but Chamoiseau is good at putting us in their shoes, despite the educators being incredibly villainous at times. A very powerful example comes on pg. 72: "Monsieur le Directeur, I speak of your silences, your bearing, your neatness that was proof against all perspiration in spite of the sun's hammerings; I will also recall here your attitude toward school, toward others, toward life, an attitude forged in solemn ceremonies familiar to those who once built cathedrals. N-word, you fled from yourself and, with stubborn determination, held your head high--above the cane fields, the sugar, the watermelon grins, the bekes, the dancing, the drums, the torrents of rum, that life directed entirely toward sticking us forever in the mud." Shivers. Absolutely riveting. Chamoiseau is a master at using rhythmic images to say so much about his/our society.

At school the narrator needs to learn a new language, and Chamoiseau successfully depicts his confusion, his despair. This is a lot to ask from a five or six year old: Learn how to speak perfect French or else have authority figures scream insults at you! You don't pick it up fast enough? The Teacher will flat out ignore you because you are unworthy of his attention.

Random, but I loved how Chamoiseau depicted the father. The father is in only a few scenes, but every line speaks volumes about his character. In what would take another author chapters, Chamoiseau takes only a few lines: "At the supper table that evening, the little boy recounted this business about the apple tree, but no one seemed impressed. The Papa merely wondered wherever did he think he could pick apples, since they all had to be imported to the island by boat in closed crates and arrived half-rotten" (57). Again, there is so much happening in this quote. Readers get that the father is unimaginative and bitter, but Chamoiseau also gives readers a picture of the economic disparity of Martinique. And it's also showing the absurdity of the children reading books written by Europeans talking about apples and forests and castles when none of these things exist in Martinique.

In addition, the childhood experience is depicted so thoroughly and unflinchingly. It reminded me of discusses in my craft classes in which it was agreed that many authors write from the child's perspective to avoid responsibility. As in, writers can have a child do horrendous things but they are safe from criticism because children lack the mental tools to know what is right from wrong or have a complicated relationship to others. Chamoiseau totally disregards this, especially on pg. 123 when the school boys decide to kill The Teacher. The following scenes are hilarious; the children casting spells and their one hundred percent investment in becoming murders. I think a lot of times authors depict children as agency-less, as innocent and moralistic creatures devoid of layers, but here readers see that child are ruthless! The narrator and his peers want more than anything for The Teacher and the director to drop dead. Childhood is such a complicated matter!