UCLAUfahamu: A Journal of African Studies

TitleSpeaking Without Toungue: Silence and Self-Search in Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

Permalinkhttps://escholarship.org/uc/item/2kj825dq

JournalUfahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 18(1)

ISSN2150-5802

AuthorOnwueme, Tess Akaeke

Publication Date1990-01-01 Peer reviewed

eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital LibraryUniversity of California

SPEAKING WlTIlOUT TONGUE:SILENCE AND SELF·SEARCH IN ARMAH'STh~ Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

by Tess Maeke Onwueme

I cannot yet recall any literary work in the corpus of Africanliterature that has been subjected to the kind of undignifying trial thatAyi Kwei Annah's first novel, The Beautyfu' Ones Are Not YetBorn (1968), has been made 10 endure. Numerous critics have madecharges against the author for writing a "sick book,"! for exhibiting a"warped vision," for his "misanthropic vision,"z and his "rigid moralsense.") The conclusive statement Eldred Jones makes in hisassessment is that the "dominating mood of the novel is one of hopelessdespair,"4 thus in concurrence with Molly Mahood whose conclusion isthat "the dominating mocxl of the novel is one of almost totaldisillusionment, "5 and in this sense these critics justify AnhuTRavenscroft's classification of the book among the "novels ofdisillusion."6 Of these charges, the one which seems most to tilt thebalance of justice against the novel and its author is the prodigiousamount of evidence brought against them in the ankle "Dialectic asForm: Pejorism in the Novels of Armah," by Nnolim. This critic isunsparing in the effort to demonSbU.te that Armah

is a writer whose philosophic pessimism is undisguised in eachwork... ,[He] is both a cosmic pessimist (who views the worldas inevitably and inuinsically bad and life in it essentiallygloomy and futile), and a retrOgressive pessimist or pejorist(one who views the world as undergoing an inevitablecorruption and degeneration),7 (Author's emphasis)

For proof of his final judgement and sentence against Annab, this criticjoyously imposes overbearing exhibitS ofdata and imagery from the textas final clamor for the crucifixion of Th~ B~autyfulOnes Are NotYet Born. In this regard he states that

Annab, who seems to be unusually excited by images of decayand corruption, never fails to focus on the wetness thataccompanies corruption and decay (10 everyone's disgust).Hence the preponderant images of ooze, clamminess,slime, lubricity, mucus, urine, with their accompanyingoffensive smeUs, oflen made more disgusting with the images of

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relching, farling, vomiling, and bad brealh.1 (Author'semphasis)

And to prove his point funher. the critic enwnerates

the linguistic cognates of pejorism (Latin: Pejor, Pejoris­worse-implying that things are always moving from a beuer toa worse state) [which] are: corruption, decay, rolldecomposition; which also go with their own cognates:shrinking, dwindling, emacialion, sickness, dealh. 1l(Author's emphasis)

With such abundant evidence, it would be risky at this point toattempt to acquit Annah from the judgement of these indignant criticswho had expected him 10 conform to standards of visualizing andrepresenting reality set by such writers as Achebe, Ngugi. Soyinka andAma Ata Aidoo. Instead of using a rhetoric that would enhance theimagery of "hope, progress, augmentation or increase," Armah turneddissident and frustrated critics "fixed" in their expectation of whatshould be valid in African literary aesthetics, and offered the "imageryof defeat, decay, frustration, disappointment, shrinking anddwindling-all subsumed under the figurative language of bathos­since in pejorism all movement is anticlimactically pointed."IO

Even precocity has its price and maybe for this reason, onewould be tempted to leave Annah to pay the necessary price for daringto be different, and for not conforming to norms of literaryestablishment among the African literati. However, the truth and imponor Annah's vision in the novel are compelling enough for me 10 dootherwise.

My urgent task in this study, therefore. is to attempt to stageanother hearing for Armah and elicit altemative evidence based on otherinterpretations and analyses of the text and Context to enable us see thedimensions and other face(s) of The Beautyful Ones Are Not YetBorn. We will therefore dissect the problems posed by the novel, tearthrough and delve beneath the superficial evidence of pessimismaccumulated with the encrustations of rot, decay, waste, and slime, toobserve their characteristics with the aim of arriving at a possiblehypothesis and, maybe, some theoretical statement concerning theanatomy of decay. In this regard my initial premise is that decay or rotis not antithetical to growth or development but is an essentialcomplementary phase in the cycle of a transforming or evolvingorganism. I would, therefore, proceed funher by stating that in thenatura] cycle, beneath the surface of rot, decay and waste, is the node ofhope, renewal and growth whose potent force within shoots forth,

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impelling and precipitating the disintegration and fragmentation ofundesirable waste above the surface for continuity. Harnessing thisphenomenon to some concrete observation from real life. is it notparadoxical that in order to harvest from growth the yam head must firstbe buried alive. to rot and decay before a new shool can sprout from itfor seed? This seems to be the underlying philosophy that infonns thepreponderant show of rot and decay in the BeautyfuJ Ones. who areNot Yel Born but will be born eventually, so long as Teacher, TheMan, Baako, Naana and others stay determined to be the nodal spiritand nexus of growth. and not succumb to the general body of rot anddecay. My own prognosis therefore is that embedded in the rhetoric andscatological imagery of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born isthe grain of hope and salvation naturally derivable from a consciousrevulsion to the negative energy of sin, decadence, and consumption.

A little digression may have some salutary effect for now.Recently, I was privileged to see on television a brilliant black scholarand theologian, Cornel West, in an interview with Bill Moyers. West'sargument, which focussed on the black condition and predicament,hinged on the paradox of ~combativespirituality~which has engenderedthe rhythm of blues, jazz and rap (or a marriage of ~rhetoric andmusic"}.1J These have become the predominant modes through whichblack people over the years have steered the course of tragic history tolook be;ond the sordid deflationary reality by "confronting it in theface,'" to visualize the ray of hope behind the clouds. West alsotermed this phenomenon "subversive joy," in which the rhetoric of Jazz,Blues and Rap have turned "tears into laughter. "13

Although West was making those statements with specificreference to the condition of blacks in America, a discerning mindcannot fail to rationalize its equivalent to the human condition in thefragments of Th~ B~autyful On~s of Annah's Ghana. For thatmauer, any African country that is still gripped by and grappling withthe throes and traumas of psychic disorientation and fragmentationinherent in the dehumanizing factors of ~market culture~ and "marketmentality~14 consequent upon a people's subjection to westernizationand neocolonialism will exhibit such characteristics. Let us now departfrom this circumstantial evidence for our thesis, derived from the viewof Cornel West, and proceed into a more intricate and intimate analysisof the existential paradox which fosters bloom from doom, hope fromfailure, growth from decay, and rebirth from death.

Thus, contrary to the popular verdict against the seemingpessimism of Annah's vision, I feel motivated to commute the sentencepassed on the author. This positive judgement of Armah's pessimismderives from a non-sentimental understanding, interpretation, andanalysis of the phenomenon of dualism, and the underlying mystery

74 UFAHAMU

inherent in the "rites of passage," from sin to salvation, fromdecomposition to development. In these rites of passage, thepsychological burden of conscience arising from corruplion chums theinner mind of the individual, inducing nausea and retching by way ofemotional dissociation, as in a conCessionary which in the final analysisevokes and impels cleansing and renewal through expiation.

Thus a valid reaction to the obfuscating imagery of decay, rotand squalor which most critics have gleaned as pessimistic anddystopian in Armah's novels should in faci be visualized beyond thesuperficial. Transcending this realm, what should be revealed andaccented is the cyclic node of growth, hope and regeneration underlyingthe nux and chaos of immediate. disintegrating reality. In somerespects, Margaret Folann's concluding statements in her analysis ofThe Beauty/ul Ones15 would be quite supponive of my slance at thispoinl In the words of Folarin. "the final values which emerge from thebook seem to me not unpositive. The novel is certainly not simply acensorious gesture against a corrupt society."16 Funhermore. this criticgoes to great lengths 10 illustrate that the novel does not suggest that

the "beautyful ones" can never be born. The flower whichpresumably illustrates the caption is "very beautiful" (p. 214)unlike the pasted brick "flower pattern" on the Railway andHarbor Administration Block in Chapter I. Finally when theimage of the beautiful flower design on the bus disappears it isreplaced by a "melodious note" (p. 215).. .it may also mean thatthere is life and even genuine happiness to be had even whensociety is rollen and corrupt. 17

Another exceptionally charitable critic has also tried to put in agood word or two (though sometimes not convincingly) to uplift thesignificance of Annah's vision. Roben Fraser, quoting Gerald Moorein his anicle on Armah's second novel, writes,

There is a marked therapeutic value to much of Armah'swork. We can now see that he is concerned fundamentally withthe ethical quality of a nation's life. a potential for exuberanthealth he sees as having been strangled by an infection offoreign origin.18 (My emphasis)

We move from these premises to argue that the healing vision (which isanalogous to the "therapeutic value" referred to above) is a dominatingtheme in Annah's novels. Staning from his very first novel, it wouldappear [hat the journey or quest for renewal from dirt and decay beginsin the mind of the individual, and in this way. from self·questioning and

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self-search; the self encounlen reality and confronts it or siands face toface with it to rationalize, albeit in potent silence. From this position,the spiritual quest gravitates towards the family (nole for example thechastening and salutory effects Koomson's betrayal and dethronementhave on the "loved ones," with Oyo as their choral leader) and of coursethe chastening effect Efua has derived at the end of the frustratingdemands on Baaka to yield to their maddening "market culture" or the"cargo-mentality," to use Cornel West's tenns.l 9 Thus, whereas therhythm for cleansing and ritual purification are intoned in minuter unitsof social organization, namely the individual and family in TheBeautyful Ones Au Not Yet Born and Fragments respectively,they progressively gain emJX'Werment through the collective voice of thelarger community from Two Thousand Seasons (1973) to Theflealen (1979). In this regard. the spiritual excursion which is begunin the soul of man to exhume. excoriate. and chum out din in TheBeautyful Ones generates a motion not juSt to pr<xl.uce a cathaniceffect but to reveal "the way" hidden beneath the depth of decay so as tounravel its beauty and open up new frontiers and vistas of hope for TheHealers.

Thus, rnther than impose negative sanctions, in particular againstThe Beoutyful Ones, I affirm that the healing vision and mission ofthe author's later, and relatively more acceptable, novel The Healerswas already hinted at in the shocking, repulsive and nauseating imagesof sin, decadence and corruption in Fragments and The BeoutyfulOnes In fact, it is my contention that the evocative silence of wasteand rot stabbing the conscience in these earlier novel(s) is seminal to thenurturing of hope or the healing vision and insight in The Healers.

Moreover, this "healing essence" belying the encruStation ofdecay should be seen as an essential ingredient required for the naturalprocess of decomposition. which in tum empowers the organismtowards self-regeneration and self-transformation. Because thismetabolic process is internal or, rather, metaphysical, it gathersmomentum beneath the facade of the surface. In a paradoxical sense, itacts as a catalyst. stimulating and rejuvenating the soul within theorganism to recreate harmony out of fragments and discord and torefashion disintegrating factions of cells or polity to merge into one newbody with a healthy soul for continuity.

This brings us 10 the potent power of silence in TheBeautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Although the ever-presentheap of din and decay accost the visual and other senses in the novel, itis in the mind that the psychological imprint endures as burden in theconscience and consciousness, demanding expiation. I shall have causelater to argue that it is essentially for this reason that the action of thenovel takes place "inside" the mind of The Man and that it is in fact not

76 UFAHAMU

the physical man we observe going on an excwsion from home throughthe bus to the administrative office but his mind which is on a spiritualjourney for renewal.

Because lhe accompanying anguish and conflict dramatizing thetrauma of being occurs away from the ruSt and gold that accost the eye,the "healing" or regenerative process occurs within, internally sutxluedbut provocatively encoded in silence. In this state of wordless agitation,the self retreatS 10 its inner eye, the mind, to weigh and question theprevailing odds. the chaos. anarchy and contradictions surrounding it(especially the fragmenting coating at the surface), not as a"misanthropic" denial of the reality of the human condition, but as ameans of reintegrating and fortifying the aaumatized ego 10 atrum itsidentiry.

The Man in the novel is. then. not a man in that narrow, physicalsense, but the Inner Will or Conscience foslering the humaneessence in the soul of being to reprimand or impose sanctions againstouter dissident drives. Thus The Man in man is his ego, his position ofstrength and will which acts in silence on the pan of man in TheBeautyJul Ones. In this regard, Silence is not a marie of impotenceor marginalization bUI a function of empowermenl and a superior modeof action. Leslie Kane's analysis of the "language of silence," in which"...silence is a moment in language,"20 is quite valuable althis point.Silence in the novel is not a retreat from action or decision but anauthoritative recourse to redress the devaluation, marginalization andvulgarization of Ihe word as speech. Note, for example, the carefulnarration of awe and moral uneasiness which The Man's silenceimposes on the bus conductor:

A pair of wide-open staring eyes mel his....The eyesfrighlened the conduclOr. ..even the more remembered smell ofthe cedi was now painful, and Ihe feeling in the armpit hadsuddenly become very cold vague fears of punishmenl drovetheir way into his mind he was about to go down as toslare. He did not need to hurl any accusations. In theconductor's mind everything was already 100 loudlyand too completely said.21 (My emphasis)

The narralor goes on further 10 give uS clues indicating thai speech andaction had receded from the physical and verbal realm to that of Ihepsychological and the unsJX>ken:

"I have seen you. You have been seen. We have seen all." Itwas not Ihe voice of the watcher. II could not be the"oice of the human being the conductor knew. It was a

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large voice rolling down and everywhere covering empty spacesin the mind and never really stopping anywhere at all. So thiswas it The Watcher. What could a poor man say totheir voices? What was there (0 reply to tricks and thedeception of lhe innocem?22(My emphasis)

There is ample evidence to point to the fact that "the mind," and not TheMan, is the protagonist in the novel, and therefore thaI the entire actionin the novel is a spiritual quest.

The narrator relentlessly provides us with more infonnation anddescription about the various stages of this excursion of the mind toenable it to synthesize the conflicting reality:

Thinking of the endless round thal shrinks a man to somethingless than the size and the meaning of little short-lives flying aTIlSon rainy nights. the man followed the line of the hardsteel tracks where they curved out and away frominside the loco yard and straightened out ahead forthe melancholy piercing push into the interior of theland.23 (My emphasis)

h is obvious from our context that the "steering away from planes intothe hard steel tracks... piercing push into the interior of the land" hasmetaphorical implications in the journey of the mind of man towardsvision and revision.

As if to clarify this point, the narrator does not leave us guessingabout possible interpretations of this metaphorical spiritual journey andquest. By way of reinforcement, the narrator states,

Qut ahead, however, the tracks drove straight in clean shinylines and the air above the steel shook with the power of the sununtil all the afternoon things seen through the air seemed fluidand not solid anymore. The sourness thai had been gathering inhis mouth went imperceptibly away until quite suddenly all hewas aware of was the exceedingly sharp clarity ofvision and Ihe clean taste that comes with thesuccessful defiance of hunger....

Nothing oppressed him as he walked along now, and even theslight giddiness accompanying the clarity of his starvedvision was burried way beneath the unaccustomed happyIightness.24 (My emphasis)

78 UFAHAMU

These allusions to sight and insight that arise from "theexceedingly sharp clarity of vision" are not incidental or even accidentalreferences in this COnlest of the man's mind's search for renewal,meaning, and essence. To erase any chances of ambiguity and anypossible chance of misunderstanding, the narrator continues:

Far out, toward the mouth of the small stream and the sea, hecould see the water already aging into the mud of itsbeginnings. He drew back his gaze and was satisfied with theclearness of a quiet attraction, not at all like ambiguousdisturbing tumult within awakened by the gleam. And yethere undoubtedly was something close enough to the gleam, thisclearness, this beautiful freedom from din. Somehow, thereseemed 10 be a purity and a peace here which the gleam couldnever bring....To the clarity of his tarnished vision had beenadded a sharpness as he rose ready to retum.2.5 (My emphasis)

Thus having gained this tremendous amount of spiritual insight bylooking beyond the surface din of sin and decay to seek cleansing, themind retreats into its innennost recesses to gain fortitude in Silence. Itis no wonder too that soon after this spiritual retreat, we are faced withthe encounter ostensibly between The Man and Teacher.

I view The Man's meeting with Teacher as an encounter withdestiny. It is an instance of man's journey through the tunnel of hismind to question, negate and, ironically, affum reality. Teacher in thenovel is symbolic of the inner moral conscience that holds the reigns onthe will to self-destruction.

The action now recedes in silence to man's mind and the narratoris more concerned with revealing to us the internal and spiritualprocesses motivating man towards penitence, and renewal of faith toreaffinn his capacity for continuity.

This is also the source of the drive for The Man's spiritualjourney to meet Teacher who, like The Man in the novel, is not defined,named, or limited to corporeal existence. Teacher too functions as the"superego" when the "self meets self"' to question itself in its inner,naked. and Stark revelation of the truth of being.

The Man's meeting with Teacher is, therefore, not an encounterof the "self' with the "other," but of the "selfs" encounter with "self' inits introgressive search in the soul to create harmony out of thefragments of chaos. This is an essentially healing mission.

In some sense, too, Teacher is a mirror-image of the mind ofThe Man, or more appropriately, of the superego imbued with thepower to censor the drift of ego. The narrator does not spare anymoment 10 insinuate that this supposed meeting between Teacher and

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The Man is a search for the soul for as soon as the spiritual encounter isover, this is lhe description that immediately follows:

The naked man turned on his bed. He turned the left knob onthe radio till it would go no farther, and then gave the tuningknob an inward pull that slid the red line smoothly across theglass face ....Opposite him, the man went very quietlyback to the desk and sat on it. just thinking, looking andlistening.26 (My emphasis)

The underlying meaning here. reinforced with the emphasis on"thinking," "looking," "glass face," "opposite him," is that havingundertaken this spiritual encounter with the "self," and having churnedout its impurities and dirt. man finds peace, salvation and renewal whichprepare him for the spiritual growth required (0 fonify him against thelure of material demands and desires reincarnating in the Koomsons. the0)'05 and other representatives of sinful humanity.

Furthermore, in order to amplify the "eloquence of silence" as aposition of strength through which the mind gains empowerment, thenarrator is careful almost at every turn in the novel to juxtapose, orrather superimpose, Silence on speech or the word. At one time in thelife of the people, speech, or the word, was a meaningful vehicle forexpressing and conveying value and identity. The word had integrityand functioned as a unifying, powerful force for expressing thecollective voice and will of the people as a harmonious entity. Then theword had the power and prestige of "mother tongue," but in the chaos,the anarchy of the fragmentation, and the disintegration of the people'ssocial and moral values, the word had tumbled from its prestigiousheight of mother-tongue to a mere "tongue," a mere babble of a rabble,lacking coherence as well as collective action and will.

In the novel, therefore, the mind searching for resolution of Ihiscrisis of wagging "tongues" immediately evokes the power of silence torescue it from drowning in the: noise, the "confused rauJe,"21 the"unending rattle,"21 and the shuddering of the unstable physical spaceand surface. Note, for example, the narrator's juxtaposition of noiseand silence at these crucial moments in the novel:

"You see, we can share," he said, as he came up to the man.But only the unending rattle or the bus answered andabsorbed his words. The man in the back seat just satand his eyes just stared, even when the conductor broughthis cigarettes to about a foot of his face....

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The watcher was no watcher after all, only a sleeper. Wordsshot out angrily from the conductor's mouth with anexplosive imperiousness that woke the sleeper.

"You bloody fucking sonafabitch! Aniele of no commercialvalue! You think the bus belongs to your grandfather?" Thesleeper awoke and looked up at his accuser understandingnoming of the words at first... The conductor laughed acrackling laugh. "So countryman, you don't have ahanderchief too?" The man did not answer....

"Well," he shouted above the death rattle of the bus,"gel out!" The man had already started out of the bus,saying not a ward.29 (My emphasis)

The rhetorical interplay of noise and silence. as evidenced above and inseveral other moments in the novel. unravels to the mind of the criticallistener and reader the meaningless, vulgar, and undignifyingproportions to which speech, the word, and language (as mothertongue) had become devalued. More significantly, it reveals the extent10 which degenerative speech lacked empowennent for collective action,thus abdicating itS place and role to Silence with itS vast, profound,superior, authoritative power "to express the unspoken and theunspeakable."30

On a final note, it is this recourse 10 the evocative power ofSilence thai imbues the mind with a keen awareness of its impedimentswhich can only be resolved not by taking flight or taking the hypocriticalstance that they do not exist but by looking them squarely in the face andconfronting them. Through such spiritual confrontation with evil, themind gains insight and empowennent to cleanse, heal, and seal thecracks that impede growth and progress. It is this spiritual mission andvision that the mind as protagonist accomplishes for the individual inThe Beauly!ul Ones Are Not Yet Born and Fragments, whichprogressively empowers the collective spirit of the people to speak withone voice as chorus from Two Thousand Seasons to ThelIealers.

IChinua Acnebe, wAfrica and Her WrilerS.w in MassaclrllStItS Re~lell'. XIV~1973), pp. 624-5.

Bemth Lindfors, "Armah's Histories: in A/ricu Utuature Toda.,: Mythud Hislory. II. Edited by Eldred D. Jones (London: Arricana PublishingCompany, 1980), pp. 85·96.3Emmanucl ObiCA::hina as quoted by Charles Nnolim in -Dialectic as Form: Pejorismin the Novels of Annah: in African Llteratllre Toda,: Retrosput andProspect, 10. Edited by Eldred Jones (1979). p. 107.

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4Eldred Jones, African Liltra/ure Today. 1.2.3.4, III (1969), p.5S.5 Molly Mahood as quoted by Robert Frazer in Tht No~t1s of Ayi KweiArman: A. Study in Polemical Fiction (London: Heinemann, 1911), p. 2.6Arthur Ravenscort, as quoted in Frazer, Ibid., p.2.7Charles Nnolim, Op.Cit.8/bid.9/bid.IO/bid.llComell West, in an interview with Bill Moyers. April I, \990.121bid.1Jlbid.141bid.ISMargarcl Folarin, "An Additional Comment on Ayi Kwei Armah's TheBeauty/wi Onu Are Not Yet Born," in African Littra/ure Today. 5(1971), pp. 11&.128.16/bld" p. 122.i7/bid .. p. 128.18The HOI'tls 01 Ayl Kwtl Armah, p. 13.191nLCrview wilh Bill Moyer, Op.Cit.20Leslie Kane, The Language of Sifenct: On the Unspoken and theUnspeakable ill Modern Drama (New Jersey: Associated University Presses,1945), p. 17.21Ayi Kwei Armah, Tht Btautylul Onts Art Not Yet BOrTI (London:Heinemann, 1%8), p. 4.22Loc. Clf.2J/bld., p. 23.24lbjd., p. 22.25Ibid.• pp. 23-24.26lbjd., p. 61.27Ibid.• p. 1.28Ibid.• p. S.29lbid.. p. 6.Jot...eslie Kane. Op. Cit.. unnumbered page.