Postcolonial Literature Themes

Postcolonial literature
addresses the
problems and promises of decolonization, the process of non-western countries
in
Asia, the Pacific, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and the
Caribbean becoming
independent from western control. It is the literature of
people trying to reclaim their freedom
and their new identities after
struggling for independence.

Some of the
themes of
postcolonial literature include re-asserting the identity of the indigenous
culture,
revisiting and revising colonial history, and providing fuller
descriptions of the people
created by colonialism and the way in which their
lives reflect both cultures. Many postcolonial
authors also use hybrid
dialects to reflect the intertwining of western and non-western

languages.

Jean Rhys's 1966 novel Wide Saragasso
Sea is
an example of postcolonial literature. Rhys, who was born
in Dominica, imagines the earlier
marriage of Mr. Rochester of Jane
Eyre. The main character, Antoinette
Cosway, is torn between her
identity as a white creole in Jamaica and her married life in
England. The
author writes about the confusion of having a mixed identity. Antoinette is

declared mad, a comment on the tendency of western cultures to identify what they
don't
understand as mental illness and the tendency of colonialism to
produced fissured and
conflicting identities. Things Fall
Apart by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe
is another example of a
postcolonial work in which the main character, Okonkwo, witnesses the

dissolution of the traditional Igbo culture with the introduction of Christian
missionaries. In
both novels, the protagonists are raised in the non-western
cultures and are exposed to the
confusion of dealing with a western culture
that does not recognize their values or
identities.