What's the Difference?

In today’s class discussion there was much talk surrounding the attitudes displayed by Mr. Brown and Rev. Smith. Due to poor planning on my part I hadn't completed “Things Fall Apart” before class so some of the context of the discussion was lost on me. However, I was able to establish some opinions about the two that seemed to hold up after I finished the last few chapters. A lot of what was discussed focused on who was the nicer guy, but the more I heard the more it seemed  that it wasn’t so much a matter of one being nice and the other being mean, it was just a case of differing philosophies. They shared the same ultimate goal and were both equally detrimental to the continued existence of the tribe as a unit. The ideas of good and bad are relative and when I compared these two characters in the context of their mission, neither seemed particularly good to me. Was Mr. Brown as aggressive and immediately destructive as Rev. Smith? No. However, in the long run, I think that Mr. Brown’s tack was more shrewd and insidious.

Rev. Smith was concerned about establishing a tradition of strength in the congregation. As a result, he considered driving the less faithful from the church, took an aggressive stance toward the villagers, and let the zealots among his group run unchecked. While this approach did allow him to strengthen the faith of the church in Umuofia, it also resulted in increased hostility with the villagers. As we can see in chapter 24 of “Things Fall Apart,” this approach wasn’t going to be sustainable without serious conflict and, likely, notable losses for both parties. While brute force can pay off in the long run, the run is much longer and more painful than the “good cop” approach Mr. Brown employed.

Mr. Brown was interested in ensuring that the church appealed to as many tribesmen as possible. He seemed to do this by learning about the native culture, without adopting these concepts himself, and looking for ways to make the church an integral, and ultimately dominant, part of the community. (As an aside, this scenario, as lopsided as it is, seems to go toward the concept of exchange to be covered in our first essay.) Mr. Brown’s process of examination can be seen on pages 101 and 102, Achebe writes that Mr. Brown even took the time to learn about the clan’s beliefs and looked for ways to “attack” those ideas.  Ideally, establishing mass appeal would lead to a situation where everyone would have a close friend/family member who was in the church and that would ultimately bring the rest of the tribe along.

To answer the question presented in the title of this post, I don't think there's a difference. In the end the two men could have been swapped out for anybody or any personality as long as they had the same goal in mind. While I'd prefer a Mr. Brown style regime, Mr. Brown seems like a more dangerous influence, in regard to the local culture, than Rev. Smith. Mr. Brown displayed a gentleness and understanding that made him appear non-threatening. This lulled the people of Umuofia into a false sense of security and before they knew it their community was being pulled apart by Mr. Brown's involvement in their lives. At least those who were loyal to Umuofia’s traditions could readily see the cultural/societal threat posed by Rev. Smith and try to do something to change things.

Read Or Bury Our Traditional Stories?

Is the title nonsense? Yeah. I just wanted my title to create the acronym ROBOTS. I previously had a line rationalizing the title, but it seemed pointless. This doesn't seem any more fruitful. So...

I think avoiding controversial texts, like “Heart of Darkness,” does nothing to serve individual growth or growth as a society/community. Without reading a book like “Heart of Darkness” and considering, internal and external, reactions to it we risk a reaching a point where we continue to operate in the same ideological framework and don’t move past certain ideas. Now, I suppose one could argue that teaching the same text each generation can lead to the same sort of stagnation, but I’d say that risk is almost negligible because the context in which HoD is read and the way it is read change over the years. As a result, HoD continues to inform people, but brings them to different conclusions. For example, HoD was read for 50+ years before an opinion like Achebe’s was developed and published. Achebe rails against the text and Conrad for the evils he observed, but without reading HoD Achebe might not have been compelled to respond when and how he did and we may not be considering the question of Hillis Miller’s essay “Should We Read ‘Heart of Darkness’?”

As can be deduced from my comments above, I agree with Hillis Miller’s general opinion that “’Heart of Darkness’ should be read, ought to be read” (HoD 474). However, I kind of disagree with Hillis Miller's opinion that it should only be read a certain way. HoD is a work of fiction, so to assume everything in the book is completely accurate isn’t very reasonable. However, I think there’s value in HoD, or most any book, regardless of how it’s read.  Is reading “Heart of Darkness” without some sort of discourse, introspection, etc. dangerous? I think dangerous is overstating things, but yes I suppose it could skew or reinforce a reader’s opinions. However, things are open to interpretation and if someone goes into “Heart of Darkness” looking to find examples to reinforce their negative opinions of another race, culture, gender, and so on, that's what they'll likely find. If they don’t read “Heart of Darkness,” they’ll likely find it in another text they come across. I don’t think that the discourse that can come out of reading “Heart of Darkness” should be sacrificed to avoid the risk of causing harm. We shouldn’t avoid things just because they might be taken one way or another, because they present potentially disquieting concepts, or because we can get similar ideas from another text. A set of ideas presented in a specific way will elicit very specific opinions that may not be conceived otherwise.

Furthermore, we, as members of society in general, should also read classic books like HoD because those who came before read them.  We shouldn’t read them out of obligation or to maintain the status quo, but to understand what shaped our forebears’ thought processes, how society has or hasn’t changed, and how we can individually interpret the world in which we live.