Analysis of themes

                          

     A number of themes have been dealt with by Caryl Phillips in his novel The Nature of Blood. This essay aims at examining the themes of racial discrimination, identity crisis, alienation and isolation in The Nature of Blood.  A considerable part of the essay, however, deals with racial discrimination. The comparative analysis to the source text and the effects of migration remains focal during the course of discussion.

    Shakespeare’s construction of Othello is made against the ideology of whiteness which is deemed as dominant in the European culture. Whiteness has thus been racialized and Caryl Phillips, finding it as a platform, has poignantly dealt with the theme of racial discrimination in his intertextuality in a number of historical narratives. The fundamental and universal ideas have, thus, been presented by him in different settings across different times and periods. It is a re-visioning of the theme of Shakespeare’s plays. The several stories convey the same message, i.e. throughout history the terrible treatment of fellow humans has repeatedly continued. Phillips, like Shakespeare, has incorporated the story of a Venetian army general, who though has a rank and position, yet falls a prey to overt racism due to his being a black-skinned foreigner. Contrary to the original source, the characters have not been properly named as Othello and Desdemona but the story comprises a Venetian general’s arrival to Venice, his courting of a senator’s daughter, their secret marriage, their stay in Cyprus and the story ends with them safely lying in bed thinking of the future life in Venice: "when my duties in Cyprus achieve a happy conclusion, we shall return home to Venice and commence a new life of peace in the remarkable city-state" (Phillips p.174). According to Smethurst, “The death of Othello and his wife Desdemona in Shakespeare’s play signals an intolerance of inter-racial marriage in white European society. In Phillips’s novel, the Othello narrative does not reach this conclusion and Othello is left enjoying his conjugal bliss with Desdemona on Cyprus” (15). The matrimony between the general and the senator’s daughter, in both cases, is despised by the senator but in the case of Othello he is more harsh and repeatedly scolds his lineage to the Moors “where we may apprehend her and the Moor?” or “Here is the man, this Moor, whom now it seems Your special mandate, for the state-affairs, Hath hither brought.”. He believes that his daughter's interracial marriage can only be the result of Othello's trickery.

“O thou damned thief, where hast thou stowed my daughter? Damned as thou art, thou hast enchanted her, For I’ll refer me to all things of sense, If she in chains of magic were not bound, Whether a maid so tender, fair, and happy, So opposite to marriage that she shunned The wealthy curled darlings of our nation, Would ever have t’incur a general mock, Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom Of such a thing as thou” (Othello Act 1 Scene 3).

 Before the readers could formally meet the Othello of Shakespeare, he is labeled as a black ram “an old black ram Is tupping your white ewe” and “Barbary horse” which create an impression of tragic consequences in the very beginning of the play. Contrarily, in the case of Phillips, he is detached from such an image and, free from the obligations he has to perform to the doge, he spends most of his time on wanderings, observations and getting acquainted with the Venetian society and customs. To add to the theme, Phillips has incorporated the Venetian ghetto where the Jews were kept confined so as they could not mix with the Christians in the affairs of mundane life.

On Sundays and on Christian holy days, the Jews were imprisoned for the full length of the day and they were obliged both to appoint and to pay these Christian guards themselves. In addition, they were required to pay two boats to patrol unceasingly the canals surrounding the ghetto, the outer walls of which were to be windowless […] Jews were forbidden to run schools or teach Christians in any subject, and any Jew found outside the ghetto at night was likely to be heavily fined and imprisonment (Phillips p. 130).

    As a Moor, Othello is constantly stereotyped as "savage" or "animal". On certain occasions, he mentions his relation to a royal family ‘I fetch my life and being from men of royal siege (Othello 1.2. 21,22)’. A similar situation is presented in The Nature of Blood when the Venetian general is busy in his conversation with the family of the senator and he says: ‘I chose not to mention my royal blood (Phillips p.127)’. After all, Othello’s race sets him apart from others where the key actor in arousing this prejudice is Iago who by way of his artful manipulation - due to professional reasons as well as Othello’s marriage with Desdemona on racial grounds - produces tragic consequences. Phillips’ version of the Othello may also be interpreted as an attempt where ‘Phillips places the Othello story, which is central to The Nature of Blood, in such a way that it charts and influences the flow of the other narrative journeys of race, and racial difference from early modernity to our post-colonial age (Armstrong p.123)’. According to Smethurst, “The Othello narrative introduces a literary intertext, Shakespeare’s Othello, in which issues of race, and specifically inter-racial marriage, are raised. In Shakespeare’s play, the black Moor Othello is driven by jealousy. In Phillips’ analysis of the play, this jealousy derives from Othello’s insecurity as an outsider in Venetian society, and this analysis clearly informs Phillips’s rewriting of the story within this novel” (15).

    The element of migration and its after-effects on a foreign community has widely been reflected in The Nature of Blood. Like the colonialists and the imperialists who used to be obsessed to purify their lands of others i.e. aliens whom they regarded as polluted, Phillips’ Venetian society, Nazi Germany and the newly formed Israel are tended towards space control. According to Raymond Betts (1998), "imperialism . . . was a way of seeing things, of arranging space" (94). Being aware of his race, place of origin and the Venetians’ attitudes towards foreigners, the Venetian general feels insecure and regards his move "from the edge of the world to the center. From the dark margins to a place where even the weakest ray of the evening sun were caught and thrown back in a haze of glory" (Phillips, p. 107). He is regarded as black “other”. The terms “my dark bosom” (Phillips, p.109) and “fair Venice” (Phillips, p. 107) refer to his being an alien in this new society. Similarly, the Ethiopian Jews in Israel who were assigned "ugly housing at the edges of the city" (Phillips, p.207) or “she lived with her parents and younger sister at the edge of the city in one of the developments into which her people had been placed” (Phillips, p.204) identify this spatial architecture in Phillips’ work which reveals the contamination of one’s blood by the aliens in a society.

    The theme of racial discrimination is further elaborated when the Jews of Portobuffole, like Othello in the original source or Shylock in the The Merchant of Venice, meet discrimination. They are considered as the outcasts and have been made limited to the ghetto to protect the civil society from ‘the defiled’. They have been instructed to ‘distinguish themselves by yellow stitching on their clothes. People detested the Jews […] from the borrower (Phillips p.53)’. Another instance of the racial sentiment is reflected in the same story when the priest, on the occasion of the Good Friday service at the Church of St Marie, expresses his prejudicial sentiments and says: ‘we also pray for the malicious Jews so that You, God, can take away the venom of their spirits so that they may come to recognize Jesus Christ (Phillips p.95)’.  Thus, having migrated from Germany, these Jews are exposed to the alien treatment of the people of Portobuffole. People of the local area are predisposed to an animosity towards them and finding the disappearance of a Christian boy an opportunity, they make a long tale of it which, in reality, is based on rumours. The authorities, in turn, are equally responsible who are unable to resist the pressure of the locals and fail to impart justice to the members of a group who are aliens on their land. As a result, the protection of the members of an alien community is compromised and believing in mere confessions made through tortures, the authorities render them as proofs and sentence the Jews to death.

    The story of Eva Stern in The Nature of Blood is yet another narrative given by Phillips. To diversify the theme of racial discrimination, the author picks up the story of Eva. Eva who is a Jewish girl – and is subjected to persecutions at the hands of Nazi Germans – occupies much of the space in the novel. She suffers terribly for her being a Jew. She loses her parents, sister and friends and at last becomes insane. For instance, despite having described her mother’s death early in the first section of this narrative, Eva later suffers a prolonged and recurring hallucination in which she decides that her mother has returned after the camp has been liberated (Phillips, p. 35). The extreme dehumanization which consists of her repressions in the ghettos and the terrible train ride till the point in the text where she is not only subjected but she is made instrumental in annihilating other human beings are all appalling.

Today, they continue to burn bodies. (I burn bodies.) Burning Bodies. First, she lights the fire. Pour gasoline, make a torch, and then ignite the pyre. Wait for the explosion as the fire catches, and then wait for the smoke. Clothed bodies burn slowly. Decayed bodies burn slowly. In her mind she cries, fresh and naked, please. Women and children burn faster than men. Fresh naked children burn the fastest. (Phillips, p. 46).

However, she is finally rescued by the English soldiers but she suffers psychologically all her life. There is no direct likeness between the story of Othello and Eva but the unexpected affinities result from the choice of words, juxtaposition and other intervening stories. Whereas Othello represents black suffering, Eva Stern represents Jewish suffering. Though they belong to different periods and places yet they both become victims of racism. Eva’s situations have been described in a bit horrible manner if compared to Othello’s. Contrary to Eva’s desperate and helpless situations, Othello is a high ranking figure but both are destined to racism. Othello, on the other hand, has chosen to live in the Venetian society by his own will and has to bear the weight of racism while Eva never chooses anything voluntarily and becomes an object of racist ideas of her time. In this way, Phillips treats the theme in a much wider perspective.

    The novel vehemently emphasizes the main idea of racism. The tales given by Phillips are tragic and the individuals therein are judged on their blood (race) and not by their individual qualities they possess. They are all deemed as representatives of races and not as fellow human beings. They all fall prey to the prejudices of the groups.

    Other themes in the novel include identity crisis, sense of alienation and isolation. Othello, after having been deceived by Iago, becomes less confident over his own identity. He starts deliberating his  identity and lacks in holding a cohesive ego identity. He starts feeling a insecure and inferior identity due to the supposed conduct of Desdemona. Othello’s tendency towards adopting the Venetian language and merging into their customs reminds us of his sense of alienation on a foreign land. “In Othello's person, his entry into this different language is a form of self-alienation, a kind of mimicry in which he himself is only outwardly represented. He is a "mimic man" of a certain kind, struggling to balance his inward sense of authenticity with the kind of weightless non-recognition afforded him by Venice” (Clingman, p. 156).  In the case of The Nature of Blood, the Venetian general becomes identity conscious but keeps silence on the occasion when he is conversing with the senator’s family. He does not choose to mention his lineage with the royal family when feels demeaned with the attitude of the senator’s son. Being free from the duties he has to perform, he spends much of his time in visits and observes different places and customs of the Venetian people which is a form of self-alienation.  Thus, following an isolated and idle routine of life, he is attended by a messenger “And then, only some few weeks past, one among the doge’s most trusted senators eventually rescued me from this dull routine of isolation” (Phillips, p.119). Eva, on the other hand, while sitting in a park in her imagination, encounters a couple who stare at her and she thinks that “I have every right to sit in this park and enjoy the afternoon breeze. I am harming nobody, not even myself” (Phillips, p.31). While being in London in a taxi, she feels as if “He looks at me with an invitation to leave his taxi. To leave his city. To leave his country” (Phillips, p.190). Similarly, the Jews  in Portobuffole (after having been expelled from the Colonia in Germany) were initially tolerated but gradually their customs and rituals were targeted and “these Jews arrived as foreigners, and foreigners they remained” (Phillips, p.52). The fourth narrative of the novel which is about Malka who, though, is a Jewish woman and is in Israel yet she faces segregation due to her African identity. She and her community are in sort of ghetto like situation who are being treated as aliens for their Africanness. 

    There may, however, be viewed some autobiographical elements in The Nature of Blood in terms of identity and alienation. Phillips explores his own identity who as a black man lived in Europe, obtained education and faced the identity crisis, alien treatment of the teachers as well as students. Phillips quotes the words of his friend Frantz Fanon in his essay “In the Ghetto” of the The European Tribe when he (Frantz Fanon) was told by his Antillean professor that "Whenever you hear anyone abuse the Jews, pay attention, because he is talking about you" (Clingman, p.143). Growing up in England, he has said, “[t]he key issue for me and my generation……was identity” (Clingman, 144). We can, thus, find an affirmation of the autobiographical note pervading through the novel.

    The Nature of Blood presents how human beings become inhuman towards other human beings. The writer has skillfully weaved the threads together in this tapestry of history and illustrates how Othello, the Jews, Jewish Ethiopians, Israel's founders - men and women - share the same traumas and insights. The novel furnishes food for the mind of the reader that all human beings (irrespective of creed, colour and language) are humans and must be endured. It teaches tolerance and affection towards others. By reading the novel, one is temporarily moved and rather shocked but at the end he finds himself improved and well-informed.

Muhammad Abdul Wahid

      BIBLIOGRAPHY:

• Phillips, C. (2008) The Nature of Blood. London: Vintage
• Shakespeare, W. (2012) Othello. Lahore: Famous Products
• Betts, R. (1998) Decolonization. London: Routledge.
• Robert,  C. (1997) Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
• Shapiro, J. (1997) Diasporas and Desperations. Available from: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/25/reviews/970525.25shapirt.html [Accessed: November 20, 2014)
• Machado Saex, E.  (2005) 'Postcoloniality, Atlantic Orders and the Migrant Male in the Writings of Caryl Phillips'. Small Axe Number 17 ,Vol 9, No.1: 17-39
• Clingman, S. (2004) 'Forms of History and Identity in the Nature of Blood'. Salmagundi, No. 143: 141-166
• Calbi, M. (2006) 'The Ghosts of Strangers: Hospitality, Identity and Temporarility in Caryl Phillips's The Nature of Blood', Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2: 38-54
• Berry, E. (1990), ‘Othello’s Alienation’, Studies in English Literature,1500-1900, Vol 30, No 2:315-333
• Smethurst, P. (2002) ‘Postmodern Blackness and Unbelonging in the Works of Caryl Phillips.’Journal of Commonwealth Literature 37.2 (2002): 5-19.
• Armstrong, A. (2008) 'It's in the Blood! Othello and his Descendants: Reading the Spatialization of Race in Caryl Phillips' The Nature of Blood'’. Shibboleths: a Journal of Comparative Theory, Vol.2, No 2: 118-132
• Dawson, A. (2004) "To Remember Too Much Is Indeed a Form of Madness:” Caryl Phillips’s The Nature of Blood and the Modalities of European Racism’, Journal of the Institute of Postcolonial studies, Vol 7. No. 1: 83-101