I agree that Hatterr is a challenge to read. Even after we were given the different elements to be on the look out for, it is still hard to understand. One of the things that I do like about the book is that it is written in a way that forces you to slow down and as it was stated in class today “sound it out”. I know at times, people (myself included) are tempted to gloss over the text, and just pick up on the “key” or “important” elements that get you whatever information you need. But that really isn’t feasible with this book.
I think another interesting thing to look at is the way that Hatterr is critiquing religion versus the way that Tutola critiqued religion in My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. In Hatterr, when the reader encounters religious figures, they are doing things that one wouldn’t associate with a “truly” religious person. The religious/mystical people the Hatterr encounter are con-artists and swindle people. If you take a look at My Life…the religious people that are encountered are acting badly, but they stick true to certain religious mythology. If I remember right, the demon baptizes him with scalding water, even though he doesn’t want it. Tutuola doesn’t say that a priest, using a visage of righteousness, does this bad thing to him. This leaves me wondering which critique is more effective. Is it more effective to use a critique that Hatter did, which highlights hypocrisy does exist in the religious world, or is better to critique it the way that Tutuola did?
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So I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I prefer H. Hatterr to Bush of Ghosts by far. They are both insane and written quite wildly, but at least H. Hatterr's experiences are tangible and based on HUMAN interaction, rather than ghost figures living in a ghost world where everything is open to interpretation.
ReplyDeleteWith the sages in H. Hatterr, they are human. They are con-artists and yet powerful in their own rights. The authority figures in Tutola's novel are ephemeral and their meanings are vague/debatable.
At least with H. Hatterr, I can tell where his criticism and sarcasm toward religion is coming through - with Bush of Ghosts, I am forced to wade through a swamp of insane imagery first.
Imagining Desani write this book and with all the inferences of what he is taking a jab at, his use of language might be his acknowledgment of how English readers superficially read just to get the macro picture. Desani realizes this rampant phenomenon in the general reading population and I think it is another one of his cynicism about everything. He now spins the table by writing in English and making the English wade through their own, native language. This observation would be another argument for Ngugi’s repertoire against the English language: the English can’t even read their own language! That maybe an over generalized statement but struggling through this book makes me wonder about those who attempted to read H. Hatterr and gave up simply because of the catawampus nature of the English writing.
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