CHAPTER TWO LITERARY CRITICS’ VIEW ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND

Camara Laye among numerous writers presents the African community as having symbolic elements. He looks at his society to present the African Aesthetics in order to show that African has a culture that is worth appreciating. Camara Laye therefore recreates the unified community in The African Child (1953) he is simultaneously narrating this events by which he, now sitting in Paris, became separated from that Organism. The way into the forest and the way out are identical.

Laye advocates for a literature that is engaged in the reality of Africa. He rejects the position of an unhistorical African and embraces the celebration of the past. He represents the African past and the dignity of Africans as individuals. The African Child (1953) and The Radiance of the King (1954) anchor on the functional integration of the traditional African society.

The African child (1953) portray life in the traditional African society. The author childhood to adulthood embraced and bears the print of culture and tradition. His personal for writing The African Child (1953) are historical reasons. It is not leaving home that troubles the protagonist but his emotional problem generates from the imperial context of his alienation. Selin (1971:45) contends:

Laye provides limited and a representative sample which is ideal for study in as much as his works contain not only alienation but also an interesting metamorphosis in the configuration of that alienation.

The novel appeals to a love of the strangely beautiful… It is an implicit indictment of the colonial system. We know that, couple with alienation melting of gold, blowing the bellows, and dancing are subordinate to the appearance of the snake and burn an artistic creation into a religious ceremony.

Circumcision as a preliminary rite of passage opens the door to sexual experience without engendering a new social individual, while initiation accomplices the more important rite of passage bringing to birth the perfect social order.

From the beginning of The African Child to the end, the reader constantly hears the voice of the author who is recapturing and weighing everything that he has lost and reassessing the real price of his modern education.

Each new stage in his life destroys part of his past… Old pleasures give way to new – but in the end, we know too well, sorrow, not happiness prevails French conquest of Guinea and with introduction of the French policy of assimilation.

As the father sees his own situation and that of the majority of his countrymen, Western education is the only alternative for his children. He naively entrusted his son to it without any reservation or consideration that education in European style has its own dynamic to which the African Child must sacrifice the old ways.

At the onset, we must bear in mind that symbolism, is an integral part of Laye’s work. Laye employs the setting, characters, motions and animals as pervasive symbols. The novel symbolically demonstrates the progression of human soul from one level of reality to another or from one level of self awareness to another, an air of universality.

Laye’s The Radiance of the King (1954) is the story of education of Clarence in African ways of life. The education is accomplished through a gradual and conscious renouncement of his indigenous culture. Clarence had to have this education so as to be able to integrate into the new world around him.

In a recent study, Rereading Camara Laye, Adele King says:

If not in a definitive but in my opinion in a creditable enough way, suspicions, regarding Regard du roi (The Radiance of the King). The novel is primarily the work of soulie, A Belgian with a passion for Africa and an unsuccessful literary career.

…Most intelligent readers like their Kafka straight not geographically transported. Even the character structure of Kafka’s has been most blatantly retained… It is truly amazing foreign critics have contented themselves with merely dropping an occasional “Kafkaesque” a feeble sop to integrity. Since they cannot altogether ignore the more obvious imitativeness of Camara Laye’s technique.

In his criticism of The Radiance of the King (1954) Senghor comments on the simplicity of Camara’s style. However he noticed certain imperfection in the book. He says:(1964:250)

At the very beginning of the book he did not feel Africa, for Camara has borrowed many European images and metaphors which do not fit into an African context.

In spite of these pitfalls, Senghor further concludes:

What saves the book is the Negro rhythm that animates the narration and give its authenticity.
Senghor agreed that Camara has not only mastered the French language but has been able to make it respond to his Negro aesthetics after reading Camara’s works, one may agree with Senghor that Camara is one of the most successful French-African writers who have been able to express their African sensitivity with distorting the foreign language. One has to admit that it takes a tremendous amount of work to attain such perfection as Camara has.

The Radiance of the King (1954), Camara is really talking about cultural assimilation but in his case it is Europe that has to assimilate from Africa. Speaking of reversed note. Janheiz Jatin says:

The usual pedagogic relation of Europe and Africa is here reversed here, the European is the pupil, who must learn justice and pass examination.

From the preceding analysis, one could say that The Radiance of the King (1954) is structurally a perfect example of African literature, in spite of the little touch of the epic in its denamcement.

From family and friends, he long to unite with them.
This goes a long way to say that the tradition of any society has been in existence before the emergence of the colonial masters. The African traditions has its norms and values, which guide the Africans.

In The African Child (1953) Laye has given prominence to certain features of his childhood days which as they stand in the book are so important. David & Harrigton (1971:45) asserts:

The workshop of the African Child’s father for example is an educational institution to which youths from neigbouring towns come to learn gold smiting as well as social norms. This is one way in which knowledge is upheld in traditional African society.
That is why his father’s workshop is always busy with customers wanting to change or collect their gold transformed to Irinkets Moore (1962:31) confirms:

From the beginning of The African Child to the end, the reader constantly hears the voice of the author who is recaphering and weighing everything that he has lost and reassessing the real price of his modern education.

Laye’s novel are good example of African literature that reflects the African traditional phase on the continent which of the real African and their majority. Laye says:

Yesterday in Africa, we were nearer to beings and things, for that reason which are not at all mysterious, …I see the invisible rise up and confound our poor little reason which can only claim so tiny a place… but I see I can’t speak of mystery without speaking also of culture… to reveal the extra ordinary deep sympathies hidden in the heart of the Africans.
Laye tries to talk of African spirituality and culture which can’t be seen with physical eyes and how the gods guide and protect their interest; all that he said is a way of projecting the culture and traditional beliefs of Africans. According to A.C. Brench in his article on some critics on Laye’s novels says:

Laye seems to be praising a way of dire which was no longer viable, was precisely, the way of life the colonist considered most fitting for the African to lead.

It could be that Laye was treating a subject fit for Africans.

Laye resolutely shot his eyes to the most crucial reality, these which we have always been very careful to reveal to the public here. Has this Guinea of my own race, who it seems, was a very lively boy, really seen nothing but a beautiful, peaceful and maternal Africa? Is it possible that not once has Laye witnessed a single minor extortion by the colonial authority?

This in some ways a deceptively simple story, is the work of a dark child uncorrupted by the complexity and dislocation of the world we know… Displayed in an earlier Europe is of sympathetic interest created by what he has to say and the way he has said it.

The prime duty of African writer is to show his own community that African people did not hear of culture for the first time from Europeans: that their society were not mindless, but frequently had a philosophy of.

Camara Laye has been severely criticized by his fellow Africans for the way he presented Africa in his first autobiographical novel. African Child (1953). He is particularly accused of closing his eyes to the problems of Africa and romanticizing on a glorious past. A writer in presence Africaines says of Camara:

Laye resolutely shuts his eyes to the most crucial realities, those which we have always been careful to reveal to the public here. Has this Guinean, of my own race, who it seems was a lively boy, really seen nothing but a beautiful, peaceful and maternal Africa? Is it possible that not once has Laye witnessed a single minor extortion by the colonial authorities.
This critic is dissatisfied that Laye did not deal with the colonial problem which we have been very careful to the public here, meaning the European public. In other words, Laye is not an engaged African writer who is expected to present the case of the colonized and suffering Africa before the European audience.

The greater portion of African Child (1953) deals with the mystery and magic world of Africa Camara Laye is a cultural nationalist, who use his African Child (1953) to show all the cultural aspect in African societies, he made reference to a spiritual snake. The snake is an omnipresent symbol used by Laye to emphasize that Guinea society depends on it for spiritual guidance. As far as his father is concerned, success in life depends on harmony with tradition with culture (1975:63) assert:

…because of this ancestral heritage Laye’s father’s artistic creation is a ritual with spiritual significance as it has always been in African traditional culture. All activities of the forge praise – singing, incantation.
In the same time it is a perfect example of the influence of European audiences. Whose taste and literary tradition greatly influence the African writer. Janhenz Jahn was right say:

The Radiance of the King (1954) is to date the high point of neo-African literature in French prose.

In an interview with Camara, he was asked how he felt about the reaction of several African intellectuals to his first novel. In his reply, he stated what his intentions in the novel were.

When L’Enfant Noir was published many African intellectuals did not agree with me on the subject matter. Many wanted me to talk of colonialism or colonialization. I thought personally that the best way to attack colonialism was to talk of African civilization. My interest at that time was not colonialism which was staring in the face, it was the African civilization which I wanted to present to the world since it existence is contested. Besides colonialization is epithermal and if I had attacked a situation which no longer exist today, the world would have lost its value.
In the above passage, Camara made it very clear that his purpose in writing his African Child (1953) was to represent the African civilization to the world that has been doubting its existence. The ‘World’ is that of European bourgeois audience. It is important to note that Laye’s The African Child (1953) is a work that really teaches about the African cultural values and aesthetics.

Taking a critical evaluation on all that has been said and written about Laye and with critical comments on him, we can deduce, that despite the modern civilization and foreign cultural problems faced by Africans, Laye used The African Child (1953) and The Radiance of the King(1954) to portray the existence of African traditional norms and values in African society.