Masaryk University Faculty of Arts
Authorities Hostility towards authorities
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- Compulsion for breaking the law
AuthoritiesHostility towards authoritiesEven after the process of decolonization, a strong European influence has remained in the Caribbean. Not only the education system, but also laws, administration, public institutions and services, all of it was designed based on the European model. From one perspective, if we take for granted that the European model of society really was the best model that was available at the time, it could be perceived as an amicable contribution on the side of the Europeans. However, because of this, a certain kind of distrust and even hostility towards the aforementioned has remained in the subconscious of the Caribbean people. This kind of disrespect for authorities is depicted in In the Castle of My Skin when describing the village overseers. They were villagers who came to work as patrolling policemen, to enforce laws of “The Man” upon their own countrymen. Lamming describes the relationship between the overseers and ordinary people from the village as follows: “The average villager showed little respect for the overseer unless threatened or actually bullied.” (Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin, 26) The lack of respect for authorities and even hatred towards them is pictured here very clearly. The overseers are not trusted by the villagers as keepers of order and peace, they are not the policemen one would seek if in need of assistance or guidance. The overseers are presented as aggressive brutes that are used to asserting power over others only for the sake of their own satisfaction. The overseers were granted special privileges for their services, like owning the piece of land that their house was built on. This alone created a distance between them and other people in the village, because owning land was a concept that was strange to the Caribbean people, and was brought to them by the Europeans. Also, the concept of land ownership is one of the most destructive elements in the story of In the Castle of My Skin. Historically, the slaves were not permitted to own any land of their own, and land ownership was a liberty that was reserved only for the white people. Because of this historical implications, the fact that the overseers were granted land in return for their service is a metaphor for how morally rotten they are for serving the authorities, still associated with the colonial oppression. This issue is also depicted in another situation in the same novel, when one of the overseers chases the boys to punish them for a transgression they committed. The boys promptly choose to seek refuge at a public religious ceremony, and they hide among the crowd. The overseer is looking for the boys and by doing so he is disturbing the ceremony. The people attending are immediately hostile towards the overseer, without knowing what his business at the ceremony really is. For all they know, he is a public servant who is doing his duty, maybe apprehending somebody who broke the law or disturbed the peace in the village, and still, they show no respect to him and dismiss his authority. Some of the villagers rebuke the overseer, and when the overseer retaliates and they start to argue, the rest of the worshippers start singing, and the argument is drowned in their song. Nobody is eager to learn who the overseer is looking for and for what reason. When the overseer finally lays down his hand on one of the boys he was trying to catch, he is met with an angry response of the priest: “The overseer touched Trumper, and the spectators didn’t understand what was happening. The overseer hadn’t come to be saved, that was clear. The preacher grew furious. He threw his hand out and shouted louder than ever: ‘Touch not the Lord’s anointed.’” (Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin, 182) In the eyes of the worshipers, it is not the culprit who is intruding the gathering, whatever his transgression might be. The overseer is rebuked by the crowd and the preacher so vehemently that he has no other choice but to leave, unable to perform his duty. For them, he immediately becomes the public enemy. Compulsion for breaking the lawAs it is mentioned in the Season of Adventure, Gort and Crim even make it a kind of a sport to break the law. “It was a matter of pride for them to evade the law. Crime had to be impressive in its effect on those who they despised.” (Lamming, Season of Adventure, 262) The desire of Gort and Crim to disobey the law is clearly a remnant of the history of oppression that was inflicted upon the Caribbean islands. The laws that were forced upon the Caribbean people were the laws of the British, their conquerors and enemies. These laws were not designed to protect the common people from crime and injustice. Rather, theyweare designed to protect the usurpers from the common people, and to carry out the usurpers’ wishes. Therefore, it can be argued that for Gort and Crim, the act of rebellion is still associated with the fight for freedom, a desirable and virtuous endeavor. As Lamming describes it in his novel, the compulsion for breaking the law is so strong with Crim and Gort that they are not afraid of any kind of punishment that would come for their transgression. “They were resigned to any extremity of punishment.” (Lamming, Season of Adventure, 262) To Crim and Gort, the severity of the punishment they would receive was an assurance of how brutal the law enforcement officials are to the villagers. For them, the punishment is not a penalty for compromising the public order; it is a sacrifice that had to be made in order to fight “The Man”. With Crim, the hostility towards the police is so strong that he feels the need to avenge himself for the humiliation he has suffered from them by being questioned, perhaps multiplied with all the other legal punishments he has suffered over the years (on one occasion, he implies that his name, Crim, is a short form of “criminal”, meaning he must have had a rich history of corporal punishment). When Chiki stands in questioning before the police constable, he feels the bayonet on the back of his leg, and he starts to fear that the policeman is going to amputate his leg. Naturally, he is afraid of losing his leg and starts being more cooperative with the police, but not for the reason of self-preservation, or at least only partially. He does not seem to be afraid of the pain, or the fact that he would probably not be able to take care of himself with such a handicap, which would leave him on the outskirts of society. The only thing that comes to his mind is that without one of his legs, he would not be able to take his revenge on the police, as he intends. He thinks to himself that he will save his act of resistance for later, when his revenge is complete, then, he could lose his leg for all he cares, but now, he has to even the score with the police. He is so emotional that he even goes as far as shouting threats at the police, saying that if they are about to execute somebody for the murder, it should be him, because if they let him live, the revenge on the police will become the sole purpose of his being. Only after the threat of disfigurement he calms down and adopts a more submissive tone of speech. (Lamming, Season of Adventure, 266) When police commissioner Piggott is personally interrogating the villagers after the murder, he meets only their silence, which only fuels his anger for the villagers. Chiki then reminds Piggott that he should try to remember his own upbringing to better understand the reason behind the villagers’ lack of cooperation with the police. “Nothing here is foreign to you. Whorin’, hunger, the whole lot. You start from scratch like any o’f these men here. Now you got power, an’ you feel you can put out your memory like a fire. But you can’t Piggott. You know how a poor man feels who got to answer a murder he knows nothin’ of. You know it ‘cause your own life start here. Like any o’ these boys you start from scratch” (Lamming, Season of Adventure, 268)
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