Roots by Alex Haley: The generational African-American struggle for freedom

Some dismissed this epic as a fake. But it doesn’t claim to be wholly fact. Granting that it is indeed a fake, then it would be like all the others- fiction. And granting that it is fiction, it is would still stand out as a classic. My copy of Roots by Alex Haley I bought for a mere P20 in a thrift shop. Multiply the price by a dozen and It’s still worth it.

The first part of Roots brings to mind Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Its first parts show that Africans and Europeans have different cultures but what they have in common is humanity. They have their own customs, practices, and traditions. They may not have centralized government but they have no need for such a system in the first place. They were living happily until the slave traders caught them one by one. By focusing on one person – Kunta Kinte – Alex Haley succeeds in presenting to us the real impact of slavery. The question here is: If a man is separated from his land, his people, his culture, and even his freedom, what is left of him? Since Roots spans seven generations (Biblical allusion?), it gives the answer: even if freedom is taken away; hope remains, and through his descendants Kunta Kinte is able to liberate himself from bondage.

The latter parts of Roots bring to mind Beloved by Toni Morrison and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. It presents racial discrimination and all the other dilemmas the African-Americans faced in their struggle.

It was the first part, however, that I enjoyed the most. For in there you can see Alex Haley at his finest. It took a lot of research, imagination, and creativity, for him to create a Gambian village with its exotic environment and fascinating people. The legends, the beliefs, the customs- it’s as if he were there; it’s as if I was there as I read the text. The theme of Roots? I think a major one is human suffering. Another is overcoming that suffering in the face of difficult circumstances. There are sub- and underlying themes, one of which asks the question: Is racial prejudice based on color alone? How come the earlier Africans were too eager to spite the slaves, when they were of the same color? All these questions require an understanding of American history and society and African culture; these elements weave together the fine fabric that is Roots. Even the adaptability of the slaves is significant, for it is a testimony to human fortitude.

Indeed, Roots, like Martin Luther King, Jr., Michael Jordan, and of course Barack Obama, is a triumphant proclamation that the African-Americans have succeeded in reclaiming their rightful place in our world.

My Antonia by Willa Cather: Great love story of American countryside

It was F. Sionil Jose, one of my country’s foremost novelists, who recommended to me My Antonia by Willa Cather. He said it was one of his ‘early influences’, along with Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. Naturally my curiosity was aroused, but I couldn’t find a copy of the book. Not until one day when my sister told me she bought one from a BookSale outlet. She read it before I did, and she – who has read more classics that I have – told me that it’s one of the best books she has read. Wow! My expectations already high, I took to reading the novel. In a few days I was done, and now I can only repeat what they told me: it’s a beautiful, very beautiful masterpiece. Of a landscape so majestic and of a love so deep. I can almost see the endless ocean of countryside.

As for the love, its profundity lies in the fact that between Jim and Antonia it was never a love that is romantic. It was rooted on their nostalgic childhood spent in that small town in Nebraska. And that same love was powerful enough for Jim to add his possessive adjective to Antonia, hence the title ‘My Antonia’.

Any reader of the book shouldn’t miss the way Cather inserted her feminist ideas into the book. Antonia, who worked like a man for some time, can do what a man can do; it’s only that it won’t be proper for her to- in the eyes of society. Women are women; the difference between and women doesn’t necessarily lie in the latter’s abilities, but it’s more of an individual and collective choice.

Up to date Willa Cather’s book hasn’t been equaled, and I believe the critics when they say it’s one of the greatest love stories of all time. I think My Antonia is a far cry from the newer novels about rural US. However, she should not be seen as competing with the contemporary authors, for her books have already attained the level of ‘classic’.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles: The potentialities of great friendship

Now this book is an achievement even greater than Catcher in the Rye, in presenting adolescence as it is. It is a tale of friendship that is violated by the weakness of human nature, a story of greatest tragedy that pierced through my heart like an arrow. Finny’s death is hard, even for the reader. It was a fierce climax, against the otherwise peaceful background of the Devon school, their separate peace that gets broken because of Gene’s insecurity. It could have been the other way around, and I think this is essential to the theme: great friendships are actually possible. It is a matter of choice, dependent on what wins in the internal struggle between insecurity and trust. Finny last words voice his agony over the realization that Gene caused the destruction of his life and his death.

Tragic as Finny’s death was, one asks the question: who actually died? I think the answer is both, for they were really best friends from the start, and thus their lives were intertwined, conjoined. Finny’s physical death is also the emotional death of Gene, but what shortly follows is Finny’s resurrection in Gene, and Gene’s own resurrection as someone who has learned his lessons. Finny is the avatar of friendship – never did he fail Gene even in his ‘deathbed’. Finny even wanted Gene to join the ‘1944 Olympics’, equating such a participation as his own (I found that scene truly poignant). A Separate Peace has taught me the most important lessons in friendship – lessons I will never forget.