Journal of Interdisciplinary Cycle Research ISSN NO: 0022-1945
A STUDY ON OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE IN AMINATTA FORNA’S THE HIRED MAN
1R. Shobhana Sree Ph.D Research Scholar Department of English Rathnavel Subramaniam College of Arts and Science Sulur, Coimbatore. Email: [email protected]
2Dr. K. Nagarathinam Associate Professor & Head, Department of English Rathnavel Subramaniam College of Arts and Science Sulur, Coimbatore. Email: [email protected]
ABSTRACT
Aminatta Forna is one of the important contemporary writers of the world. She was
born in 1964 in Glasgow, Scotland to a Sierra Leonian father Mohamed Forna and a
Scottish mother Maureen Christison. She lives in London with her husband Simon Wescott
at present. She also travels several times in a year to her native village, Rogbonko in Sierra
Leone, where she does project collaboratively to promote the poverty into the spheres of
education, health, agriculture and infrastructure. Her interest to African cultures not only
limits in the literary field, but it extends to the social spheres through her active
involvement. She is an award-winning author of two novels Ancestor Stones and The
Memory of Love. Her third novel The Hired Man is also a winner of commonwealth Writer’s
Prize in 2011 which tells the story of a Croatian village after the war of independence and
an English family who buys a new home in the village and plans to spend the summer there.
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The family learns about the stories of the past through the local handyman, Duro Kolak.
This paper deals about how Forna uses the literary technique ‘Objective Correlative’ to
evoke the exact emotion in the minds of the readers which she holds.
Keywords: Aminatta Forna, War, Horror, Objective Correlative.
Aminatta Forna was born in Bellshill, Glasgow and raised in Sierra Leone and
Britain. Her father, Mohamed Forna, was a physician who became the finance minister of
Sierra Leone and was killed by his political opponents in 1975 when Forna was 10 years old.
She started her writing career with her debut memoir The Devil that Danced on the Water
which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. Following that she wrote two award-
winning novels, Ancestor Stones and The Memory of Love. She also wrote short stories,
essays and presented arts magazine and documentary programs. Her third novel The Hired
Man is a rigid and powerful novel sets in a small fictional town in Croatia. It tells about its
dark wartime secrets, unwillingly brought into light by a family of outsiders.
Gost, the fictional town created by Aminatta Forna, is surrounded by mountains and
fields of wild flowers. It is an attractive spot and the opening chapters of the novel have an
optimistic note. Beyond the boundaries of the town, there was an empty old blue house for
years which shows the signs of life. Laura, an Englishwoman in her 40s and her teenage
children buy the old blue house and planned to use the house as their summer spot. She is
attracted by the lack of tourists and by the uncultivated fields of wild flowers. But her
children are not satisfied because of the lack of the internet and mobile phone coverage. She
is also confused about a single bakery in the town and why the proprietor should be so rude.
But at least one of the locals named Duro Kolak proves to be more hospitable and speaks
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good English. He is an odd job man lives alone with his hunting dogs and a large collection
of firearms. Though he is solitary and taciturn in nature, soon he becomes invaluable and
helps the English family to settle down in their new summer spot. During the course, they
find out many objects use by the Pavic family, the former inhabitants of the house, whom
Duro Kolak knows very well. Each object in the house reflects something about the past.
Forna chooses Duro, the writer and the principal narrator of the story, who reveals the
legacy of the past. Here, Forna uses a prominent literary device „Objective Correlative‟ to
portrays the tragic events of the past and the same to reflect in the minds of the readers.
Objective Correlative is one of the significant literary terms used by the writers
across the world. The term has now reached as a popular literary concept. It deals about a
literary description that marks an emotion and also evokes that emotion in the minds of the
reader. This literary term is used to describe a set of objects, a sequence of events, and
cluster of images and setting which will be the result of the particular emotion. The term
„Objective Correlative‟ was first used by a person named Washington Allston, who was a
poet and painter. He invented this term during his lectures on art titled “Introductory
Discourse” in 1840. By using this term he described the process of producing the
pleasurable emotion by the world. In 1919, T. S. Eliot, a British writer, presented the term
with a new meaning that Objective Correlative is a set of objects, and a chain of events
which will be the result of particular emotion. In his essay Hamlet and His Problem, he
says: „The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an “Objective
Correlative”; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the
formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate
in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.‟ This idea was
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expanded by a Spanish-American philosopher named George Santayana. In his work
Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, he says that Correlative objects not only express
poet‟s feeling but also evoke it, particularly in the discussion of the poetry of Robert
Browning. Critics argued that Eliot‟s idea was influenced mainly by the writers like Ezra
Pound in his poetics and Edgar Allen Poe in his criticism.
Aminatta Forna, like many other writers in the world, used this literary technique to
create the emotional impact in the minds of the readers. The very first object, Forna
highlights in the novel, is the blue house which sets as the primary concerns to expose the
secrets and silences of the past. It was once the house of Pavics. But, now sixteen years later
almost ruins after the pause of hostilities. Laura, with the help of Duro, repairs the house.
After the reconstruction, Forna, opens the literary space to seek the symbolic meaning of
other objects in the house of Pavics as well as their familial relationship with each other. The
house becomes the space for political action. Beyond the idea of history, identity and space,
the house is closely linked to time. Duro points out: A stain in the top corner of the room
spoke of a leak in the roof. Some of the plaster had broken away and a patch of lath showed.
By the door, a box of junk ready to be taken out: some crockery, an old plate rack, and
empty bottles. The gate in the hearth carried the cinders of a long-ago fire, hardened and
splashed with bird droppings from the chimney. Though the walls have been done, the blue
paintwork of the windows was crazed and flaking. The tendril of a vein crept over the
boundary of the frame. (8)
Through the narrative voice of Duro, the voices of previous inhabitants are heard and
their thoughts and feeling are conveyed. Duro, personally, shows more interest in revealing
the hidden secrets of the house. Because, through the narration he can remember his
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childhood friend Anka, who is one of the previous inhabitants of the house and whom Duro
cares more. So, renovating the house is more like rebuilding his desire to bring the memory
of Anka back to life. The blue house not only urges Laura to know about the former
occupants but also confronts to know about her own past and her family. The readers learn
the reason for Laura‟s son Matthew‟s insolence and her divorce with her former husband,
Matt and Grace‟s father, has not gone well with the children. So, the family comes to terms
with the past and remakes the familial relationships like post-war.
The next piece of memory, Forna builds in the story, is Mosaic, a picture or an image
on the pieces of glass or stone. The mosaic is built by Anka, by this she not only defines
herself but also preserves her identity through it. It is Laura who discovers the mosaic:
When he came back I set down my tools to help carry the groceries from the car. More
coffee, which we carried outside again. Laura turned her face to the sun, closed her eyes for
a few seconds and then opened them again to take a sip of her coffee; her eyes roamed the
front of the house. When she noticed the place on the wall where I had scraped away the
plaster she stood up and went over to inspect it, running her fingertips across the tiles. I
watched her for a bit and then I said, „what is it?‟ „There‟s something under here,‟ she
replied. „It looks like a mosaic.‟ (29) The life of early inhabitants is like the tiles in the hands
of Duro. The mosaic reflects the life of humans, different colors, shapes and sizes. It is
Laura who discovers the mosaic and works to rebuilt it. By reforming the actions of Anka,
Laura replicates the actions of Anka. In the content of war, the mosaic is collective
responsibility. Each story is a part of the mosaic which contributes to the present state of the
house. Duro writes: A green hand, reaching upward. Two lines of yellow tiles either side of
a single, narrow line of red tiles: deep, dark red tiles. These tiles were made of glass. On the
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far side the mosaic the thumb and forefinger of another hand was in the process of being
uncovered to match the one on the left; they were two hands reaching into the air. The three
downward-pointed blue shaped remained as they had been and all of this against a white
background. The tiles were different shapes and sizes, fitted each to the other accordingly.
(45)
The car, Fico, is another important symbol through which Forna tells the history of
Gost in terms of the changing attitudes and perception of its use. The car illustrates an
attempt to get its memory and to bring it back to contemporary society as well. Duro
highlights the significant aspects of its size, color, power of engine and affordability and
also spends time on repairing it to preserve the uncomfortable period of history, especially
the memories of Anka, who the car symbolizes in many ways. Kresimir, Anka‟s brother,
does not like to repair the car. He is diligent, delicate, greedy and exploitative whereas his
sister Anks like Fico is famous, attractive, and serviceable and liked by all. This is the
reason why Kresimir does not want to repair the car which brings out his inadequacies and
inabilities. The image of car in the same way like the mosaic reminds the story of Anka and
her disappearance during a course of time. By renovating these objects Duro feels that the
memory of Anka can be immortal.
The next important aesthetic symbol Forna discusses in the novel is the Fountain
which highlights the connection between physical space and identity. The fountain, like the
blue house and the mosaic, hoards the image of terracotta colored fish entwined in emerald
weeds. Like mosaic, there is the hint of history which is erased and buried under the ruins.
However the tradition of storytelling reconstructs the ruins and reveals the history which is
tried to bury. Though the terracotta colored fish is less attractive than the blue, red and
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yellow bird, it points out a very important detail. This image of entrapment of the fish in
weeds represents symbolic connection to the life of Anka. The emphasis of object is not on
the composition but its function on the human life. In repairing the fountain, Grace, Laura‟s
daughter, articulates Anka‟s desire of liberation.
Along with the above discussed symbols, there are other three symbols which Forna
subtly includes: drought, rain and rainbow. The drought represents the life of people during
the siege and the physical and spiritual barrenness and the destruction of the society. It also
highlights the brutalities of the war and its horror. Duro remembers the drought: It began in
April and stretched the summer by weeks at either end. The sky was a brilliant blue, the heat
weighed heavily upon the town and the people moved slowly. (126)
In contrary to the drought comes the rain as a symbol of cleansing and purification.
Duro recalls: Here up the hills the rain washing down my face feels good. I lift up my head
and open my mouth and let the water in, it is sweet, pure and sweet. I shield my eyes and
look in the direction of the town, invisible behind the torrents of water. Let it run, I think,
through the sweets, down the gutters, into drains until it is carried away by the river. Let it
wash away the shit and the pus and the blood, the things that can be washed away. But let is
also wash away the fear and the malice and the spite, the things that are harder to erase. I
wish these things that are happening to someone else, someone else. I didn‟t care who. I
clenched my fist. Leave us alone. (257)
The passage forms as a prayer which includes the biblical terms such as „lifting up
my head‟ and „let it run‟. Here, Duro longs for both physical and spiritual healing and
cleansing since rain is a symbol of purification and hope. Finally, the reference of rainbow
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comes as a picture of recovery and a new colorful restart which already begins by the
renovation of the house, the mosaic, the car and the fountain. The symbol of rainbow
highlights the beauty and redemption after a dark period. The dark symbolizes the horrors of
the civil war.
The Hired Man is a remarkable novel for its treatment of war and its impact on the
minds of the readers. Forna handles the tensions of post-war of Croatia parallel to the post-
war of Sierra Leone. Duro, the narrator and the writer of the story, struggles to rebuild his
memories on Anka by repairing the blue house, and its symbolic objects. Forna uses the
literary technique „Objective Correlative‟ cleverly and neatly which reflects the horrors of
the past and insert the same horrors in the minds of the readers. She also portrays the civil
war of independence in Croatia indirectly and establishes herself as one of the most
important chroniclers of war.
Works Cited:
Arana, R. Victoria., and Ramey, Lauri. Black British Writing. New York and Hampshire:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Print.
Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore and
London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Print.
Caruth, Cathy, ed. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore and London: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1995. Print.
Forna, Aminatta. The Hired Man. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013. Print. Freud, Sigmund. Beyond The Pleasure Principle. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2015.
Print.
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