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, 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 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 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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