Humanness and Intolerance Between Generations

In Sembene Ousmane’s Gods Bits of Wood and Mariama Ba’s Scarlet Song one sees the use of characters as representatives of humanness, as well as the eventual display of the lack of it. For the purposes of this paper, humanness is defined as “that in which empathy is the basis for being human” . Gods Bits of Wood has a broad peripheral view of one great movement for humanity to change and for the Africans and Europeans to accept each other as whole societies. On the other hand, in Scarlet Song one perceives a more focused and personal version of the same attempt, in which the author has created two characters in a dramatic romance plot to depict the struggle between their worlds. Both in Ousmane’s and Ba’s pieces, the lack of tolerance in the characters from older generations repress and annihilate the younger generation’s attempt for humanness.

Surrounding the subject of lack of humanity, Ousmane portrays how human we can be, as well as how inhuman. The story tells of the inhabitants in several areas in Senegal, most specifically of the African men and women on the Dakar-Niger railway in the late 1940’s and of their st

This lack of tolerance is a theme that comes to light several times, in both pieces.

In God’s Bits of Wood, the constant death of children and eventually the final rotting of Gorgui lets us see intolerance at its deepest roots. On the other hand, the birth and death of the “Gnouloule Khessoule”, not black not white, child in Scarlet Song symbolizes the end of humanness or perhaps the inexistence of it altogether. In both pieces one observes the struggle between generations to unify the black and the white—the irony of trying to create humanness through inhumanness. It seems as if somehow the books had been written on purpose to follow one another as one big plot, in which God’s Bits of Wood is the beginning of one great story, and Scarlet Song, its tragic ending. One must realize that once upon a time all continents were joined together as one, and that no matter what colour our skin is, beyond all generational gaps and prejudices, we are nothing more, and nothing less, than humans.

You think you’re superior because you’re white. But just scratch yourself. You’ll bleed the same red blood, a sign that you’re the same as all people on earth... You’ve got a brain and liver that do the same job as Ousmane’s brain and liver. Tell me, in what way are you any better? (29)

One must take into account the irony of the situation, for in both pieces, in the face of doing what they claim to be the creation of tolerance and equality, the older generation kills the younger generation. This is, as well as murder and proof of the lack of humanity, a symbol in itself; the assassination of the younger generation represents the downfall of their ideals. The ultimate proof of this is when, in the end of the story, Ousmane drops a crude description of another child’s death, causing a strong reaction from the reader and imprinting the image in our minds and hearts. Gorghi’s death in the end of Gods Bits of Wood symbolizes the hatred between both societies. With his body died any chance or hope for peace and agreement between both worlds. This is very well depicted by Dieynaba when she says, crying, “Why can’t we just kill all the white men?’”(191), and then Lahbib answers, “you must not let hatred enter your heart. We want no more blood, we want no more children killed, but hatred cannot be our guide. I know that it is difficult…’” (191). Even though Lahbib’s words bring a drop of

Some topics in this essay:
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