Should We Seek Truth in Somé’s Magic? :: Of Water and the Spirit Literature Essays

Should We examine Truth in Soms Magic? What is most striking close Malidoma Soms Of Water and the Spirit is not only his extraordinary news report of the Dagara initiation ritual, but the ways in which he uses his experiences to make comments upon westward culture. Because of the way in which he was raised and educated, Som clearly dwells upon the border in the midst of his congenital Dagara culture and the vastly differing Western culture. Som himself characterizes himself as a cosmos of two worlds, with his lifework being to attempt to explain each to the other. Because of his unique status, Som is in the position to make extremely insightful comments about his native culture, his select Western culture, and the ties that bond the two together despite their seemingly incommensurable differences. As much as this story is about Soms initiation, it is on the button as much a commentary on what happens under colonization. To magnetic core up briefly, Som seems to be dis cussing the arrogance and yet the connective void - what he calls the sickness - of Western culture. Colonization begins from a feeling of superiority in Western, in this case exclusively European, countries they believe in their right to let the land inhabited by others. A secondary but until now important assumption under colonialism is the belief that the European culture is better, to a greater extent productive and beneficial to its members. Hence it is justified in the minds of the colonizers that they enter a foreign land, displace the indigenous peoples from their homes and strip them of their cultures. Despite the fact that these cultures, with their consequent rituals, traditions and religions, have been established for millennia, the colonizers maintain a belief that these cultures are backward, subordinate and somehow harmful to their members. It is for their own good that these indigenous peoples are divide like spoils of war amongst colonizing nations, Christ ianized and forced to abandon their native tongues in promote of the language of the colonizer. Som himself is representative of his culture kidnapped from his indigenous way of life and laid against his will into a Jesuit school where he is cruelly punish for misuse of the French language and force-fed Christianity. The colonizers came equipped with various modes of stripping the native of his culture and assimilating him, with or without his consent, into theirs education, in this light, seems to be a method of brainwashing.