LA MÉTAMORPHOSE ET L’ITINÉRAIRE MÉTAPHYSIQUE DE CLARENCE DANS LE REGARD DU ROI DE CAMARA LAYE
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Date
2007-11
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School of Humanities, Imo State University, Owerri
Abstract
Camara Laye in his novel Le Regard du Roi (The Radiance of the King) puts the Whiteman (Clarence) in a role that contradicts his privileged status in the Colonial Administration. The Colonialists were the masters who ruled the Blacks and had the ultimate power in their colonies in Africa. What would then be the intention of Camara Laye for reducing the master to the subordinate role in the novel? Clarence loses his dignity because he becomes penniless and has to depend on a beggar who sells him off in a trade by barter, to a local chief, naba. The beggar gains a wife and a horse. But Clarence is turned into a stud who populates the chief’s harem with mulattoes. Would it be an attack on the colonial authority? Or would it simply mean adding value to the African culture which was rapidly giving way to the Western culture? Perhaps Camara Laye wanted to affirm his negritudinal stand of the Black Identity. The novel is liable to several interpretations. This article explores the metaphysical implications of the exposure of Clarence, the Whiteman, to the African life; and his awakening to the reality of the moral stench that emanates from his status of a stud as imposed on him by the naba.
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Keywords
Troquer, sacrifice, métaphysique, sexualité, prise de conscience
Citation
Journal of the Humanities