The Long Song: Time, History and Memory - Essay Example

? Time, History and Memory Time, History and Memory The Long Song is a historical novel. It is one of the books that have attempted to describe the situations of life in slavery. The writing of the book in the period after which slavery had been abolished tries to explain the historical value of narrations about slavery and restore integrity of the enslaved. Many years ago, slave narratives never used to be historical sources to be relied upon. Writing of more slave narratives has affirmed the history of slavery that has led to the understanding of the hard life in slavery (Southgate, 2004).Miss July narrates the story in a way that makes the reader get to know how different ethnic groups, races and social classes used to interact during the abolition of slavery. The title brings out the long time yearning for freedom that the slaves were fighting for. The story being a counteraction on memory allows the reader to seek an intervention in the events of history. This acts as an exploration of the objective of slave narratives in giving history a new meaning and enables the reader to imagine the perspective of history in terms of the present situation. July’s narration of the life in slavery enables the audience to feel the extent of miserable life that they were subjected to. She expresses her statements in a manner that depicts the hatred she has for the whites. She enters into a love affair with the plantation master but the relationship later ends .Levy makes the reader realize the transition between the past and the present. The Long Song informs the descendants of the victims of slavery about the hostile environment which their ancestors had lived in. Levy received many letters of gratitude from the descendants of Emily Godwin who never new their slave ancestry. The never change; they permanently stick to be what they are at the time of their occurrence (Levy 2010, pp.321). This means memories can never be rubbed away. Somebody might wish to go off to some world to where nobody can reach. They wish to go to a place, which time does not pass. Unfortunately, such a place does not exist in this world. One might be continuously getting frustrated by the world’s grief, which moves as a function of time and not as a function of somebodies wishes. Time terrifies by the fact that it is a passing factor. One is forced to believe, sincerely, sitting and doing nothing does not really make time to have a break. It even adds the reality of having done nothing. It is rather determined to rush and make history. Years, decades and centuries pass, time increasingly goes longer. The moments keep changing, you wonder if the centuries, decades, years, months, weeks, days, minutes and seconds were spent in the most efficient and productive ways they possibly could. A continuous rapid transition of what happens today to history that goes forever, a thought that things appear and disappear. Whatever remains of experience continue to take to the traditions to be taken as traditions of different communities. People tend to act in the ways of their ancestors, possibly as a sign of showing them respect. People’s self-consciousness flow in the direction of what happens in the past, the capture and destruction of existing memories by history has received revelation, like the ancestral bond of identity had been dismantled and occurrences ending as if the experience was self-evident. In the book, “The Long Song” (2010), the essay is trying to reveal the part played by neo-slaves narratives in coming up with and bringing a significant change in history. This is done to close the gap of time by enabling the audience to visualize the past in terms of the present events. The genre has been written in the post-abolition era to assert the meaning of historical value of the story about slavery and restore the conscience of slaves as being human beings like anybody else. In this case, history is never used to judge slaves’ rights. The slaves living in Jamaica had a hard experience in the sugar plantations where they worked as slaves. The sugar plantation owner was aware that the slaves were human beings like any other and needed time to work on their own firms and earn a living (Southgate, 2004). However, he fights them in a rebellion and brings them back to the firm because they are meant to be slaves. The plantation owner looks loyal to his ancestors and continues subjecting the Caribbean to slavery more than upholding the integrity of a human being. It becomes even more painful that he is aware that the slaves require a source of livelihood. History should not be confused with nostalgia. It is not intended to revere the dead, not to continue molesting the living, but should be a source of encouragement to the living. “The Long Song “quotes, “Laugh as much as you breathe and love as long as you live”. The people living in the present should learn from the mistakes done by the people who lived in the past. Time and history are the secret of who we are today. We should be ready to let the past go. On the other hand it is good to honor it, lament if necessary and celebrate if it. However, it is wrong to use history to torment others. In “The Long Song” by Andrea Levy, the story is based in Jamaica .The story is a memory of Miss July. She happened to have been born in the world of slavery on the Amity plantation. July narrates the painful experience she had in the horrible land as a slave. However, I can say July is wise enough to be able to point out the horrifying history. A person who has no sense of the past events is a stranger to the human environment (Southgate, 2011). Human beings are more of inheritors of the past than being creatures of nature. Miss July recognized her identity with the times she used to go through later to be the history she narrates. Not knowing our history is like not knowing who we are. Miss July clearly identifies herself as a Jamaican slave (Sesay 2004, pp.203). Every second that passes records the kind of identity that we associate with. Anything that we do at every moment creates our history. All the actions we take add up to who we are. Our history has a good explanation of our origin. The book, “The Long Song” tends to justifies the Jamaicans and their natives from other countries in terms of race, gender and family. The times they spent together in slavery marks their roots. The memories of the time they had in slavery keep lingering in their minds. Each time they remember it, they feel the pain. Andrea Levy, the writer of “The Long Song”, bases the events of the book to her heritage. The story is centralized in Jamaica in the 1830s at the time when slavery was ending. The writer exacts her anger on the white who were the source of the rebellion and torture of the slaves. We realize that whatever we know about our birth we get them what happened in the past. Our history is the beginning of ourselves and therefore incorporates the history into our memory. We notice that we begin the current story of ourselves using what we know as second hand (Stroud 2006, pp185). Therefore, our history defines who we are today. Every second we spend defines our status tomorrow, stick to our memory and becomes our history. The narrator feels the pain that she actually never experienced, takes history into her memory of the events she actually never went through. This tells us that the history of our roots could have the same chances of happening to us too. Our history is just a story of us had we been born earlier, it is not a story of strangers or a story of people from another land. It was during a conference in London when the topic being discussed was legacy of slavery that the author of the book found the idea to write the book in memory of their ancestor’s slavery. The inspiration to write the book started when a woman, so confident of her Jamaican roots, stood to ask about the time when her ancestors were subjected to slavery. The writer of “The Long Song” says she got surprised that somebody could be bold enough to speak publicly about her slave ancestry (Eberstadt, 2010). The history revoked her memory and she felt inspired to write the book about Caribbean slavery in Jamaica. The slavery experience was so horrible. The contents of history as it happened can never be changed. History is just an event happening only differing between the time it is being told and the time of its occurrence. The turbulent experience in the Jamaican sugar plantation during their slavery remains in the history of Jamaicans. It does not matter how much time passes. The story will be exactly as painful as it was in the 1830s.It is a story narrated by a Jamaican woman called July. She writes the story according to her memory while she was a slave at Amity plantation. It is bitter to hear the story of how July came forth to the world of shame (Lee 2012, pp.123). However, she just had to accept it, because history had made it and she could not change history. Truth in history should allow for editing. July had to accept with the fact that she was conceived after a Scottish who was an overseer in the sugar plantation raped her mother. The overseer’s name was and July’s mother’s name was Kitty. She had to accept the state of the fact even though it was painful. You will realize that the most stinging reality of history never fades from one’s mind. The truth about July’s birth seems to be in the forefront of her memory. Such a painful incident is so difficult to forget, you try to forget it but continue to hang around. The memory keeps reality from you or even hides reality from you and summons reality for you to remember. A painful memory possesses you rather than you possessing it.July have to recall the history of her people but the price is to bring sorrow to her. People’s memories whether sweet or painful are the propellants that keep people moving whether they attach some importance to one’s life or not. One remembers sweet memories and feels encouraged to move to the next level. On the other hand one recalls painful experiences reorganizes and looks for a consolation to be able to move forward (Stroud 2006, pp.146). Time passes but history remains in our memories as exact as it happened. The title of the book, “The Long Song” emphasizes on time. It talks about the life experience of slavery that the Jamaicans were subjected to. The slaves for a long time yearned to be given freedom. The title suggests that it took the Jamaican’s along period to get to the comfort they wanted. The writer tries to address the audience directly. She convinces the readers that in the past, information never used to diffuse as fast as it does today and encourages us to research other narrations of what happened during that time (Southgate, 2004). The history about slavery used to be neglected because the Africans had forgotten their life in slavery when they were fighting for their rights in native lands. The slave narrative tries to reset the retaliatory move adopted in the plantation. History is a product of memory through time. It makes one appreciate time taken by one to get transformed to something better than what one was. The Jamaican gets to appreciate the days gone that has brought forth their current existence. They can now talk of the days long when they were in slavery. Time evolution has given them an opportunity to transform their painful past into an enjoyable present mathematically converting the past into memories that become mere history (Sesay 2004, pp.315). Time difference can reduce the intensity of a feeling of a painful incident. Life becomes interesting when one can identify with a successful historic state through memories to recognize the fact that they are in the land of other people’s historical achievement and take to their footsteps, for example, in terms of practicing culture. Imagine an event of the past being shown on television (Ricoeur 2009, pp.178). The audience is made to understand that the people who were living in the past are just like them. July tries to connect the past and the present. This is to show that our history is just a memory of the present separated by time difference. Levy let July be the narrator of her own story moving from third person to first person. This gives the reader time to reflect what the story says. In the book, “The Long Song”, July rises up and becomes the mediator between Robert Godwin, the new plantation owner, and the freed slaves who are yearning for better terms of working (Eberstadt, 2010). July becomes the center of the story when she plays an important role to both the authority and the slaves. She is now a proud woman when the matter of time leads to her uplift especially after living with the plantation owner. She becomes a source of salvation to her community. “Just give it time”, it is true that time holds the future, judges one fairly or even unfairly to create history. . The story shows the need for instilling pride in young people about their history instead of feeling shame. Levy wonders how the woman was confident enough to be proud of her slavery history. It sounds shameful to have such a kind of memory about ones origin. But the time difference in between is able to make it understandable. Time enables one to heal on the painful occurrence so that the history just resides between the world of unreality and reality, to be only painful when revoked (Bevernage 2012, pp.124). Levy phrases the question in her own way when she speaks at her own status of discomfort. This comes when his thought at first is to change the story of shame and oppression to a story of pride so as not to revoke the painful memories though the past is permanent and cannot be changed but affected by how you tell the story. She puts the story in a metafictional state to avoid infliction. July is a single narrator in the story (Eberstadt, 2010). This shows that the story is the memory. The reader gets to feel the intensity of the pain in slavery. It makes the reader believe that the narrator actually suffered. The long song tends to be a kind of narrative that imparts pride in readers. At the conference, Levy wonders how confident the woman was to ask about their slave ancestry. She suggests that the woman could have felt “any ambivalence or shame” in mentioning slave ancestors. She necessitates the possibility of how a writer can convince the audience to appreciate their past. The long song puts emphasis on individual and communal memory. The tense used interplays between past and present in order to bring the bridge the time gap. Metafication in the story is achieved to admit reality and accept that understanding of reality starts with re-imagination of the language. Memory in life seems to be in basic opposition with history rather than being synonymous. It has to come to realization that memory is life, not borrowed from somewhere else but borne by the living society. The difference can be that the characters in history have got a present which is our past. Memory tends to be a permanent evolution subject to being remembered and or forgotten. Memory can be posed to deformation and being manipulated to fit the interests of various parties. Anybody can tell the memory in one’s own way (Grant, 2011). History is just a reconstruction of an incomplete situation of what does not belong to the audience. We notice that memory continues to be the actual act and ties us to believe that all the past are more or less the same as the present while history is a mere representation of the past. At the end of the story the narrator’s voice drops shifting from the mule to the hardships of Jamaica. The story, the Long Song is characterized by beginnings and ends. This is seen in the rebellion, which starts with the slaves aggressive to fight for their rights but end up being taken back to the plantation. July who gets born in a shameful manner ends up working at the plantation owner’s home and later becomes the mediator between the slaves and the plantation owner (Southgate, 2011). This shows how the memories of the suffering slaves made them strive for comfort and actually got the freedom they wanted. In the book, “Wish You Were Here”, by Graham Swift, Jack is entangled in a series of thoughts of painful memory. The title of the book is figurative in that, Jack wishes that his brother was there with him. Jack Luxton recalls how they had to shoot their cows, which had been affected by mad cow disease. He recalls the death of his father, Michael Luxton and the bombing of New York buildings (Erasmo, 2012). Now his younger brother who had fled from home has been killed while fighting in a war in Iraq. The world turns around Jack at its own pace revoking painful memories and worsening the current moments, which are yet to join the heart-braking history. The memories present the love Jack had for Tom and how he felt lonely when Tom ran off to go and join the army. Jack had to endure the torture of life when the army informs him to go and collect his brother’s body (Erasmo, 2012). I would say that memory and history worsen the present time. In as much as we put events in our head we might want to either think or forget them. Graham uses the skill of delay to furnish the story. However, an impatient reader cannot enjoy the story. It requires someone who is not quick reader but someone looking for being driven to get facts out of the story. The reader is not able to have earlier clues of what happens later in the story. The suspense created makes the reader be curious to know more about the story. Swift also does an interplay of the past and the present when Jack recalls the moments they had together with his brother. This feature brings out the reality of the death of Tom when he is being revealed as an important figure to Jack. Therefore, we do not feel emotions of the present but we induce and feel them using the emotions of the past. We cannot actually prove that Jack sincerely felt the death of his brother as being painful. We discover the situation he goes through when he resorts to his memory and recalls the moments they had together with Tom and all the sorrows around him including the death of his father and the bombing of New York, which is not related to the death of Tom. Memory plays a part in current feelings and actions. Supposedly, the bombing of the New York is the source of the war in Iraq. He compares himself with Tom, he says he is, “a sticker, a settler” and Tom on the other hand is, “a move-on, a leaver-behind”. The memories make Jack criticize his brother’s decision to move away from home (Markovits, 2011). What we refer to as memory in a given moment is not really memory but history. Someone going through memory just looks for history. As Graham puts it, “Such a simple thing, but like moving the hills”. Moments happen whether simple or serious; they proceed to the next level of being history even if they continue to trouble us. Jack undertakes the crucial journey to collect his brother’s body, however, the memories into his secret intrude and he ends up getting troubled with memories and the times they spent together with his brother. He is best described in the statement, “just hung there, Jack Luxtone, like some big baby being dandled”. The memories take control of him (Erasmo, 2012). The work of remembering makes everyone his own historian. Time comes and goes. Happy and sad moments both travel the same way. They descend to seek residence in our memory (Levy 2010, pp.345). However, all that memory pays us is inducing the existing grief. Just as Pittacus Lore puts it, “The price of memory, is the sorrow it brings”. Time, memory and history go hand in hand. Memory travels through a time difference to deduce information from history. Memory is therefore the history that we can remember. Wish You Were Here have a common feature with The Long Song in their dependence of the past to predict what happens in the present. In the Long Song, July recalls the life in slavery while in Wish You Were Here, Jack recalls the moments he shared with his brother. In both stories, the main characters take part in narration. The effect of Jack narrating the story makes the reader understand the intimacy between him and Tom. I think the evils that befall the family are due to lack of unity in the family. For instance they could worked a way out to avert the cow disease if they were together.The theme of lack of family agreement is clearly depicted. Bibliography Bevernage, B 2012, History, Memory and State-Sponsored Violence: Time and justice, Routledge, New York. Eberstadt, F 2010, When Jamaica Lost Its Chains, Sunday Book review, The New York Times, viewed 26 April 2013, . Erasmo, S 2012, An Island of One, Wish You Were Here, by Graham Swift, Sunday Book Review, The New York Times, viewed 26 April 2013, . Grant, L 2011, Wish You Were Here, Fiction, Financial Times viewed 26 April 2013, . Howes, B 2007, Human Memory: Structures and Images, SAGE publications, New York. Lee, C 2012, Violating Time, History, Memory and Nostalgia in Cinema, Bloomsbury, Florida. Literarycornercafe.blogspot.com 2011, Book Review-The long Song by Andrea Levy, Literary Corner Cafe, viewed 26 April 2013, . Litlifela.com, Swiftian sadness, Counter Balance, viewed 26 April 2013, . Markovits, B 2011, Wish You Were Here by Graham swift-review, The Guardian, viewed 26 April 2013 . Morrison 2003, Contemporary fiction: History and post histories, Routledge, London. Ricoeur, P 2009, Memory, History, Forgetting, University of Chicago Press, New York. Sesay, K G 2004, Transformation within the Black British novel, black British Writing, Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Southgate, M 2011, Book Review: The Long Song by Andrea Levy, BC Books, viewed 26 April 2013, . Stroud, G 2006, A History of Time and Memory in Urban Russia, University of Illinois, New York. Zerubavel, E 2004, Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past, University of Chicago Press, New York. Levy, D & Shnainder N 2010, Human Rights and Memory, Penn State Press, London. Read More