2.2.hwang

Language and Landscape: Conflict in Chinua Achebe's Anthillsof the Savannah

Paoi Hwang

Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas, Volume2, Number 2, June 2004, pp. 161-174 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/pan.0.0067

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Language and Landscape: Conflict in Chinua Achebe'sAnthills of the Savannah

Paoi HwangNational Taiwan University

This paper will discuss Anthills of the Savannah, which, incidentally,has the most pictorial title of all Chinua Achebe's novels, focusing onthe relationship between language and the environment staged in thisnarrative and, in particular, on the very English concept of picturesquelandscapes.1 I shall attempt to trace the trajectory of the picturesqueand landscape painting within the English language and address theproblems that arise as a result of its subsequent export to the Britishcolonies. Two basic questions underlie the argument. If Achebe believesthat the English language can be a useful tool for the African writerto reclaim his ancestral heritage, does he also believe that it can loseenough of its cultural past to be made suitable for the Africanenvironment? And does Anthills of the Savannah, his most recent noveland one in which many themes from his other works converge, conveya successful mastery and subjugation of the English language?

The English-language postcolonial writers seem to have inheriteda certain pictorial rhetoric from their past. One of the main reasons forthis is the imperial fascination with landscape. W. J. T. Mitchell hasnoted that landscape conceptualization first flourished in China at theheight of its imperial power; England's fascination with it likewisebegan when it experienced imperial success (Mitchell 1994: 9). But,the start of Western landscape awareness has always been attributedto the Dutch, whose mid-seventeenth-century transformation from arebellious colony to a maritime empire happened to coincide with itsexport of landscape painting. In the eighteenth century the idea, meaning,

1 Chinua Achebe's well known views on the use of English by African writers arepremised on the belief that in a postcolonial context no language can remain a "colonial"language; see Achebe 1975: 15, 30-32, and 52.

Partial Answers 2/2 (2004)

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and usage of the word "landscape" underwent a very interesting change.According to John Barrell, landscape began as a painter's word thatwas initially used to describe "a pictorial representation of thecountryside," either as subject of a picture or background of a portrait.Later, however, the word was used more broadly to mean a piece ofcountryside, a visual phenomenon. In fact,

[t]here is no word in English which denotes a tract of land, ofwhatever extent, which is apprehended visually but not, necessarily,pictorially. The nearest is probably "terrain," but in practice theuses to which this word can be put are very limited. . . .The wordwe do use, of course, is "landscape": we can speak of the "land-scape" of a county, but in doing so we introduce, whether we wantto or not, notions of value and form which relate, not just toseeing the land, but to seeing it in a certain way - pictorially. (1)

The marriage of landscape aesthetics to the English language was agradual and complex process. The eighteenth-century English interestin landscape and landscape-art manifested itself in many differentforms such as painting, gardening, and literature, and increased travelwas seen as a reason for its widespread popularity. However, a possiblymore significant factor was that it was perceived as a practice of thecultivated.

According to Barrell, to display "a correct taste in landscape wasa valuable social accomplishment," hence the principles behind it were"learned so thoroughly that in the latter eighteenth-century it becameimpossible for anyone with an aesthetic interest in landscape to lookat the countryside without applying them, whether he knew he wasdoing so or not" (5,6). These artistic principles, which will be discussedin detail later, led to the creation of a vocabulary that reflected adisturbing interchangeability between aesthetic values and social orclass norms. The desirability of acquiring an eye for landscapes wascompounded by the social connotations of taste, and landscape termsbecame assimilated into political and social metaphors:

"viewpoint" or "point of view" is an intellectual term, one has"elevated" thoughts by being in an "elevated" position, one'slife gains "perspective" as well as the landscape (painted or real),one should accept one's "walk" of life, one ought not to haveideas above one's "station," one's life has "landmarks" if one

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"surveys" it properly, and to "command" bright "prospects" ismore than just having mental snapshots of the view, or "panorama,"from an "eminence," preferably from a "seat" (garden seat orfamily seat). (Brownlow 1983: 22)

The process by which the English society and language achieved theirunique vocabulary of picturesque appraisal was a popular topic fordebate in the eighteenth century. The names of Joseph Addison, EdmundBurke, William Gilpin, and Uvedale Price have been linked to theformation of this particularly English aesthetic experience. The argumentfor the picturesque has been inextricably linked with theories of thebeautiful and the sublime:

Since sublimity and picturesqueness are usually defined bydistinction from beauty and from one another, and since theprinciples, bases, and functions of these distinctions are ordinarilydifferent in different writers, no adequate and accurate accountof any one such character divorced from all others is possible.(Hippie 1957: 3)

However, while beauty can be seen to belong to a general discourseon the pleasing effects of nature on the human eye, the sublime as aconcept goes back to Longinus and to earlier Greek roots. Althoughthe five sources of sublime that Longinus lists in "On the Sublime"2pertain to literature and rhetorical expressions, the experience of thesublime also has moral aspects: "For the true sublime, by some virtueof its nature, elevates us: uplifted with a sense of proud possession,we are filled with joyful pride, as if we had ourselves produced thevery thing we heard" (Longinus 1965: 139). By the time the notion ofthe sublime was treated by Edmund Burke, it came to be seen asarising from ideas of pain, danger or terror (1990: 36). In a sense thesublime came to mean the failure of the imagination or a loss forwords to describe a visual experience that would result in feelings of

2 The five elements of the sublime are: the command of full-blooded ideas, inspirationof vehement emotion, use of figures of thought and figures of speech, nobility of phrase,and the creation of a general effect of dignity and elevation (141). Longinus tended touse the words "beauty" and "the sublime" interchangeably: the great style is both beautifuland sublime, and these qualities please "all people at all times" (1965: 137, 155, 139).Edmund Burke (1990: 1) notes that it is this lack of distinction in Longinus's discoursethat his own enquiry seeks to address.

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both awe and anxiety. This explains two topoi that are reflected in thelanguage used to describe Africa: sensations of elevation and feelingsof indescribable anxiety.

In The Road to Botany Bay, Paul Carter notes that the first toolneeded to conquer a land is a rhetorical one, and the process of associationthat is part of language is a form of possessing the land. The sendingof travel writers to the colonies was the imperial nation's way ofvicariously claiming the land, since the successful replicating of a"new" land in the imperial language implied that some form of controlhad been exerted, because each rendition carried some familiar signsthat were indicative of the artist's own cultural interpretation. Withthe British Empire massively expanding in the eighteenth century, thepicturesque functioned especially well as a means of cultural self-definition, for not only was it useful in marking foreign territories butit also counteracted classical Greek and Roman art at home, ideal artthat still poses as a strong factor in the English identity (Andrews 11).The picturesque style was perfected to represent the English landscape,and this style was slowly transferred to the colonies. As the picturesquedeveloped and acquired a marked English vernacular flavor, travelingartists disseminated its principles and settlers set out to recreate thecolonies in the image of home. As Carter concludes, "explorationcivilized [a] country by translating it into English" for "whatever itsmotive, to place the Aborigine in possession of English was simplyto possess him, to help him forget he was ever at home" (63).

The special treatment accorded to the African environment in Englishcolonial writing is brilliantly analyzed in J. M. Coetzee's White Writing.Coetzee notes that English poets and painters who attempted to depictthe South African landscape often failed to produce convincing resultssimply because they could not find the greenery and the wet surfacesthat they were accustomed to representing. Consequently, because theartists "fail to compel the veld to yield up its essence, they are predictablyfollowed by a reaction in which the veld is condemned as unresponsiveto language . . . inscrutable and indifferent" (1988: 164-65). Thetreatment of the African landscape followed two main methods: eitherthe landscape was manipulated to make it conform to English perceptions,for example by adding an occasional picturesque element and mouldingit in familiar iambic-tetrameter couplets, or it was more convenientlyignored and overlooked. The anxiety that stemmed from the Englishwriter's failure to apply his language to the landscape also meant a

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devaluing of the African setting as primitive and beyond civilization.According to Coetzee, the main reason that the African landscapenever appealed to the English as sublime was because in European artthe sublime is more often associated with the vertical rather than the

horizontal, with mountains rather than plains, and with heights anddepth in contrast to expanses.

Although Coetzee's interest in the mechanics and motives of usingthe English language in South Africa mirrors Carter's in Australia, hiswork puts the argument in a different light. Like Ngugi and Achebe,who are "natives" of the land, Coetzee questions the presence of aforeign landscape perception and the significance of having the Englishlanguage in South Africa. He is just as caught up in the search for alanguage that will fit Africa and be authentically African. However,his view of what is happening in South Africa serves as a warning ofthe possible failure of such an enterprise. For the South African writer,the refutation of European languages entails a search for a more "au-thentic" language - one that excludes even the languages "indigenous"to Africa because "their authenticity is not necessarily the right authen-ticity" but is "a natural or Adamic language, one in which Africa willnaturally express itself, that is to say, a language in which there is nosplit between signifier and signified, and things are their names" (3).This desire in South African writing to find, or even to create, a languagethat is new and free of cultural baggage is largely responsible for whatCoetzee regards as the "literature of empty landscapes" or the "literatureof failure."

The prevention of such a catastrophe can be found through an earlyrealization that "the true South African landscape is of rock, not offoliage; and therefore that the South African artist must employ ageological, and not a botanical gaze," writes Coetzee, and it can beseen that "the rocky interior thus has a living heart, revealed only tothe closely attentive observer, the lone walker of the wilds" (168). Theflaw in this argument is that the "attentive observer" only seeks whathe wants to see, and therefore what he finds beneath the "unpromising"African landscape are still the old signs of life: water, the African vio-let and the aloe vera. If three questions are asked about the whitewriting of Africa - "Can the African landscape be articulated in English?Does the land speak a universal language? Can the European be at homein Africa?" - three more can be asked about English writing by Africanwriters: How can a European language serve the African landscape?

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Is it possible for the African writer to really convey the feelings of being"at home" in a foreign language? In what way does this matter?

Since English reached the colonies with the purpose of transformingthe native people, their culture and their landscape, it is not easy forAchebe, who has chosen to adopt this language, to argue for it instrictly neutral terms. In addition, if the colonized subject was eitherdistorted or dismissed from early English representations, it is not asimple task for a writer emerging from this void to claim his duethrough the very same medium.

Simon Gikandi regards Achebe as the first writer to bring up thelinguistic and historical problems that the colonial situation has createdspecifically for the African writer who has adopted English. Achebe'sworks act as a direct and conscious challenge to the colonial languageby exposing its previous agenda to reproduce the colonial ideology;they are a new oppositional discourse that counters what Edward Saidhas termed the "permanence of vision" (Gikandi 1991: 4). Achebe'suse of narrative to counter the fixed colonial vision allows him toreread the world - to look at every thing twice - and articulate a newspace for the African writer. Yet how does Achebe propose to evadecultural impediments such as the picturesque rhetoric that comes withusing the English language?

The picturesque evaluation system may provide a clue to Achebe'smethod. Basically this system stands on the categories of variety, contrast,and unity. All three measurements are taken from a vantage point, ora commanding center, from which a central theme can be located (seeNevius9,13).3 An artist of the picturesque, whether drawing a landscapeor describing a group of people, has to be able to dissect the scene,pit its elements against each other, and relate the general effects to atradition or taste. In turn, the ability to make associations, to relate thegeneral effect of the picture to a genre or a tradition, will determinewhether the viewer is a man of taste. The process of commanding ascene from a vantage point and conferring on it a high aesthetic statusthrough associations was meant to elevate the status of the perceiver.Hence, for many, the postcolonial contest became a fight for the bird'seye perch rather than the overthrowing of such an imperialist gaze.

3 The picturesque has always been likened to a predatory stance, a strategic viewingand framing of landscapes, with only the viewer being unviewable (Mitchell 16). InElleke Boehmer's terms, this commanding perspective also amounts to the "colonialgaze," the "bird's eye" view, and the "voyeur" position (67).

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Achebe states that the Ibo language and traditions translate intoEnglish writing by imagery and metaphors (see Searle 1997: 155-64).4 Hence the title, Anthills of the Savannah, alludes to the novel'srendering of an African reality in the English language. The imageryis at once African and brown, as Achebe explains:

Generally the grasslands tend to be burnt down during the dryseason, before the next rains. Everything is burnt down and theonly things that cannot be burnt are these structures of earthmade by termites. ... So the people say these are the remnants,these are the survivors. When the rains come, the new grasseswill grow - there's no problem there - but will they have amemory? There's no way they can know about the fire of lastyear because they were not there and they're likely to think thatthe world began with them, that the world is always green. Sothey need these experienced structures of indestructible earththat are standing in their midst and are very soon to be dwarfed,in fact, by the grass, which soon grows taller than they, butwhich are there as a memory: they know, they remember, andthey will be there again when there is another fire and all thepresent grass is burnt. (Wilkinson 141-54, 148)

Achebe uses anthills as a metaphor for human society, but the savannahindicates that this is a society located in Africa. The title also introducesthe themes of endurance and regeneration. While the brown anthillsare permanent structures in the African landscape, capable of survivingfire to live and tell their tale, the green grass is short-lived and memory-less: it appears with the rain, and at one point grows taller than thebrown anthills, but is fated to die when there is a fire.

It is thus clear from the very beginning that Achebe views greenand brown landscapes as representing two different cultural forces.This is evident when he deliberately places verdant landscapes nextto the more traditional brown ones. The resulting conflict of landscapessignifies the difficulties of merging the concepts of one (the Englishlanguage) with the reality of the other (African landscape). Although

4 "There is a way in which the vigour of one language, its imagery and metaphors,can be transferred across. And there is a certain irreducibility in human language anyway,which is what makes translation possible, even though we are not always satisfied withthe result and we keep striving" (Searle 163).

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the picturesque is revealed as an everyday phenomenon for some ofthe characters who aspire to the western lifestyle, the green landscapethat they seek to create contrasts dramatically with the more traditionalAfrican villages and their traditional ways of life. Greenery and water,denoting modernization, development, and higher standards of living,are seen to displace the dusty brown savannah and redefine it as backwater.Ironically, whilst the people of Abazón are suffering from severe drought,the presidential palace flaunts an artificial lake that could have suppliednumberless districts with water. This taunting difference is meant toaccentuate the growing dependence on water. Hence one of the moreperceptive characters, Ikem Osodi, whose role as editor of the NationalGazette mirrors Achebe's own experience as an editor, questions whetherthe water shortage was due to disturbed climatic factors, or whetherthe people had forgotten how to adapt and grown dependent on aplentiful supply. Ikem argues that men used to know ways of gettingby during droughts: "good land was more plentiful than good water,I and people were able to relieve] their burning thirst with the juicesof banana stems in the worst years of dry weather" (Achebe 1988:103). But, now the drought seems so severe that, unless something isdone, death is sure to ensue.

In the arid climate of Nigeria, the maintenance of large areas ofyear-round greenery would mean an enormous consumption of waterthat would undoubtedly affect supplies throughout the country. However,the landscape that is associated with the elite is always green:

The low hibiscus hedge outside the window and its many brilliantred bells stood still and unruffled. Beyond the hedge the courtyardwith its concrete slabs and neatly manicured bahama grass. . . .Beyond the courtyard another stretch of the green and red hedgestood guard against the one-story east wing of the PresidentialPalace. Over and beyond the roof the tops of palm-trees at thewaterfront swayed with the same lazy ease they displayed togentle ocean winds. (9)

The hibiscus is not a plant commonly found in dry climates, noris the bahama grass. Each is there to produce a picturesque quality.The green colors, the waterfront, and the ocean breeze also promotethe picturesque effect. Clearly, the Presidential Palace is enjoyingsomething that is alien to the land because it has to be enclosed byhedges that stand guard - against what? The above description also

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follows a traditional picturesque stratification. It consists of a hibiscushedge in the foreground, with the palace as a main subject in themiddle, and finally the waterfront with the swaying trees fading intothe background. In this picture-perfect imitation of a presumably Englishscene, the cultured atmosphere displaces the native heat and presentsthe chanting village people as the alien elements in the landscape. Notonly do the picturesque qualities alienate the African characteristics,but the very framework in which it is placed further suggests that thisis not an African gaze.

It is significant that this picturesque view is only enjoyed by theelite of Kangan. The president, Sam, and Beatrice, the protagonist andthe only narrator to survive at the end of the novel, are not only oftenassociated with green but also frequently appear in scenes that arestratified according to picturesque principles. The house that Sam livesin is typically picturesque:

The great shimmering expanse of the artificial lake waters stretchingeastwards into the advancing darkness on your left and the brightlylit avenue taking you slowly skywards in gigantic circles roundand up the hill on the top of which the Presidential Retreat percheslike a lighthouse, was a movingly beautiful experience. (73)

Similarly, Beatrice is often depicted standing on the balcony "amongher potted plants," taking in "deep lungfuls of luxuriously cool, freshmorning air" and watching "the streaks of light brightening slowly theeastern sky" (108). The two passages have a number of structuralfeatures in common. The presidential retreat "perches" on top of a hill,"like a lighthouse" or a focal point, commanding a view of the lakethat suggestively recedes into the horizon. Beatrice's balcony alsoaffords an elevated view of, for instance, the two pine trees "standingguard in the driveway" as the light brightens in the east. Each of thecharacters is guarded by symbols of the picturesque, i.e. birds andhedges: each is an alien in the African landscape and thus requiresprotection from imminent intruders. Both passages deal with locationsthat have been chosen for their heightened picturesque visibility.

Although Sam and Beatrice share the same interest in the picturesque,their relationship with it is very different. Beatrice's association withthe picturesque is presented as more acceptable: she is excused ashaving been brought up "in a world apart"; however it is also due toher awareness of this difference that she is conscious of her preferences.

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When she is described in picturesque settings, or even when she isseen making salads and sherry trifles, there is an awkward air aroundher as if something did not belong (115). Hence Ikem and Beatrice'sboyfriend Chris both notice the market woman or village priestess inher, and at one point she herself agrees to "a vague sense ... of beingtwo different people" (105). From the very beginning Beatrice questionsher Anglicization, and this is what finally leads her to embrace peoplelike the illiterate Elewa and her servant Agatha. Beatrice's Englisheducation and English ways actually serve to remind her of who sheis, and at the end of the novel she makes a visible effort to reclaim theAfrican part of herself. By contrast, Sam loses touch with his Africanculture, and his indulgence in the western lifestyle leads to his tragicdeath and the suffering of his people. Throughout the novel, Sam triesto occupy an elevated position and wants nothing to do with the villagepeople of Abazón. He surrounds himself with artificial lakes and importedplants but does not realize that this is a perpetration of the coloniallegacy that is detrimental to both his image and his well-being.

When Ikem is executed under Sam's orders, Chris tries to escapethe same fate by escaping to the country. It is Ikem's belief in theAfrican ways that leads to his premature death, since it directly contradictsSam's more westernized ideals. As Chris travels towards salvation (helikens his journey to a pilgrimage), he recalls how Ikem loved thesavannah and its brown landscapes. He notes in painterly terms howthe "thickly-laid" green forests of the South yielded grudgingly toopen parklands of "thin black paint applied with niggardly strokes of[a] brush" (205). And, on one occasion, he even goes so far as tosuggest that the green landscape is absurd: "this wide expanse of grass-covered landscape with its plains and valleys and hills dotted aroundwith small picture-book trees of every imaginable tree-shape and everyshade of green . . . was taking on the colors and contours of a picnic"(206). The landscape at this point of his journey contains many picturesquequalities, and having this type of scenery interrupt our protagonist'sride to freedom into the brown land of his ancestors is rather disorientating.On the one hand, if Chris pictures his escape/pilgrimage as a picnic,his death in the middle of nowhere is intended to be absurd, and histraveling companion's hearing his dying words as "the last grin" iscryptically apt. But, on the other hand, if Chris' last utterance is meantto echo Kurtz's "The horror!" in Heart of Darkness (Conrad 1963:71 ), then we may infer that, like Kurtz, he has truly begun to understand

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the devastation wrought by colonialism on leaving the alienating forests.He realizes only too late that the differences between the South andthe North constitute the story of two countries. It is significant that,shortly before his death, he remembers that it was the British who hadmarked the provincial boundaries of Nigeria, dividing the land bystressing its discrepancies in order to facilitate their rule. The choiceof Bassa as a capital city was also made by the British; that it wassituated in a less arid area served to demarcate the western/modern

lifestyle from that lived by the traditional African people.Beatrice interprets Chris' dying remark as "the last green" - an

unfinished sentence referring to the "green bottles" in the nurseryrhyme sung by children learning to count ("One green bottle hangingon the wall. /And if one green bottle should accidentally fall / There'llbe no green bottles hanging on the wall"). However, it is not clearwhether he was pointing to the inevitable tragedy of green bottlesfalling off the wall or hinting at government as child's play. Nor is itcertain whether the bottles are "green" for the rhyme or for any otherreason. While Chris regarded himself, Ikem, and Sam as the hypogram,he also believed that they were the tripod supporting the Nigeriangovernment. Beatrice explains that:

Chris was only just beginning to understand the lesson of thatbitter joke. The bottles are up there on the wall hanging by ahair's breadth, yet looking down so pompously on the world.Chris was sending us a message to beware. This world belongsto the people of the world not to any little caucus, no matter howtalented. (232)

She indicates that Chris had wanted to tell his people that they can,will, and should rule themselves. Any ruler, especially if he is pompous,will only rule precariously. The inevitable fall of the "green bottles"serves as a warning for those who have never tried to get in touch withthe common people, but instead have looked down pompously uponthem. That Beatrice interprets "the last green" as Chris's epiphany oftyrannical rule is correct, but the utterance also works as an announcementthat it is the last time that the color green will be allowed to reign overthe African landscape.

The picturesque is by no means the only deterrent that Achebefaces in his use of English, but it is one of the most important andinsidiously influential aspects of the cultural heritage behind the language.

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For that matter, it has always played a significant part in colonialnarratives, not because it suited the conditions, but because it was anEnglish tradition. Anthills of the Savannah is a novel that sets out tochallenge this aspect of the English discourse. It suggests that Englishcultural traditions are just as important for our understanding of theEnglish language as are the efforts to adjust the language to a newculture for a new purpose. Elewa's uncle embodies this idea in that herepresents the common people and the African heritage that is acceptedand embraced at the end of the novel. He is proud that he has neverentered a white man's house, yet when he visits his niece in one, healso says that he hopes it will not be his last. This is not to imply thathe enjoys being in a white man's house, but rather that the people wholive in such houses should not reject his kind. This example can beexpanded to mean that the African landscape is sometimes green, butit is richer because it also turns brown with the seasons. Greenery andclues to water are not just hidden or buried underneath a brown geologicalsurface: greenery is temporary and water is not always present tosustain one way of life. Like in any other place on earth, the seasonschange, the landscapes change, and the African people have alwaysbeen sufficiently adaptable to make the best of what is theirs - that isuntil the belief that green is better was introduced. Consequently, inan effort to acquire the constant green outlook that did not come naturallyto Africa, those who could afford it squandered what resources therev/ere and made life unbearable for the rest of the people. We are theones who impose a meaning on the land and use the language that wechoose to describe it, and subsequently we are faced with culturalconflicts over whose interpretation is the more appropriate or suitable.

Anthills of the Savannah encourages a wider acceptance of differenceand change. The fact that there are different narrators or "witnesses"suggests that things are to be viewed from different angles, with multipleperspectives: "It is the same story, the story of Africa in the modernworld and our problem with Europe. . . . Africa is the masquerade andyou don't stand in one place to see it, you move around the arena andtake different perspectives" (Searle 156).

The genuine African landscape can, in fact, be coherently articulatedin English. In a rare example of an "un-westernized" description ofthe African landscape given by the village elder of Abazón, we can seethat English translates exceptionally well: "Long before sunrise in theplanting or harvesting season, at that time when sleep binds us with

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a sweetness more than honey itself, the bush-fowl will suddenly startlethe farmer with her scream: o-o-i! o-o-i! o-o-i! in the stillness andchill of the grassland" (123). The African landscape is not just aboutlight or colors, it is about sound and sensations as well. To convey therichness of such a setting involves a careful choosing of words and aconscious departure from the specifically British imagery and metaphor.Under such circumstances, the language becomes useful for conveyingthe true imagery of African landscapes and, conversely, the imageryitself rejuvenates the language by opening it to the possibility of newexpressions. In Achebe's view, Africa's oral tradition may offer alternativeaesthetic experiences for the making of a "new" English. It may containnew methods of perception and presentation that can act as replacementsfor the western picturesque. It might also mean the removal of certainaesthetic associations behind the picturesque, which seem to be a majorcause of alienation for non-native English speakers.5 Or, instead ofassociations, on which the picturesque heavily relies and which callsfor a particular cultural background, comparisons can be used to recruitnew elements for consideration. These two dimensions of languagecan be used to differentiate between a writer who takes the role of apossessor seeking to inscribe the land or a translator merely describingthe land. Achebe uses landscapes as a medium to expose and counteractthe picturesque in English, because it is through landscapes that interactionbetween colonial and native eyes is veiled or revealed. Ultimately theimage of anthills in the savannah stands as the reconciliation of Achebe'scharacters to their lost African heritage, because, despite the constantreference to green landscapes, a brown one lingers on.

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. 1975. Morning Yet on Creation Day. London:Heinemann.

-----. 1988. Anthills of the Savannah. London: Penguin.

5 In Hopes and Impediments Chinua Achebe writes about an African boy who used"winter" instead of the word "harmattan" because he was afraid of being called a bushman.He believes that it is part of his business as writer "to teach that boy there is nothingdisgraceful about the African weather, that the palm tree is a fit subject for poetry"(1990: 44). Clearly, the psychological associations of a word not only prove that puristEnglish seeks to possess but also that it seeks to eradicate what it cannot possess.

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----. 1990. Hopes and Impediments. New York: Doubleday.Andrews, Malcolm. 1989. The Search for the Picturesque. Stanford:

Stanford University Press.Barrell, John. 1972. The Idea of Landscape and the Sense of Place

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Picturesque In Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetic Theory.Carbondale: The Southern Illinois University Press.

Longinus. 1965. "On the Sublime." The Poetics. Trans. W HamiltonFyfe. London: Heinemann, pp. 122-254.

Mitchell, W. J. T 1994. Landscape and Power. Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press.

Nevius, Blake. 1976. Cooper's Landscapes. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o. 1986. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics ofLanguage in African Literature. London: James Currey.

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Searle, Chris. 1997. "Achebe and the Bruised Heart of Africa". InConversations with Chinua Achebe, ed. Berneth Lindsfor. Jackson:University of Mississippi, pp. 155-64.

Wilkinson, Jane. 1997. "Interview with Chinua Achebe." InConversations with Chinua Achebe. Jackson: University ofMississippi, pp. 141-54.