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

Should We Seek Truth in Somà ©Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s Magic? What is most striking about Malidoma Somà ©Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s Of Water and the Spirit is not only his extraordinary account of the Dagara initiation ritual, but the ways in which he uses his experiences to make comments upon Western culture. Because of the way in which he was raised and educated, Somà © clearly dwells upon the border between his native Dagara culture and the vastly differing Western culture. Somà © himself characterizes himself as â€Å"a man of two worlds,† with his lifework being to attempt to explain each to the other. Because of his unique status, Somà © is in the position to make extremely insightful comments about his native culture, his adopted Western culture, and the ties that bond the two together despite their seemingly irreconcilable differences. As much as this story is about Somà ©Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s initiation, it is just as much a commentary on what happens under colonization. To sum up briefly, Somà © seems to be discussing the arrogance and yet the connective void - what he calls the â€Å"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 own the land inhabited by others. A secondary but nonetheless important assumption under colonialism is the belief that the European culture is better, more 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 accompanying rituals, traditions and religions, have been established for millennia, the colonizers maintain a belief that these cultures are backward, i nferior and somehow harmful to their members. It is â€Å"for their own good† that these indigenous peoples are divided like spoils of war amongst colonizing nations, Christianized and forced to abandon their native tongues in favor of the language of the colonizer. Somà © himself is representative of his culture: kidnapped from his indigenous way of life and placed against his will into a Jesuit school where he is cruelly punished for misuse of the French language and force-fed Christianity. The colonizers came equipped with various methods 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.