Prepared by the researcher : LEILA ABOUZEID , ASSIA REDOUANE – Laboratory of Applied Humanities, USMBA, Fez
Democratic Arab Center
Journal of cultural linguistic and artistic studies : Twenty-third Issue – March 2022
A Periodical International Journal published by the “Democratic Arab Center” Germany – Berlin.
Journal of cultural linguistic and artistic studies
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Abstract
This study aims at highlighting the pessimism and negativity in the novella The Year of the Elephant by Laila Abu Zaid, as a case study of post-colonial literature. Although it is claimed that post-colonial literature is an attempt to control the self-representation, this study found that post-colonial literature may, in fact, reproduce most of the main stereotypes produced by the colonial discourse; rather than constructing a new world and overcoming the cultural remnants of the colonial era, it actually recreates a negative and pessimistic discourse that contributes to the deterioration of the situation in society and the consolidation of the image that the other built of it, with its help, until it becomes a reality.
INTRODUCTION
Discourse, in its literal sense, is a mode of organizing knowledge, ideas, or experience that is rooted in language and its concrete contexts. The Foucauldian sense of the term, on the other hand, is more elaborated. Foucault’s “discourse” has the ability to construct the subject rather than simply talk about it; for him, discourse is more than what the traditional definition of the term provides, it is more than simple utterances; because, as he believes, language is never given in itself; “language exists, and, with that language, a collection of signs defined by their contrasting characteristics and their rules of use” (Foucault, 1972, p. 85), for him, “discourse” is more related to statements, it is used abstractly for “the domain of statements”, and concretely as a “count” noun for groups of statements or for the “regulated practice” (the rules) that govern such a group of statements (Fairclough, 2003, p. 124).
Constructive discourse is to spark positive change in the world. Neither the discourse that sows the seeds of disappointment, despair, and hopelessness in life nor the one that emphasizes its weaknesses benefits society. Discourse, as seen above, not only describes its subject but also constructs it. So, as discourse has that much power, it is up to its user to use it to build the world as he dreams of it to be. Hence, instead of internalizing the colonial discourse and unconsciously reproducing it in the form of postcolonial narrative, the last should focus on the positive aspects of society, trying to emphasize, elaborate, and give them value. It should even shed light on the missing desired aspects and present them the way people would seek to make them part of their real world.
As a case study in this paper, Year of the Elephant by Leila Abouzeid depicts a less-than-ideal situation in this regard. In addition to the gloomy atmosphere its lines create, the novella makes it difficult to be proud of Moroccan resistance and struggle against the colonizer as, according to Zahra the protagonist, all that was happening, at the time, is that some opportunists (resistance leaders) were leading some gullible people who believed in their sincerity to find themselves, side by side with the rest of Moroccans, out of the deal “independence” which merely benefited those opportunists.
Each discourse reflects a certain perspective of the world, and the discourse theory allows us to ask and investigate whether the subjectivity of the discourse’s subject is real or fully constructed by the imposition of certain beliefs and representations on it and on the world through the power of that discourse.
- A THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Colonial discourse is a concept introduced by Edward Said, who adopted Foucault’s notion of discourse to describe that system within which the range of practices termed “colonial” came into being (Bill Ashcroft, 2013, p. 50). Said’s intervention is designed to illustrate the manner in which the representation of Europe’s other has been institutionalized since at least the eighteenth century as a feature of its cultural dominance (Ahluwalia, 1999, p. 47). Said’s concept Orientalism, which examined the ways in which colonial discourse operated as an instrument of power, initiated what comes to be known as colonial discourse theory, that theory which, in the 1980s, saw colonial discourse as its field of study (Bill Ashcroft, 2013, p. 51). The theory demonstrates the way in which such discourse obscures the underlying political and material aims of colonization; and points out the deep ambivalence of that discourse as well as the way in which it constructs both colonizing and colonized subjects (Ahluwalia, 1999, p. 15).
Gayatri Spivak, another pillar of the colonial/ postcolonial theory, influenced by her translation of Derrida’s book, Of Grammatology, argues that the structure determining colonial discourses always presuppose a center that ensures a point of origin, meaning, being or presence (Tibile, 2010, p. 65). Thus, she stresses the importance of Derrida’s thought for the critical analysis of the discourse of colonialism, and she describes her project as a deconstructive project, that aims to raise the lid of this desire to turn toward what is not the West, which in her case could very easily be transformed into just wanting to be the ‘true native’ (Spivak, 1990, p. 8) to be able, as she says, to easily construct a sort of ‘pure East’ as a ‘pure universal’ or as a ‘pure institution’ so that she could then define herself as the Easterner, as the marginal or as specific, or as the ‘para-institutionall’. (Spivak, 1990, p. 8)
Spivak is voicing here the will of the colonized eastern to deconstruct that image of the “East” built by westerns to be able to construct another image of “a pure East”, but what we need to think of is, how different than the first image the second one will be in reality? This paper is suggesting an answer anyway.
Postcolonialism, in the other side, is the historical period or state of affairs representing the aftermath of Western colonialism; in fact, historians after the Second World War used to use terms such as the post-colonial state to indicate chronological meaning, designating the post-independence period. However, from the late 1970s, the term has been used by literary critics to discuss the various cultural effects of colonization (Bill Ashcroft, 2013, p. 204). Postcolonialism is also seen as “the continuation of colonialism in the sense that the colonies get freedom only from political rule and there started the complex process of postcolonialism, self-imposed colonialism ” (Sawant, 2015, p. 1), that is why the “post” in the term refers to ‘after colonialism began’ rather than ‘after colonialism ended’ because the cultural struggles between imperial and dominated societies continue into the present (Ahluwalia, 1999, p. 15) even where the colonizer has officially left the country; Said says in this regard that: ” The nations of contemporary Asia, Latin America, and Africa are politically independent but in many ways are as dominated and dependent as they were when ruled directly by European powers” (Said, Culture and Imperialism, 1994, p. 19).
Postcolonial theory investigates and develops propositions about the cultural and political impact of European conquest upon colonized societies, and the nature of those societies’ responses (Ahluwalia, 1999, p. 15). Thus, postcolonial theory- as epistemology, ethics, and politics, – addresses matters of identity, gender, race, racism and ethnicity with the challenges of developing a postcolonial national identity, of how a colonized people’s knowledge about the world is generated under specific relations between the powerful and the powerless, circulated repetitively and finally legitimated in service to certain imperial interests (Sawant, 2015, p. 5). So, we can say that postcolonial theory is concerned with the responses of the colonized: the struggle to control self-representation, through the appropriation of dominant languages, discourses, and forms of narrative; the struggle over representations of place, history, race and ethnicity; and the struggle to present a local reality to a global audience (Ahluwalia, 1999, p. 15).
- ABOUT YEAR OF THE ELEPHANT
The Novella is written by Leila Abouzeid (born 1950), the Moroccan author who writes in Arabic is one of the icons of Moroccan literature. Year of the Elephant was enthusiastically received on its appearance in English by reviewers in journals ranging from the MESA Bulletin to the Village Voice, from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs to World literature today. The 1989 publication then has itself perhaps generated new directions in “cross-cultural literary history (Harlow, 2009). Year of the elephant is the first novel by a Moroccan woman to be translated from Arabic to English; it is also one of the first works by any Moroccan writer to be translated from Arabic into English (Ferna, 2009). Moreover; the novella has contributed both to questions of national liberation struggles and to emergent feminist agendas in the east (Harlow, 2009).
The novella is about the plight Zahra, the protagonist, had to endure during her journey towards Independence, the Independence of her colonized country first, then, her own Independence after her husband disposed of her saying: “Your papers will be sent to you along with whatever the law provides” (Abouzeid, 2009, p. 1).
Shattered, without money, Zahra returned back to the old and only room she had inherited from her family. The woman who had not visited her hometown for years couldn’t cope with the new conditions she found herself within, so she decided to go back to the city to try to reestablish her life again, alone this time, but armed with a strong will and a great faith. She spent the days of this journey remembering everything that belongs to the previous one, her journey, side by side with her husband and her friends towards Morocco’s Independence.
The novella belongs to the postcolonial narrative, it reveals the doubts Moroccan people had about the independence, the disappointment they felt about it and the despair they felt after seeing no positive change occurs in their society after the so-called independence.
Abouzeid illustrates the difficult lives of Moroccan women in post-independent Morocco. She also characterizes educated and religious men and their fragmented and inauthentic identities […] The novella establishes a hierarchy of narrative voices to challenge the patriarchal ideology and to problematize individual and political identities. It constructs a narrative based on women’s struggles, men’s crises of identity and Morocco’s socio-political and religious upheaval (Khannous, 2010). Moreover, the novella reflects the spirit of the 70s-80s; a period of social and economic crises in Morocco.
- PESSIMISM IN THE NOVELLA
Modern colonialism won its great victories not so much through its military and technological prowess as through its ability to create hierarchies incompatible with the traditional order. These hierarchies opened up new vistas for many (Nandy, 1983, p. 9), particularly for those activists who used to lead the resistance. Once the colonizer left, they monopolized positions in different ranks, and started changing their lives and even their principles and adopting a system that perpetuates the same ways, or maybe worse, the colonizer used to use in oppressing their brothers. We can quote here Zahra when talking to her husband saying: “And we are waiting for reform to come from the likes of these! You’re more dangerous than the colonizers”(65). This reality was like a trauma for people who were struggling and waiting for the Independence to feel free and enjoy their rights. Abouzeid expresses this disappointment through Zahra’s voice:
In the beginning of the Resistance, struggle would wash away all spite and malice, Independence would relieve our cares and heal our sores like miracle cures sold in the market, In fact, we loaded Independence down with a burden it could not bear.(78)
This situation of frustration led Moroccans to states of loss and pessimism. This is what Leila embodied in the novella through Zahra’s connection with space and her relationship with other characters. Investigating these manifestations throughout the novella is our concern in this phase of the study.
from the beginning, the reader knows that Zahra has cut what ties her to her hometown very long ago, and without her grandmother’s advice, she would maybe sold her room, the only heritage she got from her parents, she says: “and from my earliest consciousness I remember my grandmother’s constant admonition woman has nothing but her husband and her property, and that husbands cannot be trusted” (15), and also says: “No woman sells her property so tradition dictates. I grew up among such words and deeds”(15). So, it was a matter of tradition that pushed her to keep the room, and the reality proves that what her grandmother said was true. After discovering herself that her ex-husband was not trustworthy, she feels grateful to that advice which led her to keep a roof under which she can rest and recover; however, the humble condition of the room fills her with humility. Now that she has been accustomed to living in cities, her old room seems very low.
As time went by, life in the town became more difficult and Zahra started nagging about everything, the house is “a house that never knows peace”, it gets influenced by the climate, “The gloom of the day casts a sadness over the house and a chill unrelated to the cold weather seeps through it” (27). The house’s condition made her wondering, “Was that written in my destiny as well?” The town, in turn, is “a dying town” it “is trying to fight off death with hope and miracles”(62). Even its streams have dried up. “What happened to this town? They have marginalized it and sentenced it to death, like me”.
Through her words, Zahra leaves the reader with an impression of alienation. The village that was vivid before is desolate now. Zahra’s members of family died or left the town. The house is in a deplorable condition, it is about to collapse under the weight of its inhabitants; but in fact, it seems that it is not the town that has changed, rather, it is Zahra herself, and the gloomy vision that she holds towards her town is just a projection of a feeling of grief and devastation; because after all, the town that Zahra had left years ago is the same town she is coming back to, but Zahra who had left is not the same Zahra who has just come back. Her suffering with her husband’s betrayal and abandonment, beside all what she endured during the period of resistance has changed her to another person; to an older, wiser, bleaker and pessimistic woman who sees the storm as a harbinger of fatality that refers metaphorically to her gloomy future, she says:
From the bus window, I had surveyed the impact of the storm, recognized its ominous signs. Trees lay in the middle of the road amidst the rubble of uprooted shacks. The scene reminded me of the flood seven years ago that had swept away everything and left our town in ruins. What the forces of storm and flood destroy is enough to build entire cities. My heart contracted, knowing that this storm was but a warning of worse to me, but I could not worry about that. (2)
So nature is also raged, it creates ruin and destroys everything that comes into its way, it is like it was expressing the mess and anger inside her, just as if nature was doing what Zahra herself wants to do. That storm is like the sough’s voice of Zahra’s broken heart that is screaming loudly without making a noise or being heard, it seems that Abouzeid creates this picture as an allegory that refers to Zahra’s internal eruption. An eruption that made her lose sense of things; and what she used to admire has no more effect on her, which led her to question her identity:
I cross the square, breathing in the smell of the town, a mixture of moist earth and dung, and walk through the gates. In the past I had felt intoxicated every time I passed through those portals, but now as I look beyond the town walls at the dilapidated rooms with their rows of arched windows lining the riverbank, I feel nothing. Have I lost my identity? (2-3)
Zahra’s feeling of loss and alienation when entering the town is offset by another sense of security once entering the small shrine and meeting the faqih. The faqih is maybe the only one who has not changed; he still has the ability to make her feel better, “as soon as I see him, I feel reassured. I had feared that he, like Rahma, might have passed on. But nothing about him has changed, as if in his world, time does not exist” (8). Mentioning religion so many times through the novella, in addition to Zahra’s very positive attitude towards the faqih refers to Abouzeid’s trust in faith, Zahra finds solace and oblivion in the present of the faqih, and she mentioned, elsewhere, the prayer as a remedy for her insomnia.
Under those circumstances, Zahra lived a short period in the town making efforts to cope with her new conditions, trying hard to gain some money, but things did not go well; hence, she came to conclude that a town where she can‘t afford to eat is not her home(62). So she decided to quit the area and go looking for a better life somewhere else; when she left, she felt intoxicated by her emancipation.
As for the human relationships in the novella, if we exclude the good relationship Zahra has with the faqih, with Roukia, and with her grandmother, we can say that her relationship with the rest of the characters is characterized by negativity. Her father who should represent refuge and safety becomes the source of fear and dread, she says about him:
I never saw him, may God have mercy on him, without a furrow on his brow. If laughter slipped from his mouth, he would rein it in again and scold us as if the fault were ours. When he lost his temper, he would curse my brothers and sisters, but spare me. I was always the favorite, ever since I had gathered olives, albeit reluctantly, in the cold chill of the Atlas which even the grown-ups could not stand. He also favored me because I didn’t live with him though I probably only realized that later in life. I used to panic at the sound of his voice, I suppose out of solidarity with my siblings and would not feel safe again until he had gone or I had returned to my grandfather‘s house. (15)
Her dead father is not the only one towards whom she does not express any kind of positive feeling; when she tells the reader about her sister coming to see her she says: “somebody had passed the news on to her. What could she want? Clearly, she expects that like other divorced women, I will abide by custom and live with her”(76). and when she asked her to go with her she replied: “I am not going with anybody” and when her brother in law added: “You have a family and have no reason to drug yourself from one place to another”(76), she replied sharply: “I am not anyone’s inheritance, and I am not leaving Casablanca” (76).
If one is to analyze Zahra’s attitude here, he can say that it is not Zahra’s reaction about her sister’s suggestion that is irritating, as after all, she is looking for independence and dignity, and her desire not to put herself at the mercy of anyone is well understood. What is strange is the way she is dealing with the matter, she does not pay any attention to her sister’s initiative and makes no effort to achieve positive interaction with her while she could have rejected the offer in a less severe way.
When it comes to her husband, the reader is informed from the beginning that she did not choose him, no one had even taken her opinion about the proposal, she says: “And the family decided to marry me off without ever asking for my thoughts.”(20) After getting into his parents’ house, she did not get welcome at all, rather she endured hard times, especially after showing no signs of pregnancy, Zahra states in this regard:
I passed a year in my in-laws’ house without venturing outside even once. Finally, when I still showed no signs of imminent childbirth, I was sent off to make the rounds of shrines, burn incense, wear charms, and drink various herbal mixtures. I would have drunk poison if they had given it to me. When they give up hope, their treatment of me worsened considerably. In the face of their unceasing reproaches, I became convinced that I was indeed the guilty party and labored under that burden ever after. I’m not so sure now that it was my fault. (21)
That was the beginning. Afterwards, they moved to the city and started a new life together; a life, about which, Zahra does not say much, a life that seems to be dry and emotionally empty, at least from Zahra’s perspective, nevertheless, when they had accused him of organizing a strike, she felt grief and pain, she says: “I went to visit him and couldn’t recognize him. His emaciated cheeks looked as if a hammer had beaten them in. every time I looked at him, I saw the hammer in my head and felt sickened by pain and nausea.” ()Anyway, this seems to be normal in the old Morocco and maybe in the whole world in the past, as people, at that time, used to build families not on the bases of expressed feelings but on sincerity and gregariousness. However, Zahra’s husband is not one of those people; he is an ungrateful person who did appreciate neither her wife’s sacrifice nor her work with him during the period of resistance nor even the years they spent together sharing all the graces of life as well as bearing its calamities.
Zahra’s husband abandoned her and divorced her while knowing that she is unable to restart life again, ignoring all the past just because she is not in line with his new position, a woman, who decided to stick to her tradition unwilling to break away from her original skin and replace it with the skin of the enemy she was fighting a period ago and witnessing its looting of her country and the assassination of the best of its youth, is not a woman that can help him reach his ambitious goals or climb upper ranks’ ladder; a typical story of treason and betrayal that led to eradicate “the roots of trust from her soul and sow unending wariness and suspicion in their place” (61),
Before the great disappointment she felt because of her husband, Zahra might had been aware of the disappearance of her illusion during the early days of the celebration of independence. While she was attending an auction of items that represented pledges to the national movement she discovered that her friend Safia had stolen the best piece and kept it for herself, she says: “Safia had helped herself to some of the donations”(61). Safia was one of the friends she met “on the long trek to independence and grew to love them all” (42). Hajj Ali, Faqih, Rahal, Roukia, Walter and so many others most of whom will benefit from their work as members of the resistance.
After she returned back home and told her husband what happened with Safia, he replied with a cryptic question: “Have they already started?”(61) which means that he was knowing very well what will happen with the members and expecting that from them; but how could he not know what he himself was intending to do.
Another member who got affected by those winds of change is Hajj Ali, a committed nationalist who “was a husky and enduringly cheerful blacksmith whose skill at his craft fueled his happiness and glowed like live coals under the bellows of his forge. His love for his work was matched only by his love for his country”(36). In addition to distributing leaflets and preparing food for detainees in the central prison, he performed many other clandestine activities. “After Independence they appointed him caid in one of the southern provinces”(37), a position given to many of those nationalists at that time. The caid as described by Zahra, was a position associated with power during colonialism and remained so after independence, she says:
In the colonial period, the caid was head of a tribe and lived regally. He was a member of the feudal class that controlled people’s lives and property in collusion with the protectorate authorities. The latter had hoped in this way to create numerous pockets of diluted power, thereby weakening national unity and frustrating the central government. The caid was a distinguished personage, associated in the people’s minds with wealth, power and fear. The word now denotes a position in the ministry of Interior which is equivalent to that of mayor, but in the early days of independence, the title was still surrounded with prestige.(37)
Hajj Ali, just like Faqih and other members have found themselves in new positions within which they have to cope without being prepared for such abrupt changes of station. When Zahra visited him in the south, “he was tense and dispirited as if his fairy-tale happiness had died like the fire in his workshop furnace in the old city of Rabat” which made her wondering: “Where had his good cheer gone? His energy and determination?” On that day, she says, she realized that “man’s spiritual health, like his principles, is a most “fragile possession” (37).
Even Roukia, Zahra’s best friend, and her husband had benefited from independence, Fakih askes: “Did you know I have been appointed caid?” she replies: “let me congratulate you,” and added: “It seems everyone’s being appointed caid these days.”(72) “I did well by choosing to be caid in Azilal Faqih says. “Isn’t that true, Roukia?” and when Zahra asked him about the reason behind his choice he replied: “ At least in Azilal one can enjoy some advantages. I tell them I want it for health reasons, but don’t think they believe me.” He added: “There one has plenty of eggs and chickens”(73).
Through a close reading of the examples above, one sees that Leila Abouzeid seems to be saying that most of Moroccan nationalists had, once the colonized quit the country, revealed their greed and looked for opportunities to make their lives easier and forgot about their values as well as the supreme public interest for which they were pretending to fight.
However, Zahra seems to be exaggerating, she is so negative, for she is unable to appreciate anything or anybody, everyone is execrable in some way; even her neibors are unbearable, she says:
“Now l seclude myself in this room.” Contemplation is the wont of the intelligent Slander and gossip. I know these people. Poverty has imposed the lowest of morals on them. Some of them say I’ve heard them say She’s unsociable, aloof, a miser even with words.” They understand nothing. Some women come to visit me, but their merciless gossip about other households nauseates me I feel disgust rising in me and my stomach tightens”. (18)
But once again, it may be Zahra’s problem first, her pessimistic character may be the main responsible for that negativism, we can quote her here saying: “I despise everyone, including myself. There seems to be such a malaise and feebleness permeating everything. What’s wrong? Is it black magic spell?”(11)
In the contrary of her negative attitude of Moroccan people, she has a positive one when it comes to western people and institutions. One time, and while he was in the prison, her husband asked her to meet a man, he says: “You will find a man named Walter behind the prison. He is a German guard married to a Moroccan woman from Chtouka.” She asks him in disbelief: “A westerner who will open his house to us?”(51) Later after having been well recieved and feed, and after spending sometime with them, Zahra said:
A sense of warm familiarity enveloped us. The man came in with his two small daughters in hand and sat down cross-legged, putting one girl on each knee. Watching him, I felt a strange mix of emotions, a new kind of affection tinged with the dregs of years of loating and misunderstanding. Everything I had heard and seen since childhood only served to confirm my belief that westerns were an entirely separate species; I even wondered what they ate.(52)
Furthermore, when she was looking for a job, she made several attempts to find an opportunity in a Moroccan factory, but her attempts failed at the end; she first went to an olive oil factory, but the guard ended telling her arrogantly, as if his father was the owner: “We have no jobs available” which made her conclude: “We will never prosper with the likes of you among us”(25). at the other hand, a woman told her that the French Cultural Center is looking for a cleaning woman. she didn’t like the idea and declined, saying “I am waiting for answer from the factories to which I have written”. But no answer came, and finally she realized there will be no reply, and then, she said: “I come face to face with the basic fact that we can’t do without the French after all”(78). So she went with the woman; hence, Like it or not, Zahra seems to, consciously or unconsciously,compare and judge moroccans and westen’s behavior and valorize the latter.
By the end of the novella, Zahra concludes her story by stating the fact that her reality and what she will concentrate on is the idea that life here is only a passage to the eternal life in the hereafter. The idea itself is true, but in that context, it becomes the ultimate of despair and the lack of any optimistic overview. It is like she says that there is no need to dream about a better life in here, for one will not have it; all one can do is waiting until he reachs the other life. This idea is not acceptable even in Islam that calls for the social justice and the struggle against corruption until the desired reform becomes true.
CONCLUSION
At the end of this research paper, let us look for the beneficiary of the ideas and conclusions that can be drawn from our novella and postcolonial literature by the result. When Zahra concludes that the injustice of some indigenous is harsher than the injustice of the colonizer, we get to understand that the latter is more merciful. We, then, unconsciously start superiorizing him and even appreciating his existence on our territory since besides the evil he has done, he, at least, was making “fundamental” reforms at the level of infrastructure, educational system, and other areas, which may justify his existence and stability.
The reality may be miserable, but making generalizations and describing the situation from its surface does not help in achieving any progress. With a complete absence of the insinuation to the real reasons that led to the case described or to the role of colonialism in setting up a proxy regime, which lacks principles and only preserves the interests of the colonial powers in return for privileges that his members enjoy at the expense of their country’s benefits, the situation has a little chance to improve. The reality, as described in the novella, is no more than a picture, rigid and two-dimensional, the reality described is no more than the appearance that disguises the truth. Zahra missed the truth just like the rest of the masses, who get convinced with what appears to be a reality without serious attempts to question it and explore the truth as it is. Abouzeid in this novella did no more than voicing or reproducing what the majority of passive Moroccans keep saying or using as an excuse to justify their passivity or even their corruption, as they see that everyone is corrupt and that corruption is the only way to success. It is true that Zahra chose the difficult path, as she has chosen to resist, but she did not show the reader the good fruit of her resistance; on the opposite, she ended up working as a cleaner in the French center.
The mission of an author with a cause is greater than merely describing reality as it is, authors are to change reality, to inspire it positively, and to construct the perfect world they want to see in that reality through their discourse, as we mainly studied in this research how powerful the discourse is in shaping its object.
To change the world, we have to help people change the way they see things. Global betterment, according to Suzy Kassem is a mental process, not one that requires huge sums of money or a high level of authority. Change has to be psychological. So if one wants to see real change, he should stay persistent in educating humanity about the principles and values. One should not only strive to be the change he wants to see in the world but also should help all those around him see the world through optimistic views and positive constructive ideas and stimulate their hope and willingness to change so that they would want to accept his appeal to change. This is how underdeveloped colonized societies will evolve to become better; telling them that they are terribly disastrous will not change anything, and if it changes something, it will be in the negative direction.
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