From the very beginning, I was intrigued by the imagery of contrast in Césaire’s opening pages of Notebook of a Return to the Native Land. First, he hooks the reader in with the repetition of an ambiguous phrase “At the end of daybreak….” One associates daybreak with a beginning, a dawning, an enlightening, but he juxtaposes it with “end.” To me, this gives one the feeling of impending doom or destruction. He continues by using personification to describe Antilles: “the hungry Antilles, the Antilles pitted with smallpox, the Antilles dynamited with alcohol,” stranded in the mud of this bay. . .” This effectively gives the islands life and a sense of isolation and misery, revealing through them the history of their inhabitants.
Another strong image of contrast is conveyed through his description of the throng. Normally, one thinks of a throng as noisy, active, often driven by a common purpose. But Césaire describes the throng as “detoured,” “chattering and mute,” something that “does not pack, does not mix,” “not connected with anything that is expressed,, asserted, released in broad earth daylight.” Again, he draws the reader into his world of conflict and his world that doesn’t make sense.
The combination of these powerful images, as well as others, gave me a feeling of unrest, tension, isolation and incongruity. It compelled me to continue in his path to seek resolve. It was a journey worthwhile.
