Sedimentation rate

Arthur Joyce Lunel Cary was born in Derry, Ireland, on December 7, 1888. Throughout his childhood, Joyce Cary spent much time with his grandmother in Ireland and in England. Although he always remembered his Irish childhood with affection and wrote about it with great feeling, Cary lived in England for the rest of his life. The feeling of displacement and the idea that life’s tranquility may be disturbed at any moment informed much of his writing.

In 1906, determined to be an artist, Cary studied Art in Edinburgh. He did not fare well as a painter so decided to apply himself to literature. He was an adventurous young man and in 1912, Cary served as a Red Cross orderly during the Balkan Wars. During the First World War, he served with a Nigerian regiment fighting in the German colony of Cameroon. The short story Umaru (1921) describes an incident from this period in which a British office recognizes the common humanity that connects him with his African sergeant.

Cary was wounded at the battle of Mount Mora in 1916. He returned to England on leave got married to Gertrude Oglivie. Three months later, Cary returned to service as a colonial officer, leaving a pregnant Gertrude in England. Cary held several posts in Nigeria including that of magistrate and executive officer in Borgu. Cary began his African service as a stereotypical colonial officer, determined to bring order to the natives, but by the end of his service, he had come to see the Nigerians as individuals facing difficult problems, including those created by colonial rule.

By 1920, Cary concentrated his energies on providing clean water and roads to connect remote villages with the larger world. His wife wanted him to resign and go back to England but he could not due to financial reasons. However later on he was able to sell some of the stories he wrote in Africa to The Saturday Post through a literary agent. His works were then published in this American magazine under the name “Thomas Joyce”.

This provided Cary with enough incentive to resign from the Nigerian service and settled with his wife in Oxford. They had four sons.

Cary worked hard as a writer but his brief economic success soon ended as the Post stopped publishing his works. Cary worked at various novels and a play, but nothing sold and the family soon had to take in tenants.

However, in 1932, Cary managed to publish Aissa Saved, a novel that drew on his Nigerian experience. The book was not particularly successful, but sold more than Cary’s next novel, An American Visitor (1933). His next novel, The African Witch (1936) did a little better and his finances improved.

Although none of Cary’s first three novels was particularly successful critically or financially, they are progressively more ambitious and complex. He decided to change the structures and style so he wrote his next novel Mister Johnson (1939), entirely in the present tense, which is now regarded as one of Cary’s best novels.

Some of his other works are: Castle Corner (1938), Charley Is My Darling (1940), A House of Children (1941), The First Trilogy (1941 – 44), and the Horse’s Mouth (1944) which remains his most popular novel.

Cary’s themes include the tension between creativity and colonial administration, which destroys the old as it fashions the new; the conservative desire to preserve things as they are; the difference between liberty which consists of a lack of restraint, and freedom, which lies in the ability to act; and the sense that human life is difficult and happiness elusive; that fleeting joy is life’s only reward; and that love is necessary to humanity. We will treat his most popular novel Mister Johnson which has been criticized greatly by African literary scholars Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is said to be a re-action to this novel.

3.1.2 Mister Johnson (1939) is the story of a young Nigerian who had an unsuccessful career in the service of the British colonial regime. Although the novel has a comic tone, the story itself is tragic. Johnson, a young African, is assigned as clerk at an English

district office in Fada, Nigeria. He is from a different district and is regarded as a foreigner by the native. However, he works his way into local society, got married there but never really fitted in. he also has difficulties in adjusting to the regulations and mechanism of the district office and his official duties. Meanwhile, the district officer, Rudbeck, is dissatisfied with his work and life in Africa. Rudbeck decided to build a road linking Fada to the main highway and larger population centers. Johnson, as Rudbeck’s clerk is happy about the project.

Johnson is one of Cary’s joy-filled characters, possessor of a great energy that infects all around him. People are drawn to Johnson and follow him without realizing that they are being led. Indeed Johnson has no clear idea of where he is going. His delight is in seeing those around him happy. His mood infects Rudbeck and, when Johnson suggests how the books may be fiddled to support Rudbeck’s road project, the colonial officer agrees. Unfortunately, Rudbeck’s swindle is uncovered and he returns to England to be with his wife. Johnson now goes to work for Gollup, a retired British sergeant who has married a native woman and runs a local store.

Unlike Rudbeck, Gollup is an abusive drunk, racist, but he admires Johnson’s good humored courage. Johnson, in turn, enjoys the compliment to his courage. On one occasion, Gollup attacked him and he retaliates. Gollup does not take the incident seriously so does not change his attitude towards Johnson, but he cannot have an employee who has struck him in public. Johnson is therefore tired and leaves Fada.

Meanwhile, Rudbeck is recalled because of a shortage of political officers. Immediately he recommences his road-building project, but funds were inadequate so he was forced to manipulate to provide the needed funds. His superior cautions him to be careful because another scandal will destroy his career.

Rudbeck recalls Johnson and Johnson’s infectious enthusiasm makes the road-building successful. Johnsons stay is short-lived because Rudbeck discovers that Johnson has been engaged in petty graft and dismisses him. Johnson turns to theft from the store to support his lifestyle and, when Gollup’s the storekeeper discovers this, Johnson kills the

storekeeper. Johnson is tried for murder. The trial brings Rudbeck to the breaking point.

Johnson is found guilty and begs Rudbeck to keep him from the gallows by killing him.

Rudbeck follows his heart rather than the rules and does so, though the act is expected to destroy his career and possibly have other ramifications, legal and personal.

Chinua Achebe has said that Mister Johnson struck him as superficial and helped from his determination to write his own novels about Nigeria. Other critics have found Cary’s portrayal of his main character patronizing and Johnson himself childish. But these criticisms miss the universal quality of Johnson as one of the world’s creators. It is important to see Johnson as an individual character and not as a generalized racial type.