History, myth, and revolt in Lorraine Hansberry's 'Les Blancs.' (drama by African American woman author)

Lorraine Hansberry began drafting Les Blancs (The Whites) as early as 1960, soon after the publication of her remarkably successful A Raisin in the Sun (1959). But it was not until 1970 that Robert Nemiroff, her former husband, put together the published version of the drama. In Les Blancs Hansberry expands on the attention given to Africa in Raisin, where Asagai, the Nigerian intellectual and activist, is used to fortify and scrutinize the familial, political, and cultural bond between Africa and Black America - subsequently portraying an African ancestral milieu that is credited but not idealized. Raisin is the first major play by an African American to translate into dramatic form the European exploitation of the lands and peoples of Africa, and the ensuing rebellion against European rule. When Raisin was produced in 1959, African struggles for independence had begun to receive international attention; by the 1960s, African nationalist movements had assumed vast and powerful proportions.

In recreating an African colonial scene in Les Blancs, Hansberry advances the need for dialogue between the oppressed and the oppressor, yet she insists on action and commitment, supports the procurement of sovereignty at any cost, and visualizes the genesis of a new black world. The play does not resolve any problem but raises thought-provoking questions about history, Africa, America, anger, and confrontation; it shows that people are largely a fusion of evil and good, valor and fear, conviction and confusion, indifference and involvement. Hansberry argues for humanism even as she directs her themes through a predominantly African historical and socio-artistic experience.

African-based folklore, chanting, drumming, and dancing in Les Blancs energize the action and tempo of the plot, heighten the tone and moods transmitted through dialogue, and celebrate indigenous African practices. Such musical patterns reaffirm the everyday impulsive role of music and dance in traditional African life, where they are used interactively during occasions such as work, war, ceremonies, and storytelling sessions. The musical quality of Les Blancs makes information accessible and provides an outlet for expressing creative talent.

As in her play A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry's thematic and textural approach in Les Blancs is structured on standard realism.(1) But she occasionally intersperses this realism with an expressionistic slant,(2) sustained mostly by a dancing African Woman who animates and sensationalizes Hansberry's thematic vision, and who embodies and actualizes the African socio-aesthetic attributes and belief systems that Hansberry advances. The Woman's role is paradoxical - on one level initiating and preserving principal African prototypes, and on another level perpetuating a European-generated literary doctrine. Instances of expressionism rarely and briefly, but notably, digress from, but do not distort, the predominant realistic frame.

Herein lies the peculiarity of Hansberry's dramatic vision: her success at reevoking and reenacting history through an essentially Western model, yet ritualizing and mythologizing history through the use of certain African cultural and folkloric devices that exhibit an African and human yearning for, and attainment of, the rite-of-passage from servitude to affirmation. The juxtaposition among the play's realism, sporadic expressionism, and black aesthetic ritualism, situated in key folkloric practices and the ceremonious maturation of some principal characters, corroborates Hansberry's ability to tap African and Western constructs, and to fuse history with myth, drama, and folklore. She achieves what would become a central goal of the 1960s Black Arts Movement in its pursuit of a black aesthetic, and what Paul Carter Harrison in the 1980s - in reference to African-rooted ritual dramas - would describe as "the urgency to formulate an aesthetic based upon the American experience but informed by the ethical sensibilities of Africa" (xliv).

This elaborate examination of African systems and folkloric motifs against a colonial backdrop is crucial, especially concerning the contrasts sometimes drawn between Les Blancs and Jean Genet's Les Negres (The Blacks). (Les Negres was originally published in 1958, while the English translation The Blacks: A Clown Show was published in 1960.) While the thrust of this essay centers on Hansberry's reappraisal of history as a dramatic resource, and on the thematic and structural unfolding of Les Blancs through the pragmatic fusion of African and European aesthetic ideals, the comparisons that critics make between Les Blancs and The Blacks deserves some attention, since some scholars consider Les Blancs a "visceral response to Jean Genet's celebrated play" (Nemiroff 41). Nemiroff contends that Hansberry felt that Genet did not probe black nationalism and oppression in a proper and genuine manner (42). Genet's play reconstructs the narrow frame in which white playwrights traditionally contrive black characters. His black characters are minstrel-like coons who are useful only insofar as they amuse whites and fulfill the notion that, in a position of power, blacks are as autocratic as whites. Genet's play is designed for a white audience; the justification for black actors on stage is the presence of white spectators. In the event that a black audience might have to be accommodated, however, Genet insists on complying with stringent guidelines.(3) Wearing white masks, black characters act out a clownish exchange to the delight of a white audience. An African colonial scene is revived in the play, but not fully explored. A revolution eventually takes place, but it is a weak, cynical, even derided echo of black nationalism, and does not threaten white rule. Genet perpetuates the minstrel dynamic by using black characters to lampoon black nationalism.

In probably reacting against the sensationalism of Genet's The Blacks, Les Blancs gradually, but definitely, unfolds into a more compelling rendition of veritable black nationalism. The play is set in a mythic, white-ruled African nation, Zatembe, that closely resembles Kenya, East Africa, of the mid-1950s, when natives took up arms against white settlers. The principal character, Tshembe Matoseh, returns from England to attend the funeral of his father (old Abioseh). He encounters the ongoing rebellion but refuses to be a part of it, even though his father was a premier nationalist who called for African participation in the provincial legislature (Les Blancs 154).

The action of the play takes place in two locations: Tshembe's father's home, where his half-brother Eric now lives, and the Mission compound, a hospital established years before by Reverend Neilsen. Hansberry initially reinvents an archetypal colonial setting by merging historic actuality with dramatic imagination. Allegorical characterization sustains this fusion of the real and the imaginary, with the white and black characters delineating facets of colonial rule. Madame Neilsen, the blind wife of the Reverend Neilsen, is the elderly missionary who, along with her husband, has spent forty years in Zatembe and believes in the destined union of Africa and Europe. Charles Morris is a white "liberal" more sympathetic to European interests. Major Rice is a soldier-settler who fights the "terrorists" and symbolizes Western military encroachment in Africa. The medical doctors Marta Gotterling and Willy Dekoven are missionaries who heal no more than they exploit.

Among the blacks, Tshembe's brother Abioseh is a Roman Catholic priest who has sold out to European precepts. Peter, a servant by day and warrior at night, portrays the militant trickster. Eric, Tshembe's mixed-race half-brother, externalizes the clash between Europe and Africa.

Contrasting with the European influence in Zatembe, the rustic scene of the Prologue prepares the mythic African background of the plot, foregrounding major dramatic components that sustain action. It is a simple metaphorical African setting with a layout briefly removed from realism. The East African world view of the Prologue is conveyed by natural surroundings, music, a dancing African Woman, a spear, and a hyena. Sounds and images of the land are integrated into the development of the plot. Drumming communicates in the manner of African talking drums and embellishes the commencement of the story with the intensity of sound. Drums also reinforce key moods, moments, and events. Hansberry's restoration of African conceptions and icons in Les Blancs is consequently substantiated in her consolidation of key African customs and aesthetic practices.

The Woman dancer introduced in the Prologue reemerges at specific points in the play. Her Masai features and costume(4) easily define her as the soul of "Mother Africa," a persona of "the slaughter, the enslavement" of the people (105):

Suddenly there is silence. A Woman dancer is seen suspended in the sky in a characteristic African dance pose. Black-skinned and imposing, cheeks painted for war, her wiry hair rounded by a colorful band, she wears only a leather skirt and, about her waist, a girdle of hammered silver. From her wrists and ankles hang bangles of feathers and silver. (53)

At the end of the Prologue, the Woman raises a spear, a common East African weapon foreshadowing rebellion. She will later offer Tshembe a spear in her bid to coax him to defy colonization (106). The spear, an insignia of traditional vigor and militant recalcitrance, further heightens the native ambience that Hansberry injects into her plot. After persisting through a phase of self- and cultural denial, and of diplomatically evading the local insurrection, Tshembe subsequently connects with the spear even becomes the spear - by finally participating in, and spearheading, the uprising. An extension of the rhythmic, action-inducing attributes of Les Blancs, the enchanting Woman underscores the pervasive rhythmic quality that confirms the Africanisms of the play in spite of its obvious European penchant. She dances her way into the hearts of her audience and emblematizes Tshembe's mental state, his inner sentiments and bouts of guilt.

The Woman's appearance precedes the "unearthly 'laughter' of a hyena," a reference to the controversial mythic hyena present in one of the African fables used in the play (54). Unlike Tshembe, who metamorphoses into the more tangible, immediate, perhaps devastating prospects of the revolt as personified in the spear, the metaphysical hyena typifies the more vulnerable and acquiescent aftermath of colonization. Symbolizing the manipulated African in Les Blancs, the hyena is controversial, as its laughter contradicts its pain. Juxtaposing the heroic Woman with the defeated hyena sets the tone for dissension within the play.

The rural African scene in the Prologue contrasts with the "river boat whistle," an alien presence, in Act I (55). While an interracial colonial setting is apparent, the African locale, with its drum sounds, remains dominant. Common to traditional African drama and sometimes tapped from this source, the combination of "drum, song and dance" in African American drama "associates textual with scenic writing and performs functions that were once held separate in other arts" (Fabre 216).

Scenes ii and vi of Acts I and II, respectively, open with background drumming (68, 159). After the initial appearance of Madame, the scene is punctuated by "Congo drums of basso intensity" (64), announcing the death of an important figure - old Abioseh, once a Kwi elder. The drums heighten action and announce important events like funerals and war. When Charlie complains that there is "No Cable. No Mail. No phones" in Zatembe (150), he fails to understand the local replacement of these devices by talking drums. Drumming accompanies the tirade of Ngago, the oral "poet-warrior," when he proclaims war against "THE INVADER." In typical oral-traditional fashion, Ngago supports his poetic call to combat with energetic gestures expressed in incantational form. His voice assumes various pitch levels in tune with the low and mounting staccato of the drums. Ngago's poetic drama of war ends with ceremonial determination when he raises his rifle and swears by the earth to "KILL THE INVADER!" (160-61).

Ngago's transitory appearance takes away from the sequential plot arrangement, further demonstrating Hansberry's loose reliance on the realistic mode, and her ability to incorporate several seemingly extraneous socio-aesthetic elements. While Ngago is an atypical addition to regular characterization in Les Blancs, his manifestation and actions do not distort or veer from the play's structural and thematic design. Ngago is germane to the oral-traditional accent that defines areas of the play, and foreshadows the hostile radicalism that later consummates in the clash between Africa and Europe.

Commenting on the significance of oral militant poetry in Africa, Ruth Finnegan relates that "the excitement and emotion associated with military exploits are often expressed in poetry before hand. In this way both poet and audience can be stirred up to declare war or to prepare for battle" (208). Referring to the "Mau Mau" uprising,(5) the militant movement which informs Les Blancs, Finnegan recalls how poetry and war songs "carri[ed] out active and widespread propaganda among the masses in Kenya" (285).

"Mau Mau" war songs and poetry are reminiscent of the war songs that emanated from the Nigerian-Biafran Civil War,(6) and which advanced themes of hope, reassurance, motivation, and sorrow. They lamented even as they foretold victory. Sung in Igbo,(7) English, and a combination of both languages, the Biafran war songs are a precise example of the continuance and progression of oral-traditional practices in modern society. Communally owned and transmitted, they illustrate the restructuring and reapplication of a ritual that reflects the transmutation from monolithic ancestral society, where warfare entailed the use of bows and arrows, machetes, and clubs, to modern, post-colonial, ethnically diverse society, where warfare involves the more deleterious dependence on rifles, bombs, tanks, and jets.

As Tshembe's conscience and spirit, the Woman dancer participates in the musicality of the play; she materializes at various points to haunt, implore, and pressure him into taking part in the struggle for self-rule - in the Prologue and Scene iii of Act I, and in Scene iii of Act II - enhancing the play's erratic excursion into the nonrealistic. During an argument between Charlie and Tshembe, she reappears in a scene which shifts from the real to the surreal.(8) Her presence is backed by "the distant, haunting strains of a chant," fostering a rhythmic quality comparable to that of the drums (104-05). At the end of Act II, Scene iii, she surfaces with background drumming, this time more than a figment of Tshembe's imagination. It is at this moment that Tshembe discerns the African Woman as both real and emblematic. He accepts her calling, reclaims his African identity, and commits himself to social change. Embodying Africa's cultural virility and combative resistance, the Woman's position is antithetical to that of Tshembe's European wife, who typifies colonial intrusion and foments African social disintegration and complacence in the face of repression.

That Tshembe is ultimately ideologically unrestrained by his linkage to Europe signifies that entering into another culture does not presuppose self-rejection and neglect of one's cardinal cultural demands. Tshembe succeeds in finding a middle way: His attention is primarily redirected to his homeland, but he does not dismiss his pertinent European affiliations. He is, in a sense, the conceptual equivalent of the play's form, an intricate synthesizing of European and African-centered creative and cultural values and paragons.

The aesthetic effect of folklore ties in with the cultural and dramatic importance of music. Music and folklore are also integral components of traditional African drama. Folklore is a cornerstone of enlightenment in the colonial "myth" of Les Blancs, functioning metaphorically and culturally. The rite-of-passage attribute of the form accentuates thematic development and action. Peter, like the trickster character in African folktales, wears a harmless and servile mask, but finally plays a formidable role in the revolution. As servant he is Peter, but as warrior he answers to his native name Ntali. He persuades Tshembe to enlist as a leader in the movement, reminding him of the great history of his family and the Kwi (124-29). Narrating a fable about hyenas and elephants, a folktale borrowed from Jomo Kenyatta's Facing Mount Kenya (1953) and retold by Hansberry (Carter 10607), Peter is able to buttress his ideological message to Tshembe. The elephants exemplify whites as the embodiment and casualties of evil; they destroy and are also susceptible to destruction. The hyenas qualify as virtuous black victims who must take up arms against imperialism. Their continued "terrible laughter" is a masochistic response to the "bitter joke" played on them by the elephants (126).

At the end of Act I, the dancing Woman appears again, described as the" 'sleeping lioness' of the lore" (106). In several African oral tales the powerful lion portends danger and should not be agitated when it sleeps. Affiliated with the proverbial lioness, the Woman is "awakened" by colonial tensions. In the end, the natives evolve into the predator "lioness" with the Europeans as prey.

Music and folklore blend with traditional practices to preserve belief systems which are sometimes subtly expressed. The people, who engage in oral instructional and artistic practices predating the arrival of Europeans, successfully preserve their meals by wrapping them in leaves, a method the whites adopt to preserve drugs (108). Their unique Kwi "sign" of greeting attests to their adherence to communal mores (68). Raffia from the palm tree functions as a towel, and is still preferred in this regard (72).

Other events speak of the existence of revered customs. As first son, Tshembe has to return from England to attend his father's funeral. A native being examined by Marta suddenly abandons the exercise and runs off with another native to attend to some social calling (58). A similar event occurs when Tshembe and Charlie are arguing over African-European relations; one of the villagers runs in, throws a piece of bark at Tshembe's feet, and runs off (103). The bark is a summons for Tshembe to attend a meeting of the native Council, which seeks to overthrow European rule. While the Council's action holds cultural implications, it also alludes to the inner strife provoked by Tshembe and Charlie's conversation (Wood 185).

Although some value systems survive Western intrusion, Hansberry exposes the cultural havoc bred by this intrusion. Brainwashed by colonial ethics, Abioseh refuses to participate in his father's funeral rites because his Catholic upbringing forbids his participation in "pagan" practices. He will soon be Father Paul Augustus, a Catholic priest. Tshembe reprimands his socio-religious choices: "You, the son of a proud elder of the Kwi, are now pleased to change your ancient name for that of a Roman Emperor!" (79). The more Abioseh is contemptuous of Kwi culture, the more he leans toward Western archetypes, hoping that "some day a black man will be Archbishop of this Diocese, a black African Cardinal" (79). Abioseh is socially insecure; his loyalty to Catholicism sustains an institution which, Tshembe claims, "kept the watchfires of our oppressors for three centuries!" (80) He wears "the receipts" of colonial trade (80), perpetrating a Du Boisian "double-consciousness" which reaches its climax when he betrays Peter to Major Rice (157).

Tshembe is initially as much a "European" slave as Abioseh is. He agrees to take part in his father's funeral ceremony, but does not really "believe in it" (78). Spending time in Europe reduces his high veneration of indigenous practices. With a white wife and child in England, Tshembe is emotionally and secularly tied to Europe and, thus, skeptical about fighting for independence at home. A former nationalist leader, traveler, and intellectual, he initially chooses to be a mere observer of the mounting tensions.

The bitter familial arguments between Tshembe and Abioseh are indices of African-European clashes. While Tshembe is not eager to take part in the revolution, he supports it. Abioseh, on the other hand, thoroughly espouses the "pseudo gifts of European culture and religion" (Carter 113). He describes the "Resistance" as "the terror" and the rebels as "fanatics" (76-77). During one of their arguments, Tshembe wears African traditional robes while Abioseh is accoutered in the Catholic robes of medieval and modern Europe. Stage directions heighten the conflict: Abioseh raises a silver crucifix

above his head and intones a prayer in ringing liturgical Latin. TSHEMBE throws back his head and begins, with all his power, to join in the offstage funeral chant. The two barbaric religious cries play one against the other in vigorous and desperate counterpoint. The lights come down on the novice Paul Augustus on his knees and the terrified ERIC, still clutching his robes as TSHEMBE weeps out. (80-82)

Perhaps European-African discord at its severest is embodied by Eric. He is the product of an adulterous relationship between Tshembe's late mother Aquah and Major Rice, the "Colonial Reserve Officer" (60). While Eric's African side is urged to fight Europe, his white side empathizes with the continent and its derision of Kwi traditions (74). He finally surmounts his internal conflict and assumes his native name, Ngedi, confirming his African identity and revolutionary status. He takes the defiant oath of allegiance and declines Abioseh's invitation to St. Cyprian's Seminary.

Culture conflicts stem from imperialist designs underlying seemingly feasible missionary intentions. There is something eerie about the foreign presence and the subsequent changes it introduces. As Madame puts it, "The change. Some cold wind blew in over our people here and chilled their hearts to us" (66). The settlers are mostly antagonistic toward the native culture and insurrection, except Madame, who supports the uprising and immerses herself in intercultural learning.

Other white colonialists overlook the ethnic values and convictions of the local people. Marta admits that, after five years in Africa, "I still have a great deal to learn about the African" (58), and presumes that the natives have not yet "earned the right to criticize" exploitation (112). More than the other Europeans, Major Rice intensely detests the Africans. Like the classic European conquistador, he makes Zatembe his home at the expense of local lives and traditions. Acting out his staunch belief "that authority in this colony has always depended on the sacredness of a white life" (133), he defines the [debased] natives as "savages," "Kaffirs," and "darkies" (86, 89, 135). The high point of Rice's animosity toward African life is manifest in the sophisticated military hardware he organizes against the meager weapons of the natives, and his refusal to admit that Eric is his child.

Charlie Morris, the Euro-American "liberal" who comes to do a story on Reverend Neilsen, fails to certify his credibility. Constantly advancing stereotypes about Africa's primeval naivete, the continent's indebtedness to Europe, the sadistic nature of the rebellion, and his innocence, his book will most likely be a parable dramatizing how Europeans bring promise to untamed Africa - a story about "the martyred Reverend and this temple in the wasteland that is Africa," as Tshembe puts it (163). Tshembe challenges Charlie's oversimplification of Western authority: "For a handshake, a grin, a cigarette and half a glass of whiskey you want three hundred years to disappear - and in five minutes! Do you really think the rape of a continent dissolves in cigarette smoke?" (97) Charlie's appreciation of the Kwi crisis is little more than an expression of sympathy for people who must sacrifice freedom in order to profit from the presence of an exalted civilization.

Frequent arguments between Charlie and Tshembe introduce fresh perspectives on black versus white, Africa versus Europe, the skeptic versus the novice. Tshembe's quandary is that he initially does not have total faith in European practices or the traditions of his people. Charlie, on the other hand, is largely uninformed about Africa, even though he is a well-traveled journalist. Their exchange summarizes the clash between "understanding" Europeans who, like Madame, ultimately display allegiance to their people and Western-trained Africans who, in emergency situations, inevitably support their people.

Racial tensions in Zatembe are cultivated by a missionary set-up that masks a fervor for power and control. Tshembe assesses the situation when he tells Charlie that "men invoke the device of religion to cloak their conquests" (122). Although Charlie sees the mission as a "temple: a way station in the darkness" (59), and Marta describes Reverend Neilsen as a father to the blacks (59), Christianity subverts rather than sustains the people. Reverend Neilsen, epitome of Christianity, refused to help Aquah give birth to Eric because "the child was the product of an evil act, a sin against God's order, the natural separation of the races" (167). His refusal was also an attempt to elude the implications of Eric's existence, the truth that "Eric was the living denial of everything he stood for: the testament to three centuries of rape and self-acquittal" (167). Madame describes Neilsen as "a minister, not a statesman" (139) - a shallow excuse for his failure to offer solutions to the crisis. He is killed by the revolutionaries and appears on stage only once, as a corpse in a coffin, a metaphor for the sterility and death of his religion. When the mission finally goes up in flames, Christianity's demise is prophesied.

Europe's progressive schemes are subsumed in ambitions pursued "at Africa's expense" (123). The "dirty, smelly little hospital" (123) provided for the Kwis contrasts with the decent "Whites only" hospital seventy-five miles away. Dekoven admits that the chief aim of white incursion is to train and prepare blacks for jobs that serve European interests, sustain the status quo, and "provide the rationale for [this] genocide" (152-53). This "rationale" is entrenched in the creation of false expectations regarding health, wealth, and education, even as Zatembe's natural resources deplete viciously. Zatembe hills, Tshembe notes, show huge "scars," the result of "great gashes from whence came the silver, gold, diamonds, cobalt [and] tungsten" (101). Other forms of European abuse are effected in imposed taxation, curfews, seizure of the people's land, and the implementation of the identity paper law.

The natives' combative response to white dominion marks their attainment of a degree of self-realization. They fail in their attempts at peaceful negotiations and solutions through delegations and petitions. The United Nations is helpless, and Kumalo (reminiscent of the late Jomo Kenyatta(9)) is deceived into being arrested by Zatembe's government, crippling his role as spokesman for the people. The overdue African resistance jolts the whites, who cannot comprehend the people's decision to overcome docility, just as America's white population was startled by the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Rice truly believes that the people have not been done "a moment's harm" (92), while Charlie's opposition to the uprising recaps his antagonism toward black life: ". . . one white life taken," he alleges, "counts for more than the murder of blacks by the hundreds!" (119).

At the end of Les Blancs, it is easy to misconstrue that Hansberry stirs black-on-white violence. She does not merely promote violence; she agrees with the circumstantial inevitability of violence for defense:

It is no longer acceptable to allow racists to define Negro manhood - and it will have to come to pass that they can no longer define his weaponry.

I think, then, that Negroes must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non-violent. They must harass, debate, petition, give money to court struggles, sit-in, lie-down, strike, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps - and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities. (To Be Young 214)

In similar terms, Tshembe informs Charlie that Europeans only "listen" when they are "forced to" through violence, being that they are intrinsically violent, "chopping off the right hands of our young men by the hundreds" (120).

That Hansberry endorses circumstantial war against colonization does not confine her theme to the indictment of whites. As in A Raisin in the Sun, she peeks into the future and raises questions about African self-government. In the event that the natives secure power, Charlie asks Tshembe, "What will you do with [power]?" (99). Skeptical about black preparedness for autonomy, Abioseh warns: "Men do not move from lizard powder to legislatures, from sweeping floors to ruling nations - " (147). Hansberry predicts the future emergence of corrupt leadership in Africa. The prevalence of fraudulence, maladministration, and power misuse in modern African states corroborates the imminent accuracy of her concern.

Just as she refuses to delineate Europeans as sole culprits in human repression, Hansberry acclaims Europe's immense contributions to the world, including Africa. Tshembe admits that "Europe - in spite of all her crimes - has been a great and glorious star in the night" (168). There is, therefore, the probability of cooperation between Europe and Africa. In tying African oral art to a European dramatic frame, Hansberry shows that African and European art, though formatively different, can be applied to related themes and aesthetics. Honest reciprocity between some black and white characters in Les Blancs dramatizes the prospect of cordial European-African relations. Madame's relationship with the late Aquah was sincere. While she taught Aquah some European languages, Aquah taught her Kwi customs and language, how to decipher drum messages, and how to make quinine. Madame admits that "she was the dearest friend that I have had in Africa" (65). Other honest white-black relationships center on the learning agenda and cultural exchange between Madame and Tshembe, and the friendship between Eric and Willy Dekoven. Eric holds fast to his conviction that Willy "is kind. No one else is kind" (116).

Even if all Europeans are not the enemy in Les Blancs, extracting the guilty from the guiltless is arduous when responding to group behavior. Perhaps this is the reason that Madame dies. The natives kill her, resisting her exoneration from the crimes of her race. She may be harmless and well-meaning, but, as Peter points out, she is "a part of it" (127). Judged guilty for just belonging to a particular group is questionable. It is a sensitive factor that Hansberry probably presents unintentionally at the end of Les Blancs. After Madame is shot, Tshembe holds her in his arms with compassion, responding to the perplexity of the situation by letting out a frustrating, "animal-like" scream of anguish (172).

The loss of lives at the end of the play is ritualistic. Human sacrifice fosters a reawakening and becomes a symbolic route through which black regeneration is mapped out. Neilsen's death announces the rejection of a deficient religion. Tshembe makes the utmost blood sacrifice; he kills his brother, Abioseh. Abioseh's death is the momentary demise of a traitor and potential despot. He passes away without acquiring the tools for self-determination. Peter, on the other hand, dies the sacrificial death of a martyr after he takes the oath and vows to enlist in the battle to free his people.

Les Blancs expands thematically, finally addressing global concerns along with black issues within and beyond Africa. This is one of Hansberry's chief objectives in the play - to deal with, but not seclude, black life, history, and art, just as she nurtures the probability for frank and cooperative socio-artistic encounters between Europe and Africa. As writer and activist, Hansberry envisaged the antithetical aftermath of socio-artistic isolation on black struggles. Black Americans are, after all, intertwined and intermixed, genetically and culturally, with "others." Hansberry makes the point when, using Candace as her persona in To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, she declares that "the continents of the world met in her blood - Africa, Europe and aboriginal America" (50).

As part of the strategy to avoid an African-centered theme, Tshembe submits that, whether people are "shot in Zatembe or Mississippi," corresponding modes of oppression are displayed (122). Having witnessed the anguish faced by "too many raw-knuckled Frenchmen" and "too many pop-eyed Italian children," he cannot "believe that those who raided Africa for three centuries ever 'loved' the white race either" (102-03). In Young, Gifted, and Black, Hansberry also recalls the Nazi determination to destroy "the Jews, the Poles, the Czechs, the Russians . . . as 'inferior peoples'" (177). Pictured from an unbiased viewpoint, blacks are not the sole victims of fascist control.

Hansberry's Les Blancs draws upon ancestral socio-aesthetic patterns and exemplifies her unflinching belief that "the ultimate destiny and aspirations of the African peoples and the twenty million American Negroes are inextricably and magnificently bound up together forever" ("Negro Writer" 6). Africa not only offers a metaphoric base for realistic subject matter; the region is also appraised from melodramatic and mythic angles.

Hansberry's plays are about social problems. She claims that "all art is ultimately social: that which agitates and that which prepares the mind for slumber" ("Negro Writer" 5). Invoking Africa in diverse ways defines a realm in which themes affecting Africans and African Americans are inquired into. Apart from proposing a symbolic "home" replacing American society, Africa permits Hansberry to research thematic and stylistic elements commonly absent from white plays. She retains a black aesthetic and identity, even as she is influenced by European paragons, proving Samuel Allen's contention that "the African heritage may serve as a fertile source of inspiration and of renewal for the Afro-American" (625).

Hansberry refuses to subscribe to the subjective concept of a noble ancient and distant African past. She examines a more realistic, accessible modern Africa as a source of self-determination. Her choice agrees with Sigmund Ro's claim that "a new self-image [is] derived from a positive identification with modern Africa" (567), the kind represented by Tshembe, Abioseh, and Eric.

Beginning with precise attention to black life, Hansberry's drama also delves into non-black-restricted subject matter. Africa is artistically and culturally symbolic. While nurturing the socio-political well-being of blacks, it also serves as a metaphor for surveying ecumenical human concerns.

Countering what Hansberry describes as the typecasting of blacks as "unharried, unconcerned, glandulatory, simple, rhythmical, amoral, dark creature[s]" (To Be Young 199), her African images construct more eminent impressions of beautiful, dexterous, ambitious black characters. To balance and authenticate her depiction of Africans, however, she also enacts African failures. Unlike the ridicule and debasement advanced by minstrelsy, her creation of inept African characters is a pragmatic exposition of human reality in which Africans, like other people, comprise the constructive and the disastrous.

Africa is rejuvenated from various conceptual angles in Hansberry's Les Blancs. It is mythic, since its re-creation is informed by the playwright's insight and not outright reality. Her Africa is largely an abstract innovation from a Western perspective, even though the process is backed by comprehensive research. The mythic world of Zatembe is molded by Hansberry's imagination, yet it centers on a graphic reappraisal of colonialism and liberty struggles in Kenya. She uses this historical fact within an allegorical, mythic context postulated by character types.

Genuine portrayals of Africa exist alongside mythic modifications. The colonial scene in Les Blancs is legitimately and cogently portrayed. Hansberry sometimes shifts from the actual to the ideal, but often checks herself. References are made to a consummate, model Africa that ought to displace white imperialism. But there are signs that such African self-rule may prove to be less than effectual, self-deluding, and neo-colonial.

Notes

1. The plot is closely patterned on European realism in its dramatization of a convincing replica of real-life historical situations; in the reliance on distinct, chronologically arranged acts for plot development; and in the utilization of mostly orthodox character types who engage in conventional dialogue.

2. Adherents of expressionism, a twentieth-century literary practice, react against realism and strive to dramatize not the objective reality of events but a subjective picture transmitted through the mind of a central consciousness; in this case, the dancing Woman is the subjective picture, and Tshembe is the central consciousness.

3. According to Genet, "This play, written, I repeat, by a white man, is intended for a white audience, but if, which is unlikely, it is ever performed before a black audience, then a white person, male or female, should be invited every evening. . . . A spotlight should be focused upon this symbolic white throughout the performance. But what if no white person accepted? Then let white masks be distributed to the black spectators as they enter the theater. And if the blacks refuse the masks, then let a dummy be used" (4).

4. The Masai constitute a major East African pastoral and hunting ethnic group.

5. The "Mau Mau" war refers to the 1950s' native insurrection against European rule in Kenya. The bloody conflict was not called "Mau Mau" by the indigenous people. The term is a derogatory European invention implying the taking up of arms against innocent settlers by a savage people. This notion contradicts the native people's perception of their war as a step toward regaining autonomy and self-pride.

The "oath" Maria talks about (90) refers to the oath Kenyan natives were forced to take by "Mau Mau" fighters. The natives had to declare their resolute support for the revolutionaries under oath. As Maria points out, those who took the oath were marked, usually on their arms. In this scene, Rice searches for such marks on Tshembe's arms.

6. The Nigerian-Biafran Civil War (1967-1970) was essentially a war between those in the Ibo-dominated southern region and those in the rest of Nigeria. The War resulted mostly from religious, ethnic, and egotistic rivalry, and is the worst that Africa has witnessed thus far.

7. Igbo is the language of the Ibo people, the third largest ethnic group in Nigeria.

8. At this point, even though the Woman emerges as part of Tshembe's real thought process, she is more imaginary than concrete; she is realized in his uncontrolled dream state. She will later mature into the aspect of his internal, rebellious mental being that craves reformation.

9. Kenyatta was a nationalist and first Prime Minister of Kenya when the nation achieved independence from British colonial rule in 1963.

Works Cited

Allen, Samuel W. "Negritude and Its Relevance to the American Negro Writer." Cavalcade. Ed. Arthur P. Davis and Saunders Redding. Boston: Houghton, 1971. 617-26.

Carter, Steven. Hansberry's Drama: Commitment Amid Complexity. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1991.

Fabre, Genevieve. Drumbeats, Masks, and Metaphor. Trans. Melvin Dixon. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983.

Finnegan, Ruth. Oral Literature in Africa. London: Oxford UP, 1970.

Genet, Jean. The Blacks: A Clown Show. New York: Grove, 1960.

Hansberry, Lorraine. Les Blancs. Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays of Lorraine Hansberry. Ed. Robed Nemiroff. New York: Random, 1972. 49-172.

-----. "The Negro Writer and His Roots: Toward a New Romanticism." Black Scholar 12.2 (1981): 2-12.

-----. To Be Young, Gifted, and Black: A Portrait of Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. Adapt.

Robert Nemiroff. New York: Samuel French, 1971.

Harrison, Paul Carter. "Mother/Word: Black Theatre in the African Continuum: Word/Song as Method." Totem Voices: Plays from the Black World Repertory. Ed. Harrison. New York: Grove, 1989. xi-lxiii.

Nemiroff, Robert. "A Critical Background." Hansberry, Les Blancs 35-46.

Ro, Sigmund. "'Desecrators' and 'Necromancers': Black American Writers and Critics in the Nineteen-Sixties and the Third World Perspective." Callaloo 8.3 (1985): 563-76.

Wood, Deborah. "The Plays of Lorraine Hansberry: Studies in Dramatic Form." Diss. U of Wisconsin, 1985.

Originally from Nigeria, Philip Uko Effiong is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Tennessee-Martin. He holds an M.A. in English and Literature of the African Diaspora from the University of Calabar, Nigeria, and a Ph.D. in Dramatic Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.