Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)

Studies - Judit Molnár: The Spatio-Temporal Dimension of Diasporic Discourse from the Carrebian on the Canadian Literary Scene

We could not know, because the vast Atlantic which separated us from England, that the speech we were imitating was really working-class London fish-sellers' speech. We, the black aristocracy of an unfree society, exchanged our native speech for English working-class patois. (52-53) Knowledge of the Western world was available only for the privileged who could afford it; many with the support of relatives from America. The educated boy's image conjured up the word "fool". Any black boy who achieved brilliance at book learning, who got a job that no one remembered ever being held by a black boy, such a boy was said to be "bright-bright-bright". He was either a "Latin Fool," or a "mathematics fool," or a "Science fool." He was also said to be slightly mad. "Off his head." (69) As Brown points out the word "fool": [in] the Creole usage ... implies an awesome expertise. [...] it also voices the colonial's deference to the colonizer's culture" (15). The application of the ambiguous meaning of the word serves also as an example for the binary cultural oppositions embedded in Clarke's early experiences. Clarke was not only a "history fool" but a "dreaming fool" (137), too, and Milton has always been dear to him, which accidentally happens to be the name of his best friend in the novel, too. Clarke is thoroughly familiar with Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained

, thus Brown sees a connection in Clarke's wish to explode the two myths; one associated with the Caribbeans as Paradise and the other with the New World as El Dorado. (191) He clearly demonstrates the falseness of these believes. Brown argues: Nothing has more forcefully emphasized the fallacy of a Caribbean Paradise than the islander's stubborn quest for their economic and social EI Dorado: in the Panama Canal Zone at the turn of the century; Great Britain after the Second World War; the United States over the last forty years; and Canada since the fifties. (2) And the image of a possible El Dorado in the New World often vanishes when immigrants face the harsh reality of the society where they have hoped to fulfil their dreams and instead find themselves culturally, socially, politically suppressed. Clarke's early education unhidden in the novel originated not only in the St. Matthias school and the Combermere Secondary School. Closely 208