An African Twilight Zone, or Just Where Do You Think You Are?

Picture yourself driving along a country road to somewhere you have never been before. It is getting dark and eventually you realize that you are lost. You decide to go on to the next town and hope there is a gas station or mini-mart open where you can buy a map.

But.....there is no gas station....

there is only a group of small houses with mud wall and thatched roofs. You park the car and decide to find someone you might possibly ask directions from. The people in the village are strange, dark, and as you try to talk to one of them you realize that you don't understand their language...you cannot communicate with them....can't ask directions....can't even ask for a drink of water. This place doesn't look like any place you have ever seen in your country...or in your life. You feel disoriented, like you have stepped into a new reality. A world where you cannot decipher the customs or the people. Eventually, you can't tell reality from fantasy anymore. Since you are lost, you can't go on. But you don't want to stay either.

The longer you stay in the village, the more your perspective switches from who you know you are to who you have become in this strange place. Are you losing your mind? Have you already lost it? What should you do?

In the novel “A Question of Power” the author Bessie Head takes the reader on a loosely autobiographical journey with her into her own lost world of madness. Through the character of Elizabeth, the reader finds him/herself falling down the proverbial rabbit hole into Elizabeth's mental landscape of demons, gods, joy, fear and madness. By the end of the first few pages of this woman's story it is obvious that you are in a strange land, and no one (especially Elizabeth) is going to hand you a map. Elizabeth's language is sometimes vulgar and sometimes poetic. But at no time does she give any indication of when she is lucid and when she is traveling through the hellish landscape of her inner world. The reader must travel with her and hope that as Elizabeth finds meaning, he/she will too.

Elizabeth is a refugee from South Africa who finds herself living in a village in Botswana, where the customs and language are foreign to her. She is trying to create a life for herself and her small son, but her feelings of isolation and encroaching madness make it difficult. As she slips back and forth between short periods of sanity and longer and longer periods of madness, the reader must piece together the story of her past as well as the day to day happenings of her life. This is difficult, because nothing is crystal clear to Elizabeth or to the reader. A times it is clear that Elizabeth is asleep and dreaming. At other times her madness seeps into her waking hours. It is hard to be sure if the people she interacts with are real or not. It becomes somewhat clearer eventually when the reader finds that two of the men that she interacts with are actually members of the village she lives in. (Sello and Dan.) Elizabeth does not know these men personally, but for some reason both men become icons in her inner world; one for evil and the other for good. But because of the fluidity and changeableness of Elizabeth's madness, it is difficult to decide which is which. She feels a mystical connection with Sello and explains that they “were twin souls with closely linked destinies and the same capacity to submerge other preoccupations in a pursuit after the things of the soul”. But when Dan becomes part of her inner life, she is no longer sure that Sello is on her side. She feels as though she is part of a triangle in which “both men flung unpleasant details at her in sustained ferocity”. When an evil woman named Medusa enters the picture, she is sure that she will not survive the assault on her soul. Throughout the story Elizabeth exists in a floating world between madness and sanity, and the reader finds him/herself floating with her. Her feelings of disconnection with her race along with her lack of knowledge about her origins fuel the fire of increasing madness. She feels she is “no one” and “everyone” at the same time. She also struggles with her sexuality and at times seems to be working out some distant memory of childhood abuse at the hands of a mysterious man. Every part of Elizabeth is laid bare to see, and the reader feels at times as if they should look away from her pain.

Elizabeth's descent into madness and her journey out the other side to reality is not an easy one to follow. The language that Bessie Head uses in this novel is her own particular kind of hieroglyphics that the reader must try to decipher as he/she goes along. For some readers, this language is too vague and fantastic to allow safe passage through. There are no road maps of the usual kind to follow when reading a story. The narrative is at time disjointed and does not follow the usual plot structure. In fact, the reader may feel as though they are going mad themselves while trying to travel the storyline. But what I have found when reading Ms. Head's chronicle of Elizabeth's experiences, is that in order to be able to follow along the reader must let go of all previous expectations and go with the flow of the words. In a way it is like jumping into a freezing cold pool of water. At first, you must acclimate yourself to the temperature of the water and then get your bearings. As the reader continues on, the current of the words begins to sweep you along and you find yourself in a different mindset. As long as you continue to remember that there is no familiar landscape going by, you can begin to set aside your incredulity and take a journey that is intense and entertaining.

Some critics have proposed that Ms. Head's novel is “dishonest”. By this I suppose they mean that her illustration of the language of madness is completely made up and not based on any real experiences of her own or any personal knowledge of what it is like inside a mentally ill person's head. While my experience is limited when it comes to what madness is like, I did find myself completely immersed in Elizabeth's world. After reading for a while I would find myself feeling as if I was coming up for air when I would stop. I found myself engrossed in the story. If Ms. Head was being dishonest it was an extremely effective dishonesty. Since “A Question of Power” is a novel and the author does not profess it to be anything else, then dishonesty does not seem to be an important concept when critiquing it. Whatever “technique” the author uses to create the kind of story they are trying to write, it is ultimately up to the reader as to whether he/she can connect with the ideas. When writing fiction, even if it is loosely autobiographical, the writer is free to tell the story in whatever way works for him or her. It is the reader who must find his or her own “map” in order to travel safely to the end.

Whether Ms. Head was aware of the fact that she was taking her readers on a “ride” or not, the novel “A Question of Power” is a powerful journey which any reader will find challenging and will definitely offer you an education in fantasy and reality. Just don't forget to bring your own map.