Relationships in Joyce Cary's Novel, Mister Johnson

This study will describe and discuss the relationships of the main characters in Joyce Cary's l939 novel, Mister Johnson, about black-white relations in British colonial Nigeria.

The primary relationship in the book is that between the African clerk Johnson and the District Officer Harry Rudbeck. Most of the other relationships in the book---such as that between Johnson and Sergeant "Sargy" Gollup---are developed by Cary to help strengthen and clarify the relationship between Johnson and Rudbeck. These two characters are meant by Cary to symbolize the relationship between the white British colonial in the position of ultimate power in Africa and the subservient African who derives a major part of his identity from his relationship with powerful whites who he is continually trying to please.

We first see Johnson as he meets Bamu, his wife-to-be. He is a stranger to her town just as Rudbeck's people will always be strangers in Africa to some degree. Bamu is suspicious of Johnson and his promises of a better life, just as Africans were suspicious of the colonialists and their promises of a better life. Johnson makes promises to her that mirror the promises made to Africans by whites: "Oh, Bamu you are only a savage girl here---you do not know how happy I will make you. I will teach you to be a civilized lady. . . . " (11-12).

Johnson cannot accept that Bamu is already happy and civilized, and he will never fully communicate with her, or, in fact, with anybody. He is a man who

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esire to make himself seem more important than he is. The Waziri has had him beaten for a minor incident, but Johnson claims to his wife and others "I'm a pretty big man in the country and the Waziri's best friend" (181). Johnson is a child, and his relationships are marked by his child-like eagerness to please: "`Time for supper,' Johnson says gaily. He walks round them like a dog excluded from a reunion on the street corner. If he had a tail he would be wagging it. . . " (184). Johnson believes at one time or another that he is the best friend of a number of the characters in the book, but in fact they have a very different opinion of him than he believes they have of him. He cannot be said to truly have an opinion of himself, because he is almost completely allows himself to be defined by others. He believes himself to be friends with Sargy Gollup. In fact, Gollup is fond of Johnson, but almost in the way that a man would be fond of an obedient dog. Cary writes that Gollup the Sergeant "grows more and more fond of Johnson. . . . In his first sentimental mood, . . . he will cry out, `I `gree for you, Johnson. You the best little nig I ever knew. It's not saying a lot, but I mean it. . . . I like you because you're honest a

Category: Literature - R