Clezio’s novel “Onitsha” is an excellently woven story of South Africa in its colonial period, describing the sufferings of native Africans as well as the pains of generous Whites like of Geoffroy Allen and his wife Maria Luisa.[break]
The story starts with a young boy Fintan and his mother Maria Luisa. He calls her Maou. Leaving Italy, they come to Onitsha in South Africa. They are so attracted by Onitsha, a virgin land in the heart of vast South Africa, as well as so eager to meet Geoffroy Allen, Maria´s husband who is working and waiting for them there. There is no limitation to Fintan´s excitement as he is going to meet his father for the first time. Maria Luisa is equally enthusiastic to see her husband after a long time.
After a month-long journey on the ship, The Surabaya, they reach the strange and faraway land. But their previous eagerness crumbles down when they meet rude, cold, rough and strange Geoffroy Allen. Fintan cannot accept him as his father.
Maou´s dream of beautiful time with her husband in a virgin land is worn out when she witnesses his cold nature and his ignorance of her. Her heart breaks into pieces to see the miserable condition of African slaves. She finds they are being chained and assigned for certain work without proper food and water even in scorching midday sun.
Fintan meets native Bony who familiarizes him with rivers, jungles and the many mysterious places of Onitsha. White officers Gerald Simpson and Sabine Rhode enjoy luxurious life in that remote place while sucking the blood of helpless South Africans. They are the example of cruel colonizers. They are totally cold hearted. They treat the natives as animals.
Here we get similar images of the Booker Prize (1999) and Nobel Prize in Literature (2003) winning writer J. M. Coetzee´s novel “Waiting for the Barbarian” which is an allegory to oppressors and oppressed.
Oya, a young black girl who is taken as mad, runs from house to house. She is exploited by many and later becomes pregnant. She gets a white man´s servant as her husband and father to her son. Nobody knows who the baby belongs to but the kind servant accepts her.
Maou and Fintan just find poverty, suffering, suppression and suffocation of Blacks in their imaginary land. They return to Italy with bitter experiences and dreadful images of Onitsha when Geoffroy is sacked from his job. He wishes to do research on African cultures and traditions which remain incomplete with his death. He always dreams of an African queen who is in her journey, defeated, without crown and palanquin. His dream has symbolic meanings. Africa at that time was a defeated land and was suffering from the White colonizers´ domination .The country was surviving but without hope and with lots of pain in her heart as the suppressors were dancing on her heart.
Onitsha presents the disheartening pictures of Africans in colonial period. It equally points out the pains of kind Whites. But generous Maou and Geoffroy leave Onitsha for Italy as they can’t adjust themselves in the midst of cruel suppressors.
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