|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Features |
| Journals |
| Gitanjali in Zimbabwe |
 |
What Is the What? By Dave Eggers McSweeney's 475 pp. Rating:
|
Dave Egger’s well written What Is the What? offers a fictionalized memoir of Achak Valentino Dominic Deng, a Sudanese Lost Boy now living in the United States. Although Achak is a real person with a specific history, Eggers’ story is a composite drawn from the experiences of many Lost Boys who traveled across southern Sudan in the 1980s to escape civil war.
Structurally, Eggers divides the narrative into three parts, each of which covers a segment of Achak’s life in Africa. The first book details the attacks of the Arab militias and his escape from Sudan. The second describes his life in a refugee camp in Ethiopia, while the third relates his life in a refugee camp in Kenya and his eventual relocation to the US.
Even though Achak’s memoir is laid out linearly, Eggers unravels it through flashbacks as Achak tells his story mentally to people in his surrounding environment (the Christian neighbors downstairs, the desk orderly at the emergency room, people entering a gym). Eggers also weaves in anecdotes about Achak’s adventures in America, creating many smooth temporal shifts in events and locations.
The three-part structure also establishes symbolic links between Achak’s present and past. The first book connects a home invasion of his apartment in Atlanta to the Arab militias’ invasion of his village in Sudan. The second draws parallels between Achak’s futile attempts to receive medical care in an emergency room and the nonexistent aid at the refugee camp in Ethiopia. And the third juxtaposes Achak’s return to normalcy following the home invasion with the semblance of normalcy he experienced at the camp in Kenya.
Such carefully crafted structure and parallelism suggest What Is the What? is a complex metaphor that uses symbolism to generate deeper thematic meaning. However, Eggers seems more concerned with narrative complexity than with making statements about war, those displaced by it, and those who fail to respond.
Because the novel is set in Africa and details a journey through horror and inhumanity to reach normalcy, it automatically evokes comparisons to Heart of Darkness, but Dave Eggers is no Joseph Conrad.
What Is the What? does feature a few glimpses of symbolic brilliance. In the first book, a Lost Boy who tires of the endless walking crawls into a hole inside a bomb crater where he plans to remain in hiding forever. Later, Achak stumbles across a ghost-like man who lives alone in the desert with his cache of food; the man claims he is alive because he lives nowhere, so everyone leaves him alone because they cannot find him
Unfortunately, these scenes are tempered by some blatant attempts at symbolism that scream, “I’m trying to make a point here because I’m so deep.” In the third book, after surviving a bus accident, Achak encounters a group of Kenyans who tell him, “Pray, Sudan. Pray for your survival.” The overt symbolic gesture can’t be ignored, but a more subtle approach would have worked better.
Eggers also makes a small character blunder by concealing the fate of Achak’s girlfriend Tabitha. Throughout the story, Achak hints that his relationship with Tabitha will never be fulfilled as he would wish. When we finally learn why he says this and how recent the events are, the narrative is nearly finished.
Eggers intentionally withholds this information to give the book a sense of dramatic climax, but the problem is the events would have a far greater effect on Achak and his mindset than Eggers allows. The sudden revelation and the understanding of how Achak would react in reality make his pervious characterization seem false. In these circumstances, Achak’s outlook on life and his digressions about Tabitha should be different from what Eggers portrays.
But Achak’s subdued, unrealistic response is related to one of Eggers’ themes. What Is the What? is a modern retelling of the story of Job, but from the anti-Job perspective. Achak is a human beset by misfortune heaped upon innumerable misfortunes. But throughout every horrible experience, unlike Job, he willing accepts that what happens to him is all part of God’s plan.
What seems strange is Achak considers God to be the author of these events even though he always carefully delineates the history and roles of the humans behind them. He seems convinced that the humans acting against him are fulfilling the plan God has set for him.
What Is the What? is also part metafiction about the human compulsion to tell stories and relate one’s life experiences to everyone, even those who do not hear or do not wish to hear. However, like the novel’s symbolism, Eggers deliberately makes a point of having Achak express this idea, as though he doesn’t think his readers are bright enough to understand this “deeper” message.
This blatant effort at metafiction gives the story an anticlimactic, somewhat non sequitur, ending. It creates the impression that Eggers simply kept writing until he couldn’t think of anything else to say, then he needed to use some gimmick to conclude the story.
Technically, Eggers writing is wonderful. His sentences paint detailed pictures in clear, concise words—although his language may be a little too perfect and advanced for a narrator whose first language isn’t English.
On a larger scale, What Is the What? offers an intriguing perspective of modern Sudan and the country’s almost unfathomable violence. It shows that Darfur is not the Sudan’s first attempt to commit genocide against its citizens.
This perspective and Eggers’ great use of language make What Is the What? an enthralling story and an entertaining read. It might not be a literary classic (certainly not even close to Heart of Darkness), but it’s definitely a fine example of what contemporary literature can achieve.
 |
