Timothy Mo's Man Sundae, and Other Overseas Workers

Timothy Mo's Man Sundae, and other overseas workersEveryone knows who Man Friday is.The Man Sundae of my title refers to the titular hero and narrator of Timothy Mo's most recent novel, Renegade or Halo 2 (1999).The book's first chapter is appropriately concerned with first the body and then the name of the hero, or rather his naming, for though he has been 'loftily christened Rey Archimedes Blondel Castro' (7), he will travel through his story under a series of nicknames, pet names and noms de guerre.This multiplicity of names reflects his protean and adaptive nature as well as the scandal of his provenance, which affronts most of the usual categories of identity. 1Rey, or Sugar Rey, is the son of a Filipina bar-girl from Mactan and an African American serviceman.Not surprisingly, his anomalous appearance prompts his earliest schoolmates to call him Frankenstein, but while the nickname serves as the ignition for a recurring theme, the novel's interest in forms of monstrosity, it doesn't quite catch on in the playground, because Rey is 'too bright and friendly' to be Frankenstein's monster.In an early instance of complicity, he obligingly supplies a nickname for himself, when the other urchins are debating what he should be called.'Halo-Halo', I replied.Well, this was an inspired witticism at my years but not totally original.However, it was enough to crease my contemporaries, Halo-Halo, or Halo 2 in its shorthand form, being the many-hued and multi-textured confection of ice-cream, cereals, neon syrups, crystallised fruits, frosty shavings, leguminous preserves and bloated pulses that you can find under different names all over South Asia.Just one of the region's surprising constants, but at this time I alluded to variety, to delicious hotch-potch and inspired mixing, me as Man Sundae.(6-7)For the rest of this essay I propose to exercise the critic's privilege of ruining a good joke, and to take seriously the invitation encoded in the wordplay to compare then said, "No, they no kill me, they willing love learn."He meant by this, they would be willing to learn' (226).Crusoe's ponderous and redundant gloss on Friday's excellent English -'they willing love learn' -is a small instance of the large sense in which Friday's wit and inventiveness is enclosed in the service of Crusoe's interest, just as Friday's speech is inscribed and contained (in both senses) in Crusoe's language. 2Crusoe describes the three years he lived on the island with Friday as 'perfectly and completely happy' ( 222), and indeed Friday is clearly a delightful companion, as well as just the person you would want to have along on a desert island -goodhumoured, hard-working, optimistic and versatile: not unlike Rey Castro in Renegade.But although Crusoe is undoubtedly fond of Friday, Friday is always primarily valued because he is profitable.Crusoe's unconscious has made this point to him even before he rescues Friday, an action prompted by a dream in which he sees a savage escape from his cannibal captors and come to Crusoe's fort.In the dream, Crusoe shows himself to the savage, who kneels down before him; whereupon, Crusoe says, 'I carried him into my cave, and he became my servant' (202).In the dream, Friday arrives in Crusoe's territory as a refugee, and stays as a guest worker.The dream, clearly enacting Crusoe's wish, soon becomes actuality.Not long after rescuing him, Crusoe puts Friday to work and to school.The secular aim of Crusoe's educational programme is 'to teach him every thing that was proper to make him useful, handy, and helpful' (213).The first lesson, as everyone remembers, is a naming, in which 'I made him know his name should be Friday, which was the day I saved his life; I called him so for the memory of the time; I likewise taught him to say Master, and then let him know, that was to be my name...' (209).Friday's name, then, has two meanings, as the invocation or invoice of an unpayable debt, and as the antonym or opposite of Master.Suspicious by nature to the point of paranoia, Crusoe cannot bring himself to trust Friday at first.He is afraid that if Friday is able to return to his own people, he will forget his new religion, and his obligation to the man who has saved his life, and will come back

Caribbean history, culture, and politics · History · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Race, History, and American Society