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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 3 page paper discusses Senegalese author Sembene Ousmane’s novel “God’s Bits of Wood,” about the 1947-48 railroad strike in then-French West Africa. Bibliography lists 3 sources.
Page Count:
3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVOusman.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
described in the book changed both the men and women who participated in it. The paper argues that there were two significant changes described in the book: the idea of
solidarity among the male workers; and the support of the women for the strike, and then their subsequent participation in it. Discussion The book is based on actual events, but
they are heightened and modified for dramatic effect. The struggle from "oppression to equality" took at least 14 years, but Sembene condenses events into a single year; despite this, his
narrative "conforms to the official record in most important aspects" (Jones, 2000, p. 117). Unlike colonial documents, which stress the contributions of French engineers and officers," it is the Africans-the
workers and their families-who are at the heart of the novel (Jones, 2000). During the colonial period, the French who worked on the railway were paid much higher salaries than
the Africans, who were used mostly as unskilled labor (Jones, 2000). In addition, the French had medical benefits, generous vacations, a family allowance, and "extra pay because they worked overseas,"
none of which was available to the African workers (Jones, 2000, p. 117). There were several strikes by workers over this arrangement, the earliest in 1881, and again in 1920,
1925, and 1938; the strike that Sembene uses in his novel is the one that took place in 1947 (Jones, 2000, p. 117). It was the longest of them, and
affected the most people (Jones, 2000). Thus, one of the themes of the book was the way in which the African workers supported one another during the strike, Another theme
is the "formation of a working-class consciousness ... that connects the narrative of the strike to the time of independence" (Jones, 2000, p. 117). The strike and the worker unity
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