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Nada The Lily Q3 - Cruelty
The casual cruelty displayed by Chaka and his brother Dingaan foremost, but all the characters really, reminded me of The Orenda, the historical novel about the Wyandot people. This was considered normal, and the cruelty of Chaka and Dingaan is notable only because of its excess. How did this affect your reading? Coming from a Judeo-Christian societal viewpoint, did it make you uncomfortable?
Comments
It made me uncomfortable in the sense that the author and probably his white audience considered it normal. I'm really unsure as to whether a native South African would consider it normal. The main critique of the Orenda (from the wider world) was that it was told from the Jesuit perspective and reflected the written Jesuit account. The modern first nations didn't feel that it was an accurate reflection of their history. So I kept wondering what modern South Africans thought of this story. If it really is an accurate portrayal of the time, I don't have a problem with it. Yes, the violence makes me feel uncomfortable, but I'm not reading fiction to be comforted - I'm reading it to be challenged.
Thomas Mofolo wrote a novel called 'Chaka' - https://www.amazon.com/Chaka-Thomas-Mofolo/dp/1478607157['Chaka'](https://www.amazon.com/Chaka-Thomas-Mofolo/dp/1478607157 - about the rise and fall of the Zulu back in the 1920s which was, IIRC, partly inspired by Nada The Lily. I have not read it, but it is considered very good.
Googling 'Nada The Lily From An African Perspective' I don't see many hits from Africans critiquing the novel, so I'm working on the assumption that it didn't offend people, at least.
Oddly enough I've been thinking about The Orenda lately and hadn't made the rather obvious connection between them until now. This for some reason bothered me less, perhaps because the cruelty in The Orenda was more prolonged and personal (and IIRC quite vividly described) whereas this seemed somehow more hand-wavy and less vivid. The probable stand-out exception to that is when Mopo loses his hand in the fire.
I came across this article from The Conversation from 2023 (link below). It's written by an English academic who's published papers on Shaka Zulu. The main point is that most of what we "know" about Shaka has been made up by various people after the fact. To that extent, I think the violence and cruelty in Nada the Lily is there because of the prejudices of the Victorians, not due to any fact.
From a "worldbuilding" point of view, that level of slaughter against his own people would be unsustainable, so it was unbelievable. And after that, I was treating it like the pulpy cartoon style of story it was.
That's what makes it different from The Orenda, as that was trying to be realistic.
https://theconversation.com/shaka-zulu-is-back-in-pop-culture-how-the-famous-king-has-been-portrayed-over-the-decades-207417