Self-Identity In Edouard Glissant's The Fourth Century

During early school years, many students were instructed to create family-trees for their history courses to explain their culture and backgrounds. Edouard Glissant’s novel, The Fourth Century, is like a family-tree of the Longoué and Béluse families being presented to a history course. Throughout the novel, Glissant tells the story of a young boy Mathieu, who is trying to understand the history of his homeland, Martinique. To do so, he seeks out to find an older man, Papa Longoué, who provides him with stories necessary to understand his history and culture. Papa Longoué uses examples of his own experiences and accounts of stories that he thought helped shaped the history and culture of Martinique. The story-telling of Papa Longoué allows …show more content…
In The Fourth Century, Glissant describes how culture creates and affects history, and how in turn, the combination of culture and history creates self-identity of individuals within cultures. One main example of how history creates self-identity is seen in the description of the relationship between the Longoué and Béluse families. In the beginning of the novel, it is apparent that the Longoué family escaped slavery immediately, and went off to live as a maroon. The immediacy of this escape from slavery is noted in the beginning of the novel, when the author states, “Maroon from the first day. Maroon from the first hour,” (Glissant, 38). On the other hand, the Béluse family remained in slavery and worked on plantations for their owners. Once Mathieu understands how the two families lived upon their arrival to Martinique, Papa Longoué discusses their past relationship. Prior to being shipped off, the Longoué and Béluse families had a history filled with hatred. The text quotes, “They had not inherited the hatred, they had …show more content…
Liberté, a maroon, and Anne, a slave, had a unique friendship. For one, the two boys were always roughhousing with one another. Whether it be fooling around or in a serious manner, their friendship was very violent. However, the violence being exerted through each boy was very different. For one Liberté’s violent acts were much more gentle compared to Anne’s. The text describes Anne’s opinion of Liberté’s violence by stating, “So he was fascinated by the ease, the mockingly casual air, the smile that never left Liberté’s face even when he fought the hardest, finding there some complement or antidote to his own unaffected violence,” (Glissant, 137). Through this quote, readers can see that Liberté’s maroon culture made him feel as if he were superior to all the violence that was occurring, because of the fact that he was already considered free from slavery. Therefore, it is his culture that allows him to prevent the violence from affecting him. On the other hand, Anne was much more violent throughout their friendship. The text describes Liberté’s opinion of Anne’s violence by stating, “Liberté secretly admired his fierceness, it was constantly on the alert, just looking for occasions,” (Glissant, 139). Through this quote, it is clear that Anne acted much more violently than Liberté during their games because he felt a need to be more powerful