Other Leopards by Denis Williams

First published: 1963

Type of work: Impressionistic realism

Time of work: The 1960’s

Locale: Somewhere in the Sudan Savannah in the mythical country of Johkara

Principal Characters:

• Lionel (Lobo) Froad, the protagonist, an archaeological draftsman who is searching for racial identity and a positive relationship to history
• The Chief, a black Christian missionary
• Eve, the Chief’s daughter, eventually Froad’s lover
• Hassan, Eve’s husband, a Muslim
• Dr. Hughie King, Froad’s employer, a British scholar and archaeologist
• Catherine, Hughie’s secretary, whom Froad wants to marry
• Mohammed, an Iranian who wants Froad to promote the cause of Arabs

The Novel

The nature of Lionel Froad’s conflict becomes apparent at the beginning of the novel. Froad, the protagonist, is a man suffering from ambivalence and inner division. This sense of self-division is underscored, at the beginning of the novel, when he confesses to having two names, Lionel, literally his Christian name, and “Lobo,” the nickname which expresses his ancestral heritage, the first representing who he is, the second, who he ought to become. Froad, a Guyanese who was educated in Great Britain, has come to Johkara, a fictional country located in the Sudan, to work as an archaeological draftsman for an English scholar and archaeologist, Dr. Hughie King, and, on a deeper level, to find his roots and his identity. Johkara, like Froad, is itself divided. Froad describes it as “not quite sub-Sahara, but then not quite desert; not Equatorial black, not Mediterranean white. Mulatto. Sudanic mulatto....” Froad’s plight as a divided man who is torn between two worlds, who is uncommitted and paralyzed, is thus introduced. His task, to recover his roots, is underscored by his ostensible task, to participate in archaeological digs in his ancestral homeland.

On one of these digs, statues of Amanishakete, the Queen of Meroe during the first century s.c., are unearthed. Froad, who wanted to believe that Amanishakete’s royalty could somehow demonstrate his own noble African ancestry, is angered and humiliated by Hughie’s disparaging remarks about the queen. Yet when he sees the statues (she is shown flogging slaves), he must admit to himself that she was cruel and ugly.

If he must reject the dark forces of his ancestral past, nevertheless he is unable to accept the cerebral, rational, calculating aspects of Hughie, the representative of Western culture and Froad’s alter ego. While Froad admires Hughie’s scientific ability, he despises his condescending attitude to African culture and his pretentious European mannerisms. Froad is soon drawn into the lives of the other characters, who symbolize the various warring elements in Froad’s own consciousness.

Eve, the daughter of the Chief, a black Christian missionary, has deserted her husband, Hassan, a Muslim, after marrying him against her father’s wishes. Eve, who calls Froad “Lobo,” is described as “the image, pure and simple and shatteringly original,” of Amanishakete. She and Froad eventually become lovers as he attempts to help her resolve her familial and marital troubles. Froad is also involved with Catherine, Hughie’s secretary, whom he wishes to marry, but is unable to consummate his love for her and loses her when she is told (falsely) that Eve has become pregnant by him.

Ambivalent in love, Froad is also torn between political causes. He is approached both by the Chief and by an Iranian, Mohammed, to write tracts on the causes of black Christians and the Arabs, respectively, the first appealing to Froad’s Christian upbringing, the second to his pan-African sentiments.

Froad’s dislike for Hughie, both as a person and as a representative of white colonial culture, comes to a head on an archaeological dig, in which Froad stabs Hughie with a screwdriver and leaves him to die. He then flees into the Johkara jungle, strips himself of clothing, daubs himself with mud, and perches in a tree. As the novel ends, Froad sits in the tree and watches the approach of light in the distance, whether of a new day or of Hughie, coming for revenge, is left unclear.

The Characters

Froad is a man divided, sharing with the other characters numerous conflicting characteristics. Froad describes himself as “another leopard,” differentiating between people who are completely sure of themselves and of their place in the world and those who are tortured by uncertainty: “Some leopards think they have no spots simply because they have no mirrors. Others manage to know, somehow.” He shares certain qualities with some characters but is in accord with none of them.

Eve, who speaks to the side of Froad which is Lobo, is described as the image of Amanishakete and compared to the dark and gloom of forest and river, of earth and nature itself. She is comfortable with the heritage of Africa, its rites and celebrations, and with the Muslim religion. Froad looks to Eve for the nobility of his African heritage: He finds, however, cruelty, disorder, and carelessness.

Catherine, who is a Christian, speaks to the side of Froad which is Lionel. She is caring, emotionally connected to Froad, but he sees her as being in Hughie’s camp and therefore not to be completely trusted. He is unable to express sexually his feeling for her. Torn between these two women, Froad finds himself paralyzed and uncommitted.

Similarly, Froad is committed neither to the Christian cause of the Chief nor to Mohammed’s Arab sympathies. When he decides to write for Mohammed, it seems to be from caprice rather than from commitment. Hughie, whom he admires for his ordered, rational, European approach to life, he also despises for his cold, authoritarian manner and patronizing approach to African culture. He attacks Hughie, perhaps, to rid himself finally of the duality within himself which Hughie represents. Froad, ultimately, is neither black nor white, Christian nor Muslim, man of reason nor child of nature. At the end of the novel, he has returned to what seems to be a primordial state, awaiting a rebirth; it is unclear what he will yet become.

Critical Context

Like Mongo Beti’s Mission to Kala (1964), Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958), and Samuel Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1956), Other Leopards is a mixture of style, scenic development, theme, and fragmentation. It is like Mission to Kala because Froad, like Medza, is undergoing a ritualistic search for a self-identity. Like Things Fall Apart, it is a story of dissatisfaction with white European rule, but it represents the breakdown of a single personality rather than a tribe or culture. Like The Lonely Londoners, it is a comic story of a man entangled in foreign cultural influences: It is a British boss who rules Froad’s life and eventually pushes him to violence.

Particularly noteworthy is Williams’ humorous use of dialect. While Williams cannot match Selvon’s exceptional ear for dialogue, he does capture the speech patterns of Froad’s interior and exterior consciousness marvelously well. If the novel’s fragmentary, episodic, and often impenetrable story line tends to confuse the reader, there is adequate compensation in this vivid realization of the protagonist’s inner life, through which Williams articulates the key issues of a divided Africa. Froad can only strike out helplessly and impotently for answers, all the while cursing the “whipping boy” of white European colonialism that made a common language, economy, and popular culture so deadening and so amorphous.

Bibliography

Dathorne, O. R. The Black Mind: A History of African Literature, 1974.

Gilkes, Michael. The West Indian Novel, 1981.

Moore, Gerald. The Chosen Tongue: English Writing in the Tropical World, 1969.

Ramchand, Kenneth. The West Indian Novel and Its Background, 1974.