Travel writing is one of popular literary genres in which the travel writer gives a deep and intense accounts of unknown peoples and places that he has met and visited. He often includes his beautiful experiences while traveling with different people and their cultures, personal narratives, blissful and miserable memories and brings news of the unknown world. The primary purpose of travel writing involves discovering new world, exploring to unknown cultures and reporting about unknown places and peoples.
“The Snow Leopard” is one of the popular travel writings by the world’s popular travel writer Peter Matthiessen. Matthiessen’s travel writing can be viewed through the perspective of reporting the world, representing the other and revealing the self. His travel writing reflects the approach by which he has sought to present himself as a reliable source and some persistent difficulties that are always associated with travel writing. Moreover, the author reveals the approach and rhetorical technique to represent his autobiographical writing.
From the perspective of post-colonialism, this travel writing “The Snow Leopard” seeks to keep colonial discourse and imperialist traditions alive. Post-colonialism examines how western imperialists in a crafty manner makes use of colonial discourses in travel writing through rhetorical strategy while representing others. The unseen goal of western travel writing is to encourage the expansion of western imperialism and even the modern travel writings are seen to reclaim and reestablish imperialist traditions.
This travel writing “The Snow Leopard” can be divided into three components from the perspective of post-colonialist lens. The text can be viewed through the strategies of othering from colonial discourse, the strategies of othering from neo-colonial discourse and challenging travel writing’s colonialist tendencies from other voices. The western travel writer seeks to keep the imperialist traditions alive through the writing even after the official end of European imperialism. Colonial discourse always portrays colonized people as savage, uncultured, dirty, poor and as a servant whereas they portray themselves to be generous, benevolent, civilized, democratic and cultured. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are often called the age of high colonialism when the western powers extend their supremacy and consolidate their authority around the world.
Matthiessen’s narrative functions as a form of colonial discourse and he often appears to be an occidental throughout his writing. He establishes a hierarchy while recounting Europeans as white sahibs and Nepalese as porters, lazy and brown. He dehumanizes Nepalese communities of Dolpo region by saying that they are filthy and vulturous ghouls. He says that the cultures that he encounters at Dolpo are barbaric and savage. He seeks to establish a sense of cultural supremacy in western readers by depicting Nepalese as savages. He describes Pokhara and its outskirts as:
vacant children, listless adults, bent dogs and thin chickens in a litter of sagging shacks and rubble, mud, weeds, stagnant ditches, bad smells and dirty fruit peelings awaiting the carrion pig; for want to better fare, both pigs and dogs consume the human excrement that lies everywhere along the paths. (Matthiessen 21)
Matthiessen’s friend George also portrays himself as superior and oriental. Once he says ‘damn’ to porters and ‘dirty Kamis’ to ironsmith when he is angry. Even being an outsider, he tries to create hierarchy based on caste system. He thinks that porters are notorious for giving trouble and they are depicted as faithful who are barefoot and in ragged shorts. He once recounts Nepalese community of Dolpo region as:
The biologist George Schaller says that yesterday he, too, had felt irritable and miserable. These damned porters are even worse than the dirty Kamis. And the Sherpas were getting to me too, wasting and breaking everything: you lend them something, and in one day it looks like they’d used it for a month. (Matthiessen 150)
There are few modern travel writers from the west who try to promote cosmopolitan vision. They seek to celebrate cultural differences and believe that all human beings belong to one global community. However, the rhetorical strategy of representing the other and characteristics of colonial discourse are still alive in contemporary travel writing. The western travel writer indirectly seeks to keep the colonial tendencies alive in travel writing through the neo-colonialism. It is so unfortunate for us to depend upon the west even to know and discover our own place, culture and people. Sherpas, Magars and Gurungs are our own people and, Dolpo is our place. The west always takes the authority and credibility to speak about the place, culture and people of the east. They do not listen to the local perspectives and developing countries have no right to define their own country and cultures.
The strategy behind Matthiessen’s journey to Nepal is also for commercial purpose for trade. He investigates the natural resources in Dolpo region and his exploration inspires other western traders and investors for the plentiful potentials for profitable trade:
Several women and one-man wear striking necklaces of the white tusks of musk deer, one of the many primitive animals that are found in this evolutionary backwater, cut off from the rest of Eurasia by high mountains; the long recurved canine tusks are replaced in modern deer by antlers. This little deer is killed mostly for its musk, used as a perfume base; because one musk pod (a large gland in the male’s belly skin) brings up to five hundred dollars in Kathmandu, the musk deer is disappearing from Nepal. (Matthiessen83)
The travel writer often seeks to impose cultural imperialism through travel writing. Matthiessen here makes his culture acquainted in the east. Hallowe’en is a kind of festival that western people celebrate every October:
The October moon reminds me that at home it will soon be Hallowe’en and I wonder if my son will carve a pumpkin. He has a skeleton costume and white bones painted on black cloth. (Matthiessen128)
Postcolonial writers have started constructing postcolonial travel writings from the late 1960s onward. The recent postcolonial writers have tried to remove this colonial tendency from travel writing. The commentators or critics regard travel writing genre as inherently imperialist and exploitative. Postcolonial literature is the literature written by people from formerly colonized countries. It often addresses the problems and consequences of the colonized countries. The writing seeks to challenge western stereotypes and attitudes. The goal of postcolonial writers is to attack the colonial discourse and distort binary opposition.
There are numerous postcolonial writers such as Jamaica Kincaid, Colleen McElroy, Gary Younge and Caryl Philips who are also the descendants of formerly subject subaltern peoples, have created a great movement in travel writing. These writers have produced a counter travel writing to reverse genre’s traditional focus in the west. They seek to attack colonial discourses and deconstruct western stereotypes in travel writing. Jamaica Kincaid is both Antiguan and American, Colleen McElroy is African American, Caryl Philips and Gary Younge define themselves as Black British. Tahir Shah is a British Afghan and Pico Iyer presents himself as a British subject an American resident and an Indian citizen. So, now one may encounter in travel writing:
British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie suggests in his 1987 travel writing that many travelers today who do not have their origins in the countries of the mighty west or north are likely to have in common some experience either personal or familial of imperial subjugation and so are more likely to possess some knowledge of what weakness was like, some awareness of the view from underneath and of how it felt to be there, on the bottom, looking up at the descending heel. As a result, they are less disposed to imperialist nostalgia and less inclined to patronize or vilify other cultures simply because they have not yet emulated western modernity. (Thompson 165)
Works Cited
Matthiessen, Peter. “The Snow Leopard.” Vintage books, London, 1978.
Thompson, Carl. “Travel Writing”. Routledge, Abingdon, 2011.