Patrick Chamoiseau, in his detailed account School Days, uses playful and colorful language to outline the emotional struggles of a young schoolboy in colonized Martinique. Chamoiseau's creative and careful choice of words opens the reader's eyes to the internal struggle of the anonymous protagonist, who continually tries to come to terms with his conflicting Creole and French identities. The different teachers with whom the "boy" studies physically represent the opposite personalities that he feels obliged to embody. Using these teachers as vehicles for the conflicting cultural expectations imprinted on the “little boy,” Chamoiseau successfully portrays the pervasive and conflicting feelings the “little boy” experiences as he confusingly attempts to understand his roots and his place within his two worlds badges. to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Chamoiseau clearly implies his young character's initial optimism at the prospect of starting school, a mindset that the author renders naïve later in the narrative. Chamoiseau's depiction of the enthusiasm with which the "little boy" imagines his academic life on hold, and the almost animalistic way in which he constantly seeks his mother's approval, intensify the extreme emotional connection he has to the idea of become part of a larger, more sophisticated image. The relationship that the "little boy" establishes with his first teacher fuels his happiness and comfort in the school environment. “Little boy” thrives in Mme Salinire's maternal ways, signifying the comfort she finds in her Creole family roots: “School was fun. ("Little Boy") was always in a hurry to get there. Mam Salinire made everything fun. She was another kind of Mam Ninotte, equally kind and generous in her affection. His severity was not threatening but lively protective” (Chamoiseau, 28.) The positive associations the “little boy” has with school are short-lived, however: when his brothers reveal that the school he attended does not qualify as real school, but rather like an immature nursery, the center of the “kid's” world falls apart. The full faith that the "little boy" places in school as the gateway to maturation and importance makes this news completely devastating. The fact that the “little boy” now feels forced to doubt his relationship with Mam Salinire, representing a maternal figure, suggests that he cannot have faith in an educational life intimately linked to his Creole foundations. The fear and uncertainty with which "the little boy" approaches his new school contrasts with the carefree and positive attitude he had when he entered the previous school context. This profound change in mentality is clearly manifested in the titles of the individual sections of the story: while the first school experience of the "little boy" takes place under the title of "Desire", the entry of the "little boy" into the actual school is characterized as " Survival". Here, the “little boy” must struggle to stay afloat in a barrage of confusing cultural contradictions and new paradigms. He loses every aspect of the comfort he once felt in Madame Salinire's class as he must meet expectations that he finds difficult to understand. Even the spoken language with which the “little boy” grew up changes abruptly and unnaturally: “…Now, with the Master, speaking traveled far and wide along a single road. And this French street has become strangely foreign. The articulation has changed. The pace has changed. The intonation has changed. More or less familiar wordsthey started to sound different. They seemed to come from a distant horizon and no longer had any affinity with the Creole” (Chamoiseau, 47.) The lack of preparation of the “little boy” both for the actual learning of this new language and for the criticism he has to face when attempts to learn it cause him to question his academic identity. He finds himself forced to take on a foreign, yet correct, persona that contrasts every familiar aspect of his traditional persona. Furthermore, the fact that the "little boy's" new educator is simply and ambiguously called "Teacher" implies the young character's alienation from his educator, a figure instrumental to his academic and therefore personal progress. His disconnection from the new school environment, engendered by "Maestro", prevents him from understanding how to incorporate his familiar Creole culture into a society that demands of him strictly French ways of acting and thinking. "Little Boy", amidst this strong Frenchization, receives a reminder of the implications of living a life full of Creole influences and thus begins to realize the deception inherent in his pure French education. A substitute teacher, in place of the Teacher, conveys to the class the value of being Creole by belittling, and sometimes contrasting, the supreme importance of becoming French through and through: “He taught us for just over a week, and what he he taught us he shook our world... He had read a poet called Césaire, who he quoted constantly, and he talked about something called Negritude... He claimed that our ancestors were not Gauls but African people. He contradicted the Master with vigor, tenacity and ferocious joy. But he never addressed the Universe or its world order. We never understood what he wanted from us” (Chamoiseau, 129). Here, the objectivity with which the “little boy” was taught to see the meaning and seriousness of French teachings and to embody the perfectly French personality is completely contradicted. Not only does he discover that the historical information he was taught as pure fact is questionable and even deniable, but also that French ways of behaving and thinking are not necessarily singularly acceptable or ever superior. Although the "little boy" had been exposed to both French and Creole cultures in different contexts, his young age prevented him from asking questions about how he was better, or more moral, or more correct without the influence of his instructors. In this substitute teacher, the "kid" comes to understand the concept of being proud of his roots, whatever they may be, and to express this by rejecting ideas that contradict these roots. The "kid's" confusion surrounding his identity, as embodied in his experiences with teachers who embody competing factions of his cultural makeup, is commonly, and even notoriously, shared among Caribbean peoples under colonial control. This struggle, culminating in triumph for some and anguish for others, is demonstrated in some of the literary and artistic works produced in this period. As author Gregson Davis explains in his autobiography of famed Martinican activist Aime Cesaire, Cesaire had a strong affinity with his black Creole roots which he expressed through the grititude movement: “As for (Cesaire's) contribution to the formation of a postcolonial ideology, his name is indelibly associated with the fundamental concept of "negritude", a word he is believed to have coined and which would become a rallying point for several generations of young French-speaking blacks in both Africa and the Caribbean in their struggle for build a positive racial identity” (Davis, 2.) Finding such esteem and honor in a cultural identity made wrong, even barbaric, by.