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Literarure as Enforcement: a Post Colonial Analysis of a Few Plays of Wole Soyinka

Colonization and Post colonization are twin evils in the so called civilized times. During colonization criticizing the Empire was not possible. But in the postcolonial era the colonized is not spared. Personal freedom demands that a human being has the right to follow any religion and faith. According to social rights he has the right to social security, protection and participation in the cultural life of the community. But these fundamental rights were denied to the colonized and the post colonized. The writers in the post colonial period expose the cruelty and dehumanization ruthlessly practised on the colonized. The very means and ways by which the native was discredited become effective weapons to hit back at the colonizer. The native was demeaned as a ‘savage’, his land called ‘a dark continent’, his heart ‘heart of darkness’, his religion ‘barbarous’ and himself ‘a cannibal’. The post colonial writers use their cultural myths to prove the ignorance of the colonizer and his racial prejudice. They prove through their myths the greatness of their religion, the cosmic vision engendered by it, the possibility of rejuvenation inherent in it and the lesson of universal brotherhood advocated by it.

The writers aim at exploiting various techniques as myths, carnival, intertextuality, palimpsest, contrapuntal reading, symbol etc to help the reader see things from a new angle so as to question the official version of history, the so-called authenticity of the canon and the authority of intellectual hegemony exercised. The difference between the post-modern writer and the post colonial writer is that the former does it to promote nihilistic playfulness, whereas the post colonial writer is always conscious of the suffering undergone by the individuals; starting from concrete experience of pain he expresses his characters’ utter disorientation at the psychic level. The post colonial writing aims at rejuvenation of the wronged colonized and restoration of their prestige and identity.
Myths engender ageless wisdom. When a writer uses it creatively and dynamically, he invests them with fresh layers of meaning and interpretation which highlight the contemporary reality. Malinowski’s observation affirms this; “Myth contains germs of the future epic, romance and tragedy” and continues that it “finds itself in certain of its forms of subsequent literary elaboration” Myth and ritual in a primitive society are the sustaining forces both in normal times and crises. No wonder all the African writers seek recourse to myths for restoring the fragmented personality of their fellowmen and reclaiming the distorted faith in their cultural tradition. Soyinka as a great traditionalist uses myths as the core of all his writings whether they are poems, fiction or drama. Even in times of personal crisis during his imprisonment he could survive the “shock –disorientation techniques” of the “mind-butchers”(Mary T. David) only due to his reliance on mythic base, images and symbols. With the help of myth and rituals Soyinka brings to light the post-colonial agony in Nigeria. Soyinka revises the implication of the ancient myth and ritual sacrifices to suit his postcolonial orientation/focus by manipulating the ingrained equivocative power of these cultural specifics, wielding not only his poetic license but also his rights as a native for interpreting them.. In all his plays especially it is Ogun or Ogun surrogates who act out the common human predicament. Ogun is a minor God of the Yoruba pantheon whom Soyinka has elevated to a supremo, fabricating his artistic mythopoesis on and around. One or the other phase of Ogun;s life and his attributes are the seeds from which the play germinates.

Soyinka’s belief in the cosmic theatre, involving the mortal, the immortal and the unborn participants, separated just by the transitional abyss in between: their plights involving alienation, fragmentation, lack of being, and reassembling –all these and much more, find vent through his dramas. All these stages in the process of transformation are equated by Soyinka with the postcolonial struggle in Nigeria. The dissolution of sensibility due to displacement and the disruption of the sense of time led to the disenfranchisement of the “self” of the native resulting in the formation of the “other” which was an alien to him form the crux of his works. The task before him was to reclaim his “self”, the unmutilated part of it and arrive at a workable compromise with his “other”, to form a “realized self”. This is the only way out of the tight corner; the only way for survival. In almost all his plays, Ogun is the core of Soyinka’s mythopoesis. To augment this he uses specific myths and rituals in each play to suit the context of the play. The imagery and stage property too fortify this. In The Road, the time is the celebration of the Ogun festival; the Alegamo ritual is also going on. The Alegamo is the cult of flesh dissolution which ends up in earthing of energy. Ogun too is a blood – thirsty god, if not offered dog-meat he mould demand a heavier sacrifice. In the end, at the insistence of Professor, the main character in The Road, the “egungun”(a mask, worn by a dancer, strictly during a ritual performance) starts dancing; any casual or out of place performance was a sacrilege and a taboo. It is the dance of death which would end up with “earthing of energy” that is with death. The natives do their best to dissuade “Professor” from insisting on that; but he is adamant. The dance goes on and many die in the end as feared; surprisingly there is no trace of the “egungun” dancer; only his “raffia” is left on stage; he has been buried under ground as expected. The ritual is over; only then life can go on as usual. Till then there would be death – death by accidents. The road is a death trap, lying silent like a snake, killing the unwary. The unwary are the victims of the post-colonial era who get obliterated because of their naiveté.

The play is laid out at the transition phase of Nigeria. Death stalks the play; still it is not the end of life. Life springs anew from death, which is the post colonial solution to the upheavals caused by colonization and post colonization. Even the stage-properties are agents of death. The stage properties are the “bolekaja” (mammy wagon) turned “Aksident Store”, the spider reigning supreme in his web, with its predatoriness highlighted, as the post colonial monsters; the shack and the road all have suffered a displacement from useful and harmless to the sinister and evil. “Bolekaja” is for shifting the dead; it has become the cause of death, as accidents have been manouvered only to replenish it. Accidents before colonization were far and few between; transportation and transports (lorries and tankers) are the banes of colonization plaguing the lives of the colonized, pilfering their country’s wealth. The system that has been originated during the colonial days is given a run in the post-colonial days too; crushing down of the common man and exporting of natural resources, adding to the maladies of the people. Bad roads and tankers not in good condition complicate the problem. The spider is likened to the road awaiting the victims; the road is then equated to the snake that kills the unguarded. Professor is another post-colonial spill over; he is both the agent and victim of post colonial predicament. Professor and his quest share the inscrutability of Ogun and his search, sharing with the God his mysterious mythic quality. There crop some pertinent doubts in the readers’ minds, such as: What is Professor’s “real-self”? What is the “Word” he is searching for? Is it for “self-realization” or rejuvenation? Whatever the answer is Professor has searched for “Word” in all odd places yet fails to find it anywhere. The inherent ambiguity in the character of Professor and the object of his quest partake of the metaphysical ambience of myth itself which both represent.

Interrupted ritual captures exactly the condition of the paralyzed society. In Dance of the Forest and Strong Breed it is myth and ritual of the carrier chosen for annual cleansing; the hero is the carrier; in both he is forced to become the carrier, though they fall into their roles unwillingly, only by the end they reconcile to their lot. In Kongi’s Harvest it is the festival of the New Yam to be presented to the spiritual chief of the tribe done every year. In Death and King’s Horseman it is the ritual death of the Horseman of the community as demanded by the tribal custom for assuring the continuity of the race. In the Play of Giants there is no such replay of ancient myth; but the myth of the modern Governments run by the post-colonial monsters is exposed. In these plays there is an interruption in the process of the rituals; this bodes no good to the community; life can go on only after the successful completion of the ritual. Though there is no explicit interrupted ritual, as such in The Play of Giants, there is the carving of the stone going on similar to the carving of a totem during any traditional celebration of a festival. This does not get completed and the war breaks out interrupting its completion.

The locations too are restrictive and ominous helping one visualize the post colonial scenario only too powerfully. It is a claustrophobic atmosphere — the house on stilts or a closed room, the night club, the prison when it comes to buildings and when dealing with places it is the forest which is usually reserved for the non-humans. All these signify restriction of movement. No positive sign is indicated through these stage properties and symbols; they correspond to the arrest and cessation of activity corresponding to the stopped ritual
The plays have the myth of regeneration at the centre of their scheme. In all the plays the heroes are sons of the soil, remaining very close to the earth and pursuing the native tradition. Ms. Mary T. David affirms, that for Soyinka being earthed is the most important mode of being and his reiterated preference to be closed to the earth is the result of his belief is nature’s ‘life sustaining draughts’. (24)

In a few plays there is the replay of the vegetative myth which insists on the renewal of the lost vigour of the Earth through sacrifice. The Yoruba belief implicit in both the plays, namely Madmen and Specialist and Bacchae of Euripides is that, the Earth goddess, is polluted by shedding of blood; unnecessary shedding of blood (due to the civil war) is a sacrilege demanding costly rites of purification and atonement. Atonement in the real sense could never stop with the superficialities but should be accompanied with the change of heart. For a true post colonial individual this is very important and merits serving as the message of Soyinka. At the centre of Madman and Specialist is the violation of this taboo and earth demands expiation. One of those is purification through fire preformed by the Earth Mothers. The other is the sacrifice which the Old Man gratifies by getting killed in his son’s hands. Old Man played many roles; he is likened to Socrates; he is a healer by profession; he is a scape-goat. He remarks: “A part of me identifies with every human being” (M & S, 234). This is humanism preached by the so-called heathen religion. This is the real awakening that is expected of a native, post colonial individual, as against the materialistic and exploitating culture as propounded by the colonizer and his coteries. The return to the roots and the mythic tradition holds the promise of renewal. In Bacchae of Euripides, the need for the renewal of the earth is hinted at needed for the rejuvenation of the afflicted. Tiresias observes:” Perhaps ……Our life sustaining earth Demands ………a little more ……Sometimes a more than token offering for her own needful renewal.(BOE . 306).

At the centre of the play lies the kernel of regeneration and sacrifice reminding one about Soyinka’s Ogunian experience and exploits, the paradigm of post colonial rejuvenation both communal and aesthetic. Myth offers an understanding of time as continuous present, undermining linearity. Mythical time implies a recycling, a repetition and the possibility of rejuvenation, ushering in a cyclical scheme of time. Mircea Eliade points to the mythical and cyclical dimension of time by attributing archetypal meaning to worldly events (20); whereas the modern cultures prefer a linear view of time. By the ingenious use of myths not only the autonomy of the colonized culture is established but their freedom of expression is asserted.

Works Cited:

Soyinka Wole. Collected Plays: Vol.1, London, O.U.P., 1973. Collected Plays: Vol. 2, London, O.U.P., 1974.

Eliade, Mircea. The Myths of the Eternal Return. Trans. Williard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974.

Ed.Gilbert, Helen, et al . “The Language of Resistance”; Post-Colonial Drama: Theory and Practice. Routledge, London 1966 (P 190)

Malinowski, “Myth in Primitive Mythology”, Magic, Science, Religion and Other Essays 1948. London: The Souvenir Press ,1982 .

Mary T. David, “Plinths ………… Against Unreason, Myth and Ritual in Soyinka’s Post Biafran Writings”, Indian Response to Africa Writing.

About the Author

This is K KALA, am a teacher of english, working in a govt college in South India. Have served for 35 years and have done research in AFRICAN WRITING AND WRITERS (Wole Soyinka).

Interested in exploring more about Afircan tardition and love travel ling and cooking for my kids and loooking after my 3 month old grandson.

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