INTRODUCTION
In this unit, we shall study the reflection of traditional beliefs in new Nigerian literature. Some new Nigerian writers draw heavily from the traditional beliefs of their people in the creation of their art. They believe that modernity has never spoilt the real traditional beliefs of the people even though some people have been trying to run from it. In trying to attack the incessant military coups and unstable governance in Nigeria, Okri decided to use the motif of the Abiku in Nigerian traditional belief to capture this reality. Oyeyemi in her novel reveals that many people die out of the ignorance of their culture. The culture of ‘ere ibeji’ in Yoruba traditional belief is exploited in the story. Chinweizu in his poetry reveals that only African beliefs and values are viable tools for a true African literature. He explores this in his poetry which he termed ‘Afrocentric’ poetry.
3.1 General Overview
The application of traditional beliefs in modern literature in Nigeria is a true reflection of the africanness in the literature. African literature started with African orature, African beliefs and African values. The part that literature plays as a unifying institution of art is paramount to our understanding of how a people can survive the present and win the future. This leads to a proper understanding of what a true African literature entails. Chinua Achebe was once probed on his thoughts on the African novel and the novelist. Rather impatiently, he responded that definitely the African novel had to be about Africa as a geographical expression and as a metaphysical landscape. He added that it should be about "a view of the world and all of the cosmos perceived from a particular position."
The term "African" appears to correspond to a geographical notion but we know that, in practical terms, it also takes in those areas of collective awareness that have been determined by ethnic, historical and sociological factors, all these factors, as they affect and express themselves in our literature, marking off for it a broad area of reference. Within this area of reference then, and related to certain aspects that are intrinsic to the literature, the problem of definition involves as well a consideration of aesthetic modes in their intimate correlation to the cultural and social structures which determine and define the expressive schemes of African peoples and societies. The essential elements of African literature which should include the obligation to represent the image of Africa, given that Africa is relatively still unknown, underestimated and despised in the world, should be an important criterion. Some African writers have respectively depicted Africa's past and traditions, for their contributions towards the better understanding of Africa.
Furthermore, for literature to reflect its society, it should be presented in the form that comes naturally to the people's appreciation of art. Moreover, in time to come, due to extreme pressures of life in modern cities, society will resort to less time-consuming ways of reading and communicating by finding new means, and new forms and then new definitions of changing practical consciousness. Thus, it is not surprising that Nigerian traditional beliefs are often reflected in the new Nigerian literature. This is because it helps in the proper communication of Nigerian values and aids in simplifying the message by using the people’s known beliefs.
Ben Okri has often exploited the power of the supernatural to give his novel a proper leaning towards the Nigerian cultural situation. This style of writing often termed magical realism runs through his novels. A much younger writer, Helen Oyeyemi, 18 years at the completion of his debut novel, The Icarus Girl, exploited the Yoruba mythical belief on the ‘bond’ of twins which has been neglected in modern times due to deliberate attempts at avoiding those traditional values in modern literature. Oyeyemi, a diaspora writer, exploited this belief which made her novel draw much attention from critics and writers. Chinweizu, the modern Pan-Africanist, uses the traditional beliefs of his people in the creation of poetry of Afrocentric values. He believes that the utilization of African orature, African traditional beliefs and cultural values in African literature gives it a true African touch.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 1
Critically assess the importance of traditional beliefs as motifs in new Nigerian literature.
3.2 Magical Realism: Ben Okri’s The Famished Road
Ben Okri is a Nigerian poet and novelist. Okri has risen to an international acclaim, and he is often described as one of Africa's greatest writers. His best known work, The Famished Road, was awarded the 1991 Booker Prize. He has also been described as a magic realist, although he has shrugged off that tag. He writes about the mundane and the metaphysical, the individual and the collective, drawing the reader into a world with vivid descriptions.
The Famished Road is about an ‘Abiku’ child named Azaro. Shortly after birth, it became clear that Azaro was a spirit child. He had vivid dreams, which foretold the future and he could see spirits interacting with the living. The spirits called to him and caused him to leave his body for a time, which caused his parents to think he was dead. He woke up in his own coffin and his parents found they could not afford the spiritual ceremony to cut his obvious connection with the spirit world. Azaro grew and learned more about his "gift." He ran out of his compound (forcing his mother and father to follow) just before it went up in flames. Priestesses who saw his true power abducted him. Azaro made a narrow escape, only to end up in the house of a police officer whose dead son tried to communicate with him.
The Famished Road is the amazing story of the journey of a spirit child through the poverty and suffering of modern day Africa. In the pseudo- reality where the book is set, there is a spirit, as well as a physical world. A spirit child is one who only wants to be in the spirit world, so they kill themselves whenever they reincarnate in the physical world. The story is centred on Azaro, an abiku or spirit child. Spirit children are born into the world of the living but some promise that as soon as they are born they will die and thus return to their friends in the land of spirits. Azaro makes such a promise but on being born he is stopped by the beautiful, suffering face of his mother and decides that he will try life. His spirit companions do not like this and haunt him to return to the land of the dead. This makes the childhood of Azaro both beautiful and harrowing. In almost every scene of this novel the world familiar to us leaps and pours with the beauty of a spiritual presence. Spirits mingle with the living, in human or animal form, or in the form of lights and omens. Sometimes Azaro disappears altogether onto a spiritual level and a world that is both magnificent and terrifying runs by the reader.
Azaro is haunted by these spirits and some scenes can be quite distressing, even terrifying in places. The undead come as blind lecherous old men who want to use the eyes of children, beggars with misshapen limbs and horrific wounds, freaks and wild animals. Even the road of the title in this story is an entity with a stomach, a being who will destroy unwary travellers who do not leave proper sacrifices.
The novel is set in Nigeria and has a very African feel to it. We are always in the ghetto with Azaro’s family, always just on the brink of starvation. Spirits, herbalists and witches and wizards all have their places in the communities, the people are riddled with superstition but in the context of this story every superstition is a real answer and cure. Each one works and we as readers see the spirits being affected by the superstitions of the living.
Azaro lives with both abuse and a prevailing love. One of the most intriguing characters of the book was Black Tyger, Azaro’s father. A great boxer, Black Tyger is an abusive father and husband, the almost unbearable suffering of his life taken out on his wife and child. He is also a powerful and noble man crying to be heard. The boxing sequences of ‘The Famished road’ are among some of the most dramatic action scenes I’ve ever read, the opponents of Black Tyger don’t always come from the land of the living but from the land of fighting ghosts. The strength of the man and the power he draws from makes gripping reading. When he decides to become a politician we see he is noble in his thoughts, all he wants is to build schools for the beggars, the people laugh at him but I admired him.
Azaro’s mother likewise suffers hopelessly, etching out a miserable living by labouring all day to sell goods. At times it gets too much for her and she takes it out on Azaro but the love she also feels for her child and husband is heart warming. At the lowest points of our characters lives we sometimes get a glimpse of love or happiness that seems like a diamond found in a pile of coal. The novel is throughout harrowing and painful but the overall message is one of progress and hope.
Politics play a large part in the story as the party of the rich and the parties of the poor vie to get the people of the ghetto’s votes. Progress is represented by the splendid, voluptuous character of Madame Koto. This kindly, overweight lady begins the story running a poor bar of palm wine and her famous peppercorn soup.
Without giving too much away she is the first to bring electricity to the ghetto and the first to own a car, both stupendous, magical artifacts to the eyes of the very poor. The richer she gets though the nastier she becomes. It is brilliantly done. You will feel suffering reading this novel, you will feel hunger and long with the characters to find even the smallest of successes. In return you will be rewarded with some of the most beautiful prose I’ve ever read, as one critic on the sleeve of the novel says: “Okri is incapable of writing a boring sentence.”
Characters
1. Azaro is the story's narrator. He is an abiku, or a spirit child who has never lost ties with the spirit world. The story follows him as he tries to live his life, always aware of the spirits trying to bring him back.
2. Azaro's father is an idealistic labourer who wants the best for his family and the community. He suffers greatly for this, eventually becoming a boxer and later a politician. Azaro's father loves him deeply, but is often bitter at having an abiku and occasionally goes on angry violent tirades.
3. Azaro's mother works very hard selling anything she can get her hands on for the family. She cares for her family deeply and constantly gives up food and security for her family and their ideals. She is proud that Azaro is her son and goes to great lengths to protect him.
4. Madame Koto is proprietress of a local bar. She has a liking for Azaro, though at times is convinced he brings bad luck. She starts out as a well-meaning woman, trying to get along with everyone else. However, as the story progresses, she becomes richer, siding with the political party of the rich, and is often accused of witchcraft. She tries to help Azaro and his family on numerous occasions but seems to try to take Azaro's blood to remain youthful.
5. Jeremiah, the Photographer is a young artist who brings the village to the rest of the world and the rest of the world to the village. He manages to get some of his photographs published, but practices his craft at great personal risk.
The story moves between Azaro’s adventures in the real world with his struggling parents and dirty politics, and another peculiar world limited to Azaro’s vision – Madame Koto’s palm wine bar, the (famished) road and the forest – which are crowded with spirits, and supernatural elements. Often it is Azaro’s visionary world that leads him through all the tribulations of the real world.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 2
Explain the application of magical realism in the satirical presentation of politics in The Famished Road.
3.3 Traditional Belief: Helen Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl
Helen Oyeyemi was born in Nigeria in 1984 and moved to London when she was four. The Icarus Girl was written while Oyeyemi was studying for her A- levels and she is also the author of two plays, Juniper’s Whitening and Victimese. The title ‘Icarus’ is taken from Greek mythology and it means ‘protector’ .
The Icarus Girl is a story of overwhelming, corrosive loneliness. Jessamy Harrison lives in London, the only child of a Yoruba mother and an English father. As the novel opens, this intellectually precocious, angry, solitary eight-year-old has shut herself into a cupboard because only in such confined spaces does she feel in control. Jess’s alienation springs from everyday realities. She has been moved up a year in school because of her academic gifts. Her rages and screaming fits distance her further from her classmates. She is a stranger to her mother’s family and language. On a deeper level, Jess is haunted by other identities which threaten to take over and destroy her own. The strongest of these takes the form of a little girl, Titiola, whom Jess encounters when she first visits Nigeria. Jess names the girl TillyTilly, and she appears to be the typical imaginary best friend of an isolated child. But TillyTilly is far more powerful than this. It emerges that Jess is not an only child, but a surviving twin. It also becomes clear that this novel is as much metaphysical as it is realistic.
The Icarus Girl takes its premise from the Yoruba belief that twins inhabit three separate worlds: the Bush, a ‘wilderness for the mind’ (page 298), the normal world and the spirit world. Oyeyemi has said that TillyTilly is from the Bush, ‘a world that doesn’t have the same structure as our world’. Through Jess’s loss of her twin and her isolation at school, Oyeyemi explores themes of loneliness, alienation and the difficulties — particularly for a young child — of being very obviously different. Jess’s mixed race, her precocity and her tantrums set her apart from her schoolmates, marking her out and only serving to intensify the loneliness she already feels. Helen Oyeyemi has drawn on her own experience in exploring this emotional terrain. She describes herself as ‘a real mess at school’, isolated from her classmates and regarded as ‘the weird girl’. At the age of fifteen she took an overdose and while recovering took refuge in reading: she still proclaims herself to be ‘more of a reader than a writer’. That summer, another family visit to Nigeria set the seal on her recovery although she doesn’t feel wholly Nigerian: ‘I’m just British’ she says.
Twins bring blessings in Yoruba culture, but may also bring misfortune. If one twin dies at birth, the surviving twin is thought to have lost half her soul. A sacred image of the dead twin, an ere ibeji, must be carved and then tended like a living child; in its turn the ‘ere ibeji’ protects the family. Otherwise, disaster follows in the form of sickness, death and barrenness. This fate overtakes Jessamy Harrison’s family. Helen Oyeyemi describes Jess’s psychic torment and near disintegration. Her father is sucked dry by depression, her teacher disappears on sick leave, and Jess’s one good friend is almost killed during a sleepover from hell. Oyeyemi’s writing is powerful if uneven. But at its best this is a chilling story about the anguish of separation from all that should be most familiar and dear. In the end, it is only in Nigeria, within the traditional family compound, that wounds can begin to heal.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 3
How realistic is the treatment of Yoruba belief about twins in The Icarus Girl?
3.4 Afrocentric Poetry: Chinweizu’s Invocation and Admonitions
In Chinweizu’s award-winning poetry collection Invocations and Admonitions published 1986; his Africanist vision begins to loom large in the poet’s consciousness. Significantly, this volume is dedicated, to the memory of Cheikh Anta Diop, Egyptologist, scientist, historian great pioneer of Afrocentric history who reconnected the modern African consciousness to black Egypt. Invocations and Admonitions dwells on the community, the bard's own folks, and their mannerisms. Women, love and sex in 'Desire', 'That Lady', 'A Gift of Maidenhead' and 'Sex in Space' are treated with his usual masculinist rebuttal. ‘Desire' for example maintains a subtle rhythm in the public jeer at womanhood.
Other poems – 'The Penis of a God', 'Blest Freight for the Slaughter House', and 'Chant of Hired Planters' – recast the redundancy of the ruling class and their exploitation of the underprivileged through all history. There is sympathy for the workers who actually 'clear the bush, plough the soil, harrow the ground' but are cheated in the harvest ('not for us the harvest time'). On the other hand, there is contempt for Capitalism and its lechery ('what do you expect...we who make sure the roads are built'). Chinweizu often adopts this stance of poet-reformer on a mission. He presumes to bulldoze his art with an acute sense of history ('Admonition to the Black World'), to flatten Imperialism’s footholds (Islam, Christianity, Marxism, Capitalism) in our consciousness and, by these 'demolitions', retrieve from the distant past an 'icon' for the inspiration and pride of his generation. For this rare and courageous singer, putting on the garb of the griot in modern writing could be onerous, particularly when lamenting the fall of the heroes of our history ('Lament for a dauntless three') and attempting to capture a historical experience in an artistic memento that evokes the chequered Nigerian independence, its betrayal by a tribe of military interlopers and their civilian counterfeits incarnated even in millennial leaders.
Art is thus inscribed for posterity in the serial national conflicts which had come to signify, for recent Nigerian poetry, the point of departure from the aesthetics of the league of euro-modernists represented, in Chinweizu’s argument, by the poetry of Okigbo, Soyinka, and Clark- Bekederemo. Thus Invocations and Admonitions, distinguished by an Africanist alliance, adopts more complex techniques of expression in various traditional literary forms that had helped to enrich and distinguish the poetry of the new Nigerian writers from that of their older counterparts. This distinction lies in the realignment of heritage from a more credible interpretation and organisation of traditional repertoire. There is always the inevitable presence of a local audience achieved partly by the story-telling nature of the poems.
In Invocations the griot is more at home with his traditional repertoire: the prayer ('Invocations on a day of Exile'), the abuse: ('The Pagan's Reply'), work song: ('Chant of Hired Planters'), dirge song: ('Lament for a Dauntless Three'), and song of admonitions ('…To the Black World'). The prayer in 'Day of Exile' is remarkable in its adoption of òfò, to represent the Igbo poet-diviner. This totem of justice urges steadfastness on the holder through any human or divinely instigated adversity. The persona of this poem is therefore not unlike the exile of an unjust society 'where truth is cast out of the gates and falsehood sits majestic.' It draws from the traditional incantation as the supplicant calls upon his ancestors and gods: and you forest spirits/and you spirits of the rivers/and you my ancestors' (16). The journey motif parallels traditional rites of passage: 'I have travelled a road without rest/I am hungry for a patch of earth' and the rhetoricism is appropriately adapted to elicit the element of pathos: 'where can I settle my rump/and cool my blistered feet?’
though my path is hard
my chi is alert...
And what is that crouching in ambush...?
I say my chi will not permit it
move out of my path
my chi is alert (16)
Thus in this time-old precept of ritual self cleansing do we declare him/her clean and free from incrimination –an expression which is achieved by the accompanying device of rhetorical questions:
Did I get loose another man's tethered goat? Did I lean unto my bed another man's unwilling daughter? Did I loot the public granary and harm another man's crop . . .? (17)
The truth of retributive justice reflects from traditional philosophy and, in Chinweizu's poetry, is deployed with extensive structural repetitions and parallelisms important in African communication art:
If prosperity should visit me
It shall find me at home
It shall not overwhelm me
It shall not drive laughter from my teeth
It shall not surround me with faces mad with envy It shall not kill me before my time. (17)
In this lament, the subject-heroes take on mythic dimensions, quite disproportionate to actual historical positions. Now they are full of goodness, had elevated the material well-being of their people, helped the poor and made the peace. So their death is made to acquire a tragic outlook that should leave the bereaved utterly helpless as aptly projected in this rhetorical parallelism:
what voice shall comfort us…?
what arm shall strike for us ...?
what hand shall cleanse this rot ...? (11-13)
With the poet we can traverse further to reconstruct traditional funeral occasions where, as assumed, the deceased is not really 'dead' until a 'thorough search' has been conducted around the familiar places the deceased usually stayed during his life time. When at last he is not found, he is then adjudged dead. 'Lament for a Dauntless Three' is informed by such funeral practices in Igboland. The three heroes are sought after in places associated with their physical and spiritual homelands.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 4
Explain the Afrocentric properties in Chinweizu’s poetry.
4.0 CONCLUSION
From the works under study in this unit, the three Nigerian writers exploited Nigerian traditional beliefs in their writing. They believe that a true African literature must carry African themes, forms and beliefs. They are African writers writing about African cultural situations. They are African writers writing about Africa from the bias of African traditional beliefs. They are writing to contribute to reflect African culture in modern literature. Even though we observe the use of these traditional beliefs as motifs for discussing modern experiences, we notice a serious appeal in the usage. These writers wrote about Nigeria (Africa) as a part of their contribution to elevating and recalling traditional beliefs of the people. While Oyeyemi’s story of twins is deeply rooted in Yoruba cultural belief, Okri’s reflect a belief that runs through almost all the tribes in Nigeria. Every tribe in Nigeria has the belief in the emergence of a child who dies only to return with the purpose of tormenting their parents. Chinweizu exploited the traditional beliefs in gods, chi, nature and tradition. Even as modern African writers engage in anti-African moves in their bids at undermining African values, here are writers using the traditional beliefs of their people in creating functional literatures with modern relevance.
5.0 SUMMARY
These writers wrote about Nigerian traditional beliefs with much dexterity and vivacity. Their literatures truly reflect Africa. Helen Oyeyemi was born in Nigeria but relocated to UK at the age of four. Definitely at that age, she never knew anything about Africa her ancestral home. So, writing about a cultural issue like the Yoruba belief in the affinity of twins seems surprising. Definitely, she must have written her work based on what her parents told her. The character of Jess in the novel reveal a child alienated from her culture, a true picture of how Helen may have felt at younger age. The Icarus Girl reveals some misrepresentation of African cultural situation as a result of misinformation. Okri’s Azaro is a reflection of traditional beliefs in modern times. The setting is modern. The issues are modern. But the culture is traditionally hinged on the destiny of a people as a result of powers unknown. Africans believe so much in the power of the supernatural. This is also reflected in Chinweizu’s Afrocentric poetry.
6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT
Answer these questions carefully:
1. Explain some traditional beliefs reflected in Okri’s The Famished Road.
2. Carefully examine the way Oyeyemi treated the Yoruba belief in ‘ere ibeji’ in her novel.
3. From your reading of these novels, do you think they reflected the real beliefs of their people?
4. Afrocentric literature is bent towards African belief system. How does Chinweizu reflect this in his poem?
5. Distinguish the various ways each of the writers treated here handled traditional beliefs in their works.
7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READINGS
Chinweizu (1986). Invocation and Admonitions Lagos: Pero Press.
Chinweizu, Jemie, Madubuike (1980). Toward the Decolonization of
African Literature. Enugu: Fourth Dimension.
Ben Okri (1991). The Famished Road. Ibadan: Spectrum.
Oyeyemi, Helen (2005). The Icarus Girl. London: Bloomsbury.
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