Name: Vora HirvaThe African Literature

Tragedy, Testimony and the new nation: The Swamp Dwellers

• Soyinka doesn’t say that humankind is capable of making mistake but their interest in specific ways and their worries are to be taken into consideration.

• The play was written at the end of colonialism before Nigerian independence.

• It is in that sense, a sort of prologue to “A Dance of the forests” which takes up the national issue. Period of independence of Nigerian celebration but its end lies in uncertainty, despair.

Beggar

• Contrasts with Kadiye• Myth of Obatala• Willingness or humanity in fertility of land• He wishes: “ to knead ( the soil) between my

fingers’’, to take “ this soil… to scoop it up in his hands. “ cleaving ridges under the flood and making little balls of mud’’.

Igwezu’s connection with Ogun- god of war and weapons and Sango- a

friend of Obatala!

• Gloomy state • Beggar’s witness to impossibility has provided

testimony a rebirth of the land- an allegorical for the “rebirth’’ of the nation!

• Beggar : He grew up in a land with no hope of new life , springing from soil but our reason is one long continuous drought!

• Humanity is colonized.

Thanks