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
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