Chapter 4 - Heroic Narrative

We need to understand terms like hero and narrative used in this study in a strict sense, for they are technical terms in literary studies. That is to say they are not only meaningful, but they are tools specifically designed for critical readings of literary works. Therefore, when used technically as tools, such concepts help in sorting the literary works from the non-literary, since the literary works tend to respond to them in a way that the non-literary ones do not. A technical usage helps equally to ensure that we are reading the texts as literature, not enunciations of objective truth, opinion, or rules of conduct. These are things which other kinds of books can do very effectively and unambiguously. However, no single one of the literary concepts, alone by itself, will suffice to characterize literary phenomena. That is to say, the discussion of a book under a covering concept does not mean that it is therefore proved to be great literature. The work may in fact fall short if other criteria of the literary are applied. Therefore, our rule of thumb is the ability to sustain discussion under different formats and by means of different literary concepts. A strict understanding of the heroic takes us back to Aristotle's account of the tragic persona as someone 'better than men nowadays,' and further back to the speech of the Priest, the spokesman of the Theban suppliants of Oedipus in the Prologue of Oedipus the King. He explains their mission in these terms: If we come to you now, sir, as your suppliants, I and these children, it is not as holding you The equal of the gods, but as the first of men, Whether in the ordinary business of mortal life, Or in the encounters of man with more than man. It was you, we remember, a newcomer to Cadmus' town, That broke our bondage to the vile Enchantress. With no foreknowledge or hint that we could give, But, as we truly believe, with the help of God, You gave us back our lives (lines 27-36). There is a great crisis on the break in Cadmean Thebes. The people call upon Oedipus to notice their plight; particularly, they ask that he take action on their behalf. What manner of action, they do not know. But they have a memory of such another crisis a good while back, and they had been similarly without ideas as to what had to be done. On that earlier occasion, they had been preyed upon and fallen under the sway of something 'more than man.' Oedipus had proved himself the 'first of men' by meeting the vile Enchantress on her own ground, and overcoming her, undoubtedly, 'with the help of God.' To be the first of men, therefore, Oedipus had had to prove himself a match for that which is 'more than man.' To be 'the first of men' is to be better than other men, to be 'more than man.' This 'more than man' is the literal equivalent of what Nietzsche calls der Ubermensch—the 'overman.' But Nietzsche's Overman, or Superman, is not the hero of a poem. He is the ordinary man of the future, who is able to shatter all rules and systems of rationality, and set up new ones out of his own 'superabaundant life and power' (Copleston, 1965, 7.11:188). This postulation has no experiential or rational basis. And the future in which it is to take place is, of course, indefinite. What Nietzsche's Superman and Sophocles's 'more than man' share in common is that they are both products of mythic thought: they are both fictions. But it is Sophocles's character who is properly a hero. He differs from the Superman, in that the latter, whenever he appears, is the norm. His appearing is the overcoming of mediocrity by exuberance. In this exuberance, according to Nietzsche, man, as we know him, 'is overcome every moment, the concept "superman" here becomes the greatest reality—all that has hitherto been called great in man lies at an infinite distance beneath it' (Ecce Homo107). Until he appears, however, he is to be apprehended as 'the goal' of human existence (Copleston 188). The figure often encountered in the criticism of African literature as a hero resembles Nietzsche's Superman insofar as he stands above mediocrity, but differs from this personage in that he is already realized. The attitude is that if this figure is found in legend as in oral poetry, it is because this legend captures experienced reality. Such equally is the figure of Okonkwo in Achebe's Things Fall Apart. By requirement of this ideal of heroism, neither Okonkwo nor the sequence which marks his career can be fiction in the sense of poiesis, a made-up structure, entirely self-justifying in being a made-up structure. For instance, following the historian A.E. Afigbo, who claims that 'with appropriate caution' Things Fall Apart may 'be treated as containing reliable historical information,' Robert Wren speculates about the possible sources of some of the materials, like the burning down of Mr Smith's church: The archives at Enugu show an example as late as 1915, in Awka Division not far from where Achebe's father was, very likely, at the time an active, working catechist. Umuofia got off lightly—one court messenger dead and one suicide; in 1915 the Assistant District Officer P.P. Lynch attacked the offending town and killed at least forty 'enemy' in repayment for one government soldier dead and one wounded (1980:17). Things Fall Apart, therefore, is thought to capture the history of the colonial encounter, together with Okonkwo, the grandfather of Obi Okonkwo of No Longer at Ease, who had fought the colonist single-handedly, and had died in the fight. It is easy to forget that Okonkwo is a textual being, his world, the world of fiction. If the hero is more than man to the extent that the situation against which he is matched is more than man, there is also a certain necessity in the action he takes. This aspect, and perhaps the logic of heroic literature generally may be seen in Albert Camus's The Plague, where we read: [Dr Rieux] knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of final victory. It could be only the record of what had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never ending fight against terror and its restless onslaughts (1972:287). This tale of what had to be done we have learnt from the Greek and Roman traditions to expect at the early stages of a literary tradition. But if heroic literature tends to occur early in a tradition, it does not belong there exclusively. It accompanies the tradition, according to Rieux, because what provokes it, that is, what calls it forth, is experience itself, in short, what Paul Ricoeur (1984) calls 'the history of suffering.' The narrative of what had to be done in the face of terror and suffering is a sequence that contrasts with another kind, which may be still more ancient, as it is a form dominant in the poetry of pre-literate societies. Here the struggle is mostly against the forces of nature. Unlike heroic literature, which is generally tragic in orientation in that here there can be no hope of final victory, the tale of struggle against the forces of nature usually leaves the subject in possession of the field, though he may have pulled through by the skin of the teeth. Narratives of this second type, with the comic orientation, we have seen in the last two chapters, those of the first are the concern of this. What they share in common is a protagonist who is larger than life, or in Aristotelian terms, 'better' than men nowadays. These kinds of narrative, therefore, meet the key condition of Northrop Frye's 'high mimetic' poetry, centring on an individual who is 'superior in degree to other men but not to his natural environment (1957/1970:33-34). This hero is a leader, and contrasts with the protagonist of 'low mimetic' poetry, who is measurable to the everyday scale of human beings, and struggles with social forces and conventions, or even with the self. With this kind of protagonist, we are squarely in the world of the novel, and we shall be seeing him beginning with the next chapter. Occasionally, this protagonist outstrips everyday individuality, particularly if his struggle opens a course leading towards the founding of a new society. He needn't achieve this end but he does become a hero in the strict sense of the word, the central character of a high mimetic sequence. Such is Okolo of Gabriel Okara's The Voice and Philip of Echewa's The Land's Lord. The logic of what had to be done is not necessarily in terms of a duty established under objectively valid norms. Typically, it issomething which presents itself and is grasped under the sign of necessity, a necessity which need not bind, or even be obvious to anyone else; nor need it have the same consequences, except for the man of destiny, the hero. Such is the logic of Homer's Iliad. For the forming of the grand coalition of all the Greek states, and the massing of scores of thousands of troops for the invasion of Ilium does not seem to make a great deal of sense, if all that is at stake is the fate of a single individual. Such too is Okonkwo's confrontation with destiny over the history of Ikemefuna in Achebe's Things Fall Apart. Certainly, it is in regard to Ikemefuna that Okonkwo becomes distinguished among all the warriors and elders of Umuofia as one who can act in the name and character of Umuofia. Of the arrival of Ikemefuna in Umuofia, we read: when Okonkwo of Umuofia arrived at Mbaino as the proud and imperious emissary of war, he was treated with great honour and respect, and two days later returned home with a lad of fifteen and a young virgin. The lad's name was Ikemefuna, whose sad story is still told in Umuofia unto this day (9). Okonkwo's role as Umuofia's representative does not end with this embassy, it is not tied to the time of the embassy. The embassy begins it: The elders, or ndichie, metto hear a report of Okonkwo's mission. At the end they decided, as everybody knew they would, that the girl should go to Ogbuefi Udo to replace his murdered wife. As for the boy, he belonged to the clan as a whole, and there was no hurry to decide his fate. Okonkwo was, therefore, asked on behalf of the clan to look after him in the interim. And so for three years Ikemefuna lived in Okonkwo's household (9). Whatever Okonkwo does in regard to Ikemefuna is what the whole Umuofia is doing. No other public, representative role of his, like representing his village in the nine egwugwu of Umuofia allows him this scale of corporate action, where his action is alone decisive. In the egwugwu, the action that is performed is in accordance with the norm; in regard to Ikemefuna, there are no established norms. This is why a decision has to be made. The elders know that a decision has to be made. What this decision is to be, no one knows, and they are not in a hurry to find out. Readings of 'the sad story' of Ikemefuna have usually been based on the judgement the narrator pronounces on Okonkwo at the scene of the killing of the lad, correlated to the views of Ogbuefi Ezeudu, before the event, and of Obierika after. The narrator declares that Okonkwo strikes Ikemefuna down for fear of being called weak, while the one elder warns him against, and the other denounces him for bearing a hand in the killing of a lad who calls him father. But the incident has other correlates, apart from the warning and the blame. These also should be brought into play. For example, at the scene of the killing, Okonkwo has moved to the rear of the file of elders without being afraid of being called weak; but none of the elders separating him from the lad is able to save him from striking the fatal blow he wishes to avoid—the blow is fatal to him as much as to Ikemefuna. The story of the carrying away of Ezinma at night to the shrine of the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves is even more telling. Okonkwo cannot prevent Chielo from taking the child away, but he takes his matchet and follows. If he incurs blood guilt by striking Ikernefuna down, it is a blood guilt he could not have been free from if he had stayed away, unless he had seized his matchet and gone into action against his fellow Umuofia elders when they come for the boy who calls him father. To characterize the relationship between Ikemefuna and Okonkwo in terms of one calling the other father is to attempt to name by means of an everyday word, to let this word carry the burden of what cannot properly be named. The relationship is endlessly suggestive, and therefore, exceeds what can be named. That Ikemefuna calls Okokwo father is symbolic, in that its truth-content is the least important thing about it, in that it suggests much more than it says. It opens out to the 'profundity of life' (Baudelaire), connects to Okonkwo's destiny to the extent of inaugurating his tragic career. In Ezeudu's formulation, 'That boy calls you father. Do not bear hand in bis death.' it is clear that this 'profundity' is glimpsed by Ezeudu, which means that he, however briefly, has come under its sway (Heidegger, 1949). But the word father itself cannot tell what this profundity is. All it can do is to invite the exploration of meaning. The position is that it is by the appearing of Ikemefuna that Okonkwo becomes a man of destiny. Okonkwo is the one who brings him into Umuofia, who for three years is his foster father, as well as his keeper, for he is a captive, after all. All this he does in the character of Umuofia. Ikemefuna is also a sign of Mbaino's submission to the punitive will of Umuofia; and Okonkwo is the one who exacts this submission from Mbaino, in sign of which he has Ikemefuna in his power. But having once taken the boy under his wings, Okonkwo finds that he cannot afterwards cast him off. Ikemefuna is abducted by Umuofia, but Okonkwo alone carries the guilt of this abduction. It is strictly his doing; he alone is responsible. Alive or dead, Ikemefuna is a weight he cannot shift. The elders who walk in the file between him and the boy show, by failing to dispatch him, how the responsibility is his alone. But Umuofia does not entirely free itself by investing Okonkwo with the burden. Undoubtedly, Ikemefuna and Okonkwo are bound together in the history of Things Fall Apart. But is not Ikemefuna's history the secret cause of things falling apart? His sad story, in any event, continues to be told in Umuofia to this day, ceaselessly calling to mind the knife going into what had held Umuofia together, and everything going to pieces as a result. Okonkwo's deep silences immediately preceding and following his killing are highly significant, especially when connected to the 'cloud' that descends over Umuofia as the unit of narrative connecting directly to the announcing of Ikemefuna's fate by Ezeudu. It happens at a time when Okonkwo is working together with Nwoye and Ikemefuna: And then quite suddenly a shadow fell on the world, and the sun seemed hidden behind a thick cloud. Okonkwo looked up from his work and wondered if it was going to rain at such an unlikely time of the year (39). This cloud is shortly recognized as an invasion by locusts, and ushers in the last happy event before Okonkwo, the man of action and of war, is plunged into silence and meditation. But it is he who must get Ikemefuna ready and lead him out to destruction. And so, after 'sitting still for a very long time supporting his chin in his palms,' he gives instructions to Ikemefuna to prepare for the fateful journey (40). The role he is having to play in all this cannot be something he is doing joyfully. Already as a man of action, he is proceeding with something he has settled in his mind as having to be done, even 'though it might mean ruin' (Lukács, 1965/1976:434). It is the decision of Umuofia. He is not even present when the decision is made. It is Ogbuefi Ezeudu who brings him news of it. But like the ancestor of Ezeulu in Arrow of God who must go down on his knees to receive on his bare head the fire which Umuaro has elected him to carry on their behalf, Okonkwo here charged with the burden of the decision of the whole Umuofia, and the bloodguilt arising therefrom, has but one decision to make, whether in his 'boundary situation' (Seawall, I960), he can afford to stand back. In Okonkwo's language, the question is whether to be a man or to be a coward, a woman, in fact. From the moment of this decision in favour of what had to be done, even if this should mean ruin, Okonkwo is launched on a career in which the values of good sense and political expediency can have but little attraction, since these are strategies of safety. Once again, there is a parallel to Ezeulu. In the following dialogue, Akuebue criticizes Ezeulu for sending his son to the white man's school: 'When you spoke against the war with Okperi you were not alone. I too was against it and so were many others. But if you send your son to join strangers in desecrating the land you will be alone. You may go and mark it on the wall to remind you that I said so.' 'Who is to say when the land of Umuaro has been desecrated, you or 1?' Ezeulu's mouth was shaped with haughty indifference. 'As for being alone, do you not think that it should be as familiar to me now as a dead body to the earth?' (Arrow of God134). On the matter of sending his son to school, Ezeulu's explanations suggest that he does not really know why. On one occasion, he says it is something he has done as a mark of friendship towards the white man Winterbottom (14), on another, that it is in order to have an eye in the enemy camp. He also explains it as something he does because his mind tells him that whoever does not befriend the white man now will have cause to regret it later (46), then again, that he has done it in order that there may be maximum variety in a great obi, so that there is someone to respond, whatever the tune that is played (46). And this sending of Oduche to school is at the heart of the tragic sequence in which he is entangled, because it is an outcome of what the people of Umuaro see as his alliance with the white man, which has thrown confusion into their ranks. Ogbuefi Ofoka is the one who articulates this problem when he visits Ezeulu upon his return from captivity in Okperi: 'I want you to know if you do not already know it that the elders of Umuaro did not take sides with Nwaka against you. We all know him and the man behind him; we are not deceived. Why then did we agree with him? It was because we were confused. Do you hear me? The elders of Umuaro were confused. You can say that Ofoka told you so. We are confused.... First you, Ezeulu, told us five years ago that it was foolish to defy the white man. We did not listen to you. We went out against him and he took our gun from us and broke it across his knee. So we know you were right. But just as we were beginning to learn our lesson you turn round to tell us to go and challenge the same white man. What did you expect us to do? (188). There is tragic irony in Ezeulu not knowing the role of his son, schoolboy Oduche, in his overthrow. Similarly, though Okonkwo thinks of the killing of Ikemefuna as a terrible fact which will trouble him always, and which he must try to come to terms with at the level of consciousness, in narrative terms it is the complication that launches him into the tragic stream. For those who continue to tell the sad story in Umuofia 'unto this day,' it is Okonkwo's stigma forever. Nor has he an inkling of its role in the break-up of his family and the betrayal of his values. What the narrative audience tends to remember better, or perhaps more fondly, is his opposition and confrontation of the white man. And yet, if we look at the matter, there seems to be reason to think that Okonkwo's manner of opposition is unwise, even foolhardy. The struggle with the white man takes place years after he has been told the story of Abame which had been wiped out by the white man in retaliation for the killing of the first white man to arrive there. Okonkwo does not doubt the truth of this story, having received it from almost an eyewitness. He rather thinks that the people of Abame are at fault for taking no warlike action to protect themselves from the retaliatory strike, and declares that, They were fools [ ]. They had been warned that danger was ahead. They should have armed themselves with their guns and their matchets even when they went to market (99). The presence of the white men in Abame is considered by Okonkwo unacceptable. Accepting them in his own Umuofia is all the more unthinkable. So, it is settled in Okonkwo's consciousness that forceful opposition against the newcomers is what has to be done. Their presence is for him already a state of conflict; only their expulsion could restore peace (112). No other way of looking at the matter is admissible to him, nor any other argument as to how to deal with the situation. For instance, according to Okeke of Mbanta, 'It is not our custom to fight for our gods [ ]. Let us not presume to do so now. If a man kills the sacred python in the secrecy of his hut, the matter lies between him and the god. We did not see it. If we put ourselves between the god and his victim we may receive blows intended for the offender. When a man blasphemes, what do we do? Do we go and stop his mouth? No. We put our fingers into our ears to stop us hearing. That is a wise action.' 'Let us not reason like cowards,' said Okonkwo (113). He has no opportunity, however, while in exile in Mbanta to put scheme for expelling the newcomers whose activities have his become pellucid to him under the aspect of a religion which has already claimed his son Nwoye. Though he longs for a chance to l warlike clan into action against the new religion, he has ead his been denied the chance by this same exile. Meanwhile, the str entrenched in Um anger has become uofia, gaining even more ground than in Mbanta (121, 123). What Okonkwo learns from Obierika wh o again visits him in Mbanta is to what extent the situation has c considerable following the new religion h omplicated with the as gained in Umuofia, counting am ong its members some of the ruling elite. He has also learned that the power of the white man, t he backer of the new religion, extends from Umuru on the bank of t clans round about. Not only has he he Great River to all the been able to exterminate a whole Umuofia clan, using only a small number of men, and imprisoned many leading men in itself, keepi conditions, he has sent a ng them under very harsh and humiliating nd arrested fugitives to other clans, and had them tried and executed for breaking his own law s of which these people know nothing. All this is more than confirmed at the expiration of his t erm of exile, when he returns to Umuofia. He finds, moreover, that , The clan had undergone such profound change during his exi that it was barely recognizabl e. le The new religion and government and the trading stores were very much in the people's eyes an d minds. There were still many who saw these institutions as evil even they talked and thought about little else. ... [O konkwo] mourned for the clan, whi , but ch he saw breaking up and falling apart, and he mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia, who had so unaccountably become soft like women (129). It is too late to he has rea change anything. This, Okonkwo mourns too. Clearly lized that warlike reaction has n o chance in Umuofia either. Resignation is all that is left to him.But that is not to say that of the white man is someth cannot understand Um he accepts the situation. The presence ing he can never learn to accept, and he uofia's inaction when something c ould still have been done. His decision to go into action, even if it should mean utter ruin is because of his detention, harsh treatment, and humiliation at the hands of the white man's court messengers. This determination is reached silently in his mind, but we can see the force of it in his gestures on the night of his return from incarceration: Okonkwo slept very little that night. The bitterness in his heart was mixed with a kind of childlike excitement. Before he had gone to bed he had brought down h is war dress, which he had not touched since his return from exile... As he lay on his bamboo b ed he thought about the treatment he had received in the white man 's court, and he swore vengeance. If Umuofia decided on war, [if] they all would be well. But chose to be cowards he would go out and avenge himself (141). Everything he has heard and seen how little the traditional instrume situation. But these are the of the white man must show him nts of war could help in the new only tools of reaction available these he uses. to him; Religion is repeatedly invoked in Okonkwo's speeches against the white the ins man. He appears quite untroubled by the trading stores and titutions of government also set up by the white man. So it i not the presence of the white m an that troubles him s particularly , maybe not even colonization itself. There may be rather a case of fixation upon the religion because of his son Nwoye. But if he overlooks the trading stores, because he has divined that th e ey are useful and are improving t the hings by putting money into the hands people, while the new religion is working transforma of tion by turning the people from their old beliefs and the attend then he must be uniquely farsighted and revolut ionary. No one else in the commu ant practices, nity seems to think of this cultural transformation as the unqualified calamity he fears. And ye is not a revolutionary. His only desire is to restore things Okonkwo things to the way they had been, not to change them in line with some idea. In the above passage, he has clearly channelled his antagonism towards the source of these unacceptable changes into personal revenge. But the consequence is that personal revenge becomes enlarged and complicated, so that it doubles as a political act. Faced with a situation somewhat similar, Ezeulu does not think of reaction at the political level. At any rate, the instruments of reaction available to him are of a different order. Apparently, there are oracles that the white man has come to stay, and that he will turn the traditional system on its head, that he has 'come to take over the land and rule' (Arrow of God42). Ezeulu does not like the impending change (45), but there seems to be nothing to do, only to try and live with it, and as much as possible to absorb it and turn it to one's own ends. He is also at the centre of a conflict which has divided his community for five years. Its ultimate basis is the rivalry with Ezidemili, in which the latter fronts rich and influential Ogbuefi Nwaka, but it is to connect the white man, after that internal conflict has provided for itself an outlet in a war with neighbouring Okperi. Twice the question of truth is raised during the course of this conflict. It is first raised in the lead up to the war over the ownership of a stretch of land lying between Okperi and Umuaro; and secondly, at the hearings before the district officer Captain Winterbottom, after he steps in to stop the fighting. The truth as Ezeulu knows it is unpleasant to the war party in Umuaro. But he had gone ahead and done what had to be done in denouncing the action of his people, for 'how could a man who held the holy staff of Ulu know that a thing was a lie and speak it?' (6-7). It would appear, therefore, that his standing up for the truth is to some extent because he is duty bound, although it may be in accord equally with his own natural and political inclinations. Like everything else the priest does, his serving of the truth in the dispute with Okperi, and particularly at the hearings is interpreted in different ways by the various interests and parties involved. The rule by which he operates, which means, the way in which he interprets his action, he himself has given in the reference to the wielding of the holy staff of Ulu. To Ogbuefi Nwaka and the rest of Ezeulu's enemies in Umuaro, he is serving a purely personal interest. His truth in the lead up to the war with Okperi is seen in terms of an aspiration to be the leader whose will is law (28), while that before the white district officer is in terms of currying favour with him (144). The district officer sees him as a kind of noble-minded savage, who is probably racially superior to his countrymen. He describes the chief priest as he remembers him at the hearings to his newly arrived assistant, Mr Clarke: [He] was a most impressive figure of a man. He was very light in complexion, almost red. One finds people like that now and again among the Ibos. I have a theory that the Ibos in the distant past assimilated a small non-negroid tribe of the same complexion as the Red Indians (38). Thus each of the different groups who observe Ezeulu or are affected by the decisions he takes all interpret his actions and motives based on their own specific interests and prejudices. None can understand him. This misunderstanding is the reason why Ezeulu becomes a victim both of the white man and the people of Umuaro. But his fate is decided not by these human interests alone. Forces outside human compass do seem to take a hand, again catching the chief priest in the middle. By reason of this involvement of the superhuman, the sequence attains a full and strict determination as a tragedy. Ezeulu is first of all a tragic hero: he is a Sophoclean figure, in 'confrontation with more than man.' The case is obvious enough when we see him in relation to the superhuman forces, his own deity and the Idemili deity. In addition, however, the narrative produces the Umuaro community itself as something 'more than man,' for we read that 'no man however great can win judgement against his clan' (Arrow of God131). Nor is this all. A main path of struggle is one that pits him in confrontation with the white man, who is 'the masked spirit of today' (154). In all these encounters, Ezeulu's courage is unbroken. He stands his ground 'like a funeral ram which must take whatever beating comes to it without opening its mouth, [so that] the silent tremors of pain down its body alone must tell of its suffering' (229). But the heroic sequence still has a place in the narrative. It comes out by highlighting Oduche's going to school, especially in terms of its correlation to the white man's chieftaincy. We have seen that the sending of his so man's school has the structure of what had to be done. offer of the paramount n to the white That it may mean ruin is somethi ng which Ezeulu does not wish to contemplate. And yet it is so clear to other p eople, friend and foe alike. Here his friend Akuebue prepares to talk to hi m about it: Akuebue had doubted the sense in Ezeulu's action from th first but Ezeulu had persu e very aded him of its wisdom. But now it was being used by Ezeulu's enemies to harm h is name. People were asking: 'If the Chief Priest of Ulu could send his son among people who kill and eat the sacred python and commit other evi ls what did he expect ordinary me n and women to do? The lizard who threw confusion into his mother's funeral rit e did he expect outsiders to carry the burden of honouring his dead' (125). Even though his enemies are reluctant to declare this openly, Ezeul not an everyday individual, u is but a corporate person, who embodies the traditions and norms by which Umuaro i s maintained as an entity. Flirting with the white man's system, as all but and foremost an act committed against himse himself see it, is first lf and his character as the embod iment of the Umuaro system. When the white man takes him up, it is to get him to help project the colonial system, to be the spearhead and agent of penet transformation of Umuaro traditional society. Whether this rejection of the syste m of which he is a sort of fountainration and means the head, in order to substitute the white man' s, or whether what is required is for him to expand to accommodate both sys tems in himself is really the issue in the white man's offer of the p appears to think that he can aramount chieftaincy. The white m combine the an two (107), while Ezeulu who knows hi mself already as half is no questiman and halfspirit (192), thinks there on of further expansion. It is either one or the other. Once again hi s reaction is misunderstood. The colonial officials see him as uncooperative and disrespectful. His enemies at confused: wasn't the office of 'priesthome are king the thing he had been 'planning and scheming for all these years?' (176). His friends do not know what to think. As to the ma n himself, his fundamental position is not to join forces with the one who has come to take over the land and rule. Having satisfied himself that the wh ite man is building his house to' live in (45), he moves to arrange a m w ode of coexistence in which he ould be able to exploit the new dispensation for his own advantage. He speaks a s follows to his son Oduche when he returns from detention at Okperi: 'I have sent you to be my eye there. Do not listen to what people say, pe ople who do not know their right from their left. No man speaks a lie to his son; I have told you that before. I f anyone asks you why you should be sent to learn these new things tell t hem that a man must dance the dance prevalent in his time [ ]. When I w as in Okperi I saw a young white man, who was able to write his book with the left hand. From his actions I could see that he had very little sense. But he had power; he could shout in my face; he could do what he liked. Why? Because he could write with his left hand. That is why I have ca lled you. I want you to learn and master this man's knowledge so much that if y ou are suddenly woken up from sleep and asked what it is you will reply' (189 ) . The reason Ezeulu and the white man cannot agree is that while white man wishes to make use the of him to further his own aims and to achieve control over the traditionbound community, Ezeulu sees the white man's system as a manifestation across priesthood is constituted precisely for this kin his and Ulu's path. His d of eventuality It is ( 71 72). he, carrying Ulu's fire on his bare head, who must venture forth and cause the manifestation to yield and give him way. His priesthood is constituted f or a specific mode of 'leadership: to make the journey into the unknown on behalf of Umuaro, creating a p ath for them where there was none before. The responsibility of his priesthood is what has exercised him all along. In the process he unmasks the white man, the masked spirit of the day, as would become the bearer of the he ritage of the first Ezeulu, whose debut with his deity involves the unmasking and defeat of monster-figures. But it is as if this last effort has fatally exhausted Ezeulu and his priesthood, perhaps the deity too. The unmasking of the white man is an idea that would be ruled out of the question in the traditional society of T.M. Aluko's ironical His Worshipful Majesty. The Oba of Aiye, the Alaiye, and his chiefs share this attitude of reverence towards the white man. Here we are not dealing simply with what Obi Okonkwo of Achebe's No Longer al Ease would call 'the corrupt Africans at the top.' The people and their leaders associate the white man with an aura impossible to see through to the real human being. Thus is a collective fascination towards the white man. This attitude is brought out in the king's early gestures of friendship towards Mr Morrison, the African Chairman of the newly created Aiye District Council: 'You will stay with us this night. You will sleep in our special Rest House. There is an iron bed there. And it was a white man who used it last,' I knew who it was; a professor from some American University who was writing a history of a number of selected African States. I knew that the King had given standing instructions that the place be always kept clean to receive any other white man that might come at short notice. It was a great honour that Mr Morrison was going to be allowed to use this Rest House (His Worshipful Majesty9). Mr Morrison and the young educated Africans, including the narrator, Mr Kole Roberts, when they take over at the lower levels of government first to be relinquished as the expatriates give up power towards the close of colonization, find that a wedge has been forced between them and the traditional leaders. The latter have teen so uncritical in their regard of the white man: 'In the past, you tried to advise the Alaiye and his chief's Barrister Morrison said. The District Officer's an inexperienced young man whose only qualification for his post is a second-class honours degree from London or a Cambridge blue ... and, oh, his white skin…

'And his white skin, that's important,' Pastor commented. 'Yes, his white skin. He advised the Alaiye and his chiefs to reject your advice.' 'And the Alaiye did this many times.' 'Many, many times. And you had no redress, had you. gentlemen? 'No, none at all.' I said what we all knew (16). In the past the role of these young Africans is advisory. All this now changes with the setting up of the District Council, where they are to participate in decision-making, a function long the preserve of the Alaiye. This signals that the sequence unfolding is a form of struggle with the Alaiye pitted against the new decision-makers, particularly against the -chairman of the Council itself. And this struggle will take place despite the best intentions on either side, and result in the breakdown of the new order being forged. The Commission of inquiry to investigate the issue will end up, to everybody's surprise, including the oba himself, siding with the oba and his chiefs against 'the educated but inexperienced young men [usurping] their office and authority' (132). But this will turn out to be a stage, and part of the complication of the crisis about to engulf Aiyeland. The conflict in Soyinka's Ake which leads to the women's uprising is similarly based on the patronage of the traditional ruler by the colonial officers, resulting in his alienation and antagonism towards the educated elite. The impression we get in an overheard quarrel on the telephone between the women's leader Beere and the colonial district officer is that the oba's position is untenable, but that he is being propped up by his patrons: '[Now] since you bring the matter up, let me tell you this. Your king, this one here I mean ... no, don't interrupt me, I have a right to say he is yours because you saved his head this time. As far as we women are concerned, he is already gone. But listen to me, there really isn't much to discuss. I have sent you a list of complaints. He has gone back on every word, every promise and agreement which he signed before we decided not to press for his abdication. Well, just tell him from me.... As for you, that is, as for the Colonial Government, better get your atomic bomb ready because the next time round, he is going. Tell them Beere said so, his days are numbered. He is GOING!' (224). The women are determined to achieve their ends, no matter the cost; and they are prepared to overthrow the traditional system, if it should stand in their way. Thus the struggle is clearly defined, between those in favour of change and those against it. In the latter camp are the oba and his chiefs and the colonial government. The structure of struggle is different and more confused in His Worshipful Majesty. The desire for change and modernization is shared by all the elite, including the narrator, who himself is a participant. And they have recommended Mr Morrison to be appointed the council chairman to motivate and guide the movement for change, as he has brilliant ideas and proven know-how. To ensure that Mr Morrison is appointed, these very educated elite have misled the Alaiye as to the real meaning of the newly instituted district council: We were not daft enough to think that we would succeed in our plans, without carrying the Alaiye with us. We had therefore told the Alaiye that Barrister Morrison had come as a lawyer son of the soil to help him against the Resident and in particular against Chief Johna of Moba. Mr Morrison is going to be dangerous to the Alaiye. The latter would not have allowed him into the arena at all if he had been exercising vigilance. Part of his strategy of control is to exclude anyone who is potentially disruptive from his domain; and outsiders are particularly suspect. Morrison wouldn't have passed the first test for admission, being an outsider. His own people, Morrison's supporters, therefore, work a blind-fold on him, and smuggle in their man. Thus what is reported by Mr Roberts in the above is the ruse, and single cardinal function which inaugurates the chain to complicate from moment to moment into the full sequence. Without it there would be no narration; without it, there would be no Mr Morrison in Aiyeland in confrontation with the oba as chairman of the district council. It is here in fact that is decided how the two main characters, Morrison and the Alaiye, are to be taken in the unfolding sequence. Mr Morrison is a surrogate, who is to carry the burden of the confrontation the local elite wish to enter into with the king. To this extent, he is a scapegoat, who is going to suffer for a cause he will never fully understand. But we can also look at him as isolated in the middle between the Alaiye and those who put him forward. In this light, he is a tragic protagonist, 'the leader with his back to his people' (Northrop Frye, 1957/1970). The Alaiye, on the other hand, will progressively free himself of his blind-fold. He will then find himself in a fight he has not really provoked. He will be suffering in large measure for acts which are not imputable as faults, and is therefore a figure of pathos. There are other reasons for not treating the narrative as a pure tragedy, with Mr Morrison at the centre. The narrative has a split structure, with Morrison at the centre of one sequence, and the king at the centre of the other. In the first pattern, Morrison is the one doing what had to be done, and suffering for it, while the king is a hero in the mould of Okonkwo, who lives and dies for his own glory. If we think of the king as the centre of the narrative, it is because he sees himself and is seen by his people, as well as the narrator himself as the upholder of values larger than himself as an individual. These are values connected to human social organization, and it is by these only that he can make sense of the world. As the report of the official committee of inquiry into the conflict between the Alaiye and the council puts it, 'the sacred and ancient institution of obaship' of which he is the protagonist is 'the core of tribal custom and focus of tribal activities' (l 32). There is no institutional context available, where he might see things in the light of the changes brought about by colonization. On the other hand, none of those nearest to him is prepared to risk his displeasure by telling him. Of all his subjects, only Kabaka Joe speaks up. But he is quickly made to flee Aiyeland. The chairman of the district council alone must confront him. He is the one who is under the sway of the logic of what had to be done. For example, for his tour of the kingdom, the Alaiye's chiefs have gone ahead to notify the individual communities of the 'gifts' levied upon them to be made to the king. When the gifts fall short of the demand, the king declines to move on to the next community until the full amount is presented. It is agreed by the ironical narrator that the demands are onerous on the villagers, but he adds that there is no sign of discontent anywhere. The principle is that everything belongs to the king, the land, the crops, the people who till the land, their chiefs, and so on. 'Giving gifts to him, therefore, was merely giving back to him part of what was his by right' (82). This is the feudal system which the king knows and understands, and lives by. It may in fact be an extreme form of feudalism, if the people and their chiefs are thought of as owned, in the same way that the land and the crops are owned. This feudal structure is probably the thing the elite want to see changed, and are using Morrison to try for taking the round-about way to avoid giving offence to the king. As a believer in the feudal system, the king is equally up to the mark in fulfilling his own obligations as an overlord. He distributes favours to his chiefs with all readiness. At this time, the clamour among the chiefs is to have a seat in the district council because members are paid a sitting allowance. This is the privilege the Alaiye is freely conferring on all who ask him. In the end, he sends a total of thirty-five new members to a council whose full complement had been projected at sixteen. Not only is the council going to be unwieldy as a result, but also the existing council vote could not accommodate the additional number, even if there were legal power to expand. Some of the gifts he levies are also distributed to courtiers and others in his entourage. Mr Morrison has been favoured with some of these gifts, but he reacts in a way in which no one else would have done. He returns the gifts, to the consternation of some of his own friends who understand that he needs a harmonious relationship with the king in order to be effective. The council secretary, Mr Roberts, who perfectly understands his reasons, thinks that reason has nothing to do with it. The king's gift had to be accepted. What Morrison is proposing is simply not done: 'No, Mr Roberts, can't you see the whole thing is wrong?' he said. He appeared impatient with me. 'Why should I, in my state of life, able to earn a good living which supports me and my family, take these things from people who I know are very poor indeed? It is slicing off a substantial portion of the little they have to live on. 'But Chairman, these gifts are from the King,' I pleaded. 'And the King ...' 'I know, I know. He would consider it an insult to him if I sent them back to him. I know all that [ ]. But honestly these gifts ought never to have been taken from the poor peasants and chiefs in the first instance, Mr Roberts' (82-83). It would appear that in addition to working by proxy, the elite do not know in detail what they really want—they either do not know, or they both want and do not want change. More than ever, Morrison is isolated. A double crisis similar to that in Arrow of God is also insinuated here. On the one hand is a struggle with the king and tradition, with Morrison as the spear-point of modernization; on the other hand is a struggle within the ranks of the modernizers, with Morrison on one side against his colleagues of the educated elite. The outcome of the exchange above is that the second pattern of struggle loses momentum, its energy absorbed by what then stands out as the crisis of the narrative. This crisis does not break out at once because the people of the king's entourage hide the fact that the gifts have been returned. It is not delayed for long, however, because the new local government law is really an attempt to mend an old cloak with a new piece of cloth. The central government in Moba in setting up the new law, expects the obaship to begin transforming itself into a kind of constitutional monarchy. It remains competent in native law and custom and chieftaincy affairs, while the areas pertaining to law and order, national development, and external relations, in terms of treaties and so on are reserved to the central government. In some areas of national development, like education, health, and revenue collection, the district council is given limited authority to act. Whereas the chairman of the council understands his role in terms of the modernizing state, the Alaiye believes that Morrison and his council are given to him to help him in his administration of the kingdom. The programmes are to be his, or at any rate, they comprise the continuation of the old and familiar feudal system, in which he exercises arbitrary and unlimited authority. This is how he understands the white Resident, when he recommends that he accept the new council. Instructing Mr Roberts on the writing of the history of his reign and disaster, he explains, 'We really did not take seriously the things that you and Amos and Pastor told us. It was only after the Resident told us that it was a good thing to have educated young men near us that we agreed to the things that you first told us... 'Write it in the book [that] Morrison and the educated young men caused trouble. We agreed that they should give us advice. We wanted them to tell us some things that they read in their books and which would have helped us in our administration. But they wanted to take away our administration from us. They wanted to alienate the loyalty of our chiefs and our subjects' (173). He had accepted the new district council because he had thought it was going to reinforce his power. But it seems to him that what is happening is that the council is directly undermining his power. However, the true state of affairs as we have it in the narration is rather that the Alaiye unwittingly brings about the alienation of the chiefs from himself by appointing them into a council the workings of which he does not understand, nor can control (94-95). This appointment is a favour he cannot withdraw, since government has confirmed them. Of course, the chiefs themselves do not fully understand the situation, but they are full of gratitude to the council for the salaries and allowances they receive, which are not subject to the whims of the Alaiye. Equally he undermines the council by frustrating tax collection and incessantly demanding from the council stores and treasury the supply of materials and money for his own projects for which there is no budgeting provision. The council officials then find themselves having to cook up their documents in order to accommodate the illegal supplies and payments, as they cannot overcome the habits of unthinking obedience to every wish of the Alaiye, which have become second nature to them. These transactions between the king and the council officials are chiefly responsible for the breakdown that finally occurs. The Alaiye is unable to understand the difficulties that the officials are having because he is schooled in a very old tradition, sanctioned in an agreement between his great-grandfather and the British Governor of Moba on behalf of the British Crown. By this agreement, his absolute authority in his kingdom is guaranteed, and promise given of help and protection against his enemies by the British Crown, in return for certain concessions, including unhindered access through the kingdom to the interior (153-157). The British have said nothing to him about the incorporation of his kingdom into a nation, and the changes in the social order whereby he is no longer a sovereign. And yet the king is not simply tradition-bound. We see, for example, on page 70 that although the Ifa oracle is anciently established as the final reference point in reaching a royal decision, the king has learned to distrust the oracle, and to consult it only after he has reached a decision, leaving the Ifa priest no choice but to 'foresee' that decision, in his struggle with the council, therefore, the king comes through as principled, just as much as Mr Morrison, raising him from simple pathos into a heroic status. His very suicide may now be seen in terms of his perception of what had to be done, instead of a cowardly act. It may, in fact, be seen as a mode of resistance. This is certainly how he himself sees it; hence on learning of the decision of the central government in Moba to depose him, he declares himself quite ready for them: 'Let them come. As usual they will find that they are not dealing with a woman' (173). With great dignity, and without conceding a single point to his adversaries in his conception of the universe, he passes out of the stage like a Homeric hero. In Gabriel Okara's The Voice, we see a hero of the Virgilian type, who has no personal glory to look forward to, but much trial and suffering for the sake of some idea perceived as supreme reality. It is the quest and the values connected to this supreme reality that engage Okolo. The object of this quest is something which may have been, but is now mysteriously lost, something fundamental in the structure of the world in his conception, which gives meaning to everything else and holds them together. We read: Okolo started his search when he came out of school and returned home to his people. When he returned home to his people, words of the coming thing, rumours of the coming thing, were in the air flying like birds, swimming like fishes in the river. But Okolo did not join them in their joy because what was there was no longer there and things had no more roots. So he started his search for it. And this stopped the Elders from slapping their thighs in joy because of the coming thing (The Voice23). Okolo's search will necessarily be a solitary pre-occupation, and it prescribes contrariness, since everybody else is given to the joy of anticipation of something to come. To be sure, the lost object has not been displaced by something new: the new is yet to come. Nor is the loss of what must have been the old ground in which everything is rooted missed by the community. Perhaps the only reason Okolo is aware of its absence is because he himself has been absent for some time, returning when it has ceased to be there. The search is not only going to be solitary, it is going to be frustrating, and without hope of ultimate success. A fellow lonely soul, and the most courageous person Okolo knows draws his attention to the situation. This is Tuere: 'How or where do you think you will find it when everybody surface-water-things tell, when things have no more root? How do you expect to find it when fear has locked up the insides of the low and the insides of the high are filled up with nothing but yarn? Stop looking for it. Stop suffering yourself (34). But Okolo knows an inward need to search, which cannot be stopped or contradicted. The search equally urges within each and every one of the Elders, despite their not wanting to hear about it. His very search is the objectification of that voice, and therefore a thing to be hated, a voice to be silenced. The suffering that Tuere speaks of cannot take him by surprise: 'I cannot stop,' Okolo with whisper whisper spoke. 'I cannot stop this thing. I must find it. It is there. I am the voice from the locked up insides which the Elders, not wanting the people to hear, want to stop me. Their insides are smelling bad and hard at me' (34). It is clearly the necessity of the search more than a hoped-for outcome that is compelling. Okolo will proceed with it, even though ruin stares him in the face. Heroic sequences do not permit that their heroes adhere to the wisdom of expediency. For instance, the Homeric Greeks do not ask any question as to the wisdom of going to war across the seas for the sake of one woman who appears to be more than a willing party in her abduction, nor whether she is worth the lives of so many heroes, kings, commanders, and ordinary soldiers who fall in battle outside the walls of Ilium. No more does Okonkwo of Things Fall Apart trouble himself as to the consequences for Umuofia of warring against the colonist. Similarly, personal survival does not weigh with Mr Morrison, nor with the Alaiye in the face of what had to be done. In Okolo's exchange with Tuere, it is the voice of common sense that he hears, insofar as the search appears altogether pointless. The object of the search has left no trace that Tuere can see. Neither in the physical environment, nor in men's 'insides.' In short, what is the point of searching, unless there is hope of finding, unless there is ground for such a hope? Okolo has no reasonable argument to counter Tucere's argument of reason. He can only justify himself by an appeal to his sense of mission. Chief Izongo, he can deal with more easily, because he does not even have an argument of reason. All he brings to his quest to get him to 'normalize,' and become one with the praise-singers around him is force and intimidation. Izongo's objection to Okolo's search is that it will lead to disruption, whereas he thinks that he and his people are happy as they are. According to Izongo, addressing the people after expelling Okolo from the town, 'Only a mad man looks for it in this turned world. Let him look for it in the wide world if he can find it. But we don't want him to stay here asking, "Have you it? Have you it Have you it?" Even in our sleep we hear him asking. We do not know what it is. We do not want to know. Let us be as we are. We do not want our insides to be stirred like soup in a pot. We do not want to be troubled by one whose inside is filled with water. So, let us be' (72). In the end, Izongo's attitude towards Okolo is governed by fear: fear of disruption. This fear is equally ingrained among the ruling class in Sologa, and that is why Okolo fares no better there. But he does encounter in Sologa an artist who has it, without this making the artist's inside 'sweet,' possibly because he connects what he has to a function: there ought to be a dividend of some sort from being in-possession of it. For Okolo, however, the 'sweetness of his inside' is in finding it (85). The question of a function does not arise, for as we have already said, he regards it as supreme reality, not a means to something else. Anticipated and blocked at every turn in Sologa, and yet unable to rest the matter, Okolo takes decision to return to the village and try to stir up a desire for it among the ordinary people. The idea of bringing about change from the top downwards has proved a hopeless failure, first, with Izongo in his village. It is a non-starter in Sologa, where every effort he makes to see and put his question to the Big One is blocked. Hence, Okolo said he must to his village return, if he could. But this time he would the masses ask and not Izongo and his Elders. If the masses haven't got it, he will create it in their insides. He will plant it, make it grow in spite of Izongo's destroying words. He will uproot the fear in their insides, kill the fear in their insides and plant. He will all these do, if only ... if only what? Okolo asked, speaking out, but his inside did not answer (90). Okolo does not want his revolution to be a movement like any other, and this is why he does not try to specify it with a name (112). But it has power, despite its lack of structure. Where we see it functioning, it takes the form of self-awareness, as is reflected in one of the two messengers of Izongo (91-97) in whose inside, according to the cripple Ukule, Okolo's words have grown. He is thinking for himself, and making his own decisions based on a new sense of the meaning of life and life's pursuits. This is the measure of the success of Okolo's efforts, of his faith in the power of words: Spoken words are living things like cocoa-beans packed with life. And like the cocoa-beans they grow and give life. So Okolo turned in his inside and saw that his spoken words will not die (110). Even as he is led to his death, we find that a major breach has occurred within Izongo's entourage. Okolo's words have found a way through into that enclave and close formation, and have begun to grow in Abadi, the village Amatu's valuable second leader.' The powerful imagery of the cocoa beans packed with life is encountered again in Wole Soyinka's Season of Anomy. Another metaphor encountered in both The Voice and Season of Anomy is the figure of the umbilical cord holding the migrants to the land of their birth. The Aiyéró community of Season of Anomy has arisen apparently as a result of a search similar to that of Okolo, as their leader Ahime explains to Ofeyi: 'All our people know from where we came, and they know that we founded Aiyéró to seek truth, a better life, all the things which men run after. They also believe we found it. That is why our children always come back' (9). The search that has given rise to Aiyéró not only has an object clearly specified by name, it also postulates a society, with certain assigned roles. One of these is leadership itself. Aiyéró has arisen by an autonomous act of the founder, the First Custodian of the Grain, breaking away from the parent community Aiyétòmó, and starting up a new one with a number of like-minded persons. Ofeyi, however, thinks that for all their success, isolation is leading them inexorably to sterility. He proposes to take the Aiyéró way of life beyond that community: Even without the results of comparative tests ... the firm dank earth that commenced only a short distance from the coastline was visibly cocoa earth. The idea that came from his first encounter with the commune was only one of many that sought to retrieve his occupation from its shallow world of jingles and the greater debasement of exploitation by the Cartel. The pattern could be reversed, the trick of conversion applied equally to the Cartel's technical facilities not merely to effect restitution to many but to create a new generation for the future. A new plantation within the communal, labouring, sharing entity, seed through nursery to the mature plant and fructification, Ofeyi envisioned the parallel progress of the new idea, the birth of the new man from the same germ as the cocoa seed, the Aiyéró ideal disseminated with the same powerful propaganda machine of the Cartel throughout the land, taking hold of undirected youth and filling the vacuum of their transitional heritage with the virile shoot (19). Ofeyi has long sought a set of principles to live by, and first finds a workable model in a communalism scientifically founded and described in Marxist ideology, only to abandon this as soon as he encounters the Aiyéró with their 'unscientific communalism.' This he finds totally satisfying and worth propagating. But he clearly sees even as the intention is formulated, that he is going to face great opposition from the powers that be. He has no means of carrying out his plans, except by use of the tools of the ruling Cartel which he has in his charge. These he is going to try and manipulate to serve his own purposes; in doing this, he will also be getting back at the Cartel for exploitation at their hands. Not only is his political project against the interests to promote and sustain which the Cartel has transformed the whole political economy, the Cartel's widespread and effective system of social control, including the close supervision of his own advertising outfit supplied by the Cartel for propaganda, means that there is no question of confronting them directly, only by cunning and subversion. In a heroic narrative, the opponents are rarely evenly matched. What the hero sees facing him is nothing less than the forces of chaos. And this is all the more reason why he must stand up and fight. In Things Fall Apart, The Voice, and Season of Anomy, the structure of struggle is clearly defined, and the narrative voice is more or less consistently on the side of the hero striving against great odds and coming to grips with a force which is beyond him, propelled by a sense of what had to be done. In Arrow of God and His Worshipful Majesty, there is greater irony. In the former, Ezeulu who knows himself as the champion of order and interpreter, or even prophet of the historical process, helps to unleash chaos by reason of the historical process to which he must bear faithful witness. In His Worshipful Majesty, the irony arises because both Mr Morrison and the Alaiye are absolutely certain that they are opposing chaos. Both their positions have historical justification. Behind the Alaiye is a history confirmed by treaty and by long practice and tradition. Unknown to him, this history has been overtaken and incorporated by another backed by enforceable law, and what may be called the social contract. Only in The Voice does the struggle against chaos produce fruit of some sort. In all the others, the tragedy is total and without relief. The value of heroic narrative is itself, not its end; certainly, not whether or not it achieves the end the hero has in view. This recalls Okolo's reflection before the artist who has it, and nevertheless without a sweet inside. He himself is different, insofar as the 'sweetness of his inside is in finding it.'