In the low mimetic mode, narrative is preoccupied with action (praxis) or character, in terms of the ordinary and the everyday; but this is on condition that the everyday attains structuration. Despite its fascination with systems of social practice, the Nigerian novel nevertheless does unveil a phase which is low mimetic, and where praxis appears not to be as important and central as the individuality of the individual. But the ground of the individual's self-knowledge upon which he makes his experiences is usually a way of life and a social discourse he has no power to influence directly. Rather the pressure is on him to conform, with a behaviour pattern which answers to certain approved norms. In other words, the expectation is for him to function as an output or an utterance of that social discourse. This model of existence in which one conforms to a certain socially approved pattern of behaviour is produced as an impossible demand in Tutuola's Pauper, Brawler and Slanderer, Here the three main characters are determined and conditioned by requirement of the descriptive common nouns which attach to them as proper and personal names. It is not that they are fated in the Greek sense to be the subject of certain sequences. Rather the properties which are their names fix their characters and influence whatever they do. They appear then as manifestations and bearers of values, and articulations of behaviour patterns that the community treats as unbecoming, deviant, disruptive, and anarchistic. This means that the individuals can have no home in this community. Slanderer, for instance, is the son of the chief third in rank to the king, who is not only a righteous man, but also has a single-minded commitment to justice, good governance, and order. His son, however, has come into the world with a set of traits which are in opposition to his values and character. He is: a very powerful and merciless raider, an outlaw, an outrage, a traitor, a slanderer, a transgressor, a tricker, a criminal, a cunning person, a tale-bearer, a cheater, a burglar, a truant, a wild fellow, a great confusionist, etc., whose kind is rare to be seen on earth (18). All this, we are told, he 'has chosen from Creator,' and nothing can change what is thereby constituted. He brings shame and humiliation to his father by stealing a neighbour's sheep, which he tethers in his father's compound, to be discovered the next morning by the owner. The father is prevailed upon by the townspeople not to carry out the death sentence he has imposed on this son of his and the nailing of his head to a tree along the way to the market as a warning to all thieves. With great reluctance he agrees to the lesser punishment of disowning and expelling him from the town. Here the failure to conform is something the individual could not help, because the nature and mode of his existence are assigned and fixed before his very entry into the world. But a similar failure can also arise from the circumstances of the individual's life, where he is under constraint and unable to respond freely. An example is in Echewa's The Land's Lord, where the character is caught between the conflicting demands of two systems seeking to break him down and recreate him in their own image. In this narrative, each of the systems has a protagonist, Father Higler projecting the Christian ideology, Ahamba that of the cultural tradition. Between them is Father Higler's servant, Philip, who becomes the object contested by the two protagonists. The two are wary of each other, Father Higler the more so because in his endless arguments with Ahamba as to the better way, whether the Christian or Ahamba's, the man he is trying to convert to Christianity has often reduced him to silence. This is a severe shock that has resulted in the internalizing of his antagonist's voice in Father Higler's consciousness. In this way, this consciousness has become a main theatre of the struggle between the two opponents, marking the way in which the whipping hand seems to belong to Ahamba. From time to time, particularly when it is least convenient to Higler, as in the midst of a homily, Ahamba's voice would filter through. With this distraction, the narrative breaks off, so that one of their encounters replays in his mind, reinforcing the sense of hopelessness he has felt at other low moments regarding the task he has undertaken: 'But your god is a stranger here. Old Man Ahamba would say. 'Like you.... He is not a native of our soil, our skies or our forests. Father Higler would reply, 'He most certainly is.' 'He is? He is here among us…. And you did not bring him with you? It was not you who brought him here?' 'No! He needs no bringing anywhere. He was always here. Always will be.' 'Then why did you come?' He had no answer. He swallowed once, twice…, 'To tell you about him,' he finally said. 'To help you discover him, even if he was here all the time.' 'He, this god of yours, was among us since time began, and we did not know? I find that strange, White Man. Strange. But life is full of strangeness. So all I can say is let him prove himself. If he can absorb the thunderbolt of our Amadioha or make more powerful ones, then I say he is to be feared' (15-16). Old Ahamba is a deep thinker, wizened and cynical. He has made friends with Higler, but Higler has not found a way to draw him out, in order to try and see into the working of his mind, and what are his motivations. Instead Ahamba is the one asking the questions, and Higler is the one to justify himself. But he can never hope to do this to the satisfaction of the old man, because the kind of argument and evidence he requires are simply unavailable to the missionary. They are evidence of a material kind, such as we have remarked in respect of the narrator of The Concubine. Higler's sense of being in possession of the truth of salvation remains unshaken, and he comes to the conclusion that if the trouble is not with the truth he has, it must be with himself. This conclusion weakens him further in his struggle with Ahamba. Just as he requires the Christian God to prove himself in a material way, in the same way, Ahamba sees religion not as an abstract system to commit oneself intellectually to, but something transactive in a commercial sense. He speaks his mind on this to Father Higler: 'Akhee! Khee-khee! I tell you, White Man, we already have gods here that do nothing for us but are hungry for our sacrifices. What we need is a god who does something for us. Akhee! Akhee-khee!' (8). We have called Ahamba the protagonist of the traditional religion and system. Yet we are bound to ask, what kind of protagonist can he be? What does he really believe in? No clear answers can be found. There seems to be too much cynicism in him to sustain any kind of faith. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that he is recognized in the community as its leader, both by virtue of seniority and achievement (45). He equally exercises high priestly authority among them. However, the commercial framework of his thinking of religious behaviour reinforces the sense that his is a materialist religion. In any event, we see him much more clearly as the antagonist of Father Higler than as the protagonist of the traditional system. In regard to Higler, the question is not what he believes in, it is rather as to his own self-esteem. He has too low an opinion of himself to attach any high expectations to his work. This is a matter that perpetually troubles his consciousness: Would he be a hero here and have his name marked with stars in the book of life? Or would this churning jungle, this White Man's Grave swallow him, all his efforts, all his hopes. What power of alchemy, what flash flood of God's sanctifying grace would turn him, a cowardly soldier who had once fled from battle, into a heroic priest? (9). Self-consciousness, self-doubt, and the sense of taking a chance, possibly a last chance to redeem a past blunder, and the secret fear that this blunder had the force of self-revelation, and therefore nothing that can be overcome and cancelled, are all at work. It is fears of this kind that have driven him from the monastery into the African jungle; thus it is to confront himself, rather than anything else that has brought him: he had come here to do not to think, to work not to pray, for in some fifteen years as a contemplative he had served an abstract God, sublimate and rarefied beyond all understanding, had pursued him zealously with a pious faith and an enthusiastic imagination. Calloused knees. Dreamy eyes. The twilight of claustrophobic chapels, panelled in heavy oak and haunted by saintly ghosts. Faith supported on a cloud of prayers (6-7). This comprises the perception by the narrator of the way of life which Father Higler has abandoned to go to the African mission. His goal in going there is not eternal salvation—he might as well have remained in the monastery if this were his goal. He is there to justify himself in his own eyes through missionary work. Though Father Higler conceptualizes this work in terms of banishing darkness by means of the light of Christianity, it is himself that he is again and again confronted with, probably because in the last instance, his need is either self-mastery or to accept who he is. We see, for example, though he is blind to the fact, that the renegade is within, and will break out when he least expects it. We have an early instance when he is taking a walk along a disused path near his mission: All of a sudden he noticed that the darkness had almost completely comprehended the light, and he hastened towards the mouth of the path which had brought him there. Shortly after, he broke into a trot, then to a run, then a dead run. The commotion of his hasty passage commingled with his fears and resonated in his imagination to hundreds of howling, drunken demons. Branches slapped his chest and face, clawed at his soutane and ripped off large kerchiefs from it. He fell, rose, fell again, rose again like a proverbial just man, and he ran still faster, a million legionnaire devils at his heels (5). Higler's unaccountable flight here recalls Conrad's Lord Jim. In Lord Jim, however, the character's unaccountable behaviour is what ceaselessly exercises thought and the enigma whose manifestations the narrative tracks, presumably in search of understanding. In this, Lord Jim reveals a mood and a temper which are decidedly of the European tradition, in that the fate of the individual is what lies at its heart, the issue out of which it makes art. The structure of Father Higler's mind is of no real interest in The Land's Lord, nor for that matter Ahamba's or that of Philip between them. This is a novel which overlooks the individual in his individuality, but sees him in terms of functions, and his actions as reflecting certain views of the world of which he is not the originator. One character alone is seen in his individuality, and that is Philip, Higler's servant, who himself has perceived the need to know who he is. In a world where all who count not only seem to do so by being associated with a role, but also to be defined by this role, Philip, required to dissolve and be assimilated into the role assigned him, finds it in him to refuse, and to elbow everyone aside in order to try and see who he is. The needs of his fellow villagers are by comparison trivial. Father Higler's coming gives the occasion for the articulation of some of these needs. Father Higler's entry into Ahamba's village is grasped by some of the villagers as a promise of protection from evil forces feared to be at large. His own idea, of course, is that he is bringing them salvation. But this is not what they think they need. If he should convince them that they need it, their attitude is, 'It is you who want us to be saved.... You save us!' (16). But their real concerns are in some cases the need for a special access to God to be seen in his quick and decisive intervention on behalf of a believer in difficulty. Of special concern to some of the minor characters is childlessness and the want of a male offspring. We read of Genesis, for example, whose 'wife, until then fruitless, had conceived and in due time delivered a bouncy baby girl' (13). He accepts this as some sort of sign, although it would have been more emphatic if it had been a male child. In the practice of the Christians of The Land's Lord, salvation is of secondary importance. The position of first importance goes to material satisfactions. They are the spiritual children of Ahamba, his values the foundation of their lives. The Christianity that is set up on this foundation is much like that we have observed in Blade Among the Boys, The Potter's Wheel, and Ake. Philip is the native closest to the priest. He is his cook, catechist, choirmaster, altar boy, and bodyguard all rolled into one. It is not easy to make out why he has joined the missionary, but it is an act loaded with significance, since he is by election a priest of Njoku, 'the biggest god that [the] land knows' (19). Not only does Philip fail to serve as 'his father's Ihi Njoku,' but also he declines the conditions of communal life among his people. Thus is the bitterness of his uncle Nwala's denunciation of him: 'My heart bleeds for you…. Look!... Look at you! Look at what you have permitted them to do to you. You wear these things they put on little boys [Philip's mass server's vestments] who have not yet shed their first teeth. For all the stature wasted on you! Tall like an iroko tree, marked from birth as if to become a chief. In the days when we were fighting for the land we now own you could have been expected to send a spear through two men at once, to cut off a man's head with one stroke of the machete. Amadioha! Why were you not still born? All your age mates have married three or four wives and fathered households of children. They are in the Yam Society and Okonko. But you …' (21). Philip has none of the things recognized by the community as achievements, and he is keeping himself apart from the community. But not even he can finally escape the pull of the community. When we first see this, it appears only metaphorical, figural. As he prepares to leave Father Higler after serving him on the first day of his arrival, he announces: 'I go now, hut I come back in the morning early for mass.' Fine. Goodnight.' 'Yes Fada. Goodnight Fada.' Philip had walked off into the thickening gloom in a pattern that later he repeated daily. His life had a light and dark side, one aspect known, another aspect hidden: days at the mission, nights among his own people (49). Since Father Higler sees himself and his mission in opposition to darkness, forest, and night, the night life of Philip is part of what he has to fight. What he wishes is to keep Philip entirely in the glare of the light of his Mission. But Philip is not just impenetrable, he positively throws off the light when he is encircled by it. To Father Higler, 'His face had an aspect of the darkness outside. It was there, deep and uniform' (53). By contrast, Nwala wishes to see him in the light of tradition, to produce himself according to the role specified for him by tradition. The light of tradition is for Higler quite simply endless night, whose long reign he hopes to break. Here he reflects about Africa: a continent not necessarily on the same order of logic as he was used to, perhaps not even under the same eternal government. But that was the fault he had come to rectify. They that dwelt in darkness had to see the great light (54). Whether he is making headway is to be seen in the career of Philip. Planting Philip under the glare of his light is therefore a task which is of the greatest importance to the missionary. Another metaphor applied by the narrator to Philip is the rope of a tug of war. This has the force of reducing Philip, on the one hand, to the status of an object. On the other, he is either the prize in the tug of war between the Christian system and the traditional one or the means by which Father Higler may pull the followers of the traditional system over into Christianity. But the missionary will lose this struggle. Already, this outcome is forming into a pattern at the level of suggestion quite early in his residence in the community. This pattern, a background formation, has significance deriving from mythic thought. It is like a prophecy or a dream in a Greek tragedy, in that this is what shapes the experienced reality, rather than what is derived from experienced reality. We read that Philip having come back to the mission in the night to see how the newly arrived Higler has fared in the unseasonal rainstorm, now prepares to go back: 'Why don't you stay here? What's the point walking half a mile back in this darkness when you will be here early in the morning?' 'Fada, the rain has stopped now. And there is nothing in the darkness.' 'Okay,' he had said, with genuine regret. 'Go in peace then.' 'Yes Fada.' He had risen behind Philip, lamp in hand, and had stood in the veranda holding the lamp aloft. But he had succeeded only in lighting an island around himself, not the servant's path. Philip had stridden into the darkness, and the darkness totally absorbed him back (54). But the real darkness which swallows Philip up in the end is quite different from what Father Higler has feared; rather it bears a striking resemblance to that with which Father Higler has lived from the beginning, which is internal to him, the darkness of despair. Philip stands not only at the centre of the tug-of-war between the Christian and the non-Christian systems, he also stands at the centre of the narrative as a figure to wonder at. His uncle Nwala wonders. But he goes no farther than to contemplate him with deep regret because he has a great physical presence, which seems assigned for the great dignity of Ihi Njoku to which he has been elected but, in his view, shamefully declined. He does not know why Philip has failed, despite his natural endowment, but he does not seek to puzzle it out: he pronounces the case not worth puzzling out. It is too disgusting. But Father Higler welcomes the puzzle. He has seen enough of Philip's devotion to duty and ready self-sacrifice, his power of initiative and drives the man, what he wishes to attain. Philip is unmarried and uninvolved in the internal politics of the small Christian community, in terms of leadership, and so on. What then does he want? Higler has tried to find out in discreet conversation with Philip. But the servant does not want to speak about himself. He seems to have nothing to say for himself, except that he is Philip: 'Me Fada, I am just Philip.... Nothing else' (52). It would appear that he can help no one discover what may be his motivation in working for Higler because there is strictly nothing to discover. What may be sought by Higler is really on the surface, whereas he is searching at a great depth. What Philip wants is the blessing which Christianity promises to those who follow the way of faith, the liberty of the children of God—which is the opposite of the people's expectations of him. Nwala his uncle would not mind his going to church, as long as he does not forget 'the duties that [fall] on his shoulder' (77). What he cannot stand in Philip is that he 'is a man who is blind and will not see what is his duty' (78). But here also he is misguided, it is not that Philip does not know what is his duty. He knows this only too well, as we see at the moment of his despair: 'I was born a slave to duty. I had no choice and no voice. My pains and sufferings, my sweats and tears did not justify me' (139). It would appear then that what has driven Philip to the embrace of Christianity is the desire to be free of his slavery to duty, the need to justify himself as a person, quite distinct from any role he might be assigned. But being a Christian has not helped him: The hopes after which I [swam] in the past cannot be counted. All of them false. So I have left hope behind me. I have no use for hope now' (137). Philip who has all the time been a worker, and doing nothing specific for himself, does come to a moment of need, and he turns to Father Higler and the Christian God for help. He has been condemned with the help of divination for the accidental discharge of a gun in which a resourcefulness, and human concern to wonder what drives the man, what he wishes to attain. Philip is unmarried and uninvolved in the internal politics of the small Christian community, in terms of leadership, and so on. What then does he want? Higler has tried to find out in discreet conversation with Philip. But the servant does not want to speak about himself. He seems to have nothing to say for himself, except that he is Philip: 'Me Fada, I am just Philip.... Nothing else' (52). It would appear that he can help no one discover what may be his motivation in working for Higler because there is strictly nothing to discover. What may be sought by Higler is really on the surface, whereas he is searching at a great depth. What Philip wants is the blessing which Christianity promises to those who follow the way of faith, the liberty of the children of God—which is the opposite of the people's expectations of him. Nwala his uncle would not mind his going to church, as long as he does not forget 'the duties that [fall] on his shoulder' (77). What he cannot stand in Philip is that he 'is a man who is blind and will not see what is his duty' (78). But here also he is misguided, it is not that Philip does not know what is his duty. He knows this only too well, as we see at the moment of his despair: 'I was born a slave to duty. I had no choice and no voice. My pains and sufferings, my sweats and tears did not justify me' (139). It would appear then that what has driven Philip to the embrace of Christianity is the desire to be free of his slavery to duty, the need to justify himself as a person, quite distinct from any role he might be assigned. But being a Christian has not helped him: The hopes after which I [swam] in the past cannot be counted. All of them false. So I have left hope behind me. I have no use for hope now' (137). Philip who has all the time been a worker, and doing nothing specific for himself, does come to a moment of need, and he turns to Father Higler and the Christian God for help. He has been condemned with the help of divination for the accidental discharge of a gun in which a kinsman is killed, when he had only been trying to prevent a person intent on killing this man from doing so. The man who had sallied into the scene of a fight expressly to shoot his opponent dead is absolved of all guilt and responsibility. Neither Father Higler nor the Christian God comes up with the kind of help Philip believes he is entitled to, having been fighting on their behalf. No one seems to know how to provide the support he needs. The reason for this is that Philip's habits of thought from which his hopes and expectations spring forth are in fundamental opposition to the movement of Christianity, which seems to belong to abstract thought. In his moment of need, when he fears for his life, Philip desires and asks for physical protection. Even Higler is not entirely comfortable with this system which moves in abstract thought, and will not give any material sign to justify itself. Part of his reflection after a day full of strife and trouble, and has ended in a catastrophe is as follows: 'Ah yes, a priest forever. Chosen but not marked. Sent but not armed. Marooned without reprieve. These signs shall follow them that believe in me. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing' (30). Higler is able to cope with this problem of the gap between the Gospel promise and the concrete field experience of the missioner because he knows already that there is nothing to expect. Philip neither knows nor can understand why the Christian system should seem to let down a faithful member in time of need. His greatest disappointment in fact is the realization that as systems Christianity and the cultural tradition behave in exactly the same way. Tortured by his isolation from the community and effective excommunication for refusing to perform the purificatory rites imposed on him for the cleansing of a blood guilt which appears to Father Higler to attach to someone else, not Philip, and the constantly 'overheard references to his name and his abdication of duty.' Philip confronts his situation in a moment of insight, as he thinks of the contradictory demands and orders of the various allegiances to which he was subject. He was in a rope in a tug of war, a rag wrung from two ends, a man without a choice, without a voice, defenceless and undefended. Duties without rewards. It was not just, to be so caught between irreconcilable allegiances, each fiercely jealous, neither sufficient protection against the other— captious, quarrelsome lordships, careless about rewarding virtue and services but painfully meticulous in remembering and punishing failings (83). Philip's mind is disintegrating, and this continues even after he gives up the village to come and live in Higler's rectory. But the questions he is raising are not the questions of a diseased mind. He is raising questions which are capable of plunging a sound mind into the abyss. For these are really the deepest questions of existence, 'what it means to be.' According to Karl Jaspers, these are questions that lie at the heart of all tragic literature. Philip's decision ultimately is that the individual as he has known it in both the traditional and the Christian systems has no status and no distinctive identity. This is something to be protested in the strongest terms. But he takes steps first of all to ensure that he has not misread the situation by opening it up with Higler, after the latter has found out that the blood guilt is not all that Philip is held to account for. He has earlier incurred cultic guilt by running away on the night of his initiation as Njoku, and had escaped into the rectory. Higler has seen a parallel here to his early desertion from battle, and takes opportunity of Philip's inquiry to make confession, admitting that this is bow he has come to become a priest in the first place. Higler confesses, moreover, that despite becoming a priest, he has not come to terms with himself, and so there is no real peace. Apparently, becoming a priest is a kind of compromise for which he settles. That this does not address his real need is seen in his troubled consciousness. Becoming a priest is probably no more than a device of evasion, which fails. Hence it is unable to sustain him from day to day. What keeps him is, strangely, his great cowardice. This is how he confronts the possibility of suicide: He picked up his rosary from the bedpost and squeezed it, wished he had a gun. Then perhaps he could feel himself as a source of power—some power was better than no power at all—against the amorphous, the generalized and the impalpably palpable dangers that threatened him. He had no power over the inner tumult, nor the outer tumult, no command and no command post. He could not even enjoin his own mind to observe the peace and be still. A gun. What a mockery! Had he not flung away the last gun he had held and fled in hysteria pursued by cowardice. What would he do with a gun now—shoot it point-blank into the darkness without' And within? Was he not a priest? Was the Lord himself not present in the Blessed Sacrament in his chapel just a few yards away? (30). He does not mentally accept suicide like Bellow in Humphrey's The End of Dark Street, nor does he overcome the temptation mentally, and lay it to rest. Neither the reminder that he is a priest nor awareness of the Blessed Sacrament nearby is able to bring him strength. Therefore, no real decision is taken. Ultimately, Father Higler has his great moment, when his despair and suicidal thoughts are all transcended. This occurs when he comes upon Philip bound, a prisoner of Ahamba and the elders who are on the point of slaughtering him and his partner in incest in atonement to the assembled gods of the land. He is in search of Philip in a state of great agitation because of the outrage he had committed against the Blessed Sacrament. But the situation he finds him in makes him to put aside his own concerns. His sole concern now it to save Philip. He pleads with the people to no avail to let Philip go, and is no more successful in persuading him to accept absolution for the sake of his soul. But then, in one eternal moment, something clicked inside him. 'No!' he screamed. 'No!' He saw a machete leaning against a stump, dived for it and whirled around brandishing it. No he cried, 'You cannot do it! Philip was yet to be saved. He would save Philip on his own life. 'Stand away from me, I tell you! All of you! Do not lay a hand on him.' The old men backed away in their surprise. The priest backed towards Philip, made a quick turn and cut his bonds loose.
'You are free now, Philip! Run away! Run! Escape!' (142) Philip makes no move to run away. Neither does Higler, for he has offered his life in exchange for unworthy Philip's—unworthy because of what he had done to the Eucharist. Father Higler has ceased fearing for his life. He thereby redeems himself, to the extent that what he had come to Africa for is to justify himself. For Philip, however, one single act of cowardice seems to have done for him. But of course, he will equally have his moment, when he will take charge of his own destiny, and have all his enemies in his power. He spares them, and turns the point of the machete on himself. He arrives at this point only after great anguish of soul, because of his one fatal act of cowardice. Afterwards he is still and subdued. But below the surface which Higler has been unable to see through, he is preoccupied. He wants to understand what that single act has done to his personality, or rather what it captures of his personality. His question to Higler is as to what must be done to have peace. However, given that the contradictions of his own inner self are unresolved, Higler is in no position to give guidance to a man of very strong emotions like Philip. What he offers sounds hollow, viewed from the movements of his consciousness in the above: 'We … hope. Like little children we trust in God, our only refuge.' 'And the only reward we are promised, Fada, is a happy death, is that not so, Fada? Where is the justice of it?' (112). To protest this injustice in full measure, Philip decides on a heinous act, not 'an indecisive and half-hearted rebellion, but an act that would ... stink all the way to Fada's heaven and back again in the heart of the land. A taboo. An unforgivable mortal sin' (112). He settles for the violation of whatever he knows to be sacred. He desecrates the Eucharist, sexually violates his adopted daughter who is a half-wit; and does this deliberately in the open, on purpose to be observed. Instead of running away when Father Higler cuts him free, he seizes a machete, cuts the effigies of the gods and jujus to pieces, and stabs himself to death. The worlds of Father Higler and Ahamba are rational systems. They are mutually unintelligible because of the breaks and discontinuities each finds in the other's system, and mutually antagonistic because the conditions of their co-existence in the same environment require that the gains of one are at the other's expense. Though they both are aware of points of difficulty in their own systems, they do not consider these impossible to live with. Father Higler lives with his on the ground that being a system with mystery as the only underpinning, it is beyond his power to understand, while Ahamba thinks that a system that has served his ancestors well must be good enough for him. Philip is the biggest catch of the Christians, because he is a core member and key functionary of the cultural tradition. For this very reason, Ahamba and his people will not let him go. They hang on to what they treat as the strings binding him to them, determined by main effort, or blackmail, the latter particularly, to force him back. During the time of his tame service to Higler and Father Schlotz before him, his preoccupation is a silent meditation on his experience and sufferings, their causes and implications, his place in the world he is immersed in and his prospects. He comes to the conclusion that the people he has to do with do not think of him as a person, that who he is, is not important, but what he is for. And he is not contented that many others are like him in this respect—apparently this is normality itself. But Philip wants to know why, and what compensation there is for this loss of personhood. This question is fundamental in Freud, who connects human civilization to the giving up of instinctual drives at society's behest, and the accepting of 'substitutive satisfactions' in lieu. Father Higler does offer Philip one such substitutive satisfaction, marriage, of which the bride price would be provided by his Mission. The rejection of this mode of compensation means that Philip renounces all chances of reconciling himself to human community, whether the Christian or the traditional. It means that he opts to be a solitary individual; that he declines to normalize and be like everyone else. In this way are called back into play the old instinctual drives which have never been got rid of, but had been kept in abeyance all the time. The Land's Lord, of course, shares the structure of the novels of the era of colonization, namely the ethical and political binary, one alien, the other native or traditional. Philip's dilemma arises by reason of this binary, which cannot be resolved or circumvented, but rather drives the subject towards destruction. To this extent, The Land's Lord is the most traditional of all the traditional Nigerian novels. Only Nzekwu's work appears to be as totally committed to this binary. In Achebe's Arrow of Cod, for instance, the levels of tension are many. One pattern is in the cultic rivalry between Ezeulu and Ezidemili. The question of the exercise of political leadership also has a split structure. For people like Ogbuefi Nwaka, political power is the prerogative of the wealthy and the possessors of the highest titles. He has good grounds in the tradition for this. But there are equally good grounds in the cultural tradition to claim power by priestly right. Still other patterns are seen in the religious conflict between Christianity and the cultural tradition and in the alliance between Ezeulu and the colonial administration apparently against the rest of Umuaro. The result is that the same individual may be grouped with someone on one side of a particular divide in a relationship of struggle, and against that same one in another. We see this multiplicity of levels of conflict in still greater complexity in Soyinka's The Interpreters, where there are religious movements, cultures and sub-cultures, civil service ethic, ethnic and racial patterns of allegiance, religious and kinship affiliations, urban and cosmopolitan lifestyles, work and career, and so on, all producing affiliative networks and making exclusive claims of allegiance upon the individual. But there is a clear divide between those who submit and are wholly absorbed and reduced by these patterns of affiliation, whatever they may be, and those who refuse to follow any system at all, or who follow a code they have made up for themselves. A great instance of the former is perhaps what is called by Kola, one of the Interpreters, Faseyi's 'self-cancellation' (213). Characters like Professor Oguazor are like Faseyi in mindlessly following convention, but Faseyi outdoes them all in that he does not see himself simply through the eyes of a certain society or social level. His society is a fiction of his own making, and it is through the eyes of this fiction that he sees himself, by its requirements he organizes his own life, and is committed to getting his wife to act in accordance with the same impractical rules. Though Faseyi is 'the best x-ray analyst available on the continent' (45), he has very low self-esteem, and hankers after the values of Europe and its behaviour patterns as if to make up for what is missing in himself. On a similar platform is the mixed-blood Afro-American, Joe Golder whose neurosis, so to speak, is self-hatred. He is said to be 'three-quarters white' (101), whereas black is what he thinks he has every right to be. Therefore, he feels 'like Esau, cheated of [his] birthright' (102). But this cannot be the reason for his self-hatred, because rather than gratitude to his father who is half-black, which is why he himself has come to be one-quarter black, he has driven this man to commit suicide. He confides in Sagoe: 'You may be horrified when I tell you I drove him to it. I was so ashamed of him and I did not hide it, I spat on my flesh to his face because it came from him' (188). The self-hatred, then, is deeper than the question of pigmentation. It connects to what is treated in the narrative as the absence of harmony with Nature itself. In opposition to these are a group of young men with a very clear and sharp sense of self. Foremost among them is probably Egbo who in the narrator's portrayal is the emanation of Ogun 'the unyielding god' (125). As a child, Egbo's guardians 'wore out canes on him' (16). As a schoolboy, he is 'something of a miracle.' One of his teachers tells him on the eve of his departure from secondary school after his certificate examination: 'Do you know you came near dismissal six times? Six times in a secondary school career! Young Egbo you must ask me for a testimonial because that fact must impress any right-thinking man' (51). Egbo himself speaks of Sekoni, the Interpreter who goes through the most changes, as 'sometimes ... the most non-existent person in the world' (123). But these changes do not affect Sekoni's 'essential essence,' as Heidegger would say. He is a Muslim and an only child, marries a Christian, and is disowned by his father for this. He is a qualified engineer, takes a position in the public service, where he is appointed an administrative officer to his great disappointment. This is a man who understands electricity generation and is itching to get into the field. His superiors are mortally offended that he should be wanting to go into the field and to do real work, instead of being content like everyone else to draw a regular pay for no work done. Banished into Ijioha as Senior Engineer in charge of projects, and left without resources, he builds an experimental power station by improvisation. His superiors arrange at the cost of tens of thousands of pounds to get the power station declared inoperable and dangerous, without even a trial run. Sekoni has a nervous breakdown. But he does recover, immediately to turn into a sculptor, bringing out a masterpiece with his first work called 'The Wrestler,' 'a frenzied act of wood' (99). Sekoni is so independent and individual a spirit, and can break out from any system of constraint, whether it is of culture or of his professional training, the traditional world-view of his people or the attitude of mind supposed to be inculcated in one's upbringing. But this power he seems to have discovered from the bitter experience of disappointment and treachery. When his one attempt to change the world fails so utterly, he recoils and initiates an artistic career which has no ulterior motive, either as a means of self-expression or of earning a living—certainly not one of changing the world. Simply, 'its power had burst out of itself … seemingly divorced of much pain and piety. Obscuring his own identity' (220). His commitment is to what he calls life, and that is what he bears witness to. His words are few, he is a stammerer, but most of what he has to say is in terms of life as a point of convergence whereby everything has meaning. His very last remark in the narrative before he dies in a car crash is a kind of last will and testament in regard to life: 'In the d-d-dome of the cosmos, th-there is com...plete unity of Lllife. Llife is like the g-g-godhead, the p-p-plurality of its manifest...tations is only an illusion. Th-the g-g-godhead is one.
So is life, or d-d-death, b-b-both are c-c-contained in th-the single d-d-dome of ex...istence ...' (122). What Sekoni produces here is much like the ancient philosophy of the One. For him, everything is comprehended in the dome of existence, the familiar binary opposites, life-death, therefore good-evil, Father Higler's light-darkness, and so on, all form a totality. And this is his interpretation of life. Of the Interpreters, he is the one with the philosophical turn of mind. But even if the others are not philosophers as such, their practice is not lacking a philosophical basis. The Interpreters make up a distinctive group, not only because they are friends—though they disagree all the time and are frequently on the brink of a fight—are young and free thinking, they are bound together by the common ideology of egoism. It is Sagoe who systematizes it into a kind of philosophy, which he calls Voidancy (73). This philosophy seems to require the cutting off of oneself from antecedents and family, to hold oneself aloof from society's expectations and convention, and perhaps to recreate the world in one's own image. All this strongly echoes the 'exuberance' of Nietzsche's Dionysian person. By its logic, the Interpreters have no business holding together. Their holding together seems to have more to do with circumstances putting them in the way of one another than through the exercise of an intention. For what is most important about them is that they are very strongly individualized personages, so that they remain solitary individuals, even though within the group. The traits of the Dionysian persona, after all, include that he is 'the most spacious soul, which can run and stray and roam farthest into itself..., the most necessary soul, which out of joy hurls itself into chance ... the soul fleeing from itself which retrieves itself in the widest sphere' (Nietzsche, Ecce Homo 107). Thus we have the following dialogue at the return of the last member of the group, Sagoe, to the country after their studies overseas: Kola asked 'Why have you been hiding? Confess.' 'I'll explain later. How did you know I was back?...' 'Egbo works at the Foreign Office. He told us you had come.'
'Why the bloody. . .' And he slapped himself on the thigh and laughed. 'And there was I sneaking in and out thinking no one knew of my existence.' 'Your dossier fills a whole filing cabinet—Egbo will tell you more about yourself.' Sagoe scratched his head. 'But what of Egbo? He could at least have called on me.' 'Well, we all guessed you had your reason for hiding ...' 'Well, it is nothing sinister, I can tell you. I just didn't want the family to know I was back. You know, thought I'd dispose of myself first, get a job or decide not to get a job, a brief courtesy visit and then finish. Every man to his own business' (89-90) Sagoe not only wishes to be free of kinship attachments, to him not even a job is a necessity. Life will lose nothing of its completeness if there was no job to do, as long as it is a conscious decision to take up one or to go without. Among the Interpreters, Egbo and Sagoe have known each other longest, and are probably closer in spirit than the others. They are two very different individuals, however. The matter of taking or not taking a job is something which Sagoe may consider at any time and dispose of. But we actually see Egbo agonize over a decision. The creek kingdom of Osa is his by his late mother's right, and he could take it if he chose. But he resents having to be faced with such a decision, because the existence of a specific set of alternatives is already a kind of constraint. These alternatives are things confronting him and condition his actions by their very existence. We see him in a moment of silent meditation: 'Why do you continue to brood?' Always Bandele knew exactly when he flogged his mind over the decision at Osa. 'You brought yourself to the point of a choice, that had to happen, you know.' 'Even the choice is a measure of tyranny. A man's gift of life should be separate, an unrelated thing. All choice must come from within, not from promptings of his past.'
'You continue to talk of the past as if it has no place with us.' 'It should be dead…. When people die ... it should not matter what they were to us. They owe the living the duty to be forgotten, quickly, usefully' (120). Reality dogs and frustrates the desire to be free, to be, in every sense of the word, the master of one's own destiny. The Interpreters are not the only ones in this narrative who resist reduction and assimilation into outside realities, systems, and movements. There is a young thief, for instance, who is rescued from a crowd intent on lynching him by someone who calls himself Lazarus, a character like Prufrock's 'Lazarus, come from the dead, / Come back to tell you all.' This character runs a Pentecostal church, and claims he had once died, and been raised miraculously after one day. He had died a dark-skinned man, and resurrected an albino. He converts the young thief and immediately appoints him an apostle, to restore the number of these pillars of his church to the established twelve, one of his old apostles having recently died. Sagoe who witnesses the rescue and the other Interpreters have been invited by Lazarus to a special service of his church, but have not been told what the service is for. After the ceremony Lazarus comes to Sagoe and his group to hear their opinions: Sagoe [shakes] his head. There are moments when I don't believe this is that young thief, you know. It is hardly the same thief, but perhaps he was too scared at the time.' Lazarus nodded with satisfaction. 'I am glad you find him changed. I was anxious to hear your opinion.' Egbo said, 'I cannot like the new apostle. He looks submissive, not redeemed. I find his air of purity just that—air. There is no inner radiance in the boy, only a reflection from the spill of zealot's flames. Lazarus listened, open-mouthed. 'You are mistaken. That youth has received the holy spirit of God.' 'I do not like apostasy,' Egbo said. 'He has the smooth brass face of an apostate' (167-168).
It turns out that Noah, as the young thief is christened, does run away from the ordeal of initiation just as Philip does when he is undergoing initiation as Njoku, and as the protagonist of Nkem Nwankwo's Danda does at the ichi ceremony which would qualify him to receive the ozo title his father has bought him. But the case of Lazarus's convert is worse, according to Egbo: 'Noah's apostasy is not the wilful kind, it is simply the refusal to be, the refusal to be a living being, like a moon' (231). Lazarus and his Noah are both egotists, as much as the Interpreters. But the latter have no self-serving motives. Lazarus is serving a lust for power, Noah is helping himself. They are both calculating, and opportunists. The Interpreters are different: they are impulsive and irrepressible. Their impulsiveness is not mere irascibility. It arises from being connected to what Sekoni calls the 'dome of the cosmos,' attuned to the productive and creative forces of life itself. Their functioning is only as different manifestations of the single reality, life. For example, Sagoe's meeting with Lazarus is a chance event. He is waiting along a cemetery road to join the funeral procession of the chairman of the newspaper for which he works. He sees another funeral procession comprising a car and eleven mourners. The treatment of their departed and the demeanour of the mourners themselves seem to him to be abject and without any dignity. Sagoe joins them. Along the way, they meet the chairman's procession of over forty cars and thousands of mourners. They give way to the latter to cross the bridge leading directly into the cemetery before them. At the actual burial, Sagoe walks over to his chairman's cortege, carries away three flower bouquets from the hundreds laid out for the chairman and conveys these to the other grave side; he then re-joins the funeral for which he has come, before the leader of the other group, Lazarus, has time to say thanks. Afterwards Lazarus goes looking for the kind-hearted gentleman, and tracks him down to his hotel. It comes out that Sagoe is a journalist and works for a newspaper. And so immediately he begins developing plans to use Sagoe to gain publicity. But a distraction intervenes, the chase of the young thief who he helps rescue. As we already know, he does not rescue this thief for the latter's own sake, but because this is someone he thinks he could use. By contrast, the doings of the Interpreters have no ulterior motive whatever, simply the pulse of Nature itself. For everybody else, there is an ulterior motive. Faseyi thinks that this is the ordinary and universal rule of conduct, and that even the Interpreters, the one known to him, at any rate, his university colleague, must be following this rule: 'Look, let's face the facts. The university is just a stepping stone. Politics, corporations—there is always something. Not to talk of these foreign firms, always looking for Nigerian Directors. I mean, Kola, you are an artist, but I am sure it is all a means to an end, not so?' (202-203). The Interpreter says nothing to this. Apparently, it deserves no comment. The Oguazors, Faseyi, and many of the faceless characters of The Interpreters are conformists. Ideally, they should blend into the social mass and lose all distinctness in it. What distinguishes Oguazor, Faseyi, Lumoye, and so on, and renders them visible is their high level of anxiety to be seen to conform. Noah does not have this anxiety, there is no spark at all in him. Lazarus has a spark, in terms of a lust for power and domination, which means that he wants others to conform to his own fictions. The Interpreters have the spark, but they have not even thought of the question of conforming. For them it does not arise. What marks them out particularly, what we have called their independence, is their Dionysian superabundant life, reflected in their confidence to make up the rules as they go along. This is what Egbo is talking about when he demands of the past, history, tradition, to be dead and forgotten, that is, that he should be free to think for himself and find his own way. We see this equally in Kola's production of some of the gods in his pantheon. We read that, Egbo took his eyes away from what he really wanted to see, his own presence in the overpowering canvas. The unfinished part was an arched figure rising not from a dry grave, but from a primordial chaos of gaseous whorls and flood-waters. He is wreathed in nothing but light, a pure rainbow translucence. It was Lazarus, Kola's new dimension to the covenant. Egbo moved his head gently from side to side…. 'I cannot accept this view of life. He has made the beginning itself a resurrection. This is an optimist's delusion of continuity' (232-233). Within the context and limits of Kola's work, the figures—Lazarus as well as all the others that make up the pantheon—have integrity. Egbo must concede, however reluctantly, Kola's right to his interpretation. The interpretation does not impose; or rather a mark of the Interpreter is possession of the force to resist imposition. Philip's despair in The Land's Lord is because he lacks the confidence to make up the rules to live by as his own interpretation of the total phenomenon of life. He has in fact come to a dead end. He cannot go on beyond this point, otherwise going on would mean his having to continue one or the other of the traditions he pronounces unjust and rejects. His position has a certain integrity, since he is consistent. But then the positions of his opponents on either hand, Ahamba and Higler, equally have integrity. For each commits himself to his system, insofar as he sees it as the only valid one. Integrity is more radically equivocal in the picaro of the novel, where the character is seen to be struggling with circumstances which are beyond his power to influence. Such may be said of Nkem Nwankwo's Danda, who seems to be slightly abnormal. Here is his first announcing in the narrative: Bells were heard tinkling in unison at a distance. The attention of the crowd was at once drawn away from the boat. 'Rain!' they said, turning delighted, expectant faces towards the direction from which it blew. A little later, a lithe, tall man turned a corner and lunged towards the group. This was Danda, otherwise known as 'Rain.' The tinkles came with him. They were produced by small, bronze bells which were sewn on to a blue cloak lined with white which draped him from shoulder to ankle (5-6).
What may surprise is the high level of expectation exercised in regard to this delightful misfit. Of course, the elders judge him by means of a code which Danda knows to exist. But they do not realize that with Danda, knowing does not necessarily correlate to action. Knowledge involves no challenge whatever, as it would have done for the Interpreters, for example. Strictly, the elders' code has no meaning in regard to Danda. Yet their assumption is that he is normal like everyone else. Apparently much is at stake, else he may have been written off with his deviancy becoming persistent. Thus when the debate among the ozo title holders over Danda's unauthorized handling of the ngwu agelega, the ozo staff, awakens the old rivalry between Danda's family the Uwadiegwus and that of the chief, the Ikolos, the defence of the Uwadiegwus is that Danda is well-begotten, and is therefore the subject of the entitlements which apply automatically to the patriarch's successor. If what he does is in fact forbidden, it can always be discountenanced, as long as the family has enough resources to meet certain expenses: 'Danda springs from a big obi,' said Idengeli, one of the most influential of the Uwadiegwu ozos. 'When a rich man's son breaks the golden pot his father's barn will pay.' 'True word,' said another family man shaking hands with Idengeli. When Araba dies is it not Danda who will cover his outer walls, marry his women?' (24). No one is more anxious than Araba, Danda's father that Danda be equal to the claims here made for him. But Araba already more than suspects that Danda is not up to any of this. He says nothing of his suspicions to his colleagues, however. All he can do before the ozo council is to moan. 'Troubles that started from Danda have broken my head!' (25). This, however, does not show us what really passes in Araba's consciousness. We have a sense of what passes in it in a conversation with Okelekwu his neighbour: 'One has to think of those who will come after him, It will be the duty of Danda to thatch my outer walls after I am gone, to bury me. Can Danda bury me?' 'One can't say. He may be a different man after you are gone. A man I know at Obeledu was a scamp, but as soon as his father was gone—' 'At Obeledu, you say' (27). In the unfolding of the narrative, the sense is increasingly that a recovery of the type mentioned by Okelekwu is unthinkable in regard to Danda. Although Danda is thought to be about thirty years old, he hasn't properly entered into the adult world, with its high expectations and strict demands. Danda cannot measure up to any of this, as his mind is not fully developed. One of the qualities which he has carried from the world of childhood into the adult one is an unrestrained appetite. This is something which Araba himself has perceived. We read, Araba . . . filled the cup and passed it to his guest. Okelekwu drank, smirked his lips and said: 'Strong Aniocha wine.' 'It is my brother, Diochi, who has tapped it. Diochi is the best tapster about these parts… I had wanted to ask Danda to tap our palms but that would be like sending the vulture to the market to go and buy you meat which is as much as asking it to go in to a feast. Danda would drink all the wine he taps and eat the calabash too' (26). Equally the sense of right and wrong seems to be non-existent in the character. This is glimpsed in some of his escapades, for which he receives swift and heavy punishment, like his handling of the ngwu agelega and his liaison with the chief's wife. But it is particularly troubling to the leadership of the Christian community who persuade him to join them. In The Land's Lord, Philip's daughter by inheritance, Ugochi, is clearly a simpleton, though her highly developed proportions may initially mislead. She is really unable to learn anything. Danda has the capacity to learn, but seems capable of only fairly straightforward learning matter, and a logical process which is greatly reduced in complexity. When the Christians win him over and try to train him up to follow their coded behaviour patterns, they meet with disappointment because with all the good will at his command he still cannot grasp the logic of their morality, which is reflected in their everyday life and their most basic demands. Soon after joining, he misses Mass and has to face a church court. His reason for missing Mass is that, 'The people of Mbammili invited me to a bring in and drink.' 'Is that an excuse you are not afraid to give?' 'If you don't like it I will give you another one. When Amumma Nmego's wife was alive he said to her: "Woman, if you don't like the truth, I will tell you a lie."' There was laughter from other members of the court. The catechist smiled. 'We have not come to laugh, Danda,' he said. 'Missing church is a deadly sin.' 'I know,' said Danda. 'But how could I miss a come and drink invitation from a great friend—" (57). For Danda, to know that something is wrong does not mean that it may not be done if it stands in the way of satisfying an appetite, nor that one may feel a sense of guilt if one has done the wrong thing for the sake of the appetite. On the appointed day for his baptism, he fails to turn up because he has come upon a big sacrificial feast along the way and has stopped by. The priest tracks him down to the place, but is rebuffed when he tries to take him away. There ends the Christian community's effort to train him. Belatedly they realize that 'What Rain says has neither head nor tail.' This the local community has long known (31), though without giving up hope for that reason of bringing him to their state of normality. Danda's assessment of himself is as follows: 'Some people say that Danda is a tortoise, others that he is mad. I am not mad, people of our land, but I am not sure that I am sane' (63); Danda may in fact be somewhere in-between. What seems clear is that his mental development has broken off early, leaving him entirely under the rule of what Freud calls the pleasure principle. Apart from the emotions of joy and wellbeing, the only other emotion we see him experience is fear, for example, when he is thrown out of the house by Araba, and he has to spend the night in an abandoned hut far from the village. His reaction to the dark is entirely infantile and, as might be expected of one under his affliction, he gives no thought whatever to his prospects for the night until his friends depart and leave him alone. Okoli Mbe and Nnoli have accompanied him to this sanctuary, bringing yams, utensils, and live coals, which Danda has not thought to bring for himself. When they leave, he finds himself surrounded by night. He has cooked and eaten the yams and has nothing more to do, and suddenly aware of the dark, he makes haste to get to bed and cover himself up. But he is seeing and hearing things, despite that he has wrapped himself up in his cloak: Danda closed his eyes and eagerly sought sleep. But at the same time the spirits were coming into the house. There was a leader who had two heads and eyes of fire, then a dwarf whom his companions called onye oya—the sick one—one of his limbs was missing. 'Give him your leg,' a wiry spectre said to Danda. 'Yes, give him your leg' (86). Danda's fantasy here says much about the structure of his mind. It belongs somewhere in the childhood stage, and that is presumably the point at which the development of his consciousness becomes retarded. His friends are a brace of loafers, lacking both the discipline required for social existence and the application which any kind of economic practice demands, These two will help Danda steal roofing mats to mend the rotten roof of the reclaimed hut, an escapade Danda goes through without showing any emotion apart from fear. Danda's greatest fear is of bodily pain. But he is made to present himself for facial scarification in order to qualify for the ozo title which his father is determined to confer on him, after concluding that there is hardly anything he could call reassuring in the careers of Danda's younger brothers, and calls him back. But first he marries Danda to a young woman with a reputation for being serious-minded and hardworking. He bolts from the scarification at the first touch of the knife, sprinkling the spectators with his blood in his flight, and leaving his father broken with shame and soon to die of the humiliation. Whereas Danda is mentally inadequate, his friends Okoli Mbe and Nnoli Nwego are properly delinquents. Danda's development has been arrested before the adjustments to the Reality Principle which mark the adult stage. He is mentally incapable of meeting the demands of the Reality Principle, and he has to flee to avoid these. When his father proposes marriage, for example, what he returns him for all answer is 'It is sudden!' But he is as quickly won over to the idea as he was to be to the ichi initiation. The results are not far apart either. For at the first sign of difficulty with the young woman, he hurries to the in-laws to ask for the bride price back. But his father is there to forestall him. It is he who has paid the bride price and not Danda. Therefore he alone may take it back. By contrast, Okoli Mbe and Nnoli are well furnished to meet the demands of Reality, but they refuse to face these. Danda, for his part, is ultimately accepted by the community for who he is, and is able to infect the people with his enthusiasms and his fluting, despite that the themes and the tunes are the well-known ones—he himself never having composed one of his own. He easily falls under the sway of music, whether of his own or another's making. There is no restraint whatever. The people readily adjust their emotions to his. Only one person resists this movement, and that is Araba his father. This resistance is driven by interest. In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo's rage against Nwoye is borne of the fear that there may be no one to provide worship and ritual nourishment to his ancestors and himself when he passes on. The aspect of continuity which exercises Araba is the maintenance and perpetuation of the family position of power and influence by keeping the large compound and working for its prosperity. He himself is a patriarch in the mode of his ancestors, morally strict, upright, and unflinching, physically strong, decisive, and able to hold his own in the community, hardworking, wealthy, and at the head of a large compound of many wives and children. But none of his three grown-up sons seems to be able to continue in this tradition or to be worthy, in Araba's terms, of their great ancestry. Araba had sought to secure a footing for the family in the new socio-economic system, and had sent each of the three oldest sons to school. Danda, the eldest, is no good there, of course, and quickly returns. But he is no good as a farmer either. The other two continue longer in school before they too leave to try and make their fortunes in the city. One never returns; the other, Onuma, does after eight years, having scraped and saved to make a small fortune with which to buy a bicycle, a gramophone and so on to impress Araba, as he sees himself as the least favoured of the boys and the least well-regarded by his father. He also enters into an expensive marriage relationship which cleans him out, so that he is unable to cope when he returns to the city. Onuma's career recalls Pauper in Tutuola's Pauper, Brawler and Slanderer. He is a prince, but he is so poor that he is nicknamed the Father of Wretchedness. He is a great embarrassment and source of unhappiness to the king, who dispossesses him and expels him from the town. Pauper, Brawler and Slanderer, however, is a magical narrative. The fate of this leading character in the narrative is foretold in detail to the king at his birth, up to his expulsion from the king's domain. But the foreknowing of this history does not affect the king or influence his actions. He too is under necessity like the son. In the case of Danda, the decisions are made by the father. For example, the reason he has put up with Danda so far is because he believes there is no alternative. In the absence of anyone responsible and old enough to take over his inheritance when he dies, he has to hold on to Danda. But as soon as Onuma returns home, showing signs of what his father would call success, the old man quickly concludes that this is the man he can trust with the family inheritance, and dispossesses Danda. But then Onuma has his great setback, and Danda is reinstated. After his own book, Araba resumes trying to make a man of him. This ends in the catastrophic failure of the ichi initiation. In Danda's community, there are apparently many who are unable to lead the kind of life and follow the exacting discipline of traditional society, as reflected in the behaviour patterns and rules of moral judgement exercised by Araba and his fellow elders. In many cases, the problem is that the training programme of this traditional society has failed to generate the 'correct' output. This is how to understand the deviance of Nnoli Nwego., Danda's friend. In this character, traditional society has failed to reproduce itself. Danda is different, in that he is incapable of the discipline that would turn him out as a reflector of the norm. But he has an idea that certain modes of being are acceptable, others, including his own, not. He admits as much in his salutation to his little son when he is born: 'He is going to be a great man in our kindred…. Yes ... I have spoilt my life . . . but he won't spoil his. He will reach where they say people reach. If going to oyibo land is the newest thing then he will go there and come back and be noised about' (138-139). Clearly, he knows that he is not what his society would call a success. But it is another matter entirely whether things could have been otherwise. He must be mistaken to suppose that it had been in his power to strive to meet the expectations of a society like Araba's, as he lacks the mental capacity to respond appropriately to the training regime. But then, he quite contradicts himself elsewhere. For example, his characteristic exaltation is, 'Oi! Oi! Oi! My father bore me well. My chi created me well!' He hereby pronounces himself to be perfectly constituted. And there is no trace of self-consciousness in the outcry. However, he exalts in those tones when he is mad with excitement. Upon the whole, the tenor of the exaltation is no more valid than that of the salutation of his son. In both cases he is not himself. In My Mercedes is Bigger than Yours, the character's failure to attain the behaviour patterns expected of the well-begotten, to use Danda's expression, is from another source. Whereas, in Danda, Araba has deceived himself as to his son's abilities, in My Mercedes is Bigger than Yours, the father is deceived by the son's apparent success. The son Onuma is like Danda in this particular: he 'never liked the dark. He was by nature a child of bright lights' (16). In Danda's case, this is a concomitant of his infantilism. By contrast, Onuma seems not to be mentally handicapped. He is a university educated person and clearly has a mental capacity for social adjustment to the acceptable level. But his attitude is that, the world exists to minister to his fulfilment. A beautiful body and ease of manner had enabled him to sustain his attitude without much strain. He instinctively sought people that were fulfilled and saved, people rich in mind and body. He had very little patience with the other types. He despised weakness and folly. He hated sick people, small people, mean people, ugly people' (17). These attitudes, nevertheless, reflect a psychological condition. To say that Onuma is a selfish person would only reduce this psychological condition to an ethical question. The ethical parameter implies that an attitude is tantamount to a range of choices habitually made: the subject has deliberately made certain choices, adopting thereby a pattern of behaviour over against other possible patterns. What is reflected in the passage, however, seems to be much less a matter of an exercise of choice than a mode of being in which consciousness is governed by the 'pleasure principle,' to the exclusion of everything else. But the man's power of intellection is not hampered by this. For instance, Danda does not have the sophistication to think abstractions or to have feelings towards abstract properties, whereas these are the very things that make up the environment in which Onuma's mind moves. Equally, unlike Onuma, Danda appears not to be capable of hating anything, only physical pain he cannot stand. In this he lives in a world apart. Onuma is much more sophisticated than his parents in terms of material culture. But he has a mind exactly like their own, especially the father. Just as Onuma assigns the highest value to his own needs, and sees other people as potential helpers in the attaining of his aims—hence he readily exploits any situation and anybody for his own fulfilment—so does his father Udemezue. We see this, for example, in the way the latter treats the farm labourers who work for him. After one full year of unremitting labour in his farms, he gives them a few yams by way of compensation. In his view, yams are priceless; and in any case, the labourers daren't complain, as he has the means to run- them 'out of town back to their famine districts' (29). Similarly, just as Onuma lives exclusively for 'spectacular moments,' so it is with Udemezue. He has slaughtered a cow and given a great feast in honour of his son's return. Udemezue is so overflowing with satisfaction when he finds that Onuma has come with a car that he announces another feast, presumably in honour of the car: and he plans it to be 'the greatest thing that ever happened to the district.' The particulars are as follows: The feast was to last five days. They were going to offer a cow on each separate day, many goats and chicken. Most of the women of Aniocha were already baking cassava, and the palm wine tappers had standing orders (30). This is of course as Onuma wants it, and he is the one paying the bill, although the fiction is that Udemezue is the one doing so. Onuma has come home after fifteen years' absence to celebrate the securing of a shiny new Jaguar model, for which the monthly instalments would gulp up more than half his salary. The initial payment itself is a loan from a moneylender arranged by the firm he works for at a 'rapacious rate of interest' (26). But the change of fortune is as spectacular as some of the wildest orgies of the celebration. An accident almost exactly at the end of the festivities results in the loss of the car, and he rapidly descends not only to penury, but also to crime, political thuggery, fraud, and finally murder. The behaviour pattern shared by Onuma and his father is also seen in other characters who are highly placed in their community, especially the Eze of Isu and his rival for the parliamentary seat of the Isu constituency, Ikpa, who is Onuma's cousin. They all live by the rule of the spectacular, and are prepared to go to any length to get up a show aimed to impress. They want to be 'noised about,' the way Danda would want his son when he grew up. Among the humbler people, like Magic, we do see numerous signs of longing for this mode of fulfilment. In these terms, it would appear that the chief failing of Onuma is not having the means to follow the lifestyle of his choice, which is the one approved by his community. The issue in My Mercedes is Bigger than Yours is not a failure to attain the acceptable behaviour patterns. The main characters are so well connected that we can see in them the quality of soul which governs the everyday conduct of their people, by reference to which those who claim any distinction are judged by the rest. Onuma's people expect those of the community who have distinguished themselves in terms of worldly success to act like the Machiavellian prince to whom all things are permitted. He earns their respect if he claims this right. It is his due. For their own part, they will submit tamely to his exactions. But this is as long as they are satisfied that he has earned the right. Onuma's idea had been to dazzle the villagers in one quick move, and afterwards to enjoy unlimited power over them, just like that of Napoleon 'at the height of his pride' (115). But he has much to learn, for the people demand much from their prince. He can only assert himself successfully if he has the means to maintain his position. He may bully the people to his heart's content, or he may buy their acquiescence just as he chooses, provided he has access to an unlimited supply of money. But his reign will end as soon as it gets to be known that his resources are exhausted, or that he had no resources to begin with. Ikpa clearly understands this. His maxim is: 'A man who sought their approval …. must not just be wealthy but must appear to be so' (139). However, Onuma's and Ikpa's manners of approach are the same. Their way is not through bullying, but the buying of the people's acquiescence. Onuma comes to the village having successfully tried this out with the girls in Lagos where he lives, and made spectacular conquests. He is rather surprised that they do not ask for much, that the offer of a ride in his brilliant Jaguar model is more than enough to lay them at his feet. This is the kind of power he wishes to extend and exercise over the villagers. He has quite made a success of this, but crashes his car just at a time he has exhausted his money supply, immediately exposing the leanness of his resources. During his brief reign, everyone defers to him, including the local leaders of his church. His parents and those who can claim a relationship bask in his glory, and when it abruptly turns a bleak side, his father is full of offence, and the only thing that would salve his injured dignity is for Onuma to take himself off the scene. But this is something the young man is unable to will himself to do because he too is stunned at the suddenness of his fall, and because there is nothing really to return to, as he has made no allowance whatever for a rainy day. The father is also in a great rage, but this is directed against the family gods. We read, 'I don't know why this kind of thing should come to my house. Something has clouded the eyes of my fathers.' He looked severely at the Ikenga an important member of the lares. 'God damn the spirit of my fathers,' he said, snuffed and went out (105). Udemezue here recalls Echewa's Ahamba, who negotiates with his gods and is on the lookout for a god who is ready to work for him, not one who is hungry for his sacrifices. The focus of his resentment soon extends to include his son, and he becomes increasingly cool towards him. Onuma had been nothing more than a pretender to the role of the Machiavellian prince. The true prince is the Eze of Isu, who will ultimately take Onuma into his entourage when the latter's fortunes suffer a change for the worse. Of the Eze we read, He called himself Eze—king—of Isu and had appropriated to himself a wide range of royal ceremonial from many customs…. He was one of the first people to see the potential advantage in an alliance between politicians and natural or even self-made royalty. So he proclaimed himself king and designed royal robes…. [The] district was very much his to do as he liked with; he was not only the Eze of Isu town but also of the district group. He could build a post office in a compliant village and remove it from a hostile one: other poli at great peril , thou ticians stood against him gh of course this did not prevent them from trying (126127). One of those who try to wrest from him the honoured and distinguished posit ion of Machiavellian prince is Ikpa, Onuma's cousin. Ikpa's credentials a re a and ' Mercedes with a melodious h ooter the inevitable party flag stuck on its bonnet' then the adding of four new wives to his household 'to the consternation of his first wife whp o had lived happily with him for twenty years. Then a palace ... a show iece rather than a purely utilita rian d well ing. It was four floors sparkling with vivid glass and raving red blinds. The top three floors were virtually empty' (139). With a deal of money to throw about, he quickly gathers around himself a large and noisy following and a band of thugs to asser t hi s claims to power. The Eze too determined and ruthless a Machiavellian, lets his own band of thugs loose on the upstart to kill and destroy to their hearts' content. In one encounter, seven of Ikpa's retainers are killed and his shiny Mercedes bu manages to escape with his life, only to rernt to ash es. He enter with renewed vigour into the struggle, quite unperturbed by the deaths and his material losses.