In tragedy, the character does experience defeat. His defeat is necessary, in that it is destined, or somehow inscribed in the nature of things, or because it follows inevitably from the choices that he has made. But if it follows from a choice he has made, the choice itself had to be made. His defeat, therefore, does not take anything from his stature as a hero. His heroic status is already a concomitant of his being distinguished by fate and destined to experience what he experiences; but equally important is his courage in the face of that choice, which might portend ruin for him (Lukács). If he experiences ruin, and goes down, his going down is only a physical fact. But he is by reason of his courage and greatness of soul more than a match for his ordeal. This is the kind of defeat experienced by Okonkwo of Things Fall Apart and Ezeulu of Arrow of God. Accordingly, their experience is not thought of in terms of defeat, but of a tragic reversal. They are not 'defeated,' in our sense here, so as to become abject under the heel of the victor; they are properly heroes, because their greatness of soul is unreduced by changed circumstances. In addition to this quality of greatness of soul, these are characters who are part of the history of a cultural revolution. The crisis they have struggled and been destroyed in is seeking with all their might to give orientation to this historical movement. These characters are crushed by something more than man, in this case, the historical movement. Those who are truly defeated are usually in no position to maintain the greatness of soul they create the impression of having. Such is the case of Alade Moses in Aluko's Chief the Honourable Minister, who has a reputation for honesty and integrity. We do see him, in fact, frequently worrying over the rightness of a course of action he is faced with. But he clearly lacks the strength of character to push for and maintain his high principles. This is the point of weakness which his colleagues, the more experienced politicians, exploit and play upon, reducing him to an ineffectual presence in his own narrative. The case of a character like Obi Okonkwo of No Longer at Ease and Jeri Oko of Munonye's Oil Man of Obange is rather different. They are defeated first of all by their circumstances. What they struggle against is not a cultural or historical movement, but a convention that holds them as in a mire, so that their ideals are for ever out of reach. Like Alade Moses, Obi Okonkwo starts out with very clear ideas, but the former's lack of substantiality is already reflected in his being drafted as a candidate for a parliamentary seat and then appointed a cabinet minister in his absence. He never really gets to have his own say. Accepting the result of an election in which he has not campaigned as a candidate, nor even formally declared his candidacy is immediately to place both himself and his views in bonds. Henceforth he is a creature of his patrons, who take all the decisions. Obi's sense of personal freedom, on the other hand, is stronger; but it is to prove illusive in the end. Thus, whereas his views on formal education, civil service ethics, and individual freedom of action in private life have a high relief in the narrative, he finds himself forced to act against each one of these, without formally renouncing them. For example, his withdrawing his promise of marriage to Clara because of objection from his mother directly conflicts with his ideals of individual freedom of action in private life. But this does not bring him to ask himself the question, where lies his freedom. That would have been the kind of question which characterizes tragedy, according to Karl Jaspers, the deep questions of existence. Obi is merely depressed that he has not achieved his aim.
His aim frustrated, he is totally defeated. But the struggle which ends in this defeat has unfolded in stages. The first test comes when Clara reveals to Him that she is an osu. This announcement immediately awakens Obi's cultural education and its internalized system of surveillance, whereby it secretly restrains and controls individual action: 'What's the matter, Clara? Tell me.' He was no longer unruffled. There was a hint of tears in his voice. 'I am an osu,' she wept. Silence. She stopped weeping and quietly disengaged herself from him. Still he said nothing. 'So you see we cannot get married,' she said, quite firmly, almost gaily—a terrible kind of gaiety. Only the tears showed she had wept. 'Nonsense!' said Obi. He shouted it almost, as if by shouting it he could wipe away those seconds of silence, when everything had seemed to stop, waiting in vain for him to speak (No Longer at Ease 64). In Obi's cultural training, an osu is not permitted a full citizen of the Umuofia community as a marriage partner. This is something that Obi's education under the Western system has consigned to forgetfulness, until it forcefully confronts him in the choice of a partner, and he is rendered speechless. Unexpectedly he has been presented with an issue of convention or even a norm which is in opposition to his beliefs about the dignity and freedom of the individual human being and their equality irrespective of the nature and circumstances of their origin. In him, however, these new beliefs are not sufficiently well-founded, as they have not supplanted the old traditional norms. These norms are equally found to hold in Ogu's The Secrets of Nothing, despite the protagonist, Ofondu, demonstrating by sociological and historical analysis that the osu taboo is based on error. The question of tradition and culture has overtaken Obi Okonkwo, formulated in a way he could not even attempt an answer. And yet it must be faced. When he finds his voice, all he can say is 'Nonsense,' shouting it almost. Hereby he announces his readiness to take on tradition—which is opposite to the pattern followed by Alade Moses in Chief the Honourable Minister. Having once made a gesture of acquiescence to those who had taken it upon themselves to decide his political destiny, Moses seems to have taken the attitude that there is nothing left for him to save. He even seems to have learned how to keep his mind in suspense, while he goes through the motions expected of him. This state of suspense we see at work at his initiation into the chieftaincy of the town that had adopted him. Dumbly, he goes through all the rituals, prostrating as required at the shrines, and drinking the potion given him to drink. He goes on from one concession to another, never taking a stand, until the denouement, when he confronts suffering and death in his own body. He may have come at this point to the discovery vouchsafed by the Hunter's Supreme Second in The Witch Herbalist of the Remote Town, that the human person remains a totality, even when the mind seems to withdraw, and not to participate in experience. By contrast, Obi Okonkwo's history is a history of resistance, although his resistances right up to the moment of the decision to take on tradition have passed almost unnoticed. Now the issues are so fundamental and public, and cannot pass unnoticed. Obi's struggle with tradition progresses through a series of three stages. The third of these is to prove decisive. With it, Obi's moral world fairly disintegrates. The opening phase has a small build up. His friend Joseph is the first to hear of his engagement to Clara. He does not succeed at all in getting Obi to see the matter from the viewpoint of the logic of tradition, that his marriage concerns not only himself but his whole family and the future generations of his offspring. Moreover, the Umuofia Union members look upon him for leadership, encouragement, and what is today called a role model. They would be scandalized by what Obi has apparently set his mind to do (65-66). The argument with Joseph is all the warning he has that the struggle with tradition and convention is now in progress. The confrontation at a meeting of the Umuofia Union quickly follows. Obi's request for a period of grace before he should start paying back the loan he has received from the Union for his studies in England is the immediate provocation. Apparently, the request itself is of no consequence. The problem is what the president of the Union sees as the reason behind it: 'What the government pays you is more than enough unless you go into bad ways…. I have heard that you are moving about with a girl of doubtful ancestry, and even thinking of marrying her...' Obi leapt to his feet trembling with rage. At such times words always deserted him.... 'This is preposterous! I could take you to court for that... for that... for that…' (75). He ends up storming out of the meeting, threatening never to return. His view is that the president's reference to his relationship with Clara and her ancestry is unwarrantable interference in his own affairs. What he is responding to, however, is in some degree his own attitude towards the president as a person. This is the man to whom it falls by office—but Obi suspects, also by inclination—constantly to remind him of his debt to the Umuofia Union, which they like to call a 'scholarship.' Obi has silently resented this; and now the president has given him what he has warrant from his Western education to treat as unwarrantable interference and provocation. But the president's response shows that he has warrant by cultural right for what he has said. He sounds quite contemptuous when he says: 'You may take me to court when I have finished' (75). His is the role of a father, and this is the reason why Joseph has complained to him about Obi's behaviour. Nor is he alone in claiming this role of a father in regard to Obi. Mr Green equally places himself in the role of a father when he instructs Obi at his taking delivery of his car: 'You will do well to remember [ ] that at this time every year you will be called upon to cough up forty pounds for your insurance' (87). The role of mentor and political father claimed by Mr Green is not directly challenged. But it is resented. He seems, in point of fact, to expect the claim to be resented. His tone to Obi ensures this. This deliberately provoked resentment gives his claim a peculiarly oedipal aspect. The father-son relationship is inscribed from the beginning as a relationship of struggle. But if Obi resents Mr Green, the claims of a cultural father by the president of the Umuofia Union, performing an unpleasant duty, will be totally rejected. It goes without saying, of course, that he does not thereby shake off this claimant. To the end, the president treats him as a scapegrace, towards whom it behoves him to extend special solicitude. In addition to all these fathers, Obi has his own father at Umuofia to cope with. Of all the father-figures surrounding him and telling him what to do, Obi fears only his own father with whom he has not made any really 'direct human contact' for his whole twenty-six years of age (122). When he comes to a confrontation with this man, the struggle proves much less bruising than he has feared. It is the father who is forced into a corner where he is entirely without resources. Rather the mother he has taken for granted as an ally proves the invincible foe. Facing her, Obi's resistance to the pull of tradition collapses utterly. What has sustained him in the struggle, without his knowing it, is his very isolation between the two systems in mutual opposition. In his person is inscribed the tension between them. As a result, his career strictly ends when he is compelled to accept that tradition is the force against which he is 'incapable of successful struggle' (Lukács, 1965/1976). Against Mr Green and the colonists, he may struggle by indirection, when he writes the 'novel on the tragedy of the Greens of this century.' Another manner of struggle against the cultural tradition is the one Jeri Oko is faced within Munonye's Oil Man of Obange. But just as Obi has been forced to take a stand against tradition because the woman he is in love with and has settled in his mind to marry is declared not to be permitted him by tradition, Jeri's manner of relationship to the cultural tradition is not something he has chosen. He has given up his inheritance and means of livelihood to his enemy because it is either that or his life. This leads ultimately to a change of livelihood from one based on tillage farming to trading in palm oil. The restricted volume of this trade and the remoteness of his operational base from the big dealers he supplies combine to keep his earnings low and barely adequate to feed his large and still growing family. But he is making a complete break with the economic life of the village based on tillage farming. He sends all his children to school. School means fees and clothing for the children, who would not be contributing in any way to the family income or food resources, as would have been the case in the old economy. Their demands are heaviest at the beginning of a new year. So he has worked hard all year, saving as much as possible to provide for the Christmas feast and new clothing for the wife and children, as well as school uniform and fees. When he has provided for some of these, and there is nothing left even to buy a new change of clothes for himself, he finds that the children need new books besides: Lu interjected: 'Papa, we haven't shown you the list of books for next year.' Marcelina tried to hush him; but he already had his own list in his hand, and now he held it up before them. And presently Celia came out with her own list too. 'What is in it? Tell me one after the other,' Jeri said dragging his voice in his discomfort. Celia began to read. Lu interrupted after a few moments and started reading out his own shouting so that his voice would dominate hers. Annoyed at this, Mica snatched the list from Lu and held it behind his back. Lu pounced upon him, demanding the list back. Then their mother tactfully recovered both lists, handed them over to Jeri and advised him to put them away. 'No, let's find out how much each comes to.' Jeri returned the lists to the children. 'Mica, you too, go and bring yours. Let's have them all together' (32). Jeri's aspirations are clearly higher than the means at his command. The sense of an overwhelming weight is already oppressing him, and yet he has fees to pay only for Mica and Luke, as Celia is enjoying free tuition available to female children. Soon the younger children Anthony and the twins Frank and Fred will begin school also. Marcelina is good-natured and asks for nothing for herself, except that now that the twins are three years old, she ought to have another baby. As she has not noticed any sign of pregnancy all this time, she considers that something must be wrong, and that the help of the herbalists must be sought. Jeri is working extremely hard to try and meet his ever-growing responsibilities and has stood up to these so well that his eldest Mica does go into secondary school. This event marks the limit of his achievement. The reversal of the sequence starts from this point on—which is not to say that the achievement brings about the reversal. Jeri's burdens have simply been increasing steadily, and he has come to a pass where he must either put them aside or else they must crush him. Nevertheless, the achievement does bring out something in the constitution of tragedy, namely excess—the surpassing of limits, which the Greeks call hubris. Murray (1940/1962) has reminded us, of course, that this surpassing of limits (hubris) is not a moral category. It is the story of the sun, the day, vegetation, anything which may rise and decline; everything, in short, subject to change. In reaching the limits of his power, Jeri finds he knows nothing else to do. There could be no going back. In a tragic sequence, going back is not a real option. Obi Okonkwo will take this path, which is a non-option. And all that it will do for him is to reduce him from the status of a tragic protagonist to the object of pathos. In Oil Man of Obange, the hero at the limits of his powers presses on, even though the margin of profitability he might turn to account by pushing himself still further is already exhausted. In the end, fate seems to have taken a hand, heightening the mimetic level still further, to ensure that what is produced is a struggle against something greater than man. The change in fortune begins to be observed with Marcelina hurting herself accidentally and dying of gangrene infection. Following this, Jeri has a series of accidents, in which he loses, first his goods and trading tools. Then he sustains serious bodily injury, as a result of which he is laid up for months. He loses his bicycle into the bargain. Recovering, he restarts his trade with borrowed money, only to plunge into deeper waters. But the spirit of the struggle seems to have begun to be broken in Jeri with the death of Marcelina. Marcelina participates in the sequence of putting the children through school only as a helper. In narrative terms, the two parties related together in the sequence such that without one, the sequence would not be able to articulate, are Jeri as the performer, and the children as the sufferer, or Jeri as the donor, the children as the receiver. These categories, the performer and the sufferer, and so on pertain to narratology, and are derived from the nominal functions in a sentence, subject and object of the action, respectively. Marcelina does not belong to either of these categories which are decisive for the sequence articulating together. Her death does not affect the sequence directly, but as a catalyser. Its impact is first and foremost on the atmosphere. The circumstances of the narrative are from now on bleak and brooding. Jeri's income needed to pay for the children's tuition does not suffer: there is in fact less stress on it, as Celia withdraws from school voluntarily to look after the twins who are too young yet for school. As to Jeri, he returns to the trade with a heightened sense of responsibility and duty. But he who at the passing of his wife had cried out and lamented the injustice of his lot and the injustice of her decease is increasingly ill-tempered and resentful in the face of the daily demands associated with this duty. Told soon after he resumes his travels that the school headmaster has announced a deadline for the payment of certain dues, he reacts irritably: 'Let him say whatever he likes. I haven't the money yet.' His cheeks creased. He folded his arms across his chest. 'What you children and the headmaster don't seem to remember at times is that I have three of you at [ ] school, which means a lot of money,' he resumed. 'And then I have to feed you and clothe you all alone.' Silence followed. 'What was it your headmaster said? He asked ruefully in a more mellow mood. 'Papa, he said we must pay before the end of this week.'. . . 'In which case, I had better travel to Otta tomorrow,' he resolved aloud after another interval. 'The six tins are not all full; shall try to carry the oil in five only' (65).
He has a bad fall on the way to Otta, in part because of the unfilled containers, but there is an element of the coincidental as well. The accident occurs at a bend where the road is sandy. That is precisely where a lorry rolling down the way with the engine off surprises him. He just misses being crushed to death, but is overcome by the cloud of dust in the wake of the vehicle, loses control, and falls. He sustains some injury, and some of the oil is lost. The damage is mostly on the bicycle, and it is a bitter blow to him to give up the parcel of arable land adjoining his house in order to retrieve the bicycle from the repairer, who was going to sell it off to recover the cost of the repairs. He is to lose the bicycle altogether in another accident shortly afterwards, and with it the parcel of land given as collateral. In addition, he has a fracture with which he is laid up for many months. Jeri has some moments of triumph to relish and derive encouragement from, such as his children taking the first position in their examinations, and when they help the neighbours with their letters. On one such instance: He observed it all with unspoken delight. He observed Lu's eyes moving through the lines and listened as he read the words, translating from English into the language of the people. Then, turning to the right, he watched Mica and Chijioke, the former writing while the latter gaped (when he was not speaking), a slave to the child's wisdom. The situation was pleasant to contemplate. Only a few families in Obange of seven villages had children of that age who could read or write as did either Lu or Mica; very few indeed had two such children together (94). The villagers who come for help with their letters make implicit acknowledgement of Jeri's farsightedness and achievement. This to Jeri is more than enough vindication and compensation, an inner source of strength in his dealing with his sister who is implacably opposed to his lifestyle and aspirations. Onugo, rich and with no dependants, is in a position to help Jeri; and there are moments of dire need, when she appears really hard-hearted and cruel in refusing to see anything in any other way than her own unenlightened fashion. This is seen, for example, when she fails to advance a sum of twenty shillings needed to retrieve the bicycle. We read: It seemed as if his slow, quiet tone touched her heart. 'I do not mean that I cannot give money to you, she explained. 'If you wanted to buy some yams to plant, or to buy land or even to fight afresh for our family land which you surrendered to the enemy...' (81). Jeri's hint that his situation being so desperate, he would have to give out the plot of land adjoining his house as a collateral for a loan of the sum he needs, unless she lends it to him only draws from her, 'Bring a big basket.' 'I may even have to sell the land outright.' 'Go on; and sell yourself too.' With that she went into a fit, shouting, cursing, swearing (81). She is unmoved by the need to keep the children in school. In point of fact, she recognizes no such need because 'Children of their age work for their parents in the farm' (83). Those children will fall into her hands when Jeri is finally destroyed by his great undertaking. Her utter lack of awareness of the change taking place in the cultural environment and the rootedness of her views in a tradition whose workings have been seen to wreak death and destruction invest her with the air of the witch-mother. Unlike the Witch Mother of Tutuola's The Witch Herbalist of the Remote Town, that in Oil Man of Obange is dragon-like, and eats up her own young. But this is a role which Onugo fulfils unconsciously. She is, in fact, a kind-hearted woman. This is what the narrator has said of her more than once, and we have some kind of confirmation in several accounts of small acts of thoughtful kindness towards the younger children especially, only that none of this is in the aspect where it might help advance Jeri's great enterprise or lighten the burden. Jeri, however, does not feel humiliated by Onugo—she is his only surviving close relative. He is only frustrated and disappointed that she is so unshakably fixed in her views and ways. Because she will not help him, he is more than once forced into a course of action which seems irrational. One such action is when he prepares to send Mica to a secondary school. Having gone through the motion of asking Onugo for a loan, and received her usual taunt, 'Bring a big basket,' he decides to approach Mr Brown, the oil dealer at Otta whom he supplies, and makes up a letter which is, a serious departure from one of his main principles in life. A man sold his dignity by doing such things. 'Better wear your rags with pride than become a wealthy slave by borrowing,' was a common saying in the land (153). His man makes twenty pounds available to him, remarking, in case Jeri should fail to pay up at the agreed time, 'I shall ask you to regard the amount as bride price on your daughter' (171). Even at the time of writing of the letter, the fear had reared up its head that he is effectively 'pawning his own daughter.' We read that immediately after writing, He lay on his back. His eyes were dry and wide open. His throat, too, was dry. His heart was pounding—pounding with guilt, and he felt generally uneasy and apprehensive (153). Jeri has come to an extremity where his values are in confrontation with one another. Love for one's own offspring is here opposed to the education of the offspring, which is ordinarily an aspect of that love. Celia is one child to whom Jeri owes a great debt of gratitude because of her self-sacrifice when her mother dies, to look after the youngest of the children and care for the family as a whole. He loves her dearly because of this sacrifice she has made unasked. Now, in order to satisfy another need, he is putting her up as collateral on a loan. He realizes, however, that this deal will not address his situation fundamentally, and will do him much harm in public opinion: How could he, Jeri, do such a thing? The one who gave away his only daughter who also is sister and wife and mother to him, just for money!' That was what everybody would be saying about him (172). Like Alade Moses, however, once launched on this path of self-degradation, Jeri is unable to stop himself. But unlike Aluko's character, who goes along under the impulse of a force before which his spirit is utterly quelled and submissive, Jeri's is a state of fixation.
The matter of the children's schooling appears to have become for him supreme reality, before which everything else will give way because it is the way he has lit upon to justify himself to himself and to society for giving up the traditional means of reaction to the threat to livelihood. It would appear that it is his belief that the final outcome of all his efforts, whenever this should manifest, must serve as his answer for everything—as totally effective as Philip's heinous act. It is Jeri's creditor who gets him out of his impossible situation, and decouples the collateral, for he has found Celia is totally opposed to being bargained away in this manner. And so Jeri has been dragged away from the precipice, and his own 'boundary-situation' (Jaspers), where he would have had to debate for himself the impossible proposition: to go forward or not to go. But if in this way he escapes the classical format of the tragic dilemma, it is only to become the victim of arbitrary chance. On his way home from a very profitable trip to Otta, he finds himself in a robbers' ambush, having been lured into the set-up by someone pretending to be in need. They take all his money and the bicycle he has hired for the day, having lost the one for which he had given his land away as collateral. The catastrophe shatters his mind. But the judgement of the people of Obange is that it is the task he has assigned himself that has overcome him: The soil into which Jeri had sown the new seed was extremely fertile, and he had not spared himself in his efforts to carry the work through. But should this not be a lesson to all the living and sane? Was it fair that a man should practically destroy himself in the interests of his offspring—in his efforts to bring up his children? Must child-rearing mean self-effacement? Such questions did the people ask each other when they told the story, or saw Jeri sauntering about and gaping vacantly at all and sundry (186). Jeri had defined his life and pursuits in terms of his offspring. He hardly sees himself at all—it is almost as if life is something behind him, since his reprieve from a death which had fairly carried him off.
Having abandoned the modes of pursuit and livelihood which comprise his cultural inheritance, he has nothing to inspire him until his children begin to arrive. His attitude is not strictly self-effacement. He has invested his whole future in the children, and in their success is his hope of self-recovery. In this way, he hopes to turn the early defeat by the circumstances of his life and pressure from his enemies into a glorious triumph. When the robbers remove his money and bicycle and all, they rob him of this hope. The education which Jeri has sought with such single-mindedness for his children is what Sanni Salako, of Oyegoke's Cowrie Tears seeks for himself at the outset. But he is unable to pass the A-levels he needs to enter a university, though he has been trying at this for some years. At the level of consciousness where intentions are formed and goals set, Jeri looks at education as something good for his children to have, the achievement of which will bring honour and prestige to his house. At this intentional level, Sanni thinks of his own education in terms of passing certain examinations and qualifying for university admission. He has not worked out for himself what he needs education for; he goes on taking these examinations almost as if by necessity. He will eventually stumble upon the question, and bring out an answer, to add to the multiplicity we have already encountered in the novels of the tradition. For instance, we have just been seeing in Oil Man of Obange that its prestige value is a main reason why Jeri is paying whatever it costs to give it to his children. That prestige value is also seen in Ezeulu's attitude in Arrow of God. For Mazi Laza of The Potter's Wheel and Obi Okonkwo of No Longer at Ease it is a social ladder. The question first comes to Sanni's conscious mind when his girlfriend Ebun leaves him at a moment of depression, as his latest attempt at the A-levels has come to nought: Oddly enough, he felt invigorated by the fact that his girlfriend, his only girlfriend, had left him in the lurch. Perhaps to spite her, he was now doubly determined to succeed in life. He would become a money-man sooner or later. Was not the aim of any enterprise in life to make money? And from what one saw around, it didn't seem that passing A levels and going through university was the only way of making it in life. University education was merely popular as the surest way to a lifelong 'meal-ticket' which made easy the ownership of a car, a flat, carloads of girlfriends and a world of fun and enjoyment. There were certainly other ways and means of becoming rich; there were as many wealthy stark illiterates as there were affluent men of letters. As far as [ ] society was concerned it didn't matter how you got what, but how much—and the more the merrier. Money! (Cowrie Tears 5-6). Sanni Salako is now certain about education. It is a useful tool. But the real value object is money. Sanni holds money in the greatest esteem in part, because of the pleasures it can buy him, but mainly because he measures getting on in life in terms of the amount of money one has at one's command. He and Onuma of My Mercedes is Bigger than Yours are starting out on the same major premise, but Sanni goes farther, and ties his desire for money to wider and longer-term goals. Jeri goes still farther: his goals are so long-term that he can't even see them clearly. He merely fights on, knowing that if he is successful, it will compensate for all the sacrifices and deprivations. By contrast, Onuma is purely a hedonist; while in The Interpreters, Faseyi who is also a great lover of money, and uses it as a measure of how one is getting on, lacks the aspect of hedonism. Money appears to be an end in itself—money and position. In Sanni's view, his life has so far been uneventful. His hope is that his own 'day is yet to come' (Cowrie Tears13), when his life will finally register on the scale all important to him. This great day makes a mock appearance once while he is on an errand with his lover Bili's car, and runs into and gives a lift to Ebun and two of the latter's friends. One of these turns out to be Ireti, whom he had fought in his office, had to be detained by the police as a result, and loses his job into the bargain. To Ebun's inquiry whether this is his car, he has the satisfaction to answer, 'This is what I am managing until I can buy a better one' (173). Ireti who has come down in circumstances is too humbled and crushed even to utter a word all the time she is in the car. As soon as the other girls get off, and Ebun is alone with him, she begs to be given another chance:
'Although I am a Christian I'm now ready to be married to you under Muslim law which permits you to marry more than one wife. Sanni, you just try me—' (176). He has hardly time to relish his triumph to the full, as someone who knows Bili draws level at that moment, and inquires of the owner of the car, and whether Sanni is her driver. Quite unlike Sanni, his friend Jimoh is clearly asserting himself on Sanni's scale. He is only one year older than the latter, and although his educational status is somewhat lower, he is showing all the correct signs. He has married—he is Bili's husband, whom he would soon leave widowed. He has reasonably comfortable quarters, which he keeps improving upon with modern household appliances, and he is preparing to open a shop/bar for his wife to run. All this puts him in a position to patronize luckless Sanni, as at the news of Sanni's recent failure in the A-levels examination: 'Sanni-boy, for how long will you continue like this? Do you have a special liking for these exams you keep taking every year? Is it not for money that everybody has come into this world, I have always told you that if money is what you want there are more ways than one of getting it. All the time, energy and money you've been wasting on these useless exams might have been fruitfully spent on better things (12). He resents this patronizing manner. At the party to open the shop and bar, Sanni has a new sense of the relationship between him and Jimoh. He perceives that he is being used as a foil against which Jimoh is playing up his new-found wealth. Insulted, he walks out on Jimoh and his friends who use the party as an opportunity to make a parade of wealth and rich clothes. Sanni's perceptions reflect a painful self-consciousness and a low esteem of self owing to repeated failures. We also see symptoms of this uneasy state of mind in his tendency to day-dream and in the uses he makes of religion. The narrator tells us that neither Islam in which he has his early upbringing nor Christianity to which he has been exposed in the secondary school has any influence on him. But he quickly comes under the sway of an aladura prophet who treats religion as a magical process and a medicine to be applied to specific problems for specific results. His all-absorbing concern at the moment is how to pass the entrance examination, now that he is unable to gain the qualification for direct entry admission into the university. When the prophet worms this out of him, he announces to the suppliant, 'You have passed it already, my son,' and then fixes an appointment for him to come for 'brain washing.' This ritual takes place at the end of a day of fasting in a room filled with the aroma of incense and the smoke of wax candles. Prayers and incantations are said over the suppliant kneeling in the midst of seven giant black candles, his head covered in a white cloth. Afterwards he is given an egg to eat and holy water to drink. We read that, Sanni found it a little difficult to contain his excitement about the prospects which his encounter with the aladura prophet had opened up before him by rejuvenating his brain. My new brain must be tested for what it is now worth, Sanni told his textbooks as he laid them open on his table (50; italics in passages of Cowrie Tears are original). Sanni's 'new brain,' strictly speaking, has no home or basis in the subject; it is something other, which may or may not work for him. The test ahead is not for the whole person, but for the new brain. The effect of the aladura prophet's ritual brain washing is to create, or rather confirm a de facto break in Sanni's personality, whereas self-confidence is what is needed. That the dual personality is already in place is seen, for example, in his daydream (14-15), whereby his future yet to unfold is simultaneously already past. And all this is regarded by him from a distance: he observes it, but does not see himself in it—he is not part of this dream-world. We read: He saw a palatial mansion which occupied enormous space. The building had a large garage which could easily accommodate four cars.... An excursion into the interior revealed one hall sized sitting-room with a thickly carpeted floor and heavily upholstered easy chairs.... It was a palace, a mansion, in short a small empire … [the object of] envy and even hatred of not-so-lucky neighbours. To forestall the nefarious activities of such enemies and other antisocial elements, like armed robbers and political hoodlums, the villa had to be fenced right round with security walls and wires with one large entrance fitted with an iron gate on which was embossed in golden letters: Professor Chief SANNI SALAKO Esquire, B.Sc. (Akete), M.Sc. (London), Ph.D. (Toronto), O.B.E., N.Y.S.C., Federal Commissioner for Finance, and State Minister of Trade, Commerce and Industries … There is no life or activity going on in this mansion. Sanni is of course absent. His fantasy self is viewing it as a tourist viewing glass-encased treasures he cannot make physical contact with, let alone possess. The character's lack of self-assurance reflects a void in his soul he needs to fill up. His daydreams lack substantiality; there is nothing in them for his mind to rest on, except the sense of not having what he wants out of life. In turn, he tries religion and reconnection to family roots, but nothing is able to hold him for more than a moment. His conviction is that unless he has money, there is no other way to see himself than a failure. But his struggles yield just enough to get by. Thus he is not happy when his wife begins to bring in her earnings. It only brings home to him his own inadequacy: Toyin's flourishing tailoring business had turned her into the major breadwinner in the house and relegated him to the background. He, who should be the pillar of the family had been converted by circumstances into the weaker vessel! The second threat to his manliness was now coming from Bili who had decided to keep him on a monthly stipend, like a mere labourer … Am I such a failure in life? (162). Not only is Bili, his former friend Jimoh's widow into whose clutches he has fallen, anxious to keep him for herself on a monthly stipend, but she is willing to help him, if he must have money of his own. She ushers him into the world of juju and ritual killing for the making of money-spinning charms. He first attempts a kidnap, and when this is foiled, he takes the option of procuring a human head in a market of the underground. But he loses his life on the way to the ritual event; he had been unnerved because of a challenge at a roadblock and had jumped to his death from an overhead crossing into the path of a fast-moving truck on the road below. The underground world into which Sanni is introduced is unlike that of Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, where are gathered the under-class of the dispossessed. Cowrie Tears' underground is the domain of the wealthy, who have all the government contracts and control the big businesses in the metropolis. This underground is more a legal determination than a class one, a world where every care is taken not to allow the forces of law and order a glimpse. The forms of defeat experienced by the characters we have seen in this section vary in important ways. For instance, Jeri's defeat in Oil Man of Obange has qualities associated with sublime tragedy; particularly, it echoes what we read in Sophocles as 'the encounters of man with more than man.' This tragic confrontation rubs off somewhat on Obi Okonkwo, declared by Odogwu to be Ogbuefi Okonkwo of Things Fall Apart come back to life. The hero is remembered by Odogwu as the man who had taken on the white man single-handed, and had died in the fight (No Longer Ease48). Jeri, of course, fights with all the courage and resourcefulness he can muster, only that he is overwhelmed by a force which is in his own terms invincible and deploys a variety of stratagems which confuse and dissipate his energy. In one particular, Sanni recalls Danda, who is constitutionally incapable of willing resistance. Sanni, quite capable of willing it, and in fact does so again and again, is nevertheless unable to put up a fight. He is already defeated before he comes to the scene of the fight, before we even meet him. His defeat is not really a physical event, as much as psychological. Here is the scene of his last crisis, when he runs into an unexpected police roadblock on his way to deliver the human head for the money-spinning magic:
'Stop!' Sanni pulled up, a mass of jelly. 'Open your boot, sir!' one towering figure said, his face an inscrutable mask, and his gun firmly at his side. Empty. The policeman bent his fearsome height and peered into the car. 'Bring out that parcel, sir, and open it!' Sanni's heart made a double somersault. Maddened by the fear of arrest, he fled. And leapt over the roadside parapet into the road below, looking like a paratrooper as he went, his billowy agbada, opening up in the winds like a parachute but failing to hold him in suspension (195). Sanni here flies from the place of his rout. This is a man who has never been able to take a stand, but has kept to the shadows, so to speak, by impulse. His desire for money finally gets the better of him, and he ventures out. He is immediately challenged to answer for himself, and he flees, not knowing where. The decision to venture out has been a most difficult and agonized one for Sanni mainly because of the risks involved. He must be prepared to commit serious crimes, including murder and kidnapping, if he is to have at his command magical forces for money making. However, both the public itself and the government have awakened to the increasing dangers to life through kidnapping and ritual murders and are on the lookout. The possibility of arrest is therefore real, if he should go along with Bili's proposal. He is brooding over it in the following terms, when Bili surprises him: ... It was a different matter if you were a stranger and you were found meddling with a child in tears—the child might have fallen accidentally while walking on the roadside and you probably went to help—but you would on the spot be sentenced to death by lynching…! 'Are you still brooding over a simple matter?' a voice said, causing Sanni to flinch. 'Welcome, Bili, I didn't hear you enter' (172).
He would probably have deferred the decision indefinitely only that the closure of the firm he has been working for has taken from him his place of refuge, and he quickly succumbs to pressure from Bili. This indecision is certainly not from moral scruples: it is a psychological condition. It is Sanni's way of being: undecided, irresolute. It suits him perfectly when someone else takes the responsibility of the decision. And he may then complain quite grandly, 'Am I such a failure in life,' if some of the consequences of the decision are not to his taste, or do not suit the image he likes to see himself in. The responsibility of a decision he wishes Bili to take off his hands is what Bili resolutely presses upon him. She is prepared to help him with information as to where to go, and how, as well as the money he needs. But he must not only decide whether to take the particular course or not, he has to take each of the steps required by himself. So she travels abroad as soon as he makes up his mind, and she has given him all that he needs. Up to this point, the tests that Sanni has ever willingly entered for have been mostly examinations for higher certificates and entrance to university, all of which he has failed. He has also aspired to gain the love of women. When he attempts to seduce Ireti whom he desires physically (114), it is only after he has armed himself with a charm he has been promised can win him any woman he likes, even if she is a minister. The two women whose love he enjoys in the narrative, Toyin his wife, and Bili, have rather encircled him in their love, instead of him capturing them. Bili has been after him all the time she is living with Jimoh, and he is the one on the run because of Jimoh his friend. Similarly, when he first becomes Toyin's lover, she seems to nerve herself for the occasion by drinking and getting tipsy. But she is clear-headed enough to make him this speech: 'Don't think I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not as tipsy as you think … I'm only allowing you because I love you more than I can bear... and you are the only boy I've ever really loved ... you're the, first' (123). She is the one who chooses him, knowing precisely what she wants with him.
He who has never really won anything in his own name and by main effort, or held it by right, could never be dispossessed. The person who is principally dispossessed in the narrative is Toyin. But she is spared knowledge of this until the end, when Sanni is crushed to death as he touches down after his flight over the parapet. Bili has demanded more and more of his time, keeping him in her place for weeks together during which he sees nothing of his family, and he has had to invent lies readily believed by Toyin who is blinded by her love for him, and by a sense of satisfaction that she has secured for herself her own quest object. With his death, her dispossession becomes immediately manifest, complete, and irreversible. The dispossessed reversing this state of affairs is what we see in Zaynab Alkali's The Stillborn. In this work, the careers of three characters mainly are followed with fairly sustained narration, the main character Li, her older sister Awa, and her friend Faku. Each of the three has at the outset hopes and dreams centring on a young man who would marry them and give them happiness. The young men all fail of the expectations they are invested with, plunging the women into misery, and the latter have to take their destinies in their own hands. Faku seems to have suffered the most, and is driven into prostitution. When we see her and Li together at the end, they have both improved themselves: Li had listened spellbound to Faku's account of her experiences in various cities after finding the courage to leave Garba. For years, Faku had drifted without a proper sense of direction. Then three years ago she had been befriended by a kind, elderly woman who interested herself in social work. Now Faku was on the way to becoming a social welfare worker herself. Li felt happy for her friend who had found fulfilment at last (102). In striving to attain her independence, Faku has, of course, had to receive help and inspiration from another human being, the elderly-social worker. Li has had to depend on herself solely. All the advice and encouragement she has been given have been in terms of submitting patiently to her fate, with the hope that all wrongs will ultimately be put right by tradition working through its own inscrutable logic. To all this Li turns her back when she decides to start school all over again. Hers is an endless fount of courage, resourcefulness, and imaginative thinking, which means endless energy to bounce back. For the main characters of The Stillborn, every situation is alterable. This is an attitude fundamental in comedy, and shapes the narrative. By this characteristic, The Stillborn is recognizable as a comedy, despite the extraordinary sufferings the characters undergo. In this comic vision, tragedy is a phase that is to be surpassed. It contrasts with the pattern in the greater number of Nigerian novels, which follow the movements of tragedy. In these works unpleasant reality may give way, not to harmony and wellbeing, but to a realization by the characters that their situation is both unchangeable and inescapable. This realization often goes hand in hand with a change in fortune for the worse. Still the pattern in which tragedy is overcome in a comic fulfilment is well founded in the tradition, going back to Tutuola. We see it equally m Ekwensi's Burning Grass, Echewa's The Crippled Dancer, and John Munonye's The Only Son, Obi, and Bridge to a Wedding. His A Dancer of Fortune is rather balanced between a tragic and a comic fulfilment.