Thinking activity : A Dance of the Forests

Hello Readers...

This blog is the part of my thinking activity in Google classroom. We have paper on African literature. In this blog I would like to talk about the one African novel "A Dance of the Forests" by Wole Soyinka. We have to ponder any one point in detail which is given by Yesha mam.

Firstly let's throw some light on the author and novel:-

Wole Soyinka:-

Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka (Yoruba: Akínwándé Olúwo̩lé Babátúndé S̩óyíinká; born 13 July 1934), known as Wole Soyinka (pronounced [wɔlé ʃójĩnká]), is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category.Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan,and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its campaign for independence from British colonial rule. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections.In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years.

About Novel:-

A Dance of the Forests is one of the most recognized of Wole Soyinka's plays. The play "was presented at the Nigerian Independence celebrations in 1960, it ... denigrated the glorious African past and warned Nigerians and all Africans that their energies henceforth should be spent trying to avoid repeating the mistakes that have already been made."At the time of its release, it was an iconoclastic work that angered many of the elite in Soyinka's native Nigeria. Politicians were particularly incensed at his prescient portrayal of post-colonial Nigerian politics as aimless and corrupt. Despite the deluge of criticism, the play remains an influential work. In it, Soyinka espouses a unique vision for a new Africa, one that is able to forge a new identity free from the influence of European imperialism.

A Dance of the Forests is regarded as Soyinka's theatrical debut and has been considered the most complex and difficult to understand of his plays. In it, Soyinka unveils the rotten aspects of the that the past is n than the present when it comes to the seamy side of life. He lays bare the fabric of the Nigerian society and warns people as they are on the brink of a new stage in their history: indepence The play was published in London and New York in 1963 by Oxford University Press (Three Crowns Books).

Major Themes in novel:-

1) Atonement :- 

Atonement is a major theme of the play. The Dead Man and Dead Woman are brought back to the land of the living so that the four mortals who mistreated them in the past will recognize their former sins and atone. While the mortals spend a great deal of the play unaware of this, they eventually realize that the purpose of the Dead Man and Dead Woman's visitation is to teach them a lesson, and by the end, they go through a kind of conversion, understanding that they have sinned before.

2) Corrupted Power:-

Corrupted power is another major theme in the play, particularly as it represented in the characters of Mata Kharibu and Madame Tortoise. As we are taken back to the palace of the king, we see that Madame Tortoise exploits her beauty and her power over men in order to stir up discord. Mata Kharibu is also corrupted by his immense power, as demonstrated by the fact that he is demanding that his soldiers fight against their better judgment, and the fact that he mercilessly punishes free thinking. Wole Soyinka tells a story that reveals to the reader that all power is corruptible, and that just because people are given authority does not mean that they are good or ethical people.

3)Wounds & Trauma:-

The play depicts the ways that people carry around trauma and wounds from the past, that everyone has some sensitive part of their biography that haunts and hurts them. The Forest Head knows this and attempts to bring these wounds to light in hopes that those who have been hurt in the past can move on.

4)The Past:-

The play does not follow an exactly linear structure, in spite of the fact that it all takes place in the course of a day. As we learn rather quickly, the narrative concerns the sins of the past, and each mortal character has multiple identities, representing both who they are in the present as well as who they once were in the past. The present is layered onto the past as if to suggest that nothing from our history is ever fully gone, that we descend from patterns and events that precede us and continue to affect us in the present. The plot of the play concerns the ways that human beings must overcome their pasts and learn from them.

5)Nature:-

The play takes place in a forest, and throughout, various elements of the natural world come to life to take part in the reckoning that is taking place with the mortals. The Forest Head is a spirit who presides over the forest, and during the welcoming of the Dead Man and Dead Woman, various spirits of different natural elements are called upon to speak their piece. These include Spirit of the Rivers, Spirit of the Palms, Spirits of the Volcanos, and others. All of these elements of nature are personified through verse, showing us the connection between the human and the natural world.

6)Birth:-

One of the unresolved features of the Dead Woman is the fact that she was killed while pregnant with a child. She returns to the world of the living still with a pregnant belly, and during the welcome ritual, the fetus appears as a Half-Child, who is caught between being influenced by the spirit world and remaining with his mother. The Half-Child is a tragic figure, as he was never given the relief of life, and when he is given a chance to speak he says, "I who yet await a mother/Feel this dread/Feel this dread,/I who flee from womb/To branded womb cry it now/I'll be born dead/I'll be born dead." The figure of the child is a tragic one, standing in as the ultimate symbol for the wrongs done to the Dead Man and Dead Woman, and the unresolvedness of their plight.

7)Ritual:-

Another major theme, as well as a formal element of the play, is ritual and tradition. Throughout, we see the characters going through traditional motions in order to understand more about their circumstances. These rituals include the ceremony for the self-discovery of the mortals, in which the mortals must relive their crimes, the Dead Man and Dead Woman must be questioned, and the mortals revealing their secret wrongs.

Another ritual that gets performed is the Dance of Welcome, in which the spirits of the forest perform and deliver monologues. Then the Dance of the Half-Child determines with whom the unborn child will go. Often, rituals, dances, and formal representations stand in for literal events. Indeed, the entire play can be seen as a stringing together of the different formalized rituals that make up the narrative.

We find these all themes in the novel.

Thank you....

Thinking activity : The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta

Hello Readers...

This blog is the part of my thinking activity in Google classroom. We have paper on African literature. In this blog I would like to talk about one African novel The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta. In this we have to ponder any one point in detail which was given by Yesha mam.

Let's throw some light on the author and Novel:-

Buchi Emecheta:-

Florence Onyebuchi "Buchi" Emecheta OBE (21 July 1944 – 25 January 2017) was a Nigerian-born novelist, based in the UK from 1962,[1] who also wrote plays and an autobiography, as well as works for children. She was the author of more than 20 books, including Second Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Most of her early novels were published by Allison and Busby, where her editor was Margaret Busby.

About Novel:-

The Joys of Motherhood is a novel written by Buchi Emecheta. It was first published in London, UK, by Allison & Busby in 1979 and was reprinted in Heinemann's African Writers Series in 2008. The basis of the novel is the "necessity for a woman to be fertile, and above all to give birth to sons".[1] It tells the tragic story of Nnu-Ego, daughter of Nwokocha Agbadi and Ona, who had a bad fate with childbearing. This novel explores the life of a Nigerian woman, Nnu Ego. Nnu's life centres on her children and through them, she gains the respect of her community. Traditional tribal values and customs begin to shift with increasing colonial presence and influence, pushing Ego to challenge accepted notions of "mother", "wife", and "woman". Through Nnu Ego's journey, Emecheta forces her readers to consider the dilemmas associated with adopting new ideas and practices against the inclination to cleave to tradition. In this novel, Emecheta reveals and celebrates the pleasures derived from fulfilling responsibilities related to family matters in child bearing, mothering, and nurturing activities among women. However, the author additionally highlights how the 'joys of motherhood' also include anxiety, obligation, and pain.

👉Motherhood – game of power and control (“Buchi Emecheta's The Joy of Motherhood discusses motherhood in the Ibo society as a

power game of desire and control)

Buchi Emecheta’s The Joy of Motherhood is one of the most complex Buildungsroman novels written in colonial Nigeria across the early- to mid-twentieth century, which describes the protagonist’s journey of a twenty –five years period. The author has underlined the protagonist, Nnu Ego’s escalation from a strong tradition-bound character to a feminist. Her efforts for proving the validity through motherhood is saddened at every turn, unfortunately, subverted by a multifarious and complex set of contradictions she finds herself incapable of the bargain. The novel is dedicated to all mothers which open with the first chapter “The Mother” and end with the last chapter, “The Canonized Mother”. It offers offers a scathing analysis of patriarchal, colonial curtailment faced by mothers like Nnu  Ego,  who’s  societal worth  based on,  first,  her ability to  bear children.

Motherhood was the main theme of the novel. The story began with the motherhood of Ona.She wanted to give a male child to her father. It was not fulfilled by her. So, the motherhood did not give her joy. She also died soon. Her role as a mother was less in the novel. Nnu Ego was the protagonist of the novel. She longed for motherhood in the beginning. Later, she became mother foseven children. The joy that she experienced during her first child birth was not found in her later delivery. She felt relieved especially, when a girl child died soon after it’s birth. Thus, the joy of motherhood becomes ironic. The happiness was turned a relief after some time. 

The title of the novel “The Joys of Motherhood” was ironic. The experiences of the mothers in the story Ona and Nnu Ego proved that though motherhood is a blessing and joyful experience, it is not giving the same joy and happiness for the mothers throughout the novel. She considered motherhood as joy. She felt that when she delivered her first son after so much treatment and shame.

The joy of being a mother was not long lasting. The joy she earned as a mother was less, while comparing to the turmoil she had faced in her life. The motherhood attainment itself was a great challenge for her. The challenge prevailed in bringing up the children. She was expecting a return in her old age from her children’s side. But, that was not offered by her children till her death. After her he death, they had given her a grand burial. It showed the more sorrow ridden motherhood of Nnu Ego and not the joys as it found in the title. So, the title of the novel The Joys of Motherhood is considered as ironic. Emecheta  employs  the  technique  of  mother’s  introspection in  which  the  protagonist realized that she has not brought fulfilment in the family. Found herself as a doubly colonized mother, Nnu Ego expresses the sufferings as well as sacrifice in her statement just after the birth of her twin daughters. Being caught in the web of childbirth and complicated situation, she had one such epiphanic moment. The psychological temperament and grief of a mother expressed in the following  statement  which presents  the Nigerian  women’s  response to  the widespread predicament. In her monologue, she says, “God, when will you create a woman who  will  be fulfilled  in herself,  a  full  human  being, not  anybody’s appendage?  I was  born alone, and I shall die alone. What have I gained from all this? Yes, I have many children, but what do I have to feed them on? On my life. I have to work myself to the bone to look after them. I have to give them my all. And if I am lucky enough to die in peace, I even have to give them my soul. They will worship my dead spirit to provide for them: it will be hailed as a good spirit so long as there are plenty of yams and children in the family, but if anything should go wrong, if a young wife does not conceive or there is a famine, my dead spirit will be blamed. When will I be free?”(JOM. p.186)

Without motherhood, Nnu Ego feels empty and struggled very hard to be a mother. Emecheta wants to transmit the point that bearing more than five or six children do not mean that a mother is going to be prosperous in her old age. She examines the institution of motherliness, unpleasant experiences mixed up in motherliness, and its shock on the minds of the Nigerian women. According to Katherine Frank, "The complete futility of motherhood that we find in The Joys of Motherhood is the most heretical and radical aspect of Emecheta's vision of the African Women".3The chapter titles, "The Mother," "The Mother's Mother," "The Mother's Early Life," "First Shock of Motherhood," “A Mothers Investment”, ‘A Failed Woman” etc., describes the ups and down in the destiny of Nnu Ego. The author has ended the novel by giving ironical title to its chapter as “The Canonized Mother”. Nnu Ego had to experience patriarchal slavery throughout her life and died in solitude. All mothers, Ona, Akadu and Nnu Ego, have been victimized in the patriarchal and traditionally strong Ibo society. But Emecheta’s Nnu Ego challenges the conservative conception that producing numerous children will give a woman much ecstasy.

Thank you.....

Thinking activity: The Only Story

Hello Readers...

This blog is the part of my thinking activity in Google classroom. This blog is about the one famous memory novel The Only Story by Julian Barns. In this we will  have to ponder and explain the some points which is given by our professor Dr Dilip Barad sir.

So first of all let's throw some light on the novel and author:-

Julian Barns:-

Julian Patrick Barnes (born 19 January 1946) is an English writer. He won the Man Booker Prize in 2011 with The Sense of an Ending, having being shortlisted three times previously with Flaubert's Parrot, England, England, and Arthur & George. Barnes also writes crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh.[1] In addition to novels, Barnes has published collections of essays and short stories.

The Only Story :-

Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.

(The Only Story)

The Only Story is a novel by Julian Barnes. It is his thirteenth novel, and was published on 1 February 2018.

The short (273 pp.) novel is the life story of Paul Roberts, who we first meet as a 19-year-old Sussex University undergraduate returning to his parents' house in the leafy southern suburbs of London (Sutton, in Surrey, is suggested as a model.) The time is the early sixties, and there are a few references to current events. Paul joins the tennis club, which is the one of the few opportunities such places offer for socialising. In a random-draw mixed doubles, he is thrown together with Susan MacLeod, a 48-year-old married woman with two daughters older than Paul. Improbably, Paul and Susan become lovers and she eventually leaves her family to set up house with Paul in South London. Having nothing to do but a little housekeeping, Susan soon descends into alcoholism and dementia. Paul departs and embarks on foreign travels, picking up jobs and women at random.

Paul is a quintessentially alienated character. With no interest in either politics or religion, and no particular ambition, he takes life as it comes. As he narrates his life in this book, he freely admits that memory is unreliable and he may not be telling us the truth.

Points to ponder:-

1) Memory Novel - Structurally as well as thematically:-

The novel majorly talks about the theme of memory. ‘The only Story’ is a memory novel. It is based on the memory of Paul Roberts. Sometimes memory should be happy or sometimes it should be something that is unbreakable. This novel wildly talks about how Memory sorts and shifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer. We come to know four aspects of memory. 

 In the novel the narration of Paul connects with this memory dilemma. Plot of the novel woving around the memory of the novel. He might be hiding something more terrible or we can say ’Trauma in Memory’. It might be possible that he understood that his grief is more than anything and to escape from that he narrates things in a different way. We also find the story of Eric and his love affair. So it is the best example of a memory novel. Paul suddenly talks about him. Eric had a relationship with American women and Eric was ready to leave earthly things but at the moment he realised that he was going the wrong way and he saved himself but Paul was not able to do this. 

2) ‘The only Story’ as Postmodern Novel:-

If we look at this novel as a postmodern novel, we come to know that Postmodernists rejected the view which culminated with realism, that literature was a reliable source of universal truths, though such a view was never before questioned. Thus, 'The Only Story' questions the memory narration of Paul who, earlier in the novel, considers himself as a truth-teller.

It seems that Modernists also believed in the cult of the genius, which they inherited from the Romantics, according to which artists were the elite, hypersensitive persons who can grasp the ultimate truth, which was another idea of modernists that postmodernists rejected. Thus, the protagonist through which 'The Only Story' is narrated has no grasp over the objective truth and neither is he a hypersensitive soul. Through the narrator, Julian Barnes rejects the idea that writers are geniuses who have grasped the universal truth.Modernists still pretended that their novels were not constructs but that they somehow revealed the truth, which again the postmodernist challenged. Even the notion of consciousness, personality, mind, were rejected by the postmodernists, who claimed that consciousness was rooted in language which describes nothing but itself according to them. Thus, the world view constructed by the word ‘love’ is questioned in this novel. The word ‘love’ is supposed to give us a worldview of happiness, togetherness, blissfulness, idyllic, peaceful, harmonious, joyful, ecstatic, heavenly life. In this novel, ‘love’ shatters family life, it brings pity and anger, it makes people alcoholic and liars.

Most of us have only one story to tell. I don’t

mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives:there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there’s only one that matters,only one finally worth telling, this is mine (Barnes,2018, p. 13).

3)Theme of Love (Passion + Suffering):-

“Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question. You may point out – correctly – that it isn’t a real question. Because we don’t have a choice. If we had the choice, then there would be a question. But we don’t, so there isn’t. Who can control how much they love? If you can control it, then it isn’t love. I don’t know what you call it instead, but it isn’t love.” (TOS)

This novel is a love story, which talks about the theme of love that love turns into passion and later on sufferings. Most of the novel's quotes describe this theme. This novel is about nineteen years Paul Roberts and 48 years old Susan. The beginning of the novel talks about these things. Julian Barnes very passionately describes this thing. It is not only about a romantic love story. 

The protagonist of the novel Paul who becomes the victim of these things. He is a 19-year-old university student; she, a 48-year-old married woman and a mother of two; they, in London’s suburban “stockbroker belt”, sometime in the 1960s. It is not a romantic, peaceful and happy ending kind of Love. It is described the horre reality of life, Paul’s mistakes, Susan’s over-drinking, the disaster of love, Nothingness of life Paul’s sexual desire, Susan’s rigidity, and Joan’s philosophy towards life and love.

This novel talks about the failure of love and suffering in love. Joan is one of the best examples. She very idealistically represents this idea of love. Another example is Ellen and Paul’s story is at the center. Which describes that love is passionate and turns into suffering. 

“In love, everything is both true and false; it's the one subject on which it's impossible to say anything absurd.”

4)Critique of Crosswords:-

Crosswords are the symbol that is very significantly used by Jullian Barens. In this Novel two people are playing crosswords, one is mr. Gordon Macleaod and another is Joan.

In the novel protagonist Paul Roberts describes hidden aspects of these crosswords. It’s signific the leisure of British people. By playing this game people might think that they are solving the puzzles or difficulties of life. 

“Everyone in the Village, every grown-up – or rather, every middle-aged person – seemed to do crosswords: my parents, their friends, Joan, Gordon Macleod. Everyone apart from Susan. They did either The Times or the Telegraph; though Joan had those books of hers to fall back on while waiting for the next newspaper. 

If we take a one incident from the novel that

where Paul asked Joan 'Why did she cheat him in Puzzle?’ 

‘Why do you cheat at crosswords?’ 

Joan laughed loudly. ‘You cheeky bugger. I suppose Susan told you. Well, it’s a fair question, and one I can answer.’ She took another pull of her gin. ‘You see – I hope you never get there yourself – but some of us get to the point in life where we realize that nothing matters. Nothing fucking matters. And one of the few side-benefits of that is you know you’re not going to go to hell for filling in the wrong answers in the crossword. Because you’ve been to hell and back already and you know all too well what it’s like.’ Both these words in the crossword puzzle seem to signify a taunt on Paul’s middling in between Susan and Gondon’s not-so-happy married life.

5) Paul - the unreliable narrator:-

So first let's see the what is What is an Unreliable narrator? 

The fallible or unreliable narrator, on the other hand, is one whose perception, interpretation, and evaluation of the matters he or she narrates do not coincide with the opinions and norms implied by the author, which the author expects the alert reader to share. 

(MH Abrams) 

In this novel we find the unreliable narrator.Paul is the protagonist of the story. The story is based on the memory of Paul. Memory is something that is not trustworthy. We can say that it shifts according to the individual. Paul during his conversation warns the reader. Here are the quotes which discuss Paul as an Unreliable Narrator. 

“You understand, I hope, that I’m telling you everything as I remember it? I never kept a diary, and most of the participants in my story – my story! my life! – are either dead or far dispersed. So I’m not necessarily putting it down in the order that it happened. I think there’s a different authenticity to memory, and not an inferior one. Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer."These things seem to indicate that Paul is an unreliable narrator.

6) Susan - madwoman in the attic:-

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination:- 

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination is a 1979 book by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, in which they examine Victorian literature from a feminist perspective. Gilbert and Gubar draw their title from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, in which Rochester's wife (née Bertha Mason) is kept secretly locked in an attic apartment by her husband.

In the novel Susan was another protagonist. If we compare the Susan with the Bertha then we find some similarities between both of them.

Bartha was suffering by her husband and here Susan is suffering from some kind of this thing. She becomes an alcoholic. She speaks lies to Paul. Somewhere she is stuck with responsibility. She was beaten by her own husband. She had extramarital affair with Paul, she somewhere wants love, some kind of warmness but she was constantly become a victim of hatred, sexual pleasure and was beaten so many times. Susan also become a victim of child abuse when she went to his uncle Hemph’s house. When finally she went with Paul there she felt lonely and that time she became alcoholic like anything. In the end, Paul also abandons her and her daughter Clara taking care of her. Susan’s character is fascinating because there is another character. The story of both Susan and her friend Joan is interesting but Joan might digest the philosophy of life. 

7)Joan - one who understood existential            enigma:-

Joan is the formal tennis partner and friend of Susan Macleod and sister of Gerald. Gerald is the ex of Susan. She is around fifty-three and she kept yeppers with her. One Ypres died and she decided never to keep them because when you are alone and you love someone whatever they were and they died at that time you feel pain as like you lose your person. Later on, she kept another name Sible. Joan is the counter character of Susan. She had digested the philosophy of life. She spent her time with sible, she drinks, smokes,d and played tennis and crosswords.

And in the second part of the story we will come across to know more about this character Joan.There is a long conversation between Paul and Joan. In the novel, there is a very fascinating incident where Paul asked her cheating in crosswords. 

‘Why do you cheat at crosswords?’ Joan laughed loudly. ‘You cheeky bugger. I suppose Susan told you. Well, it’s a fair question, and one I can answer.’ She took another pull of her gin. ‘You see – I hope you never get there yourself – but some of us get to the point in life where we realize that nothing matters. Nothing fucking matters. And one of the few side-benefits of that is you know you’re not going to go to hell for filling in the wrong answers in the crossword. Because you’ve been to hell and back already and you know all too well what it’s like.’ 

8) Whom do you think is responsible for the tragedy in the story? Explain with reasons.

There is also one theme of responsibility in the novel. If we look at the life of the main protagonist Paul at the age of seventy is not happy with life. He has described at the beginning of the story that it is his only story, which was ultimately one kind of disaster. He is the narrator of the story. He and Susan were in a relationship. When they came to a relationship Paul was so young and Susan was about forty-eight. This tragedy happened because of Paul. He has the nature to escape from an uncomfortable and tough situation. The ship of his relationship was broken because of his escape, his childishness. When his relationship was broken, he started to blame others. 

So here Paul started blaming Gordon for domestic violence so here Paul blamed that if Gordon had not acted badly with Susan this tragedy might not happen. For understanding more we have to look into the novel ‘The Sense of the Ending’ where Julian Banned gave a metaphor of ‘Link’. When we see these links then what becomes significant is Imagine in Chain on the link is breaking then who or what is responsible for that? What are the possible answers if this chain is made with metals? So here we can say that if the chain is made with qualitative metal it might not break. There is frangibility. Some links very quickly break down and some are still there. So if there is a frangibility link will be there. So here Paul also tries to question the responsibility in a different way. Paul is not so fragile to sustain. 

Thank you….....