S's Writerly Vision

Saint Louis University
Indiana State University
Wole Soyinka: A Writer's Social Vision

Author(s): Florence Stratton
Source: Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 22, No. 3, Wole Soyinka Issue, Part 1
(Autumn, 1988), pp. 531-553
Published by: African American Review (St. Louis University)
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Wole Soyinka: A Writer's Social Vision
Florence Stratton
In Myth, Literature and the African World, Wole Soyinka

observes, "Asked recently whether or not I accepted the necessity
for a literary ideology, I found myself predictably examining the
problem from the inside, that is, from within the consciousness of
the artist in the process of creating.... My response was-a social
vision, yes, but not a literary ideology" (61). He goes on to give a
number of reasons for his rejection of the term ideology. One is
that, because ideologies are by definition rigid and comprehensive
systems of thought, a literary ideology is likely to "end by
asphyxiating the creative process," which is by its very nature an
"essentially fluid" operation (61). Another is that the notion of a
literary ideology springs from the European idea of literature which,
in contrast to the African, considers "literature as an objective
existence in itself" and thus divorces it from "the human
phenomenon which it is supposed to reflect, or on behalf of which
it is supposed to speculate" (62). Later in this same work, Soyinka
describes the "qualities possessed by literature of social vision"
as "a creative concern which conceptualises or extends actuality
beyond the purely narrative, making it reveal realities beyond the
immediately attainable, a concern which upsets orthodox
acceptances in an effort to free society of historical or other
superstitions" (66). Not surprisingly, this description encompasses
Soyinka's own creative activities.
However, while critics continue to commend the range and

deftness of Soyinka's talent, his social vision, or what from the critics'
perspective would be more properly termed his "political
orientation," has over the years caused considerable disquietude.
Black American Literature Forum, Volume 22, Number 3 (Fall 1988)

? 1988 Indiana State University
532 Florence Stratton
As early as 1972 Nguigl wa Thiong'o stated that Soyinka's "liberal

humanism leads him to admire an individual's lone act of courage,
and thus often he ignores the creative struggle of the masses" (65).
Just two years ago, in an article written in celebration of Soyinka's
fiftieth birthday, Yemi Ogunbiyi made a similar point. While
admiring Soyinka's commitment to "the timeless ideals ... of
freedom, of justice and of fairplay," he notes that "there is no doubt
that group collective action, especially in situations like our own,
seems the better option" (11). And whatever the difference in their
own political orientations, many other critics have made comments
which are in substance in exactly the same vein. Gerald Moore, for
example, links the absence in Soyinka's work of "the sudden
changes of orientation and method" that are found in Nguigl and
Beti to "the absence of any direct imprint of history on his governing
ideas" (217), and he concludes that while "Soyinka has always been
a spokesman for political commitment[J ... the peculiar cast of his
ideas does not enable critics to categorize him as either
'progressive' or 'reactionary'" (222). Rather more reproachfully,
Lewis Nkosi, while acknowledging the importance of Soyinka's
"relentless attack on the tragic abuse of power by the present ruling
elites," states that "it is not ... mounted from any radical standpoint"
but is, rather, in "symbiotic alliance with the present sources of
power" (68). The conclusion he draws is that "Soyinka has not
worked out for himself how and within what economic system or
political framework the problems he so persistently holds up to
scrutiny can be solved" (160).
As the references to such ideological concepts as "the creative

struggle of the masses" or the "imprint of history" indicate, what
each of these critics is saying is that Soyinka has not analyzed the
African situation from a Marxist perspective. And, indeed, as even
a cursory reading of his work reveals, Soyinka is not a Marxist-as
a result of which he has at various times been dubbed by Marxists
as bourgeois, elitist, conservative, reactionary. In his foreword to
Opera Wonyosi, Soyinka has himself responded to just such attacks
as they were leveled against early performances of the play by what
he refers to as "African neo-Marxists," who deplored the play's lack
of "a 'solid class perspective.' One of his arguments is that Marxist
class analysis is incompatible with certain Nigerian social realities
of the 1970s, such as "the crimes committed by a power-drunk
soldiery against a cowed and defenceless people ... irrespective
of class." Another is that Marxism's deterministic view of history
allows an "audience the comfort of seeing their material situation
as the inevitable consequence of their socio-historical condition."
Wole Soyinka's Social Vision 533
His strategy, which is based on the conviction "that sooner or later,

society will recognize itself in the projection and, with or without
the benefit of 'scientific' explications, be moved to act in its own
overall self-interest," is, in contrast, to rub "the faces of the
collaborators-the audience-in social shame, in the sewer of their
material existence."
For the purposes of my argument, more important is the fact that
all of these critical analyses are based on a false assumption: that
the radical left is a monolithic block. This is simply not the case.
The anarchist movement, for one, belongs to a quite different school
of revolutionary thought. Emerging like Marxism in Europe in the
nineteenth century in response to the oppressions that came with
the industrial revolution, anarchism continues in various parts of the
world today to present a strong challenge to Marxism.' As a result
of this misconception, critics, rather than attempting to explore
Soyinka's political thought in a positive light, have adopted a
negative focus. Concentrating their attention on the non-Marxist
elements of Soyinka's social vision, they have done little to clarify
and have sometimes obscured it.
My purpose in this discussion is to explore Soyinka's social vision
both in its own right as it emerges from his writings and as it reveals
itself when probed by Marxist, anarchist, and feminist thought. The
latter is, on the whole, merely an expedient process. Because these
schools of thought have been quite fully articulated, they provide,
for the purpose of clarification, convenient points of reference.
Marxism supplies most often (though not invariably) a contrastive
point of view, while with anarchism there is considerable
comparability. Feminism, however, in addition to being used as an
illuminating tool, is also employed, as Marxism has been by Marxist
critics, prescriptively.
In the course of exploring Soyinka's social vision, two questions
are addressed. First, what fresh interpretative insights are derived
from a fuller understanding of Soyinka's political thought? Here and
while examining Soyinka's political thought, Gerald Moore's essay
on Soyinka in Twelve African Writers, perhaps rather unfairly, is
often made the target of criticism. But because Moore is one of the
few critics who has attempted a comprehensive analysis of
Soyinka's work, his essay provides a useful illustration of the
problem encountered when a critic operates under a false
assumption.
Second, where can Soyinka be placed on the political spectrum?
Is he a reactionary, as Nkosi implies (68, 190)? Or a liberal humanist,
as Bernth Lindfors has recently claimed?2 Has he, "perhaps, always
been more of a rebel than a revolutionary," as Moore suggests (218)?

Or do none of these labels fit? A more objective analysis of Soyinka's
social vision should clarify his political position.
As indicated above, this position will be shown to coincide in
certain respects with that of the anarchists, in particular with that
of the socialist-pacifist version of the movement. Although, given
the scope of Soyinka's reading, he is certainly familiar with the
writings of such anarchist thinkers as Pierre Proudhon, Tolstoy,
Gandhi, Camus, and Ignazio Silone, this does not imply any
extensive influence on his own thought. As will also be shown,
Soyinka is not what he refers to as "the new ideologue" who "has
never stopped to consider whether or not the universal verities of
his new doctrine are already contained in, or can be elicited from
the world-view and social structures of his own people" (Myth xii).
Rather, Soyinka's philosophical roots are firmly embedded in
African, and more specifically Yoruba, history and culture.
Because anarchism is a less well-known movement than either
Marxism or feminism, before employing it as a probe, it would seem
advisable to explain briefly its fundamental principles and how
these differ from those of Marxism. Some of the confusion
surrounding the movement is a result of the common-language
association of the word anarchy with violence, chaos, and
lawlessness. In addition, anarchist philosophy has taken many
forms, none of which can be defined as an orthodoxy, and its
advocates have deliberately cultivated the idea that it is an open
and mutable doctrine. However, there are some common strands,
and because for our purposes it is socialist anarchism which is of
interest, it is this version which will be focused on.
Anarchism is derived from the Greek word meaning 'no ruler.'
It was chosen by early anarchist thinkers to denote their opposition
to political organization based on authority. While anarchists are
opposed to any hierarchical form of imposed power, they see in
the state the prototype of other contemporary forms of oppression.
Political power, they assert, denies individual liberty and
responsibility and inevitably leads to oppression and corruption,
and it should be replaced by social and economic organization
based on voluntary contractual agreement. They thus contend that
any trend toward government power and centralization must be
exposed and opposed no matter what the source. The result of the
abolition of the state will be, not chaos, but proper order in the
genuine freedom of personal responsibility. Aiming at the utmost
freedom compatible with social life, the socialist anarchists are
inclined toward regionalism and federalism. What they envisage
are groups of individuals living in voluntary association in small,

collectively owned communities which will interact socially and
economically on the basis of free agreement with other such
communities.
Anarchism and Marxism have much in common. Starting from a
rejection of the injustices of present society, both see themselves
as the only two genuinely revolutionary choices. They also share
a similar goal for society: human freedom from all forms of
oppression. Where they differ most markedly is in the way they
believe this goal can be achieved. In the first place, in contrast to
Marxism, anarchism is not based on a theoretical or systematic
analysis of society; anarchists respond to Marxism's inflexible and
all-inclusive system with the same kind of distrust Soyinka evinces
for literary ideologies. Nor do anarchists set their social criticism
in a historical perspective. Instead, as Katherine Temple puts it,
"anarchism is a gut reaction, a visceral, instinctive revolt against
the way things are right now" ("Anarchism" 5).
It is, however, Marxism's particular view of history as materialist,
determinist, and evolutionist that is at the root of most anarchist
opposition. In a nutshell, Marx saw history as tending towards the
eradication of the evils of society through the exercise of economic
laws. Human freedom would progressively come into being by an
overcoming of scarcity, which is the cause of oppression. This
would be achieved through an ever-increasing control of nature by
means of an expanding technology. Hence capitalism is a necessary
stage in the evolutionary process, as it produces the conditions
necessary for abundance. When scarcity is overcome, capitalism
will collapse, and the masses will take control of the means of
production. Political power will also be seized and a free state will
be created, governed by a dictatorship of the proletariat under the
leadership of an advance guard of scientists and scholars whose
mission will be to bring the rest of the proletariat to a consciousness
of their historic role. As the state will be classless (i.e., free), the
conditions that originally brought it into being will have
disappeared, and the state as it is now known will eventually wither
away.
While Marxists see the primacy of economics, anarchists see the
primacy of moral and psychological principles. Mass individual
moral awareness, they believe, raises the possibility of the
eradication of the evils of society faster and further than economic
development; and in bringing this moral awareness into being, the
free human agent will always play a more decisive role than any
other force. To the anarchist, this is not merely utopianism, for the
revolt against oppression is just as primary and immutable an

instinct as sexuality or self-preservation. In addition, the anarchists
postulate the existence of a set of ideal ethical principles or natural
laws which have eternal verity. These include the proper laws of
economics and social organization, and if only human beings could
learn to organize themselves in accordance with these, the now
prevalent. oppression would disappear. As freedom is instinctual
and because these laws are accessible to all, the revolutionary class
is not restricted to the proletariat. Potentially it includes everybody
and, at any given moment, all those who struggle against oppression
for whatever reason. Nor is it necessary to pass through capitalism
before the revolution can take place. Because the free human agent
is the most important factor, it is possible to start the revolution at
any given historic moment regardless of the economic situation.
In addition, many anarchists have a deep-seated antipathy towards
industrial capitalism. Regarding technological society as being
particularly destructive of human values, they look back with some
nostalgia to simpler times in the past as being closer to the ideal.
But more than anything else, anarchists criticize Marxism for what
they see as its inherent statism. A free state is a contradiction in
terms, and since power corrupts, any seizure of the existing
structure of authority can only lead to its perpetuation. As empirical
evidence, they point to the excesses of state power under Lenin
and Stalin and to the increase, rather than decline, of state power
in Russia. For the revolution to be achieved, it must be conducted,
not by the usual political or statist means, but by means of free social
and economic activity. Economics for the anarchists is derivative
of the social order, and the political is the blight on that order.
Proper social order is their passion, and this begins and ends with
human liberty.
II
The target of Soyinka's attack is similar to that of the anarchists:

political authority. And his goal for society is "the maximum
freedom socially possible" (Spear 20). In contrast to the anarchists,
however, Soyinka does, like the Marxists, set his social criticism
in a historical perspective. Gerald Moore is quite right when he
states that there have been no "sudden changes of orientation and
method" in Soyinka's writing over the years, but he misses the mark
completely when he talks of "the absence of any direct imprint of
history on [Soyinka's] governing ideas."
Soyinka's conception of history is implicit in many of his works,

functioning both' as a vehicle of theme and as a structural device.
However, in Idanre and its accompanying notes he makes it quite
explicit. In this work he presents the story in Yoruba mythology of
the primal deity, Orisa-nla, and his slave Atunda as his archetype
of the possibilities of human experience in history: tyranny and
oppression, or freedom gained through radical action against the
status quo. To date, human history has taken the former course. An
unbroken chain of tyranny and oppression "has become the evil
history of man." Soyinka finds his symbol of this cyclical movement
of history in "the tail-devouring snake" of Yoruba mythology, which
Ogun, the god of creativity and destruction, often wears around his
neck; and he dramatizes its actual destructive course in the corpus
of his writing through his portrayal of the political structures of Africa
down through the ages. From those of traditional African societies,
such as the twelfth-century monarchy of the despotic Mata Kharibu
of A Dance of the Forests or the twentieth-century theocracy of the
corrupt Kadiye of The Swamp Dwellers, to those of post-colonial
African states such as the dictatorship of the demagogic and
megalomaniacal Kongi of Kongi's Harvest and the empire of the
sadistic Boky of Opera Wonyosi -all have been tyrannical and
oppressive.
However, this evil cycle can be broken. Atunda revolts against

his servitude. Rolling a huge boulder down upon the unsuspecting
God, Atunda smashes him into a thousand-and-one fragments, thus
"creating the multiple godhead." Soyinka identifies Atunda as the
prototypical revolutionary figure: "First revolutionary / Grand
iconoclast at genesis." And he portrays the essence of the
revolutionary character in his image of "the stray electron, defiant
/ Of patterns." "The Atooda of this world," he says, introduce into
the cycle an "evolutionary 'kink,'" for "the Boulder cannot / Up
the hill in time's unwind."3 This creates the need to discover a more
appropriate symbol for the movement of history than "the tail-
devouring snake," one that signifies the possibility of change. Thus
"Evolution of the self-devouring snake to spatials / New in symbol,
banked loop of the 'Mobius Strip.'" The Mobius strip fulfills this
need because "it gives the illusion of 'kink' in the circle," which
represents the possibility of "escape from the eternal cycle." It is
thus in contrast to Ogun's snake, "a symbol of optimism" (82-88).
In contrast to Marxism, then, Soyinka's conception of history is
neither materialist nor determinist, though it is, as will be shown,
evolutionist. Rather than locating the motor of history in the
operation of inexorable economic laws, he finds it in "the stray
electron," "the Atooda of this world." Like the anarchists, then, he

identifies the primary innovating factor, not as a certain level of
technological development, but as the free human agent, the
individual who is "defiant / Of patterns." Thus it is possible for the
change to occur at any moment in history. His use of the Orisa-nla-
Atunda myth as his prototype of the revolutionary situation suggests,
in fact, that, in his view, the possibility has existed from the very
beginning.
To arrive at any fuller understanding of Soyinka's social vision,

it is necessary to turn to his other works and in particular to probe
in the light of them his conception of the process of social change,
which he represents as the "evolutionary 'kink' "and of the essence
of the change agent imaged in "the stray electron."
As Soyinka makes clear in Myth, Literature and the African World,

because of the psychological and cultural distortions caused by
colonialism, the starting point of the revolutionary process in a post-
colonial African society is necessarily "a reinstatement of the values
authentic to that society, modified only be the demands of a
contemporary world" (x). As an expression of this process, Soyinka
has chosen as the dramatic moment in several of his plays a point
in time at which these values and the world view they reflect are
in crisis. Such a moment is the failure of Elesin Oba in Death and
the King's Horseman to perform his destined role of "intercessor
to the other world" (21) by dying "the unknowable death of death"
(43) and joining the deceased king in "the abode of gods" (62). The
consequence of this failure is that the metaphysical world of the
Yoruba is shattered, "set adrift and its inhabitants are lost" (63). Set
at the height of colonialism in the early 1 940s, the play provides two
reasons for Elesin's powers deserting him, in the absence of either
one of which he would have fulfilled his destiny. As the disgraced
and grief-stricken Elesin finally admits himself, his disdainful
insistence, despite warnings, on taking a virgin bride on the very
night he was to die "brought new insights of this world to me and
turned my feet leaden on this side of the abyss" (65). His resolve
thus weakened, when the colonial officer intervenes to halt what
he considers to be a barbaric custom, he is led "to commit the awful
treachery of relief ... of seeing the hand of the gods in this alien
rupture of his world" (69). And although the decision of Elesin's son
to take his father's place as intercessor restores some measure of
integrity, the balance is still in question, for the natural social order
has been inverted. As Elesin's Praise-Singer says to him at the play's
conclusion: "What the end will be, we are not gods to tell. But this
young shoot has poured its sap into the parent stalk, and we know
this is not the way of life. Our world is tumbling in the void of
strangers" (75).
Another such moment provides the climax of The Lion and the
Jewel, in which Sidi, who performs the symbolic role of signifying
the direction her society should take, chooses Baroka over Lakunle
as her husband. By the time this play is set, in the late 1950s or early
1960s, the society has become culturally polarized. Lakunle does
not represent, as has sometimes been suggested, the "half-baked,"
Westernized African (Jones 24). Rather he is, like Professor Oguazor
of The Interpreters, a caricature of the alienated African-a
ridiculous figure in any case, but not in the latter an object of pity.
Lakunle's sexual impotence signifies the inability of the culturally
alienated to regenerate their societies "in the schemata of
interrupted histories" (Myth x). Because he denies the validity of
what Soyinka refers to as "an African self-apprehension" (Myth xii),
the authority he so much wishes to impose would only send his
world "tumbling" faster and further "in the void of strangers." The
virile Baroka represents orthodox traditionalism in all its vitality.
Though not an ideal for the future-for the Bale of Ilujinle is, if
nothing more, an egocentric and self-indulgent leader, because the
point of reference from which he views the world is centered in
his own culture-, he can initiate the process of reconstruction and
offer clear-sighted direction, heedful warnings of the dire
consequences of Lakunle's much vaunted "progress": "the
murderous roads" and the sameness of "all roofs and faces" (47).
The role of society at this point in history, "between this moment
I And the reckless broom that will be wielded / In these years to
come," is to assert its cultural heritage so that, as Baroka puts it,
"Virgin plots of lives, rich decay / And the tang of vapour rising
from / Forgotten heaps of compost, lying / Undisturbed" will be
left behind (47).
By the time Kongi's Harvest is set, "the reckless broom" has been
"wielded." Traditional authority, represented in the play by Oba
Danlola and his court, is no longer at the center of the conflict, which
is instead between Kongi, the dictator of a Soviet-style socialist state,
and Danlola's nephew and successor Daodu, a Western-trained
intellectual and the inspiration behind a community-based
cooperative farm. Although Danlola, feasting and dancing and
making love in the detention camp where Kongi has placed him,
is shown to have more vitality than Kongi in his barren mountain
retreat, he admits defeat in the struggle for power, and while
retaining his spiritual ascendancy, Danlola is prepared to make a
dignified exit from the political arena.
In the powerful Kongi, the ridiculous figure of Lakunle takes on

a sinister shape. With his imported ideology, which requires the
suppression of all traditional values and practices, he is, indeed,
as he is characterized by Danlola's courtiers, "the monster child"
that eats its mother (68-69). Denouncing the rich locutions of
traditional wisdom as "long-winded" and "senile," his regime
supplants them with the empty slogans of "positive scientificism"
churned out by his Reformed Aweri (71-72). And while traditional
rule was authoritarian, the exercise of power had its established
set-limits. As one of Danlola's courtiers puts it: "We lift the king's
umbrella / Higher than men / But it never pushes / The sun in the
face" (67). The power-mad Kongi wants absolute power. Having
established political supremacy, which he maintains through his
propaganda machine and the brute force of the Carpenter's
Brigade, he now aims not only to wrest from Danlola's control the
spiritual domain, but to have himself elevated to the status of a god.
"I am the Spirit of Harvest," he repeats with manic insistence (91).
Like Sidi, Segi intimates the choice her society should make, and
she chooses Daodu. Self-apprehending and at the same time having
acquired knowledge of other realms of experience, Daodu offers
a vision of a society in which "authentic values" have been
reinstated in a "modified" form. Presumably based on the model
of his cooperative farm, it would receive its nourishment from the
"rich decay" of the "Forgotten heaps of compost" of the past.
Such visions as Daodu's are not, however, merely the product of

integrating into one social matrix attractive or apparently beneficial
elements of another. Rather they are the outcome of a metaphysical
quest of the type Elesin of Death and the King's Horseman failed
to undertake. In Myth, Literature and the African World Soyinka
describes the object of this quest as an attempt to "initiate a rapport
with the realm of infinity" or with God, "embodiment of nature and
cosmic principles," by challenging "the abyss of transition" "on
behalf of the well-being of the community" (2-26). In Yoruba
metaphysics, Ogun, the most complex of Yoruba deities-protector
of orphans, master of the road, artist, god of iron and metallurgy,
essence of destruction and creation and of restorative justice-"is
the embodiment of challenge, the Promethean instinct in man,
constantly at the service of society for its full self-realisation." For
it was Ogun who, after the initial severance caused by Atunda's
revolt, led the other gods to their "reunion with man" by harnessing
"the resources of science to hack a passage through primordial
chaos" (26-30). Ogun is thus, for Soyinka, the archetypal hero-god
whose challenge of "the abyss of transition" reflects the human
need to arrive at a fuller understanding of, and hence to learn tc

live in harmony with, the forces of nature and cosmic principles.
Only with such knowledge can human society redeem itself from
the cyclical movement of "the tail-devouring snake."
This message, while it is apparent in a number of Soyinka's works,
provides the thematic focus of A Dance of the Forests and The
Bacchae of Euripides, both of which have a temporal setting
coincident with the end of one historical cycle and the beginning
of another-the moment at which an "evolutionary 'kink'" can be
introduced.
Like so many of Soyinka's plays, A Dance of the Forests is a moral
fable in which allegory and satire have been combined in ordei
to convey the message. Father Forest is the embodiment of the
principles of natural and cosmic ordering in this play. Having taken
pity on erring humanity, he lures three of its members, all of whom
have blood on their hands (if not on their consciences), away from
the town, where the Gathering of the Tribes is being jubilantly
celebrated to mark the historic moment, and into the forest. Once
there, he commences to make manifest to them the extent to which,
both individually and collectively, human beings have throughout
history transgressed these principles and thus perpetuated the evil
cycle of tyranny and oppression. Rather than directly revealing
himself, Father Forest holds up a mirror to human nature with the
hope that "the living [will] condemn themselves" (35). Thus, instead
of summoning from the dead the "illustrious ancestors" the human
community had requested he invite to attend their celebrations,
Father Forest sends the "accusers" (13), the captain of Mata
Kharibu's army, who, because he had refused to fight "an unjust
war" (48), had been castrated and sold as a slave, and his heavily
pregnant wife who committed suicide as a result. What each of
these ancestors recognizes almost immediately on arrival in the
present is that "a hundred generations has [sic] made no difference"
(25). Father Forest also summons another category of accusers, the
spirits of the natural environment, such as the Palm, the Pachyderms,
and the Rivers, who possess the three human guests and tell through
them the tale of humanity's gross misuse and exploitation of natural
resources. And through the command performance of the hideous
Triplets, Father Forest exposes to his visitors the "perversions"
which "are born when [humans] acquire power over one another,
and their instincts are fulfilled a thousandfold" (69).
In contrast to Father Forest, Soyinka's Dionysos in The Bacchae
of Euripides holds up a mirror to himself, revealing to the Theban
community how "Blessed are they" who reject tyranny and instead
"keep the rites of the Earth-Mother" (247). An understanding of this

play and of Soyinka's social vision as it is revealed in it requires
that close attention be paid, much closer than that paid by Moore
(233-34), to the alterations Soyinka has made in his adaptation of
Euripides' The Bacchae. What is significant in the context of the
nature of the quest the visionary undertakes is that Dionysos, rather
than representing the spirit of irrationality or intense emotion as he
does in Euripides' play, is identified with the "self-discipline" which
comes from "self-knowledge" and which is "the greatest /
Guarantee of human will and freedom" (261), and as the
embodiment of "Principles," "Laws, Eternal Causes" that "are born
in the blood / Unarguable, observed and preserved before time"
like "freedom" (292-93). He is, in fact, as is indicated most directly
by the restorative, rather than retributive, justice with which
Soyinka's play ends, Ogun.
The obvious affinity between Soyinka's "nature and cosmic
principles" and the natural laws of the anarchists should not be
allowed to obscure an essential difference between them. The
anarchists' concept finds its roots in Western philosophical
traditions, and their quest is for a kind of Rousseauean return to
nature from which they see the Western community as having been
alienated by the artificial structures imposed by capitalism and the
modern state. As indicated above, the origin of Soyinka's concept
lies in Yoruba myth, the impetus for the quest arising from what he
describes in "The Fourth Stage" as "the primordial disquiet of the
Yoruba psyche" caused by "the anguish of severance" which in
turn prompts the human community to attempt to bridge "the
infernal gulf . . . with visionary hopes" (144-46). However, the
"visionary hopes" of both are addressed to the proper social order
which will come into being only through the moral regeneration
of action. And both regard the here and now liberty of the individual
as being paramount over everything else, with the free human agent
playing the most decisive role. For both, too, the will to freedom
is instinctual, "born in the blood." As a summation of these views,
the anarchists would readily identify with Soyinka's oft-quoted
statement: "The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of
tyranny" (The Man Died 13).
Although technology is not a determining factor in the realization

of Soyinka's social vision, he does, in contrast to most anarchists,
celebrate scientific and technological achievement, both as a
manifestation of the human creative potential and as a means of
ameliorating physical conditions. Ogun is Soyinka's favorite deity
(Jones 5), and as has already been indicated, he is, in addition to
his other attributes, the god of metallurgy and the prototypical

scientist. However, the attitude adopted when applying technology
to nature is, for Soyinka, crucial to the establishment of the desired
harmonious relation between human society and nature. While this
is a theme that Soyinka deals with in many of his works, including
A Dance of the Forests and The Bacchae of Euripides, it receives
its most comprehensive treatment in Madmen and Specialists. The
policy of the military dictatorship in this play is to achieve its goal
of absolute political control by means of the complete domination
of nature by technology. "Power comes from bending Nature to
your will" is the precept of the regime's representative, Dr. Bero
(237), and he demonstrates its efficacy by using the resources of
Western and traditional African medical science to torture and kill.
Although, while at least in theory, both Marxist regimes and the
capitalist West have ends other than absolute power in view, each
employs the same means-the domination of nature-to achieve
them. To Soyinka and the anarchists, this approach is anathema. For
the anarchists, human freedom comes from submitting to the laws
of nature. For Soyinka, whose position in Madmen and Specialists
is represented by the two herbalists, proper moral order is more
a matter of a relationship of reciprocity with nature. This is what
the herbalists try to teach Bero: "We put back what we take, in one
form or another. Or more than we take. It's the only law" (260).
The same point is made in The Interpreters, for it is in Sekoni's
misunderstanding of this relationship that the meaning and irony
of his tragic death lie. A Western-trained engineer, he returns home
from abroad with visions of transforming his nation by bettering "the
logic of nature's growth . . . by the cabalistic equations of the
sprouting derrick, chaos of snakes and other forest threads by
parallels of railtracks, road extravagances and a nervous electronic
core" (25). While his dream is frustrated by a corrupt government
bureaucracy, he is killed in a motorcar accident, "silenced," like
the unnamed victim of the road referred to in the poem "Death in
the Dawn ," "in the startled hug of / [His] invention" (Idanre 11).
Like the anarchists, Soyinka's change agents-his hero-gods and

"stray electrons"-cut across class categories. That he has deep
sympathy for the masses of peasants and workers is perhaps most
clearly evidenced in A Dance of the Forests, in which he portrays
them through the Ants as "the dried leaves, impaled / On one-eyed
brooms," "the ever legion of the world, / Smitten for-'the good
to come' " (68). However, while Soyinka does not exclude individual
peasants or workers from his class of change agents, unlike the
Marxists he does not envisage the necessary social action as
emanating from the collective response of this group. Even in A

Dance of the Forest the suggestion is made that the masses are
fickle-minded and easily corrupted, "not difficult to win over" to
any cause (42). This suggestion acquires dramatic reality in Kongi's
Harvest, in which the Carpenters' Brigade functions as the regime's
security militia. And in the chilling scenes of the blood-thirsty
pursuit of Noah by the urban mob in The Interpreters and of the
already half-dead alien by the villagers in Season of Anomy, Soyinka
portrays the masses, not as initiators of positive change, but as
instigators of a "casual barbarism" (Interpreters 115).
While Soyinka's class of change agents is not defined by

socioeconomic status, it is delimited on the basis of gender. His
male visionaries include the blind beggar and the young farmer
Igwezu in The Swamp Dwellers, the carver Demoke in A Dance
of the Forests, the Old Man in Madmen and Specialists, the Slave
Leader in The Bacchae of Euripides, and the intellectuals Daodu
and Ofeyi in Kongi's Harvest and Season of Anomy. His female
characters who show any sign of social commitment are few, and
they invariably fall into the category of what he labels courtesans
and what the feminist critic Carole Boyce Davies calls "The Queen
Bees" (8 1): Rola in A Dance of the Forests, Segi in Kongi's Harvest,
and Iriyise in Season of Anomy. As even Soyinka's designation
denotes, he has cast these female figures in the sexist mold of
negative stereotypes: objects, and predatory ones at that, of male
sexual desire. This gender stereotyping reaches the point of
absurdity in Season of Anomy with Ofeyi's acceptance of the
"ultimate accolade" offered to Iriyise: "'Madammadonna,'" the
"ultimate" in male fantasies of the ideal female-the
virgin/prostitute (83). And what Jones says of Segi-and Moore
makes an almost identical remark about Iriyise (228)-typifies the
literary and social roles of Soyinka's female "activists": "Segi is an
embodiment of sex and hence potentially at least of the creative
principle" (80). As the texts reveal, rather than being co-initiators
of the required social action, they approximate mere ciphers, or
at best serve as handmaidens to the male protagonists.
This poses a particular kind of problem as soon as one poses the

proposition of a female reader who might wish to identify with
Soyinka's social vision. Such a reader would necessarily wonder
about her role in the struggle for social change and about her place
in society if that vision were realized. And she is likely to reject her
assigned role as sexual object and votary and to suspect that in the
new order-a suspicion which, as will be shown, is not all
unfounded-she along with all other members of her sex would
become the sole object of tyranny and oppression in a MEN'S ONLY

egalitarian society.
However (and feminists would argue that it is precisely because
the target of revolutionary movements has been not patriarchy,
which they consider to be the prototype of all other forms of
oppression, but other oppressive structures such as political
authority), history has proved recalcitrant, resistant to the
introduction of "the evolutionary 'kink.'" Nonetheless, with the
exception of the Jero plays and Opera Wonyosi, in all three of which
Soyinka does, indeed, rub "the faces of... the audience ... in the
sewer of their material existence," his works are not pessimistic.
This "anomaly" perhaps explains the reason that Soyinka chose to
cast his grim portrayals of society in these plays-worlds without
visionaries, but only false prophets and extortionists-in the form
of satirical farce.
In his other works, regardless of the fate of the protagonist, there
is always at least a glimmer of hope. To extend Soyinka's metaphor
of "the stray electron," other electrons begin to deviate from the
fixed orbit in which they have been circling the nucleus. Thus as
others identify with the protagonist's vision, the momentum for
change is maintained or even accelerated. In The Strong Breed,
for example, Eman's message that social redemption is to be found
not through the victimization of others but through voluntary self-
sacrifice reaches in the end all but the village leader. And in Season
of Anomy, the symbolically charged rescue of the comatose Iriyise
from her confinement in the Hades-like Temoko prison/asylum is
not, as has sometimes been suggested, the only "ray of hope in an
otherwise darkening atmosphere" (Palmer 286). Equally significant
on both the symbolic and more literal levels of interpretation is the
decision reached at the end of the novel by the apparently mute
giant, Suberu, the devoted slave of Temoko's loquacious, dwarfish,
and tyrannical superintendent. Having listened to Ofeyi speak of
"'the deadly exploitation which traps minds'" (316), Suberu
chooses to leave the prison in which he has been prisoner and
warder for decades and to join the now fugitive band of social
activists. Another Atunda is born!
It is the transmission of such visions as Eman's and Ofeyi's to a
significantly high proportion of the population of any society that
will make social change a reality. In Soyinka's view, in effecting the
change at either the micro or macro level, violent means should
be avoided. As stated earlier, Ogun represents both the creative
and destructive principles; and as Father Forest's messenger Aroni
explains in the prologue to A Dance of the Forests, human beings
"'deify'" Ogun not because "'he loves the anvil'" but because
"'his playground is the battlefield'" (5). This Soyinka clearly
deplores. In The Man Died, his position on the use of violence as
a means of resolving human conflict is stated quite categorically.
Asked by an interrogator whether he was a pacifist, he replied in
the negative, saying that he would support "'any war in defence
of liberty' " but " 'always as a last resort' " (48). In Idanre he ridicules
the more usual practice of using ultimate force as a first resort by
prefacing the story of its disastrous consequences for the people
of Ire when they enticed Ogun to lead them into battle with a
statement of their own proverbial wisdom which they have shunned:
"We do not burn the woods to trap / A squirrel; we do not ask the
mountain's / Aid, to crack a walnut" (73). And in Madmen and
Specialists he exposes the naked horror of the wanton and willful
destruction of human life. The Old Man, in an attempt to shock the
leaders of the military regime into a realization of their own
degradation, confronts them with the logical conclusion to the
premises on which they operate by inviting them to feast on human
flesh: "All intelligent animals kill only for food, you know, and you
are intelligent animals. Eat-eat-eat-eat-eat-Eat!" (254).
The Old Man's method of bringing about social change is to teach
people "to think," an activity which the state decrees "treacherous"
(242). In Season of Anomy the debate over the means of bringing
about social change is one of the central conflicts. Although Ofeyi
is attracted to and even admits the "unassailable logic" of the
philosophy of the Dentist, the "priest of violence," of "Extract the
carious tooth quickly, before it infects the others" (22, 92), the
Dentist does not, as Palmer claims, win in the end (285), nor does
the conflict, as Moore suggests, remain unresolved (229). On two
occasions Ofeyi himself commits acts of violence. On the first,
having witnessed the villagers' brutal slaying of the miserable, lone
alien, he is seized by a "cold, homicidal hate" which transforms
him briefly into an agent of vengeance before he is "restored to
humanity" (166-67, emphasis added). On the second, during the
attempt to rescue the similarly beleaguered engineer, Ofeyi uses
violence as "a last resort" (251-52). Ofeyi's final heroic act in the
novel is his breaking of the manacles binding Suberu's mind, and
it is with this act that the novel ends. For Soyinka, then, it is mass
individual moral awareness, brought into being through the agency
of the human capacity to reason, that is the mainspring of social
change.
As to the political status-revolutionary? reformist? reactionary?-

of Soyinka's social vision, that can only be finally determined by
assessing his envisaged new order in relation to the old and asking
the question: Are they qualitatively different? As Soyinka points out
in Myth, Literature and the African World, there is for writers who
wish to integrate into their works a depiction of a world transformed
the problem of verisimilitude:
Writing directed at the product of a social matrix must expect to remain

within it, and to resolve the conflicts which belong to that milieu by the
logical interactions of its components, one cannot stand outside of it all
and impose a pietistic resolution plucked from some rare region of the
artist's uncontaminated soul. To paraphrase Trotsky, we cannot tear out
of the future that which can only develop as an inseparable part of it and
hurriedly materialise this partial anticipation in present-day dirt and before
the cold footlights. To do this is not to be a visionary but to be starry-eyed.
(73)
In most of his works, while he does provide direction, Soyinka

leaves pretty much to the reader the task of envisaging the kind
of society which could logically emerge as an outcome of the
resolution of present conflicts. In both The Bacchae of Euripides
and Season of Anomy, however, he is able to present a fairly
complete picture of the end product of social change and at the
same time to avoid seeming "starry-eyed."
In The Bacchae of Euripides Soyinka capitalizes on the fact that

he is adapting an ancient Greek play to give his work an air of
timelessness or even futurity. Again, in approaching this play it is
necessary to recognize the changes Soyinka has made to the
original. In contrast to Euripides' play, Soyinka's is not written in
the tragic mode. Instead, like A Dance of the Forests, it is a moral
fable, an allegory of Soyinka's conception of the process of social
evolution which, in this case, he is able to portray as actually taking
place. Nor is the conflict in Soyinka's play between reason and
emotion as it is in Euripides'. Rather it is between tyranny and
freedom. There are no slaves in Euripides' play, and what blinds
Soyinka's Pentheus to the true nature of Dionysos is not his refusal
to acknowledge the affective side of his own nature, but rather an
obsession with state power as it is invested in him. Thus he sees
Dionysos as "a spy, an agent / Of subversion for some foreign
power" (284) and considers it his "duty to preserve / The territorial
integrity of Thebes" (283). While Pentheus is in both plays torn limb
from limb by his mother and her sisters, Soyinka's play does not,
like Euripides', end with Dionysos' imposing retributive justice on
the members of Pentheus's family by forever banishing them from
Thebes or transforming them into serpents. Instead, the brutal
slaying of Pentheus is understood to be a restorative act, a necessary
communal sacrifice which will bring into being a new kind of

society. As the blind seer Tiresias says to Pentheus's grieving
grandfather:
For all too many

The soil of Thebes has proved a most unfeeling
Host, harsh, unyielding, as if the dragon's teeth
That gave it birth still farms its subsoil.
They feel this, same as I, even through calloused soles.
o Kadmos, it was a cause beyond madness, this
Scattering of his flesh to the seven winds, the rain
Of blood that streamed out endlessly to soak
Our land. (307)
And the play ends with Dionysos' transforming the severed head
of Pentheus into a fountain flowing with wine from which all-former
slaves and aristocrats alike-drink together.
A more detailed picture emerges in Season of Anomy. Here
Soyinka embodies the future in the small community of Aiyero and
thus portrays in microcosm his vision of a society into which "the
evolutionary 'kink' " has been introduced. Ironically, even though
the wheel of history outside Aiyero and its parent community
Aiyetomo continues to turn in its age-old rut of tyranny and
oppression-and, indeed, the corruption and ruthlessness of the
traditional northern kingdom of Zaki Amuri is matched by that of
the Cartel-governed state-, visitors, rather than recognizing in
Aiyero an evolutionary development, view it with "patronising
amusement" as "an anachronism," "a quaint anomaly" (2).
Ofeyi arrives in Aiyero armed with radical views based on
"'models from the European world'" (12). Whether his imported
ideology is Marxist or anarchist in orientation-and he is in the
course of his quest accused of being both a communist and an
anarchist (180)-or something else altogether is not made clear. But
as he rather shamefacedly admits to his mentor, Pa Ahime, "'I came
in search of converts,"' and "'they were here all the time'" (12).
By this point in time, Aiyero has, in fact, passed through several
evolutionary phases, and as Soyinka indicates in this work, the
process of social evolution for him is a continuous one. Several
hundred years ago, Aiyetomo "'turned its back on the world' " (11).
Founded by the ancestors of the present generation, who were
inspired by the teachings of the Christian gospels, Aiyet6mo is, as
Moore points out, "based on an actual Christian community called
Aiyetoro, in the creeks of coastal Yorubaland" (227). In Soyinka's
fictional account, at the height of the slave trade a visionary arose
amongst the people and said," 'We base our lives on the teachings
of this white god yet the bearers of that faith kill, burn, maim, loot
and enslave our people. It is time ... to return to the religion of
our fathers' " (10). As a result, Aiyet6mo divided peaceably into two
communities living adjacent to and freely interacting with each
other.
Despite its religious origins, Aiyero is, in fact, essentially a secular

community. As Pa Ahime explains to Ofeyi, "'We have
observances'" and "'our rituals'" through which "'we
acknowledge our debts to earth and to the sea.'" But "'we don't
even think of it as a religion, only as a way of life ... a philosophy
if you like"' " (10-1 1). The economy of Aiyero, like that of its parent
community, is based on farming and fishing, and the importance
of maintaining a relationship of reciprocity with the primary sources
of its sustenance is a central tenet of the Aiyero philosophy. "Food
is sacred," Pa Ahime tells Ofeyi. And as "the earth is our feeding
grounds, the rivers our watering places; if we are contemptuous
of them we will look to them in real need some day and find we
are rejected" (194). But it is not a simple peasant subsistence
economy. Aiyero does a brisk trade with the outside world and also
operates its own power station. In addition, it sends its young men
out "to work at whatever new industries were opened in the rest
of the country, trusting that the new acquired skills would be
brought back to aid the already self-sufficing community" (2-3).
What intrigues Ofeyi is that they all return. The most striking feature
of Aiyer6's economy, however, is that it is completely
communalistic. "All property" is held "in common, literally, to the
last scrap of thread on the clothing of each citizen" (2). And while
Aiyero exists within the jurisdiction of the state, because it is
completely self-sufficient, it is able to function almost entirely
outside of it, the only concession which is made to state power
being the annual payment of taxes which are self-assessed on a
community basis.
Within Aiyero itself political power is also unacknowledged. As

Ofeyi learns when he asks if the Custodian of the Grain is the
" 'Minister of Food Supply,' " the office is a titular one. " 'We don't
have much use for titles,'" he is told (4), and the title-holder, who
in fact can even be a child, functions symbolically as a physical
embodiment of the community ethos. In addition, the role of the
elders of Aiyero is conceived as being educative, rather than
political, and the meeting house, where community decisions are
made, is open to all. Moore's criticism of Soyinka's "fabrication of
the Aiyer6 community" is entirely beside the point:
Soyinka manages to create the impression that there is something deeply

and intrinsically Yoruba about the community's arrangements. But the fact
is that the original vision of the Holy Apostles sect, which founded the
historical Aiyet6ro, has far more in common with other ideal Christian
commonwealths, in Africa and elsewhere, than it has with a hierarchical
and rather specialized society, like that of a traditional Yoruba city-state.
(229)
Aiyero is Soyinka's creation. And he creates it in order to represent

what he regards, as stated earlier, as one of the necessary stages
in the process of social evolution in post-colonial Africa: the
"reinstatement of the values authentic to that society." Thus, while
Aiyero retains the modes of social and economic organization on
which its parent community was founded, it seeks its philosophical
roots in authentically African or Yoruba systems of thought. Moore
seems to have fallen into the trap that Soyinka warns against in Myth,
Literature and the African World: that of accepting the facile theory
promulgated by so many Western scholars, that the African world
view is stagnant. Speaking of Karl Popper, he writes:
His fundamental assumptions are inaccurate. They bypass the code on

which this wQrld-view is based, the continuing evolution of tribal wisdom
through an acceptance of the elastic nature of knowledge as its one reality,
as signifying no more than reflections of the original coming-into-being of
a manifestly complex reality. (53)
The next phase in the process of social evolution is the

dissemination of the Aiyer6 idea throughout the state with the aim
of creating a number of loosely federated communal units. As these
would function independent of the state, the state would in time
presumably simply cease to exist. This is the innovative
development proposed by Ofeyi, the most recent of the "stray
electrons" in what, starting with the founding father of Aiyet6mo,
has become a Mobius strip-like chain of such free acting particles.
Although it is to be propagated by the nonviolent means of using
the men already employed in other communities to spread the
word, initially the community resists the change, arguing that even
"'evangelism is a form of aggression'" (6). However, after Ofeyi
has accused the elders of a callous indifference to the sufferings
of others, he is recognized as the natural successor to the title
Custodian of the Grain-a fulfillment of the prophecy of the original
founder that "'someone ... would turn up from the outer cesspit
of the land, a stranger who would take our message to the world'"
(11).
And, indeed, freedom is demonstrated to be "born in the blood."

Other such communities spring up across the land, and they flourish
Wole Soyinka 's Social Vision 551
to the point that they are perceived as a threat by the military-

industrial-management-state complex of the Cartel, which brutally
squashes them. Nonetheless, the idea lives on in the hearts and
minds of those who have been exposed to it, and as the novel ends
the remnants of the Aiyero community, accompanied by the latest
convert, Suberu, begin the long trek home.
However, Aiyero is not so non-hierarchical a society as it may
initially appear to be. While political power is unacknowledged,
it nonetheless exists in an institutionalized form: that of male
domination. Although females have equal access to the meeting
house, the title of Custodian of the Grain is traditionally held by a
male, and all the elders of Aiyer6, who in fact control the affairs
of the community, are men. Furthermore, it is not the young people
of Aiyero that these elders in their "wisdom" send "all over the
world to experience other mores and values" and to learn new
skills, but its "young men" (2, emphasis added). In this respect
Aiyero is an exact replica of the outside world with which it is in
conflict: It is a patriarchal community.
There are only two short scenes in the novel in which the
participation of women in the life of the community is portrayed,
but from these much can be inferred about the role and status of
the women of Aiyero. In the first, which follows the funeral rites
of the Custodian of the Grain, the women, "undaunted, even
exhilarated by the prospect of a night-long wake," are presented
busily preparing to spend the night brewing the malt beer and
cooking the food which is to be consumed (by the men only?) at
the wake, while the men engage in ritual observances (17). In the
second, the women are portrayed toiling in the fields and "bringing
wine to the sweating men in their struggle against the virgin forests"
(20).
The picture that emerges is a realization of a feminist's nightmare.

In contrast to our brothers who go off to explore the world and who
make choices, we remain where we "belong," at home, confined
to narrow and often servile spheres of behavior. Excluded from the
intellectual and political life of the community, we are prohibited
from discovering and utilizing our full human potential. This prompts
(or tempts) a subversive interpretation of Iriyise's physical condition
during the latter half of the novel. As "the gin-and-tonic siren" of
"the godless lights of the capital," as Soyinka calls her (7), Iriyise
lived on the fringes of patriarchy; and she clearly experienced much
more independence and freedom than she does as one of Aiyero's
handmaidens. Her comatose state can thus be seen as a symbol of
the condition of women in Aiyero.
It might be argued that Soyinka envisages the elimination of

patriarchy and the establishment of a sexually egalitarian society
as a future phase in the continuous process of social evolution. But
as there is nothing in his writing to indicate that this is so, one of
two conclusions is more plausibly drawn: Either Soyinka sanctions
this form of unjust power, or he is oblivious to it. If it is a matter of
approbation, then Soyinka would no doubt claim (as have so many
advocates of patriarchy before him) that male supremacy belongs
to the natural order of things, that it is one of the "cosmic
principles." If, on the other hand, it is a matter of ignorance, then
we can look forward to future developments. But in either case, if
the feminist theory is accepted that patriarchy has down through
the ages provided the model for all other forms of oppression, then
Soyinka's social vision as it stands at the moment can only be looked
upon as leading up a blind alley.
In the absence of a feminist critique, it should be quite clear that
Soyinka occupies a position on the extreme left of the political
spectrum. But even if the feminist paradigm is not accepted, the
patriarchal family is the first in a series of institutions of oppression
that a child encounters in this world. Moreover, patriarchy subjects
slightly more than half of the human race to tyranny and oppression.
At this point in time, then, and for reasons other than those advanced
by Marxists, Soyinka can only be classified as being extremely
reactionary. In relation to Soyinka's social vision, the question that
remains unanswered-and she does make her presence felt in
Yoruba mythology and history-is this: Where is Atunda's sister?
University of Sierra Leone

Freetown, Sierra Leone
Notes
'I am greatly indebted in my discussion of anarchism to the two cited works

by Katherine Temple.
2This analysis was put forward by Bernth Lindfors in an unpublished lecture
delivered at Njala in December 1986.
3As Soyinka explains in the notes to Idanre (87), Ato6da and Atunda are
variations of the same name.
Works Cited
Davies, Carole Boyce. "Maidens, Mistresses and Matrons: Feminine Images

in Selected Soyinka Works." Ngambika: Studies of Women in African
Wole Sayinka's Social Vision 553
Literature. Ed. Carole Boyce Davies and Anne Adams Graves. Trenton: Africa
World P, 1986.
Jones, Eldred. The Writing of Wole Soyinka. London: Heinemann, 1973.
Moore, Gerald. Twelve African Writers. London: Hutchinson, 1980.
NgUg' wa Thiong'o. Homecoming. London: Heinemann, 1972.
Nkosi, Lewis. Tasks and Masks. Harlow: Longman, 1981.
Ogunbiyi, Yemi. "Toast to Our Own W. S." ANA Review 1986: 2.
Palmer, Eustace. The Growth of the African Novel. London: Heinemann, 1979.
Soyinka, Wole. Collected Plays I (A Dance of the Forests, The Swamp Dwellers,
The Strong Breed, The Bacchae of Euripides). London: Oxford UP, 1973.
. Collected Plays 2 (The Lion and the Jewel, Kongi's Harvest, Madmen
and Specialists). Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984.
. Death and the King's Horseman. London: Eyre Methuen, 1975.
"The Fourth Stage." In Myth, Literature and the African World. 140-60.
Idanre and Other Poems. London: Methuen, 1969.
The Interpreters. London: Fontana/Collins, 1978.
The Man Died. London: Collings, 1973.
. Myth, Literature and the African World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1979.
Opera Wonyosi. London: Collings, 1981.
Season of Anomy. London: Collings, 1980.
Temple, Katherine. "Anarchism Vis-A-Vis Marxism." Unpublished paper. 1972.
. "The Spirit of Anarchism." The Catholic Worker May 1982.
"Wole Soyinka" (Interview). Spear Magazine May 1966. Quoted in Jones.

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Saint Louis University

Indiana State University

Wole Soyinka: A Writer's Social Vision

In Myth, Literature and the African World, Wole Soyinka

However, while critics continue to commend the range and

Black American Literature Forum, Volume 22, Number 3 (Fall 1988)

As early as 1972 Nguigl wa Thiong'o stated that Soyinka's "liberal

As the references to such ideological concepts as "the creative

His strategy, which is based on the conviction "that sooner or later,

been more of a rebel than a revolutionary," as Moore suggests (218)?

are groups of individuals living in voluntary association in small,

revolt against oppression is just as primary and immutable an

The target of Soyinka's attack is similar to that of the anarchists:

Soyinka's conception of history is implicit in many of his works,

However, this evil cycle can be broken. Atunda revolts against

electron," "the Atooda of this world." Like the anarchists, then, he

To arrive at any fuller understanding of Soyinka's social vision,

As Soyinka makes clear in Myth, Literature and the African World,

In the powerful Kongi, the ridiculous figure of Lakunle takes on

Such visions as Daodu's are not, however, merely the product of

need to arrive at a fuller understanding of, and hence to learn tc

"keep the rites of the Earth-Mother" (247). An understanding of this

Although technology is not a determining factor in the realization

his other attributes, the god of metallurgy and the prototypical

Like the anarchists, Soyinka's change agents-his hero-gods and

emanating from the collective response of this group. Even in A

While Soyinka's class of change agents is not defined by

This poses a particular kind of problem as soon as one poses the

become the sole object of tyranny and oppression in a MEN'S ONLY

As to the political status-revolutionary? reformist? reactionary?-

Writing directed at the product of a social matrix must expect to remain

In most of his works, while he does provide direction, Soyinka

In The Bacchae of Euripides Soyinka capitalizes on the fact that

communal sacrifice which will bring into being a new kind of

For all too many

Despite its religious origins, Aiyero is, in fact, essentially a secular

Within Aiyero itself political power is also unacknowledged. As

Soyinka manages to create the impression that there is something deeply

Aiyero is Soyinka's creation. And he creates it in order to represent

His fundamental assumptions are inaccurate. They bypass the code on

The next phase in the process of social evolution is the

And, indeed, freedom is demonstrated to be "born in the blood."

to the point that they are perceived as a threat by the military-

The picture that emerges is a realization of a feminist's nightmare.

It might be argued that Soyinka envisages the elimination of

University of Sierra Leone

'I am greatly indebted in my discussion of anarchism to the two cited works

Davies, Carole Boyce. "Maidens, Mistresses and Matrons: Feminine Images

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S's Writerly Vision

S's Writerly Vision