Wednesday, 13 March 2013

Marxism in 'Amos Tutola the Palm Wine Drinkard'


A Discovery Page on ELS 124: Amos Tutuola’s ‘The Palm-Drinkard’
                For my fellow grammarians and literati studying this course
                                                Anish O Cornel
The novel, 'the palm wine drinkard and his dead palm wine tapster in dead’s town' is a textual compass by which one of the oraloric genetics of culture-as found within the shores of African artistic aesthetics-is dissected. In this view, African culture is seen as a creative mechanism found/birthed through the explorative adventurisms of presocratic sages, saws who-at the beginning of the ages- were moulded from the dark fires of the black hills. Gods became men. Men became gods. There were legends, whose minds-crafted from fresh steels of wisdom-would hanker, soft and hard, to read the paradigmatic recipes which form the incredible realities of the Nature that we see. The powers in men's tongue were wielded, for death and life. They sang, shouted, wailed and praised. They discovered propriety, beauty and life in what they spoke. They learnt the mysteries of the gods locked within their hands and legs. And at last, the songs they sang could be tendered by their hand, either in accompaniment/in interpretations. These were the things that their god-like nature produced. Legends became kings, chiefs and warriors. And with such powers as discovered, a society wreathed with an incomparable je ne sais quoi of art and craft is borne. When these great men died, they left for the mountains. Though they were not seen, they never were too far away. Never were they too deeply out, from beyond the firmaments. But they lurked in some places where only men powerful as they could foot. Some so much loved their homes that they still preferred to hide/live in trees, clouds, seas, rocks, stones, animals, wind, air etc. But as for the ways of ordinary men, they led to a dome meant for the ordinary 'The land of the dead', while, the path of the gods was to the depthless and bottomless.
As the times went by, the cunning ones among the gods- the merciful and fiendish inclusive- would play on forms meant only for the recent men, in order to mock humankind's vices-a catalogue of vendetta unshackled! From this point, however, it should be established that, 'the palm-wine drinkard and his dead Palm wine-tapster in Dead’s town’ is 'that' master-piece which carries much of the supernatural in and out of it. Its fantastic-cum-horrendous weight has been a daring attempt to exhume, the actual picture of the mythic, and the incredible. In fact, the very acreage that bears the construction of whatever literature you may think of, to be rootly African (extravagantly from the core) is just this exemplum 'the palm wine drinkard' (though there are several others which fall into its aetiological phylum and which can be given the same paean which it presently receives). Hence, if we attest to the fact that African literature primarily sets on the oral tradition, which is the first, finest, purest, ancestral, and supreme, then 'palm-wine drinkard…', having identified with these groups of 'oral traditions' (albeit written)', is incontrovertibly a Cadillac of sheer Africanness (a conscious erectus of a wee Yorubaic Nigerianism). I have so much consummated in me to introduce the work with this exordium-because it is with this that the work confines itself in originality and verisimilitude-before moving further into uncovering the discoveries

            In my recent study, I discovered that, some theoretical forms extrinsic to the oraloric chrome of the text could be used to decode it.
1. The sociological factor: This deals with theories of criticisms by which social realisms-reformist, revolutionist, reactionary, blanquist- can be analysed. These theories include Marxism, feminism etc. Hence, for ‘the palm-wine drinkard…’ we are going to apply Marxism:
Key-points:
 1. The relationship between the palm-wine drinkard and his tapster is like one between a capitalist and his worker. In this sense, the tapster is slaved to work indefatigably. This pleases the capitalist-drinkard who only sits somewhere to eat from the enormous efforts of his tapster, without even commending his effort by any tangible or sensible means. In order words, the tapster is explored and oppressed.
2. The society pictured here is anti-Maxian/dystopian: 'Dystopia', in this sense, exhibits all forms of inequalities and social-cum-economic imbalance. This sort of imbalance or disequilibrium is defined in the sense of class-stratification. In a class-conscious society, there is a wide gap between the exploitative rich as well as the slaving poor: the bourgeoisie and the proletariats. This is a society wherein the individualism, ego-centrism of the exploiters is characterized by utter embezzlement, malfeasance, maladministration, avarice and less regards for the welfare of the lower-class (the exploited). Hence, the society pictured in the beginning of the novel is anti-Maxian. The palm-wine drinkard and his friends are such errant caucuses of exploiters, while the tapster is a generic symbolism of the exploited poor.
3.  The death of the tapster is a very powerful motif. In many African literatures, (mostly colonial, and post-colonial) death symbolizes 'freedom'. The freedom intended here is knitted together with its metaphysical correspondent. For example, in Apartheid south-Africa, the voice of 'death' as echoed by the hoi-polloi is a vatic fragment which some writers like Arthol Fugard, picture(s) in their works. A big reference is made in Fugard’s 'Sizwe Bansi is Dead', where he advocates that the black man can be free of his troubles only when he dies. Hence, the grave is seen, as a place where true liberty is absorbed. Though the blacks may be given freedom or independence-grant by the white, they are bound to fall into self-enslavement. Sometimes I imagine the African freedom fighters tell it to the white overlords that, 'we want to rule by our-'self''. ‘We want to run the affairs of our country by our-self. This country is 'ours''. Self-enslavement creeps in especially when the society still becomes anti-Marxian despite the independence-grant given. In other words, the death of the palm-wine tapster signifies freedom.
3. The palm-wine drinkard's vigorous attempt to find his palm-wine tapster can have several interpretations:
1). The palm-wine drinkard might have been purged of his over-exaggerated selfishness. For example, in the tapster's life time, the drinkard never cared about how he used the tapster. In fact, he saw the tapster as an immortal human-machine that keeps satiating his excitement and bacchic urges.
2). On the flip side, he might have been driven by his impulsive urges, ‘the death/life principle/Id’.  Though this sounds Freudian, we are compelled to judge his will of getting the tapster back to his quondam post of slave-working, as a damnable curse of cupidity and fear which drives him into a frantic fit. So this time he his only trying to get the tapster back so that he can further be ‘exploited’. Or simply put, he is going after the tapster because of his own selfish interests.

Also, I will like to draw our attention to something new and very important. This is actually the story of the beautiful ‘lady’ and the 'gentle man'. The 'gentle-man' symbolizes the horrors of modernism and acculturation. In the story, it is clear that the gentleman is alien to the market were the lady sees him. There is actually a big line of demarcation drawn between where the gentle man stands, and where the lady, the marketers stand. No transaction between the two. So from this point, her palfrey (feminine) identity is greatly a symbolic encapsulation of what Africa is. She is no doubt a symbolism of our ideological ‘Mother Africa’, who has now been drawn by this 'newness’. The newness in question is a broadcast of the gentle-man’s presence. More upon, from the story, we are able to note how she rejects those who are originally hers, to embrace that strange man. She is constantly enticed by his outward beauty and now she is being taken away. Very soon, she discovers what cruel strangeness lies in this man: Almost all the parts of his body are borrowed or formed by the amalgamation of several parts coming together from the different spheres of his world. England was not formed by one. Hence, I deeply believe that, this gentleman is an indirect allegory of England, by which a supernumerary part of Africa was alienated and acculturated, while the sphere from which all these parts are borrowed is simply Europe. More so, the consequent lost and captivity of the lady results into what I call a 'Tutuolanian Ecclesiastes', a code which implies that Africa will never be redeemed of the new culture that has so dominated her. In fact, every attempt made to bring her back to her original form will be proved futile.
The road to the market is the road back to our cultural realties (i.e., the market being the root of our cultural extent). It is hardly traceable. In fact since this generation is the offspring of the alienated lady, all it would have is a mere reading of the road’s geography. To walk this road may be impossible for some; difficult or easy for others, yet that market can never be found. In addition, the market is a reality of what we were before the white-men’s culture transformed us. So, unlike some Asian countries like, china, Japan, where their cultural ethos is more boldly daring, highly defiant, and repellent and where only 20% of Eurocentrism is apparent in their daily transactions, Africa is but condemned to a superfluity of Eurocentric cacoethes.
I think with some of the unprecedented facts laid in this little discovery, you would be creatively smart enough to spice up your examination questions- especially the one particular to ‘the Palm-Wine Drinkard…’ with the appropriate answers. It all deals with how highly imaginative you are in textual relativisms and concept-fixing. Good luck!!!