Soyinka early game The way It offers you a mirror through which you look at, critically examine, and laugh at the difficile flaws and pretensions of emerging African societies. Of course, this is a very familiar concern in all genres of African literature. Wole Soyinka, therefore, is not out of place to preoccupy himself and his readers or audiences with that in his work. The way

The way Assemble a motley gang of thugs, aspiring truck drivers, and bums who build a shantytown near a used engine parts store. Presiding over this shop and influencing, if not leading, this motley gang is a former Anglican lay reader and Sunday school teacher who has assumed the title of professor. As he wanders the roads he is apparently a professor of, he searches for auto parts among the wreckage of accidents.

Although this work lacks a linear narrative flow, it draws an audience well into the myriad problems plaguing emerging modern African societies: poor urban planning, rural-urban migration, unemployment, poverty, vagrancy, crime, and corruption. Soyinka thus combines social commentary, obscene comedy, and poetic philosophical inquiry with a caustic satirization of a ruthlessly materialistic and pretentious society.

The prevalence of coercion and repression is suggested in the functioning of modern African societies, through Chief-In-Town and his recruitment of thugs to serve as bodyguards at political gatherings. In this way, we can glimpse the violent political methods by which African political parties strive to stay in power perpetually, a phenomenon that seems to have persisted in Nigeria even until recently.

Corruption, another characteristic of contemporary African societies, is portrayed. Corruption materializes in the person of the policeman, Particulars Joe, who receives bribes from drivers who violate the law, seeks more bribes in other unexpected places. He shares hemp with political thugs even while he’s still in uniform. Ironically, the one who should be in charge of maintaining law and order is the one who initiates their violation. The society that is presented in the play then gives the impression that it is deviating into anarchy without anyone trying to respect the law. Drivers, for example, break the law by buying counterfeit licenses and driving without going through the necessary instruction and training. As a consequence, deaths frequently occur on the roads. Corruption is ubiquitous, seeping through all areas, including through the so-called crème de la crème whose depraved morality Samson satirizes here:

Now I want you to take the car, the long one, and

Drive through the Marina at two o’clock. All the good girls

Just coming from the offices, the young and tender faces

Fresh out of school, they take them to my house. Old

Bones like me must put a fresh tonic in their blood.

Samson, by parodying the rich whom he mockingly envies, blames them for the increasing moral degeneracy of the young. Because, as it seems normal that he, as a rich man, behaves like that, he would send his elegant car for a drive through the Marina at two o’clock, when all the young girls would be out of school so he could pick up all the good ones among them . and bring them to your home to satisfy your lustful desires. One could imagine the countless social problems that such reckless activities create. But when we learn later about the criteria for upward mobility, we should expect the worst results. There is the case of the messenger who became a senator after earning “thirteen thousand” with whom he bought half the houses in Apapa.

Religion itself is of an equally, if not more degraded and superficial nature. Little spirituality is evident in their procedures. The professor’s display of vanity in his past life in the church indicates what drives people to fight for important positions there. Saluki aptly puts it this way: “Let no one go to church, to high society.” The professor had been a showy man in his church life, placing more emphasis on his speech and his claim to holiness, even to the point of bowing down at every mention of Jesus and wiping his brow in his own righteousness. His theft of church funds is another indication of his corruption and his insincerity toward God. The professor typifies a whole group of corrupt and pretentious church officials who are drawn to the call not out of spiritual devotion but out of a cunning desire to increase their wealth. The church has thus lost almost all its glory, thus becoming just another social club. Therefore, the professor enters it with a particularly pompous step, thus capturing the attention of the congregation and holding it until he reaches his bench. [p162] His vanity is further exposed by the fact that a bench is usually reserved for him so much that if even “a stranger went and sat on it, the church director wasted no time in kicking him out.” [p162] Thus, the whole church is constantly involved in episodes from which even the bishop is not excluded. He is clearly envious of the increased attention given to the congregation by the professor, whose lessons knock out his sermon, leaving half the church asleep. The other half manages to stay awake while the bishop continues to preach, unresponsive to what was happening, watching the professor take notes. The materialism, exhibitionism and falsehood that motivate people to be active in the church are thus exposed:

In the absence of spirituality to redeem such a society from the depths of materialism and corruption, decay is more imminent. This society is governed by a special kind of ruthless materialism in which people prosper by trading in the misfortunes of others. The professor, for example, creates accidents through which he trades in the possessions of the victims. They have become so dehumanized that they are stripped of all forms of human compassion. The ties of kinship or friendship do not obstruct the course of this insensitive affair. When Sergeant Burma realized that the driver of the crashed vehicle from which he was stripping parts was an old comrade from the front line, it was only then that he showed Christian charity well but not without helping himself as usual. Sergeant Burma only took his friend’s body to the morgue after he stopped to remove all the tires from the vehicle. The social problems that emanate from them are myriad, including juvenile delinquency, crime, banditry, and violence, as evidenced by the reckless activities of the Tokyo Kid and his gang of hemp smokers … This is also manifested in the thief professor and many others indulge.

The Kongi government and the road share destructive potentials. Kongi could be seen as the representation of the modern paranoid dictator. Instead of being a procreative force, it engenders and spreads destruction, beheads its opponents, and shows no genuine interest in the fertility rites of the land and the flesh. Thus, in Hemlock he is regarded as a monster that should have been burned before reaching its full destructive proportions. This destructive potential is also invested in the road that normally brings progress and development to hitherto remote and inaccessible areas. The road is presented as a cunning and timely monster waiting patiently and silently to pounce on an unsuspecting victim and ravenously devour it. Road users: drivers, their touts, their passengers and their followers in general are perpetually exposed to death on the roads, as suggested: “The road and the spider lie gloating, then the fly buzzes like a happy fool” . [p178] The happy fool who buzzes unaware of the fact that he is happily running to a gruesome ending aptly represents the gruesome fate that awaits hapless road users. The precariousness of their existence is further amplified by Kotonou’s rhetorical but gloomy catalog of deceased heroes whose passing heroism is ironic because their death has no noble cause.

Where is the Fox that never returned from the north?

Without a basket of guinea fowl eggs? Where is

Akanni the lizard? I have not seen any other

Everyone who would be on the roof of the truck and

He plays samba at sixty miles an hour.

Where is Sigidi Ope? Where’s Sapele Joe?

Who faced six policemen at the crossing

And dumped them all in the river?

Samson:

Overpassed the pontoon, sank with

Your truck [p 157]

All these devotees of the road after a lifetime living on it and worshiping it have been consumed by it and thus transformed into ironic yet legendary heroes. One such scene is vividly captured by the professor with all his horrors: ‘Come on, I have a new wonder to show you … a madness where a car is thrown into a tree: Gbram! And crystal rains flying on shattered souls. Then, on an even darker note, he emphasizes “the rapid onset of physical decay after death.” What he is quick to admit “is a stale meat market, noisy with flies and quarrelsome with old women.” [p.158-9]

Much later, in spicy language, Say Tokyo Kid recalls the scene of an accident:

You know, last week I had an accident in

The way. There was a dead woman and you know

What was her pretty head scattered with? sweet potato

Porrage. See what I mean? A swelldame is going to

Kin stain his head with yam porrage. [p 172-3]

The teacher also exploits the dangers of the road for his own personal satisfaction, regardless of the resulting suffering. It cares less whether the people it licenses are qualified to drive or not, which is another contributing factor to growing dangers on the road.

The destructiveness of the road, devouring human lives in large numbers, is in fact a reflection of the destruction and greed that we see in all the characters. And once again, they could be seen as the reflection of a cruel and corrupt society that leaves no room for creation or development. Through scathing satire, Soyinka records her distaste for such unsavory aspects of modern African societies.

The end of the play leaves us with no hope of purging those societies. The teacher’s perennial search for a perverted version of the Word is a clear indication of the inverted values ​​of modern African society. In the end, he reaches the path: death. This suggests that the path of modern society, like the physical path, can only lead to destruction. Thus, before dying, the professor conveys his idea:

Be even like the road itself. Flatten your

bellies with the hunger of an unfavorable day, power

your hands with the knowledge of death … breathe

like the road. Be the way. Curl up in dreams

lying in betrayal and deception and right now

with a confident step, raise your head and strike the

traveler in your trust, swallow it whole or break

him on earth. Spread out a wide blade for death with

the length and time of the sun between you until

a face multiplies and the only shadow is projected by all

the condemned:

RELATED ARTICLE:

http://www.nathanielturner.com/wolesoyinakongisharvest.htm

SOURCES:

Jones Eldred Durosimi, WOLE SOYINKA’s writings Heinemann

1983

Gerald moore SOYINKA WOLF Holmes and Meier Pub. 1971

Wole by Soyinka The way on COLLECTED GAMES2 Oxford University

Press 1983