Wole Soyinka
to emphasize that this anthropomorphized nature derives its sanction
and operational value within ananimistframework. This is what gives
meaning to Eshuoro’s gripe, his sense of “injury” at Demoke’s carving
on the live Araba tree, a sentiment otherwise incomprehensible:
: Am I his son or am I not? I have asked that he pass judgment for
my limbs that were hacked off piece by piece. For my eyes that were gouged
and my roots disrespectfully made naked to the world. For the desecration of
my forest body ()
This is the materialist basis of the major conflicts of this play: the forest as
nature and humanity’s struggle with nature, even as he wars with other
men. Physical, external nature (the Forest) parallels and mirrors inner,
subjective nature in man (the interior drama of the guilt feelings and com-
pulsions of the human culprits). The ideological specificity of this rep-
resentation lies in the fact that into this materialist base Soyinka infuses
a fundamental animist tenet: external, cosmic nature encompasses and
engulfs internal nature, and though there is a conflict between both,the
former is the ultimate measure of the latter. Thus the “disrespect” man shows
towards nature in his confident appropriation parallels man’s violence
towards his own kind. The specific shortcoming of previous criticism of
this play in this regard is to focus entirely on the subjective drama and
see the exterior antagonism only as incidental, even unintegrated detail.
The entirety of the central, emblematic scene of the play, the dance-
trial, is a visual and symbolic representation of this decisive parallelism
in the play’s dramatic action, for just as the two restless dead, the triplets
(the objectified corruptions of man), the half-child (human life aborted
by human cruelties) and the ants (the millions of workers – “the masses” –
ground underfoot in the “normal” run of production) all rise to condemn
the humans, so do the spirits of natural phenomena and objects testify to
the humans’ depredatory war of exploitation of the resources of nature:
Spirit of the Precious Stones:
Still do I draw them down
Into the pit that glitters, I
Spirit of gold and diamonds
Mine is the vain light courting death
A-ah’. Blight this eye that threaded
Rocks with light, earth with golden lodes
Traitor to the guardian tribe, turn
Turn to lead.
(CP,)