Dramatic parables: ritual, anti-ritual, the “festival complex” finally his own private esoteric system compounded out of cabalistic
signs, numerology and necromancy, these two paradoxical aspects re-
main constant: a very materialistic, even opportunistic interest in the
“spoils” of death on the roads and highways, and a radical spirituality
which revolts against all the identity-forming institutions and practices of
organized religion, indigenous and foreign, which impose fear and terror
on men, especially the poor and the disenfranchised. This is why his clos-
ing, perorative “benefaction” at the moment of his death – significantly
the last words in the play – entails a ferociously sardonic iteration of
ritual and sacrificial motifs and beliefs, an iteration which impresses
with its deep insights into mystic experience and phenomena, yet leaves
absolutely no room for catharsis in its terrifyingly bleak vision of life’s
barren destructiveness (CP,–). Paradoxically however, while con-
ventional ritual affirmation is subverted by the dramatic action of this
play and the personal moral codes of characters like Say-Tokyo Kid,
Sergeant Burma and Professor, there are unquestionable life-affirming,
life-enhancing qualities in the imagined selves fashioned out of the pious
and impious shards of ritual beliefs and practices of these and the other
characters of this enigmatic play on the inchoate processes of social-
cultural change in contemporary West Africa.
The grisly cannibal feast which stands at the centre of the subversion
of sacrificial rituals inMadmen and Specialistsis the brainchild of the play’s
protagonist, the Old Man; it is a very appropriate indicator of the scope
of his towering, raging discontent with all traditional and conventional
pieties, both in their religious expressions and in secular, “patriotic”
formulations. Sickened to the soul by the mass slaughter that takes place
in wars, especially wars justified in the name of “national integrity” or
defense of a faith, this “madman” leaves for the war front, maneuvers
himself into a position of some influence and successfully arranges to
have all the war commanders unwittingly partake of a feast whose main
course is the cooked flesh of the war dead. His utterly sardonic rationale:
man is the only animal that kills wastefully, not for food; if we cannot
end wars, we can at least end war’s “wastefulness”:
: Oh, their faces! That was a picture. All those faces round the table.
: If they hadn’t been too surprised they would have shot you on the spot.
: Your faces, gentlemen, your faces. You should see your faces. And
your mouths are hanging open. You’re drooling but I am not exactly sure
why. Is there really much difference? All intelligent animals kill only for
food, you know, and you are intelligent animals. Eat-eat-eat-eat-eat-Eat!
(raises his arm): Stop it!