Wole Soyinka
(turns and holds him with his eyes): Oh yes, you rushed out and
vomited. You and the others. But afterwards you said I had done you a
favour. Remember? (BERO slowly lowers his arm.) I’m glad you remember.
Never admit you are a recidivist once you’ve tasted the favourite food of As.
(CP,)
If the act of turning those who make wars into cannibals in order to
expose and decry the “wastefulness” of wars has a twisted humanistic
logic to it, the Old Man’s exercise of his immensely subversive will in
this play consists precisely in expanding in all directions the tactic of
confronting logical systems which destroy human life and corrupt and
degrade both perpetrators and victims with their fundamentally illogical
foundations. For himself, the Old Man’s weapon is his savagely decon-
structive wit: the mere echoes of words and phrases, the mere phonemes
and syllables of ideas and concept-metaphors suffice for him to render
the verities and assurances of either spiritual solace or communicative
rationality that they proffer utterly meaningless. But over and beyond
his wit, or as an extension of it, the Old Man has also appropriated the
idioms of chants, recitations and rites of alms begging by the mendicants,
turning them on their head. This combination of his own deconstructive
wit with an inversion of the rites and locutions of alms begging that he
had appropriated from the mendicants is made with the intention of
confronting evil with platitudes which rationalize and justify it. This is
indeed acknowledged in the following scene by no less a person than
Dr. Bero, the specialist, the confounded target of the relentless assaults
of the Old Man and his disciples:
(heatedly): It’s not his charitable propensities I am concerned with. Fa-
ther’s assignment was to help the wounded readjust to the pieces and
remnants of their bodies. Physically. Teach them to make baskets if they
still had fingers. To use their mouths to ply needles if they had none, or use
it to sing if their vocal cords had not been shot away. Teach them to amuse
themselves, make something of themselves. Instead he began to teach them
to think, think, THINK! Can you picture a more treacherous deed than
to place a working mind in a mangled body?
: Where is he?
: Where? Here.
: Here?
(pointing to the MENDICANTS): There. When they open their mouths
you can hear him. You! Come here! Tell her. Would you call yourself sane?
TheMENDICANTShave approached,AAFAA in the lead.
: Certainly not, sir.
: You got off lightly, Why?