Visionary mythopoesis in fictional and nonfictional prose in the war itself, lends “death” a special resonance in the book as apper-
taining to both mass slaughter of innocents through allegedly organized
atrocities and the death of the spirit apparently intended by the imposi-
tion of tyrannical rule on the nation. This is what gives Soyinka’s assertion
of the exceptionalism of his moral vision and political testament in this
book, in spite of the unquestionably self-absorbed and self-inflated terms
in which it is often expressed, convincing social validity. In this vision, the
author-protagonist’s own incarceration and attempted physical liquida-
tion while in detention is linked with other great and small acts of abuse
and corruption of power to metonymically depict a “season of anomy”
on a grand scale. The list is depressingly long: the brutal beating of the
journalist, Segun Sowemimo and many instances of the public flogging
of members of the civilian population by a sadistic soldiery documented
in the appendices to the book; the continued abduction, detention and
more slayings of individuals and groups of Igbos by military fanatics even
as the war to bring them back into the country was being prosecuted; the
flippant and callous indifference to the horrors of the war and its human
toll revealed in the declaration by the federal authorities that the immi-
nent fall of the Biafran capital in mid-was going to be “a special
wedding present” to General Gowon; and the use of the apparatus and
protocols of office by the military rulers to cower the mass of ordinary
citizens into a submissive, docile and cynically apathetic populace so as
to consolidate a tyrannical military dictatorship. These events and trends
are told in diverse narratives which are deliberately kept unintegrated in
the narrative scheme of the book. Nonetheless, from their juxtaposition –
helped by the many digressions comprising the author-protagonist’s
editorial comments on events long after the time of their actual oc-
currence – a single powerful testament does emerge, at least in the view
of the author-narrator-protagonist, as the core ideological and moral
vision ofThe Man Died.
This testament entails an indictment of the victors of the war as “power
profiteers” who used thede factolegitimation afforded by victory in war
and the ideological serviceableness of the claim of having kept the na-
tion from fragmenting to entrench and consolidate dictatorship which
inaugurated flagrant and pervasive human rights violations and abuses.
BeforeThe Man Diedwas published and instantly took the nation by
storm, therewereprotests and demonstrations against these abuses and
violations; and there were militant actions against economic and social
injustices. Moreover, these took place before and during the war when
there was a state of emergency in force abrogating democratic rights
and freedoms and suspending the legal and judicial instruments for their