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Language games in the post-colonial narrative: Achebe'sArrow of god

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Page 1: Language games in the post-colonial narrative: Achebe'sArrow of god

ONYEMAECHI UDUMUKWU

LANGUAGE GAMES IN THE POST-COLONIAL NARRATIVE: ACHEBE'S ARROW OF GOD

You taught me language: and my profit on't

Is. I know how to curse. (Shakespeare in The Tempest)

The arbitrary nature of the sign demands that we reject any substantialist definiton of culture and history. Thus we can no longer conceive of culture and history as the off-spring of a universalist notion of the world which imbricates practices within a one-di- mensional orbit.

What are language games? How do they function in the post- colonial narrative? And how can a semiotic theory of representa- tion illuminate the function of language games in Chinue Achebe's Arrow of God? These are the informing problematic of this study.

Semiotics as a theoretical framework disavows any essentialist notion of culture and history. We will not engage ourselves in a historiography of semiotics since this has been done in previous works (Sebeok 1978; Eco 1976; Culler 1976 and 1981). Neverthe- less, there is a specific aspect of semiotic theory which will inter- est us here. This is the nature of the relationship between the con- stituent elements of the sign, viz: the signified and the signifier. This relationship is arbitrary. Thus:

no one doubts the arbitrary nature of the sign... [This] principle dominates the whole of linguistic analysis of a language (qouted in Culler 1976: 19).

The arbitrary nature of the sign has three implications for a semi- otic inquiry. Firstly, it implies that language does not consist of fixed names since the relationship between the signified and signifier

Neohelicon XXI/2 Akad~miai Kiad~, Budapest John Benjamlns K V., Amsterdam

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236 ONYEMAECHI UDUMUKWU

is not governed by the role of equality but by the rule of equiva- lence. In other words, this relationship is not activated by the se- quential ordering whereby one term naturally leads to another ex- cept perhaps in onomatopoeic words. As Fedric Jameson has un- derscored, "the sign has no natural fitness in and of itself' (Jameson 1972: 30). Therefore, the signifier which is associated with a signi- fied can take any form since there is no essential core of meaning that it must retain to function as the signifier for that specific sign. A major point about this non-natural bond between signified and the signifier is that language is aleatory. Aleatory comes from the Latin alea, meaning chance, as in the game of dice or ludo. There is, therefore, an element of freeplay which makes language possi- ble.

The second implication is that the sign is contingent. This is because the relationship between the signified and the signifier is motivated by social convention which is culturally necessary. This is also a challenge to any essentialist conception of the sign. In fact, by buttressing the arbitrary nature of the sign, Lentricchia argues that Saussurean linguistics "situates discourse in its true home in human history and by so doing subverts the formalist telos of timelessness" (Lentricchia 1980:119). Consequently, when we take up the question of what semiotics can contribute to the study of Achebe and the study of the post-colonial narrative, the peculiar worldliness of his works and of this narrative, clearly become cru- cial. It is from this perspective that we can apprehend the works of Achebe and the post-colonial narrative as constituting a specific form of language game or "rhetoric of temporality".

The arbitrary nature of the sign has a third implication for a semiotic analysis. This is the fact that the sign is part of a system defined by a peculiar form of difference. In other words, the mem- bers of a system are defined by their relationship to other members in the system. Thus to understand X we must see it in the light of its relationship with Y, for the distinctive quality of X is manifest in this difference between X and Y. This implication of the arbi- trary nature of the sign is neatly summarized by Saussure:

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... in language there are only differences without positive terms (quoted in Lentricchia, p, 123).

We need to put an alert finger in the paradox in "differences without positive terms". This implies that in a system the concepts are defined not by their positive content but negatively by their relations with other terms in the system. It is impossible therefore, for any particular object or term in a system to stand out as a tran- scendental a priori.

How do these implications of the arbitrary nature of the sign buttress an understanding of a novel like Arrow of God7 In this regard, we need to see Arrow of God as a system constituted by specific objects or isotopies. To term isotopy is used here in its sense in the semantic theory ofA. J. Greimas (1970: 188). He has defined an isotopy as a complex of manifold semantic categories making possible the uniform reading of a narrative. This is be- cause the relationship between the semantic categories buttress the coherence in the text as a system. Thus this relationship between the isotopies in the novel is represented in the semiotic square in Figure 1:

Ezeulu

Goodcountry Figure 1

Winterbottom

Nwaka

As the arrows show the opposition exists between two pairs of isotopies i. e.

Ezeulu Winterbottom and

Nwaka Goodcountry

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However, the interesting aspect of the movement of the arrows in our semiotic square is that they foreground the nature of the relationship between the various entities and not their specific con- tent per se. So although the entities that serve as isotopies identify specific characters (i. e. Ezeulu, Nwaka, Winterbottom, and Good- country) in the novel, Arrow of God, the analysis that will follow will not become an account on characterization as it is usually pur- sued in traditional practical criticism. The main emphasis will be on the function of these characters as isotopies. But before we come to these functions it is important that we address the issue of lan- guage games.

On a primary level of significance, language games amount to a particular way of making sense about the world by explaining the potential of a specific vocabulary model by projecting it as attrac- tive and excluding other vocabularies and interests. At the core of this understanding of language games is the very fact that language is contingent. But the fact that a specific language game is favoured at a time does not preclude the non-existent of other vocabularies. Such vocabularies may exist in what Sartre calls bad faith. In his discussion of language games in the works of Jean-Francois Lyotard, for instance, Segal notes that he (Lyotard) is receptive to the very fact that "justice is a matter of a particular language game". In addition, Lyotars analyses language games in terms of what he calls the pragmatic triangle". Accordingly:

[W]hen language games are said to be different, it means that in the prag- matic triangle, a given pole willbe forgotten or completely neutralized, taken to be superfluous (Segal 1992: 211).

The contingency of language is indeed the ground rule for un- derstanding the unstable nature of signification. In the realm of value it is this factor that accounts for on the one hand the percep- tion of truth in the West, and on the other hand, its translation and reinscription in the post-colonial context. Beginning with Plato, truth in the Western imagination was constituted as the Idea. The work of art and the world out there amounted to an inferior repre-

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sentation of this Ideal. The work of the artist amounted to an imita- tion, a product of a pre-existent imitation. It is this lack of certitude in the authenticity of his work, that earned the artist the appellation of a liar in the Platonic vocabulary. But with the French revolution and the Romantic movement, the mind of the artist and his peculiar intention began to take hold of the imagination.

This tendency touched the whole spectrum of life in Europe. It revolutionized artistic creation. The Romantic poets challenged the notion of art as imitation. In its place art was conceived as the unique product of the artist' s vision, the sole spring of his genius. And this genius thrives in its unrestrained power of freedom cel- ebrated in Wordsworth's "The Prelude":

now free, Free as a bird to settle where I will;

and in "Ode to the West Wind" Shelley urges:

Be thou, spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

The fact that truth was made rather than found affected the emer- gence of post-colonial discourse in more fundamental ways. The works of intellectuals such as Blyden, the Negritude poets, and Frantz Fanon, amounted to a reconstruction of truth as it is con- ceived in the West. It amounted to a reinscription of a vocabulary model with the intention of de-emphasizing the Western truth and making it less favourable. (Mudimbe 1989; Soyinka 1976; Wauthier 1966).

Language games as we have defined it here flourishes in the exercise of power. In this connection it is no longer a mere vocabu- lary model but more importantly, it amounts to a discourse.

In the post-colonial narrative, discourse has a twin significance. First and foremost, there is the more intrinsic significance whereby the post-colonial narrative, like other narratives, is distinguished from other literary genres by its diegetic character. Diegesis (i. e. telling) as used in Plato's The Republic, distinguish ~ th Cnarrati cc

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form from drama which is characterized by the mode of mimesis. But apart from this intrinsic formal significance of the post-colo- nial narrative, there is also its basic sociality which is manifest in the fact that it is saturated with the different ideological currents operating at one and the same time. Such fields of tension as we noted earlier give rise to specific forms of language games.

In the post-colonial narrative, also, language games function through two main media namely, allegory and parody. The two functions describe the spillage of the text both inwards and out- wards. In other words, parody is more functional in the description of the internal relations in the text, whereas allegory is instrumen- tal in understanding external relations of the text. Thus, the post- colonial narrative as discourse functions not only as text, where text comes from the Latin verb textere, meaning to weave, sug- gesting a sequence of sentences or utterances interwoven structur- ally and semantically. But it also functions in relation with other texts, other discourses, and language games. Consequently, our un- derstanding of the post-colonial narrative involves our reading of the text itself and also our reading of other texts which intersect and compliment other texts. Above all, the formalist buttress of the text as a self-sufficient entity, a well-wrought urn is undermined. In place of textual autonomy therefore, the significant aspect of the text is its relational function. As Jameson has stressed:

Such a definit ion o f the central elements o f the work is therefore a relat ional or funct ional one, and depends fully as much on an awareness o f wha t the e lement is not.'., as o f wha t the element is (Jameson 1972: 42).

II

The isotopies in Figure I are informed by an interplay between two categories in Arrow of God namely, Umuaro and Government Hill. The interplay between the two categories also shows that the novel is constituted by two subsystems. In terms of form this im- plies that there are basically two plots in the novel - - there is the

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Ezeulu plot supplemented by the Winterbottom plot. But histori- cally, the subsystems are indicative of the two historical realities that converge and complicate the material of the action. In other words, Umuaro stands for traditional Igbo society while Govern- ment Hill stands for the presence of the British colonial system. In the course of the action, these two systems converge and the lives of the key characters are complicated by this convergence.

It is within this interplay that we can understand the function of the isotopies. The category of Umuaro is constituted by the oppo- sition between Ezeulu and Nwaka while the category of Govern- ment Hill is marked by the opposition between Winterbottom and Goodcountry. The relationship between the elements in a specific category is achieved through parody.

Parody is not used here in the sense of imitation for the purpose of ridicule. Here it implies parody as ironic signalling of difference at the heart of similarity. Parody in this sense enacts both change and cultural continuity and as Linda Hutcheon has argued, para

has both the sense of against or counter to and near or beside (Hutcheon 1986: 183; Birch 1991: 1). In addition parody is a repre- sentation of a culture's willingness to dismantle dominant discourse while making some new sense of received notions. And:

it offers evidence that a culture has not despaired of making some kind of sense out of its own hieroglyphics (Gottesman 1990: 1).

Umuaro is configurated by a specific symbolic order. First and foremost, it is a non-despotic social organization. It is a stateless society without a central king, and therefore there is no privileged source that is fixed and possesses all social wealth. At the same time, the inhabitants of Umuaro have created Ulu as a symbolic order representing identity and as a source of coherence. This sym- bolic function has an intellectual validity. As an idea, Ulu assures a sense of solidarity in the minds of the inhabitants of the six vil- lages that make up Umnaro. Thus, the exactitude of social action in Umuaro can be guaged from the symbolic quality of Ulu. It is from this symbolic encoding of Ulu that we can appreciate not

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only its subsequent re-encoding and anulment as the language game in Umuaro is re-organized in the light of new realities.

Achebe has told us that the six villages had lived separately in the past; and as a result they were vulnerable to the terrorism of Abam - - a mercenary group that usually struck at night and carted the population into slavery. In their desire to end this terrorism, the elders of the six villages met and agreed to create a deity who will protect their lives. The creation of Ulu led to the final amalgama- tion of the six villages. In this account we see at work the function of what Paul de Man calls "rhetoric of temporality" which mani- fests in the relationship between two temporal axes, the past and the present. The temporal connection is characteristic of two oppo- sitions: terrorism versus desire. It is in the axis of desire when the new commonwealth of Umuaro is constituted that the natural domi- nation under Abam is disavowed. In other words, the inscription of Umuaro occludes the vocabulary model characteristic of Abam (i. e. terrorism) and of privileges desired as favourable.

In the semiotic square in Figure 1, the commonwealth that is consolidated in Umuaro is manifest in the relationship between the isotopies Ezeulu and Nwaka. Ezeulu is both the chief character in the novel and the chief priest to the unifying deity in Umuaro i. e. Ulu. It is within this function as chief priest that we can understand his functions. Thus, he is the isotopy that conveys the sense of identity in Umuaro since he also serves as an index to understand- ing the function of his deity. Ulu' s function include protection and regeneration. He protects the people against the Abam terrorism, and he is also the guardian of the agricultural cycle. The content of Ezeulu's prayer at the newmoon is an eloquent testimony of the functions of Ulu:

Ulu, I thank you for making me see another new moon... As this is the moon of planting may the six vil lages plant with profit. May we escape danger in the farm ... And let our wives bear male children (Arrow of God, p. 60).

Ulu's function is both metaphysical and religious and, as the text of the prayer testifies, the inhabitants of Umuaro sublimate

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themselves to this spiritual essence. It is also this sublimation, this surrender to the powers of the deity that assures solidarity and iden- tity in the minds of the inhabitants. Thus as long as that identity is assured, i. e. as long as Ulu is the banner around which the inhab- itants of Umuaro rally, Ezeulu's position is equally assured: he sights the new moon, announces the date for the pumpkin leaves festival, eats the sacred yams and leads the inhabitants in their worship. He mediates between the deity and the society. He is also endowed with a peculiar ambivalence in the novel. This ambiva- lence is noticed in the two entrances to Ezeulu's Obi. First there is a usual long threshold at the front. Secondly, there is a short one on the right "as you entered". Now, the usual, long threshold is for mortals - - elders, people of Umuaro and visitors. The short thresh- old on the other hand links Ezeulu to his deity:

His Obi w a s built differently from other men 's huts. There was the usual, long threshold in front but also a shorter one on the right as you entered (p. 1).

There are also two wives, Matefi and Llgoye. Another indicator to this ambivalence in the first incident of the novel (pages 1-3) is the presence of two children - - Obiageli and Nwafo. Now, Obiageli represents that half of Ezeulu which is mortal, his sersuons half. We can note that Obiageli tugs at her mother's clothes, who is the favourite and younger wife, Ugoye. The half represented by Obiageli is also that half of Ezeulu which is haughty, curious, and doubtful. Obiageli for instance, insists:

I said does the moon kill people (p. 2).

Nwafo by contrast, represents Ezeulu's spiritual half:

I can see things where other men are blind. That is why I am known and at the same time I am unknowable (p. 132).

Nevertheless, there is also an element of Ezeulu's prayer in the opening scene in the novel which indicates the unstable nature of the sense of identity in Umuaro. So as Ezeulu prays, we are told that he "prays with bitterness in his mouth" (p. 6). Ezeulu's bitter-

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ness is inspired by forces in Umuaro which are struggling to under- mine its sense of coherence. This unstable nature of the identity in Umuaro is manifest even in Ezeulu. When Ezeulu declares to his friend: "I am known and at the same time I am unknowable", he is in fact touching on the paradox that is implicit in his being. In this declaration Ezeulu subjectifies himself, valorizing himself to a tran- scendental subject. It is in fact this false pedestal that accounts for some of the actions he takes in the novel. Some of these actions are indicative of the tragic intensity in the novel. Thus Ezeulu's even- tual madness towards the end of the action is precipitated by his excessive ambition to subject himself over Umuaro. Firstly, there is his subtle confession that Oduche has been sent to the mission school as a sacrifice: Akuebue accuses Ezeulu of having sent his son, Oduche, to the new religion in order to please Winterbottom:

Your father and grandfather did not do what they did to please a stranger (p. 132).

Ezeulu, we are told, is stung by this accusation and then he launches himself into a defence of his action. Contrary to specula- tions in Umuaro, Ezeulu tells his friend that he has not sent Oduche to school in order to succumb or please Winterbottom. He begins with a proverb: "A disease that has never been seen before cannot be cured with every day herbs." The subject of the proverb, "dis- ease", is compared with the colonial incursion into Umuaro. Ezeulu further points out that the inaccessibility of this new epidemic to knowledge, and known curative measures, compels man to offer a sacrifice with an animal, the magnitude of which can match the power of the new holocaust. At the end of the explanation and allusion that accompany the proverb, Ezeulu shifts to another an- ecdote which dwells on the subject of sacrifice and the human im- age to overcome evil. In this anecdote he recalls that an unfortu- nate generation may be "pushed beyond the end of things and their back is broken and hung over fire". When a man is in such a dan- gerous precipice, where his existence is threatened with annihila- tion Ezeulu says that "they may sacrifice their own blood". Having

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said this, Ezeulu again reverts to another proverb namely: "that a man who has nowhere else to put his hand for support puts it on his own knee" (p. 134). Further, he weaves another of anecdote into his speech: "That was why our ancestors when they were worriors of Abam sacrificed not a stranger but one of themselves and made the great medicine which they called Ulu (p. 134). At the end of his anecdote, Akuebue is no longer in doubt of the motive behind Ezeulu's action: he has sent Oduche to school as a sacrifice. The question however, is why this circumlocution in Ezeulu's speech. This tortuous syntax is in fact borne out of his innate desire to mystify himself.

From a moral point of view Ezeulu's action to have sent Ezeulu to the mission school is wrong. This is because such an action is inimical to the traditional value which he represents. The second point that disavows Ezeulu's commitment to the coherence in Umuaro and which strengthens his subjectification is his testimony against Umuaro in the land case with Okperi. Ezeulu's argument that the piece of land in question belongs to Okperi can be looked at from two dimensions. On the one hand, he wins accolade in the eyes of Winterbottom who sees him as the only sincere man in Umuaro. But such acceptance opens up Ezeulu to tragic conse- quences since it serves to alienate him from the needs of his own people. Apart from this, Ezeulu's subjectification is manifest in his unwillingness to treat his grown children as adults. Such subjectification for a chief priest, a negation of this traditional role, confirms Nwaka's fears that Ezeulu nurses the ambition to be king.

The point to be emphasized however, is that this flow from the state of identity to the state of negation of identity exemplified in the character of Ezeulu is parodic in nature. It functions in the novel to highlight the ultimate non-fixity of truth and social actions. And in the isotopy, Ezeulu, it functions to buttress the non-fixity of subjectification.

Related to this idea of the non-fixity of subjectification is the theme of madness in Achebe's novels. We should put an alert fin-

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ger on the fact that madness assumes a source of coherence in Achebe's works. Why is it that his major characters usually skirt the thin-dividing line between sanity and insanity? Why is it that at the moment of their glory and at the height of their power they normally yield to powers that show their actions as incongruous.

Madness in Achebe's works is not merely a reflection of social norms and the forces tending towards disequilibrium. But it is also an instance of a language game which functions through parody in order to highlight the non-fixity of truth. Madness does not imply a lack of sense, it rather shows a shift in the relationship between sound and sense, i. e. words are rendered weak to carry the weight of their original sense or meaning. There is a specific sense of parody that is quite instructive here. Para as Hutcheon notes, comes from the Greek meaning counter or against. Achebe's main char- acters viz., Ezeulu, Nwibe, Nanga, and Sam, are caught up in this disequilibrium. They serve to buttress the delicate link between power and political will. Within their specific contexts, these char- acters are endowed with the power to mould opinion and to influ- ence the lives of their fellows. But more often than not, a tragic intensity in their characters always tending towards subjectification, pushes them beyond to the state of chaos where their sense of re- sponsibility is annulled. In the short story, "The Man" for instance, it is Nwibe's lack of restrain at the very decisive moment that opens the gate to the inate madness in his being as he chases the real madman to the market place. In Arrow of God, Ezeutu's loneli- ness, the manifestation of his demented self, is occasioned in his refusal to eat the extra seed yams so that the harvest will be an- nounced. The crisis Umuaro is plunged into due to Ezeulu's intran- sigence anticipates the confusion that encircles the Nigerian nation at the moment. As this is being written, tension is mounting on account of the suspension of the results of the presidential election held on June 12, 1993, by the National Electoral Commission (NEC). The confusion is thickened by the reticence of the presi- dent, Babangida, and the clamour of the Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) which is calling for the disruption of the transition

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to the Third Republic. At issue here is neither NEC's suspension of the results; nor the campaign of ABN. It is the silence of Babangida, a silence that presages a gloom, for the president has the power to deal with any force that stands in the way of change. But why does it seem that the president lacks the will to exercise his power?

Nevertheless, apart from the nullification of Ezeulu as a sub- ject, parody functions more intensely in the link between Ezeulu and Nwaka. Within the orbit of Umuaro, Nwaka functions as a negation of Ezeulu. The more trenchant instance of this negation is Nwaka's passionate and nationalist orientated argument for a war against Okperi. He underscores that, contrary to Ezeulu's specula- tion of a possibly unjust war, the war against Okperi is just and inevitable. The cadence of the speech, sketched out in its deduc- tive logic, manifest in the movement from the general to the par- ticular are indicative of its parodic intensity.

The narrator prefaces Nwaka's speech by telling us about the character: "He was one of the three people in all the six villages who had taken the highest title in the land" (p. 15). This foreshort- ening places the character in perspective. For we are invited to listen to a man of stature in Umuaro. So Nwaka greets the audience and thereafter launches into the fibre of his debate. From the ab- stract level, he intones thus:

Wisdom is like a goatskin bag; every man carries his own. Knowledge of the land is also like that (p. 16).

This abstraction is also a testimony to the authenticity of his opponent's position. Nevertheless, the truth of Ezeulu's argument is not binding nor natural. In fact, Nwaka denaturalizes the truth that is implicit in Ezeulu's debate. Thus:

But we also know that the lore of the land is beyond the knowledge of many fathers (p. 16).

Such slippage or shift is inevitable for Umuaro is an oral culture where the records of past events are not documented. Thus, it is

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very likely that each father must have told different tales on the same event. Nevertheless by the time Nwaka comes directly to the gist of his speech:

My father told me a different story. He told me that Okperi people were wonderers (p. 16).

We are no longer in doubt about the gap that exists in Ezeulu's argument. In addition, when we place Nwaka's speech within the rubric of the semiotic square in Figure 1, we see the ground slip- ping from Ezeulu's feet. The puncturing by Nwaka on Ezeulu's position or what the narrator calls the "last glancing blow which killed it ..o" (p. 17) begins to assume its own metaphysical dimen- sion within the historical ambience of Umuaro. It is not only that Nwaka is emboldened by Ezeidemili, the chief priest of the rival deity to Ulu, i. eo Idemili (we recall that in the new alliance the autochtonous Idemili is occluded to the silent pole of language games in Umuaro with the creation of Ulu). There is the fact that Nwaka's contradiction of Ezeulu is indeed a reminder that Ezeulu and his deity are becoming irrelevant. The point here is that the Abam terrorism has been dissipated. He says: "We have no quarrel with Ulu. He is still our protector, even though we no longer fear Abam worriors at night" (p. 28).

The relationship between Ezeulu and Nwaka, dialectical as it is, is indicative of a specific form of language game in Achebe's novel, one which functions through parody. Thus, rather than be encapsulated within the subjecL Ezeulu, parody reveals the dis- mantling of such notions. Consequently, in terms of the history of Umuaro, in terms of the constitution of the chief character, Ezeulu, and in terms of the relationship between Ezeulu and Nwaka, we are reminded of an ontological fact namely, the unstable character of the sign.

The function of parody in Arrow of God is analogous to the constant shift in the relationship between the main characters in Achebe's "The Madman". At the centre of the action is Nwibe, who has expressed an intention to join the group of ozo title hold-

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ers in his town. The ozo is an "honoured hierarchy". The "men of title" i. e., the council that confers the title on the deserving indi- vidual, do not doubt Nwibe's integrity for they confirm that his "proposal is excellent". However, they insist that "when we see we shall believe", which was their tacit way of telling Nwibe to reconsider his intention. But in the course of the action, Nwibe comes into contact with a madman which serves to change his for- tune, leading to his insanity, disqualification from the title, and the emergence of an obscure doctor into prominence.

The success of the narrative is predicated on its parodic inten- sity. There are two markets, two days separating the markets; there are two wives and two fat-bottomed market women with their cor- responding two men-folk (all making "four hefty beasts of the bush"). Then there are two madmen and two mad doctors. In the course of the action, the number two comes into active opposition in order to threaten and undermine anything that can emerge as a rigid code. In short, in the account truth is bracketed and ques- tioned so that we are confronted with the fact that there is no truth. There is for example, the exchange of words between Nwibe's wives, Udenkwo and Mgboye. The source of that exchange is that Mgboye's dog "has put his shit-mouth into my (Udenkwo's) soup pot". As a result, Udenkwo has smacked the erring dog. But Mgboye's reasoning on the incident puts Udenkwo's action into question. Mgboye asks: "Is it easier to hit a dog than cover a pot?" Then there is that encounter between Nwibe and a madman in the stream. We consider this encounter as the moment of semiosis in the text which is realized in the relationship between Nwibe and the madman. In the first instance, we already know that Nwibe is rational and sane. Within this rational discourse-frame he has ex- pressed an intention to become an ozo title holder. Within his com- munity and in terms of his relationship with the council of elders, it can be deduced that Nwibe's action is circumscribed by the domi- nant (rational) discourse in his society. But at the same time, it is a relationship that is arbitrary. In other words, society is capable of generating a counter discourse within which what was previously

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conceived as rational can be challenged and reinterpreted. This is the moment the madman steps into the picture. First, he translates Nwibe into new signifiers viz:

a) the hefty man who brought three others like him and whipped me out of my hut in the Afo market;

b) the vagabond who descended on me from the lorry in the mid- dle of my highway;

c) the same fellow who sets his children to throw stones at me and make remarks about their mother's buttocks.

Nwibe is none of these. But we are again at a problematic: what is the truth? The conclusion that emerges from the madman's text is that truth is temporal, acquiring its exactitude in the light of the subject's experience. In this context, truth for the madman mani- fests itself in terms of the forms in which he has succeeded in trans- lating Nwibe. It is not ironical that Achebe should engage us in this complex language game through the reasoning of a madman? But this is the point:the faculty of the madman immerses us into the arbitrary nature of the language, the fact that we are involved in semiosis. In addition, we are told that out of"instinctive modesty", Nwibe has turned to face the forest away from approaches to the stream. This action guarantees a particular assurance for Nwibe. But at the same time the madman undermines that assurance and modesty as he watches Nwibe and smiled "at his parted behind" each time he bends to cup water from the shallow stream to his head and body. When the madman laughs, he undermines Nwibe' s modesty and assurance. This is followed by an exchange of roles between Nwibe and the madman. Thus, both Nwibe and the mad- man are mad and sane within the same context.

This will bring us to a set of conclusions. Within the subsystem of Umuaro in Arrow of God the relationship between Ezeulu and Nwaka is marked by contradiction exemplified through a particu- lar form of language game, namely parody. This relationship is inevitable since Umuaro is in a state of flux. Abam worriors do no longer strike at night, ichie marks are no longer used on faces, then

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there is the arrival of the mission school, and the construction of the new road that links Okperi and Umuaro.

The second subsystem, Government Hill, reflected in the rela- tionship between Winterbottom and Goodcountry, is not related by contradiction but by contrarity and complementarity. Winterbottom is representative of the colonial system. He is representative not only in the sense that he speaks for and acts for the British colonial system in Okperi, but because through his actions we are given an insight into the operation of the system.

The narrator makes a reference to Winterbottom as "the whiteman" towards the end of the eighth incident, we are told that Winterbottom stopped the war between Umuaro and Okperi and in addition, "not satisfied that he had stopped the war, had gathered all the guns in Umuaro" (p. 28). Accordingly, such action has earned him the accronym of breaker of guns or otiji egbe. By gathering and breaking the guns, Winterbottom emerges not merely as a peace-maker, but as an archetype of British colonialism. His ac- tion is in line with the colonial process, that of pacification. The war between Umuaro and Okperi becomes the weakest link in the traditional chain which renders the tradition vulnerable to external intervention.

However, his intervention in the crisis between the two com- munities opens up to a knowledge of Winterbottom as a colonial District Officer. Thus, in the ninth incident we are told that he has spent fifteen years in the Nigerian service. He has come to see his mission to Nigeria as a career:

His strong belief in the value of the British mission in Africa was strongly enough, strengthened during the Cameroon campaign of 1916 (p. 30).

But the full philosophical detail of that career is given in the reference to extracts from George Allen's The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.

The extract is in fact a summary of the intellectual project of colonialism. The land is conceived in terms of its deadly fertility; while the people "live under insanitary conditions", and "life is

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strenuous." This endows the colonialist with a mission, viz: to shape the destinies of men, and "coax events." It is such details of func- tion that Winterbottom and the residents of Government Hill come to execute.

In that execution, we are brought to an important aspect of colo- nial policy - - i. e. indirect rule. In dealing with the local authori- ties, Lord Lugard introduced a system of indirect rule, i.e. a policy that makes it possible for the adminsitration to relate to the people through a central authority such as kings or chiefs. In northern Ni- geria where the central organization exists in the form of emirs, it was possible to impose the system of indirect rule with less diffi- culty.

As Robert Wren has noted, Lugard found the north much more malleable on account of its autocratic emirs, coupled with his ad- ministrative fiat manifest in the check on missionary activities and control on modernization (Wren 1980: 8). Nevertheless, in the south and particularly in eastern Nigeria, the policy of indirect rule was bedevilled by difficulties due to lack of centratised authority. The Igbos, for instance, constitute a stateless society, and authority and social rule revolved around age-grades and kindred groups.

The District Officers in the east, exemplified in Winterbottom, understood the problem better than Lugard. For instance Lugard had recommended that the first sons of chiefs be educated to suc- ceed their fathers. But among the Igbos it is the least likely succes- sor to the throne who is sent to school. Ezeulu, for instance, sends Oduche to the mission school instead of Nwafor or Edogo, the more likely successor as chief priest to Ulu, and Nwaka we are told, "sent a son - - the one who seemed least likely among his children to become a good farmer" (p. 215). It is such contradic- tion that shows that even within the colonial system, different lan- guage games are being played.

Such language games are either moving towards centripetal forces while others are moving towards centrifigual forces. In the note from the Lieutenant Governor, for instance, Winterbottom is reminded of the need to appoint warrant chiefs. Such an appoint-

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ment which reflects official govemment positions, tends towards the centre while Winterbottom's casual treatment reflects the ten- dency toward centrifugal forces which do not even agree with the centre (pp. 180-181).

The activities of the residents of Government Hill is comple- mented of that of the missionaries. In the semiotic square in figure I, these missionaries are represented by John Jaja Goodcountry, catechist of St. Marks C. M. S. Church. The activities of Good- country is informed by the disease of men like Samuel Ajayi Crowther and the Belgian Placide Frans Temples. Of these men, Mudimbe notes that:

they were neither the best of all missionaries... Yet one easily recognizes that each one (of them) in his time, was an excellent example of sound commit- ment to religious interest and imperial policy (Mudimbe: 48).

These missionaries endeavoured as it were to domesticate the tenents of Christianity in Africa. Crowther for instance, believed in the regeneration of Africa by Africans. However Mudimbe fur- ther notes, that in presenting his experience, men like the northerners depended on the colonialist discourse. Thus, they tend to refer to contemporary classification of savages and the need to convert Africans to civilization (Mudimbe: 49). In Arrow of God, Good- country, regards these python as a pagan fetish we are told that he never compromised with non-christians over things as "sacred ani- mals". Thus:

Within weeks of his sojourn in Umuaro he was ready for a little war against the royal pythen ... (p. 214).

But the more complementary role played by Goodcountry is manifest against the background of the crisis over the New Yam Feast (p. 215). In this regard he succeeded in winning converts by encouraging them to bring their "one yam to church instead of giv- ing it Ulu" (p. 215). It is this action more than the policy of indirect rule that served to nulify the old discourse in Umuaro and more people are converted into Christianity.

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III

So far, the semiotic square in figure I has served as the guiding thread for our discussion. Thus, we have charted out the relation- ship between the entities understood as isotopies. Such relation- ship we have argued is affected through parody for we noted that the isotopies are linked by binary opposition particularly in the relationship betweem Ezeulu and Nwaka. This relationship is pa- rodic for the isotopies are informed by their difference so that we cannot understand an entity merely in terms of its positive identity but also in terms of factors that stand to negate it. But more impor- tantly, this parodic condition is feasible for change is a crucial force in Arrow of God. It is important to note that the parody in the text inheres in the internal relationship in narrative. But there is another form of relationship which is basically external in nature. The lan- guage game at play in this external relationship is allegorical in nature.

In traditional scholarship, allegory is defined as a text that con- sists of a level of meaning that is different from the superficial one. Such deep level of meaning, can be ethical, religious, or even po- litical nature. Within the romantic tradition allegory is conceived of as capable of elliciting unitary meaning. Thus it was conceived as inferior to symbol which was seen as more connotative in na- ture. However, with the increasing influence of the arbitrary nature of the sign the conception of semiotics as a theory of representa- tion, allegory is now freed from the fixated and one-dimensional interpretation it had received in the traditional scholarship. In fact since allegory as a sign refers back to another sign that precedes it, it is like all forms of significations, dynamic in character. It is within this conjuncture that allegory regains its stature as a "rhetoric of temporality". In his rehabilitation of the allegorical sign from the cold fetishization it had suffered in the hands of the romantics, Paul de Man buttresses that it is the truthful discourse of the pour sol, for it de-naturalizes meaning and truth and renders entities as unstable and alleatory (Lentricchia 1980: 293). It is this refusal to

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yield to the specificity of the discourse of romanticism, to emerge as a sign function, that has endowed allegory as a veritable func- tion of langugage game in the post-colonial narrative. As Stephen Slemon has persuasively argued, allegory in the post-colonial nar- rative serves to reconstitute our traditional reading and understand- ing of post-colonial history. This is because allegory is:

engaged in the process of destabilizing and transforming our fixed ideas of history (Slemon 1988: 144).

The link between literature and post-colonial history is intimate and dialectical. On the surface, the narrative objectification of post- colonial history may assume different, often contradictory forms. It could be the depiction of scenes taken from history, the portrait of actual actions which are moored in history, or the reflection of historical subjects. But importantly, the writer is a historical sub- ject, and although his work does not approximate to fact, it neces- sarily reshapes facts so that we can see their searing outlines in their true beauty and ugliness. It is specifically in this matrix that the writer becomes an agent of fi'eedom for his works bring us to the problematic viz: what kind of circumstances had precipitated the kind of creativity before us? Why did Achebe write the way he had written?

In fact, Ngugi wa Thiong'O has shown that the relationship between the post-colonial writer and his past is gauged in the writ- er's commitment to reshaping the outlines of that past. Thus, Ngugi says: "what the African novelist has attempted to do is restore the African character to his history" (Ngugi wa Thiong'o 1972: 43). This re-echoes Achebe's avowed commitment to history viz: to show his people where the rain has began to beat them.

Therefore, post-colonial narrative essentially shifts the material of history sideways so that we can see its modes of operation. In this regard, it functions as a form of re-presentation by enabling us to see history from the prism of the creative imagination. It is also in this power to reconstitute fixed notions about history and reality that allegory functions as a veritable instrument of language games

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in the post-colonial narrative. And in Arrow of God we will but- tress this function by citing just two instances.

The first instance of allegory is implicated in the issues sur- rounding the appointment of warrant chiefs. As we noted earlier, the appointment of warrant chiefs is indicative of the policy of indirect rule introduced by the British colonial administration. The relationship between Winterbottom and Ezeulu as isotopies in the novel can be shifted to another level of significance so that we can see it as an index to understanding a particular moment in Nigerian history. This relationship is complicated by the fact that none of the characters understands each other. The reason for this misap- prehension is predicated on the fact that the two isotopies are in- dices of divergent cultural ethos and world views. Winterbottom comes to Ezeulu with an air of superiority and also of wonder. And Ezeulu's impressions of Winterbottom particularly in the early part of the narrative is problematic and tragic. As Winterbottom dis- arms the men of Umuaro in the land dispute with Okperi, he re- duces the men to a level of submission. At the same time he is intrigued by the seeming courage of Ezeulu, who in his testimony against his people, is perceived as courageous and worthy of admi- ration. And in the course of the action, Winterbottom implores Ezeulu to send one of his children to the mission school. Ezeulu appreciates such overtures and in sending Oduche to the mission school he does not only nurse a feeling that some form of friend- ship exists between him and Winterbottom, but he equally is aware that the whiteman has become a force to reckon with, for as he notes "the world is a mask dancing and man must dance the dance prevalent in his time" (p. 189). So he tells Oduche, "I have sent you to be my eyes there" (p. 189).

Nevertheless, it is the incarceration of Ezeulu at Government Hill that serves to objectify him as a colonial subject. In the drama between Ezeulu and Winterbottom we are allowed to see the pit- fall of the system of indirect rule. It is a system that is imposed on the colonized from the outside without due consideration of the nature of the traditional system among the people. In his casual

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reaction to the system, Winterbottom is demonstrating an aware- ness that although Indirect Rule had worked in Northern Nigeria due to the feudalistic arrangement there, it is fraught with peril in eastern Nigeria, particularly among the Igbos. It is not only im- practicable since the Igbos have no central authority, but where it has been imposed it breeds tyrants like Chief Ikedi. So this alle- gorical treatment enables us to re-interprete a particular colonial policy in Nigeria.

Apart from this, there is the more intellectual and historical di- mension of colonialism. The colonialist creates the colonized on the basis of inferiority in order to subdue his land. As Homi Bhabba has noted

the objective of colonial discourse is to construe the colonized as a popula- tion of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin in order to justify con- quest (Bhabba 1986: 154).

In recreating this untruth, Chinua Achebe invites us to see its very weak foundation. In this regard, allegory as a sign serves to de-naturalize the basis of colonial discourse. Thus, the cohesion in Umuaro serves to buttress that Africa was not a long night of savagary. Umuaro does not only have cohesion, but it is equally dynamic. The cohesion as we see derives its identity in the deity Ulu which in turn serves as the basis of social action in Umuaro. At the same time, Umuaro is not a fixed entity. The conflict in the relationship between Ezeulu and Nwaka which is further compli- cated against the background of the colonial intervention serves to show that although that society has cohesion, it has reached a point where its constituents must undergo a radical overhaul. By recreat- ing traditional Igbo society in its solidity as endowed with order and dynamism, Achebe has reaffirmed his belief in the humanity of Nigerian traditional societies; and thus, has refuted the claims of the colonialists. It is crucial to note that this allegorical re-read- ing of post-colonial narrative show that traditional societies could "fall apart" because some of their individual forces could no longer guarantee the freedom of the individual and consequently in a chang-

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ing world, they have to open up to new forces. Indeed this reshap- ing of history does not only proliferate in the novels of Achebe. It is the main preoccupation of Armah's The Healers which rearticulates African history within an intellectual framework called the way. The way is a grammar that defines pristine Africa.

Understanding statements made about the post-colonial narra- tive and the ability to make such statements implies a sensitivity to the particularity of the critic's situation and the historicity of the critic's knowledge. Such an understanding and sensitivity implicit in it illuminate the vocabulary network in the post-colonial narra- tive. The post-colonial narrative is constituted in the belief and function of a specific form of language game whose primordial identity is in elaborating the historical destiny of the post-colonial nation. The existence of language games poses a serious challenge to the interpretation of post-colonial narrative. It disavows any method of interpretation which objectifies an essentialist under- standing of entities in the text and privileges a method which will reveal not only the particularity of the author's position, but also the non-fixity of entities in this position and the non-fixity of his- tory.

The main concern of this essay, therefore, is to investigate the operation of language games in the post-colonial narrative by us- ing Achebe's Arrow of God as a basis for our analysis. We have shown that a knowledge of the arbitrary nature of the sign enables us to understand the function of language games in Arrow of God. In this novel, language games function through parody, particu- larly in elaborating the relationship between entities understood as isotopies and it also functions through allegory to reconstitute the historical circumstances which inform the material of the text. Fi- nally, we have also discovered that the advantage of semiotics over its contending methods (formalism and positivist sociological ap- proach) is its sensitivity not only to intra-textual relations which are shaped by extra-textual questions, i. e. by historical forces and power relations.

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