Name: Maru Janak JRoll No:20

Paper:14 (African Literature)Email: marujanak17@gmail.com

Submitted to:  Smt. S.B. Gardi Department of English M.K.Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar.

The Brief Overview in The Swamp Dweller

Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian playwright, poet, author, teacher and political activist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986.

Introduction

Soyinka has published hundreds of works, including drama, novels, essays and poetry, and colleges all over the world seek him out as a visiting professor.

Swamp is an area of low-lying, uncultivated ground where water is collected.

Swamp is an area of low-lying well or seasonally flooded land, often having tress and dense shrubs or thickets.

The Meaning of Swamp

The Swamp Dweller Characters

Alu

Makuri

Igwezu

The Beggar

Awuchike

Desala

Kadiye

The play is comparatively short of all of Soyinka’s plays. It relates a story of a poor family residing in Niger Delta region. When the play opens we find Makuri and Alu awaiting for their beloved younger son Igwezu. They fear that their younger song Igwezu should not go missing like their elder son Awuchick, who had gone to the city some ten years ago. Both the brothers had left the village to seek their fortune in the city.

The Swamp Dweller

The Swamp DwellerIt is a play of mood and atmosphere, constructed so as to provide the audience with liberal opportunity to make comparisons and reach judgment. Soyinka makes his points through implied contrasts and comparisons.

In the play,

There is contrast between

father and son

mother- in –law

and daughter-

in- law

the Beggar

and host

twin brothe

rs

The Swamp Dwellers takes a look at the Nigerian society, progressively moving towards the path of retrogression, degeneration, corruption and moral decadence. This is a clear manifestation of the Nigerian society as a class society with all the contradictions and problems inherent in such society. 

Igwezu went into city to earn more in life but he can’t accept the reality of life which is in city. There is starvation for shelter in city, so cold sophisticated life than village so we can say that Igwezu and Awuchike both are suffering because of their acceptance or to much exaggeration of their life. There is Constance struggle or conflict between the old and new ways of life in Africa.

There is the dialogue that old and children are living in village. It means that young are living in city. It means that young are living in city.

Makuri: It’s lie all the young man go into the big town to try their hand at making money only some of them remember their Falk and send word once in a while. Makrui: The city is a large place. You could live there all your life and never meet half the people in it.

Second dialogue shows the reality which lies in city life. In city there is not any feeling in between human being. Even they don’t know each other if they are living near. And this is the harsh reality of city life. You will lose yourself in city.

Traditional

Cultural, social, conventional

Nonwestern attitude,

Joint Family

Village struggles to connect myth

and actuality

Modernity

take in various elements of the so-

called South African tradition or any

tradition

A change in society

Is it all about accepting western ideas, culture

and forgetting the tradition of one’s own

Realism in Two Ways

 In his conversation with Igwezu, the Kadiye asks Igwezu, the Kadiye asks Igwezu repeatedly about how much money he did make in the town.

The Kadiye thinks that had made enough money to buy the whole village. 

TraditionAlu

IgwezuMakuri

Modernity AwuchikeDesala

Critical thinking

Makuri in his words:“Makuri: Dead men don’t go to the city.

They go to hell.”He says so because he wants to so the Alu’s anxiety over Awuchike’s disappearance. Makuri defends his son’s position by saying:

“Makuri: … Awuchike got sick of thisplace and went into the city.”

The found Love bond in Alu and Makuri. The famous essayist Francis Bacon in his, Of Parents and Children emphasizes the importance of choosing children’s profession by their parents not by themselves.

Bacon says: Let parents choose be times the vocations and courses they mean their children should take. But we observe in the play that parents hardly have their control over the sons. Moreover, they are found in the midst of calamities made by nature two some extent and mostly by their twin issues.

Wole Soyinka not only writes about the Nigerian background in a sociological sense, but about human beings, who happen to exist in this particular time and place. He uses his background to add originality to his art. In Soyinka’s plays one makes contact with the Nigerian Society in a meaningful manner from the inside, by means of symbols and images.

The Ibadan Magazine records: “The play does not end on a positive note by showing the villagers casting off their superstitions and marching off to construct dykes and increase the amount of land available for farming.”

Conclusion

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