THREE WEST AFRICAN NOVELISTS: CHINUA ACHEBE, WOLE SOYINKA, AND AYI KWEI ARMAH Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Barthold, Bonnie J., 1940- Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 03/10/2021 19:43:03 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/290381 INFORMATION TO USERS This material was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the original submitted. 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THREE WEST AFRICAN NOVELISTS: CHINUA ACHEBE, WOLE SOYINKA., AND AYI KWEI ARMAH by Bonnie Jo Barthold A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 19 7 5 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE I hereby recommend that this dissertation prepared under my Bonnie Jo Barthold direction by , Three West African Novelists: Chinua Achebe, Wole entitled , _ Soyinka, and Ayi Kwei Armah be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Chops Dissertation Director Date After inspection of the final copy of the dissertation, the following members of the Final Examination Committee concur in its approval and recommend its acceptance:"'-' 6 / hv. C/l'ps This approval and acceptance is contingent on the candidate's adequate performance and defense of this dissertation at the final oral examination. The inclusion of this sheet bound into the library copy of the dissertation is evidence of satisfactory performance at the final examination. STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduc­ tion of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of schol­ arship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED: "jj? To my mother and my daughter iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to my Dissertation Committee for the patience, thoughtfuluess, encouragement, and insights which have made the writing of this dissertation both more enjoyable and more intellectually stim­ ulating than it would otherwise have been. Richard Smyer, the Director of this effort, has been especially helpful, but my gratitude is also -extended to the other members of the Committee: Oliver Sigworth, Sidonie Smith, Fred Rebsamen, and Ingeborg Kohn. I am indebted to Kwadwo Oduro for his assistance with the Akan translations and to Victor Esan for help with the Yoruba. Numerous friends and colleagues have not only borne with me during the preparation of this paper, but have also assisted me with their critical commentary and their help with proofreading and typing. I am especially grateful to Robert Davis, Alexis Ahmad, Candice Corley, and Ann Yabusaki. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS vii ABSTRACT viii CHAPTER ONE. CRITICISM 1 The Quarrel over Roots 2 The Archetypal African Novel 10 Africa as Form 19 Conclusion 32 TWO. TIME 35 Western Time versus African Time 38 West African History and Cultural Change 50 Time in the Novels 58 THREE. CHARACTER 61 Things Fall Apart 63 The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born 80 Perspective 94 FOUR. NARRATIVE STRUCTURE 97 The Keepers of Time ..... 100 The Escape from the Past - . 106 Memory 121 The Narrative Cycle 129 Perspective 136 FIVE. SYMBOLS • 143 The Political-Spiritual Ideal 146 Early Umuaro 146 The Akan Initiates 148 Aiyero 150 The Symbolic Circle 153 The Imprisonment of Cyclic Time: Arrow of God . 157 v vi TABLE OF CONTENTS--Continued Page The Linear Reduction 167 A Man of the People 168 Why Are We So Blest? 178 The Restoration of the Cycle 185 Two Thousand Seasons 187 A Season of Anomy 191 Perspective 203 SIX. TIME AND CRITICAL THEORY 207 LITERATURE CITED . 210 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 1. Guinea Coast Culture Area and Other Major Culture Areas of Africa with the Nations of Ghana and Nigeria Shown in Relation to the Guinea Coast Culture Area 39 vii ABSTRACT After an evaluation of past criticism and an introductory anal­ ysis of the conceptualization of time in West Africa, ten novels by West Africans Chinua Achebe, Wole Scyinka, and Ayi Kwei Armah are ana­ lyzed in terms of character, narrative structure, and the use of symbols Achebe's Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God, and A Man of the People; Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Fragments, Why Are We So Blest?, and Two Thousand Seasons; and Soyinka's The Interpreters and A Season of Anomy. In its focus on specific parts at the expense of the whole, criticism has often implicitly denied the complexity of contemporary African writing. The effort to identify its cultural roots and the attempt to define the archetypal African novel have been part of a gen­ erally prescriptive rather than analytical criticism. The attempt to relate formal aspects of African fiction to African oral tradition and to facets of traditional African culture has been weakened by an uneven sketchiness of analysis and by critics' misconceptions of African oral literature. In the West, the conceptualization of time is primarily linear; in traditional Africa, it was typically cyclic. Because contemporaiy African culture syncretizes aspects of the modern West and of tradi­ tional Africa, there are difficulties in delineating its cultural con­ ceptualization of time. But an analysis of cultural change in West Africa indicates that the traditional cyclic conceptualization of time, viii ix while still strong, is no longer absolute but contingent. ~The fiction of the three vrriters recognizes the contingency of cyclic time but never­ theless embodies its affirmation. Character is consistently drawn in terms of the individual vision at odds with the vision of society. Different conceptualizations of time are consistently shown as the source of this conflict of vision. Either the individual or his society or both may, further, be in conflict with a traditional cyclic conceptualization of time. Narrative structure mimes and thereby affirms a traditional cyclic continuum. Narrative patterns center on the futility of the attempt to escape the past and on the value of memory as embodying not only personal but cultural continuity with the past. The cyclic narra­ tive structure of the novels symbolically remakes time into a cyclic continuum. The three novelists share a common set of symbols that centers an the conflict between a cyclic and a linear conceptualization of time. The symbolic structure of their novels is the struggle between cyclic and linear time, with the novelists' affirmation of the traditional cycle and their denigration of linearity embodied in their shared set of symbols. In the novels which focus specifically on politics, these symbols underscore the militant vision of the three novelists in their attempt to renew the values of the past in answer to the blight of the present. X Throughout the ten novels, there are analogies with Western literature which center on a shared affirmation of cyclic time. Recog­ nizing these analogies may be helpful for the Western reader, but ul­ timately the potential irony embodied in the African use of Western motifs must be acknowledged: often they are used to make a statement about the destructiveness of certain aspects of Western culture.