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Live Burial
Live Burial by Wole Soyinka
Poet Introduction
Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka known as Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, for "in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence",the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta.In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan, and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its campaign for independence from British colonial rule. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years, for volunteering to be a non-government mediating actor.
Soyinka has been a strong critic of successive Nigerian governments, especially the country's many military dictators, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it". During the regime of General Sani Abacha, Soyinka escaped from Nigeria on a motorcycle via the "NADECO Route." Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia." With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. In December 2020, Soyinka described 2020 as the most challenging year in the nation's history. He said: "With the turbulence that characterised year 2020, and as activities wind down, the mood has been repugnant and very negative. I don’t want to sound pessimistic but this is one of the most pessimistic years I have known in this nation and it wasn’t just because of COVID-19. Natural disasters had happened elsewhere, but how have you managed to take such in their strides?"
In Nigeria, Soyinka was a Professor of Comparative literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ifẹ̀. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, he was made professor emeritus.While in the United States, he first taught at Cornell University as Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991 and then at Emory University, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has served as scholar-in-residence at NYU's Institute of African American Affairs and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He has also taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Yale.Soyinka was also a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University in 2008.
Theme of the Poem
1) Sadism
In the poem, we can see how the poet is going through humiliation while he was in a prison cell. The poem starts with the dimension of his cell. It is about sixteen paces by twenty-three. They are behind the bars and watching one suffer was their(guard) great pleasure. It seems they are against truth and humanity.
Tricks to torture
The guards make prisoners' life as equal as hell and they give them third-degree torture . Here is a video showing prisons in Africa and how prisoners live there. It might disturb you to see as i've got that uneasy feel to find one appropriate video to show.
Government officials
Guards
Doctors
Voice of rebellious people
psyche of sadism
Galileo - genius
In the theme of sadism we can see the life of prisioner and how guard finds torturing prisioners pleasuruous.
2) Greek Mythology
Stygian
Stygian comes to us from Styx, the name of the principal river in Hades, the underworld of the dead in Greek mythology. This is the river over which Charon the boatman was said to ferry the spirits of the dead; the Greeks and Romans would place a coin in the mouth or hand of the deceased to serve as fare. It is also the river by which the gods swore their most binding oaths, according to the epics of Homer. English speakers have been using stygian to mean "of or relating to the river Styx" since the early 16th century. From there the meaning broadened to describe things that are as dark, dreary, and menacing as one might imagine Hades and the river Styx to be.
Muse
3) Imprisonment
Space of cell
In the poem we can see the measurement of cell in which they are living.The phrase comes from the practice of interrogation under torture, where three degrees of torture were recognised, of increasing intensity. In other contexts, three degrees of interrogation were recognised, with torture being the third degree.First, the being threatened to be tortured. Secondly, being carried to the place of torture. Thirdly, by stripping and binding.
4) Metaphor
Three guards
Doctors
Government of Nigeria
You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed
You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed is a poem by Nigerian writer Gabriel Okara. One of the most popular in his oeuvre, it is a frequent feature of anthologies. "The piece belongs with the best of Senghor's nostalgic verse," wrote Michael Echeruo in a tribute to Okara on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, "with the militancy of many of David Diop's lyrics, and certainly with J. P. Clark's 'Ivbie', another of my favorite African poems. Okara's poem is more relaxed than these, however, more ironic, less tortured. In some ways, of course, it is less urgent, less strident, less involved. If Clark's 'Ivbie' was complex and for good reason, You laughed, and laughed, and laughed seemed also appropriately straightforward: proud without arrogance, hurting without showing it, and blunt without rudeness." The first of Okara's poems that it was Echeruo's pleasure to read, it was also in his opinion the most enduring.
African literature is a literature about the African people and that continent. It contains various languages and genres. The major themes of the African literature are culture, conflict, religion, colonialism, modernism and racism. Nigerian poet Gabriel Okara’s poem ‘You laughed and laughed and laughed’ brings out an emotion, feeling and pain faced by black people. This poem also brings out the sufferings faced by black people. This poem is as discussion between the black natives and white people which brings an rules, beliefs and practice of African. Okara brought out the suffering faced by the native people in this poem.
Themes of the poem
Racism
- Underestimating other race
- Tortures of white
- Mental tortures of white
The theme of racism is at the center of the poem like how poet how described pain of the black people as white thought that they only had better civilization and the ill treatment as white people laughed at their dance , song , and insides.
Cultural conflict
- Western culture
- Supremacy superiority complex
- Judgemental nature
- Cultural connection to nature
- Barbarian
Cultural conflict is the theme Okara often uses in his works. In the context of this poem we can see the western culture seems like supremacy. And as poet talks about their behaviour they seems too judgemental because white people judging very common things of black people's culture. They neglect the culture which is the having connection to the nature.
Modernism
- Materialism
- Use of 'Car'
- Luxuries - as attraction - upper class
“In your ears my song
Is motor car misfiring
Stopping with a choking cough
And you laughed and laughed and laughed”
Also poet tried to criticize western civilization by their way of living and lifestyle like upper class and materialism.
Colonialism
- Physically controlled
- Mentally tortured
- Traits of being inferior
Colonialism is another theme of it. It is written after the colonization influenced upon the poet so how colonizers were treating and controlling the black or colonized people and also they used torture them in the way that they can rule easily on them. They tried to make them feel inferior so their way can be got in easy way.
Nationalism
- 'Magic Dance'
- 'Mystic inside wide as sky'
- 'Fire - warmth of the nature
- Living warmth of the earth 'Mother nature'
- necked feet 'raw' - 'pure'
Theme of Nationalism come in the indirect phrases the poet has used here in the poem. By above given phrases he is admiring his culture and criticizing western culture by various comparison.
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