Kongi’s Harvest Essay

President Kongi, the dictator of an Afri basis maturation nation, is turn ining to modernize his nation after deposing King Oba Danlola, who is being held in delay. Kongi de compositionds that Danlola present him with a ceremonial yam at a put in dinner to indicate his abdication. Daodu is Danlolas nephew and heir, and he grows prized yams on his farm. Daodus rooter Segi owns a close up where Daodu spends most of his time. Segi is revealed to be Kongis former lover.The unalike tribes ar resisting unification, so Kongi tries to return his goal by any convey necessary, including forcing government officials to wear handed-down African outfits and even seeking advice from the bitkind he deposed. In a climactic scene at the rural area dinner, Segi presents Kongi with the disembodied head of her father. Post-Colonial review Colonization and Post colonization are twin evils in the so called civilized times. During colonization criticizing the Empire was non possible. But in the localisecolonial era the colonized is not spared.Personal granting immunity demands that a human being has the right to follow any faith and faith. According to genial rights he has the right to social security, protection and interest in the cultural life of the community. But these fundamental rights were denied to the colonized and the post colonized. The generators in the post-colonial period expose the cruelty and dehumanization ruthlessly honorable on the colonized. The very means and counselings by which the native was brush off become effective weapons to hit back at the colonizer.The native was demeaned as a savage, his land called a dark continent, his message heart of darkness, his religion barbarous and himself a cannibal. The post-colonial writers subroutine their cultural myths to locate the ignorance of the colonizer and his racial prejudice. They prove through their myths the splendour of their religion, the cosmic vision engendered by it, the possib ility of greening inherent in it and the lesson of ordinary brotherhood advocated by it. The writers aim at exploiting dissimilar techniques as myths, carnival, intertextuality, palimpsest, contrapuntal reading, symbol etc.to help the reader see things from a new angle so as to question the official variance of history, the so-called authenticity of the canon and the authority of intellectual hegemony exercised. The difference in the midst of the post-modern writer and the post colonial writer is that the former does it to promote nihilistic evasive actionfulness, whereas the post colonial writer is always conscious of the suffering underg angiotensin-converting enzyme by the individuals starting from concrete experience of pain he expresses his characters utter freak out at the psychic level.The post colonial writing aims at rejuvenation of the wronged colonized and restoration of their prestige and identity. Myths engender ageless wisdom. When a writer uses it creatively and dynamically, he invests them with fresh layers of meaning and interpretation which highlight the modern reality. Malinowskis observation affirms this Myth contains germs of the future epic, romance and tragedy and continues that it finds itself in certain of its forms of subsequent literary elaboration Myth and ritual in a primitive society are the sustaining forces both in customary times and crises.No wonder all the African writers seek safety to myths for restoring the fragmented personality of their fellowmen and reclaiming the distorted faith in their cultural tradition. Soyinka as a great traditionalist uses myths as the core of all his publications whether they are poems, fiction or drama. Kongis garner, Wole Soyinkas latest play, has predictably created a sensation at Dakar, where it was presented at the Negro Arts Festival.For Soyinka has chosen a topical subject, African nationalism, and whether he tikes it nor not, his hysterical Kongi has probably been judged as o ften in footing of Nkrumahs ejection, for example, as by exquisite merit. This reviewer is largely unfamiliar with African political relation and the traditional determine upon which Soyinka apparently bases so much of his work. Consequently, these remarks of an unabashed outlander of necessity resuscitate plainly the clarity and coherence of the play considered, perhaps unfairly, outside its social context.As mounted in the Arts Theatre at the University of Ibadanthat is, without the utmost scene, called Hangover and with considerable confusion attending its conclusionthe play depicts for the outsider what sort of harvest a man reaps if he sits alone on top of a fortune. That is Kongis agency through the greater part of the play he descends, at its conclusion, to a harvest festival at which he is presented not with the expected new yam, but with a beheaded human head. Kongi, as several characters, in the play remark, is a poseur , a man who thinks of the world as watching him at all times.He sits upon his mountain looking out on the world, and at the same time, he is discernible to that world. Such an approach to living come alongs to prevail taken its, emotional toll. Kongi is, hysterical, and in the final scene, he delivers in mime what we are told is a four-and-a-half minute speech, while the affairs of the world the preparation of the new yam and the ruffle thereof completely submerge the words of the speech. The speech is pure gesture, spare of sound, unheeded by the world. The gestures, full of fury that, are those of a man out of all emotional control.Ranged in various more or less defined sorts of opposition to Kongi are at least cardinal characters. The first of these is Oba Danlola an old arid obstinate, fiery, traditional leader. He is in detention as the play opens, presumably for opposition, and one of the major(ip) actions of the play involves manner of speaking Danlola to present Kongi with the new yamto renounce in effect h is traditional authority in I he feast. The old order passeth, and DanLoJa finally consents. The outsider is not really competent to judge Obas generically. One imagines that, as sketched, Danlola is a stock traditional figure, and he seems a pleasant replete fellow.Yet, at one point, two characters liken him to Kongi in the important topic of posing. To the primitive there seems secondary obvious point in the proportion not because Danlola does not pose, but because his posing does not seem to have produced hysteria. This point may in like manner be made in terms of the notion of isms developed in the play. Kongi, rules a land called Isma and his devotion to isms seems to be a function of his posing. Danlola, poseur though he may be, cant really be said to participate in this warmth for isms.We have only the bare, unqualified assertion of Danlolas likeness to Kongi and zippo visible on the stage to suppport the statement. Surely, here Soyinka has either led us considerably astray, or has failed entirely to carry us with him. Apparently, Danlolas nephew and heir, Daodu, is overly ranged against Kongi and his isms, Apparently because we see Daodu do precious little. He is a bar fly, a habitue of Segis Night Club, and Segis present Lover. Segi is a sort of Herculean whore, Kongis former mistress about whom terrific stories circulate she destroys men, the suggestion is, sexually.It does not appear to what extent. Kongis present, highly disorganized condition is owing to his experiences with her. Nor is it clear whether it is Segi or Daodu who has the upper hand in their relationship. When he is not drinking Segis beer. Daodu raises champion yams on a farm settlement which runs a sort of Loose competition to the Kongian establishments, outdistancing them all(prenominal) time, it is his yam which is selected at the concluding festival, pounded and presented to all but Kongi, Obviously in the matter of harvest Daodu and his yams are separated from Kongi and hiS human head by the distance between life and death.However, Daodu at one point in the play announces a platform of resistance to Kongi which is predicated upon very nearly universal hatred and, to follow the metaphor, human heads. Segi opposes his position pleading for a attractive approach to ones fellow men, but, like so much in the play, the point of this conversation remains obscure. One is left to suppose whether Segi here asserts her basic domination of Daodu, or whether Daodu is to be viewed as the growth character who grows out of his hatred, or whether it is all a horrible joke. Segis words of love sullied by her profession.At any rate Daodus program of hatred seems clearly opposed to his benevolent yam growing, and we neer see him do anything which resolves the issue. Segi may also be placed in opposition to Kongi, but if it is difficult to determine Daodus and Danlolas positions, with Segi the paradox is hopeless. Primarily this is true because we see her do e ven less, than Daodu. She never acts unequivocally in such a way as to disprove the lasting story that she destroys men. Her relation with Daodu is so undefined as to shed little light on this matter.For much of the play she maintains silence, which she breaks most noticeably with her fanatic appeal for universal love. Here, her destructive tendencies seem open to question. Her other major action, completely at odds with her profession of universal love, concludes the play. Facing Kongi directly, she presents him with the decapitated head of her father. As staged, the confrontation is symbolic with a capital S , in view of the obvious sexual overtones of the harvest festival, one straightway suspects that Kongis particular harvest results from cultivating the Likes of Segi, that if one resorts to her one can only get abominations.Here again Soyinka may have led us astray. If Segi is a champion in the pitched battle between the sexes busy in the good fight Soyinka his portrayed in The Lion and the gracedestroying men as rumor reports he does, Soyinka has carried us a hanker way from African nationalism in that final scene. For in that case, Kongi, and also Danlola and Daodu are mere tools in a perverse fertility rite, and the discompose with Africa lies not in its dictators, but in its whores. In view of the serial publication of major interpretive alternatives suggested above, one is forced to conclude that Kongis Harvest is, to the outsider an incoherent sprawl.Alternative, and mutually exclusive interpretations are not artistic ambiguity, Soyinka sets us on a number of scents, which pursued, lead in no single direction. We are led into every briar patch in the area, along widely divergent andmutually exclusive paths, and end by zip in very small, perplexed circles. Against such a view of the play two objections world power be raised. First, some of the suggestions about the meaning of various actions might be termed over-ingenious.Such an objection m ust be at least partially granted yet, Soyinka himself must bear partial office for this critics over-zealous application, Soyinka has the true dramatists gift of reservation actions seem significant. His imaginative use of action and language effectively commands the earreach look here, this is important, and you should watch carefully. When a comparison of two characters is underlined try considerable discussion of the comparison, when a dumb character finally speaks, when a passive character finally acts, we cannot choose but suspect the situation is important.Perhaps Soyinka is too good at gelling, our attention, with the result that we are interest by the non-essential as well as the essential. On the other hand, it might be objected that a man as unfamiliar with African politics and culture as this reviewer cannot form a proper horizon of such a play. This too is a formidable objection. Still, drama is a public form of art, if it is anything, and an artist like Soyinka sh ould decide whether he wants to reach anything larger than a purely Nigerian or African public.It would seem that an artist tries to order parochial events in such a way that they have more than a parochial significance in presenting the uninitiated a dramatic experience with African politics Soyinka only confuses, and one can only suspect that he is confused himself. The matter of decent and Left Ears of State exemplifies the outsiders difficulties very nicely. Those two unusually named characters are introduced, as the henchmen of Kongis Organizing Secretary. They are a grand quite a little gagthe conception funny enough to demand our attention, and we expect that they testament do something amusing.Instead, they disappear mutely into the backroom of Segis Night Club, never to re-appear. We ulterior learn that they have been killed in retribution for Kongis politics. Their memory lingers on, except we cant really believe that we have lost them so early moreover, various char acters employ ear phrases which recall their names to us. As a result, when in the last scene, the head is presented to Kongi, we, without Soyinkas stage railway line stating whose head it is, recall, even if only for a brief moment, our old friends the Ears.Our attention, in other words is at least partially distracted at this important point by the strong expectation that the Ears will prove interesting. Soyinka must reckon with the fact that he can arouse our interest, and in nonessential matters, handle that talent carefully. It is a great disappointment to move in finally that, in the interests of coherence and clarity, many fascinating dramatic touches in Kongis Harvestshould, like the Ears of State, be more fully developed, carefully subordinated, or lopped off.Conclusion The end of the play leaves no hope in us for the purging of such societies. The struggle by Daoudu and others to overcome Kongis devastation is doomed. This futility of action is first hinted in the prove rbs from Hemlock . Even Daodu and Segi who are the only ones courageous enough to openly condemn Kongis rule, are in the end victims of the predicted general clampdown indicated by the iron grating that clamps on the dirt at the end of the play.