By
Obododimma Oha
Many people that read Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-wine Drinkard get carried away by its language (in typical assumption of an African as an apprentice of English writing and of the novel form), and hardly reflect on the indigenous philosophy about problem-solving that underlies the text. Understandable. Indeed, Tutuola may be struggling with English, with translation, but what is he really struggling to dispense? I believe that Tutuola is calling attention to a model of problem-solving and it would be appropriate to insert him into the discourse on indigenous philosophy. I know that some would think of the tapper who is dead, to the narrator’s pain, and the narrator’s quest to retrieve the dead palm-wine tapper. So, it may look that simplistic and even amusing – that a living person goes in search of a dead person! Maybe he is still drunk with palm-wine and does not know that death, an intangible, is an experience that separates the living from the dead. Moreover, does he say he is looking for death to arrest, bind and bring to somebody? Who tells him that personifying death means going to the level of the literal and giving him a human body, a form? That reminds one about the amusing case of a drunkard who once sat at the foot a luxuriant palm-tree and started shedding tears. When asked why he was crying, he replied that it was because he didn’t know whether he would be alive when palm-wine would be tapped from the tree and who would be the lucky fellow that would drink it!
So, the palm-wine drinkard is seemingly doing something foolish. Why would he embark on a quest to cross reality boundaries that cannot be crossed by mortality? Worse still, this foolishness leads him into literalizing the personification of death. In that world of the possibility of the impossible, a man (from whom he inquires about the whereabouts of his dead "tapster") puts him to a test – hoping that would get him off his back. The man tells him to find death wherever he lives, arrest him, bind him and bring him. Finding death and where death lives is the task. The logic is that this not possible. So, how does the narrator handle it, so that the impossible becomes possible?
There is, in African philosophy, an idea of the impossible. This idea of impossibility may be dependent on a number of factors:
(1) The individuals who are interacting;
(2) The limits of the exposure to experience on the part of those who are interacting;
(3) the nature of the world in which the entities are interacting; and
(4) The very nature of their utterances, whether these are mere jokes and not to be taken seriously.
Thus, speaker and hearer need to be in the same world, the same reality, in which they share knowledge and assumptions, that we understand. The sharing of knowledge and assumptions means that they are operating at the same level. That is why the Igbo say, A tụọra ọmara, ọ mara, ma a tụọra ofeke ofenye isi n’ọhịa (Pose a saying to an initiate and that initiate understands, but pose the same to a non-initiate and he or she would foolishly start roaming the bush).
One is not saying that the narrator is that ofeke who has entered the bush. But it is obviously that this fantastic male Alice in a Wonderland would see the personification of death as literal and look for him. Is he not a fictional character who can do the impossible? If he takes another fictional character as meaning the literal and is willing to create another reality, how can we stop him? By rewriting the novel and giving him a different role?
Anyway, the narrator is a crafty fellow; in fact, a trickster. Nobody in the deeper fictional context he has descended into is courageous enough to show him the way to where death inhabits – "Deadstown"! So, he applies native wisdom. Cunning fellow dies; cunning fellow buries him, as they say in Nigeria!
He goes to a cossroads called orita in Yoruba and aba in Igbo (see https://x-pensiverrors.blogspot.com/2019/02/some-lessons-from-orita.html ) and lies down, spreading out his legs so that they point to the various roads meeting. Passers-by see him and gossip about it: “Who is the mother of this alakori, lazy, good-for-nothing fellow, who comes and spreads his idiocy at the crossroads, his right leg pointing to Deadstown? Does he want to die? So, he does not know that he is courting trouble?” He heard it and cleverly but indirectly stole the map! He knew the direction to Deadsotown. That thing that nobody was willing to tell him!
Now armed with that secret, he sets out and is able to locate and arrest death at Deadstown. Aided by charms, he is able to accomplish what in our thinking is impossible. How could charms in our reality arrest and bind the intangible? That obviously points to one thing: the idea of possibility in African thinking does not obey the laws of normal logic. It logic is worked out by charms which are similarly remote to our understanding. Are we surprised that army generals in Nigeria are now talking about involving the supernatural in fighting Boko Haram?
The narrator is able to perform the task, not comprehensible to us. Impossibility becomes possible, like a miracle in the Christian born-again domain. He has answered the Sphinx, the man, who runs away from his home because he operates with our logic, thinking that an impossibility is impossible.
When I think about Tutuola, one small bird whispers to me. It tells me to be very careful in pontificating, because the future of the past is a slippery imagination and one can still move beyond personifications! One can think of the reality of reality. One can also decide to be a fictional character who introduces a fiction in our fiction. That is not a crime! Especially as some realities resemble fiction, envy fictional situations.
Obododimma Oha
Many people that read Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-wine Drinkard get carried away by its language (in typical assumption of an African as an apprentice of English writing and of the novel form), and hardly reflect on the indigenous philosophy about problem-solving that underlies the text. Understandable. Indeed, Tutuola may be struggling with English, with translation, but what is he really struggling to dispense? I believe that Tutuola is calling attention to a model of problem-solving and it would be appropriate to insert him into the discourse on indigenous philosophy. I know that some would think of the tapper who is dead, to the narrator’s pain, and the narrator’s quest to retrieve the dead palm-wine tapper. So, it may look that simplistic and even amusing – that a living person goes in search of a dead person! Maybe he is still drunk with palm-wine and does not know that death, an intangible, is an experience that separates the living from the dead. Moreover, does he say he is looking for death to arrest, bind and bring to somebody? Who tells him that personifying death means going to the level of the literal and giving him a human body, a form? That reminds one about the amusing case of a drunkard who once sat at the foot a luxuriant palm-tree and started shedding tears. When asked why he was crying, he replied that it was because he didn’t know whether he would be alive when palm-wine would be tapped from the tree and who would be the lucky fellow that would drink it!
So, the palm-wine drinkard is seemingly doing something foolish. Why would he embark on a quest to cross reality boundaries that cannot be crossed by mortality? Worse still, this foolishness leads him into literalizing the personification of death. In that world of the possibility of the impossible, a man (from whom he inquires about the whereabouts of his dead "tapster") puts him to a test – hoping that would get him off his back. The man tells him to find death wherever he lives, arrest him, bind him and bring him. Finding death and where death lives is the task. The logic is that this not possible. So, how does the narrator handle it, so that the impossible becomes possible?
There is, in African philosophy, an idea of the impossible. This idea of impossibility may be dependent on a number of factors:
(1) The individuals who are interacting;
(2) The limits of the exposure to experience on the part of those who are interacting;
(3) the nature of the world in which the entities are interacting; and
(4) The very nature of their utterances, whether these are mere jokes and not to be taken seriously.
Thus, speaker and hearer need to be in the same world, the same reality, in which they share knowledge and assumptions, that we understand. The sharing of knowledge and assumptions means that they are operating at the same level. That is why the Igbo say, A tụọra ọmara, ọ mara, ma a tụọra ofeke ofenye isi n’ọhịa (Pose a saying to an initiate and that initiate understands, but pose the same to a non-initiate and he or she would foolishly start roaming the bush).
One is not saying that the narrator is that ofeke who has entered the bush. But it is obviously that this fantastic male Alice in a Wonderland would see the personification of death as literal and look for him. Is he not a fictional character who can do the impossible? If he takes another fictional character as meaning the literal and is willing to create another reality, how can we stop him? By rewriting the novel and giving him a different role?
Anyway, the narrator is a crafty fellow; in fact, a trickster. Nobody in the deeper fictional context he has descended into is courageous enough to show him the way to where death inhabits – "Deadstown"! So, he applies native wisdom. Cunning fellow dies; cunning fellow buries him, as they say in Nigeria!
He goes to a cossroads called orita in Yoruba and aba in Igbo (see https://x-pensiverrors.blogspot.com/2019/02/some-lessons-from-orita.html ) and lies down, spreading out his legs so that they point to the various roads meeting. Passers-by see him and gossip about it: “Who is the mother of this alakori, lazy, good-for-nothing fellow, who comes and spreads his idiocy at the crossroads, his right leg pointing to Deadstown? Does he want to die? So, he does not know that he is courting trouble?” He heard it and cleverly but indirectly stole the map! He knew the direction to Deadsotown. That thing that nobody was willing to tell him!
Now armed with that secret, he sets out and is able to locate and arrest death at Deadstown. Aided by charms, he is able to accomplish what in our thinking is impossible. How could charms in our reality arrest and bind the intangible? That obviously points to one thing: the idea of possibility in African thinking does not obey the laws of normal logic. It logic is worked out by charms which are similarly remote to our understanding. Are we surprised that army generals in Nigeria are now talking about involving the supernatural in fighting Boko Haram?
The narrator is able to perform the task, not comprehensible to us. Impossibility becomes possible, like a miracle in the Christian born-again domain. He has answered the Sphinx, the man, who runs away from his home because he operates with our logic, thinking that an impossibility is impossible.
When I think about Tutuola, one small bird whispers to me. It tells me to be very careful in pontificating, because the future of the past is a slippery imagination and one can still move beyond personifications! One can think of the reality of reality. One can also decide to be a fictional character who introduces a fiction in our fiction. That is not a crime! Especially as some realities resemble fiction, envy fictional situations.
Comments