Suicide as Redemption: an Analysis of Elechi Amadi's The Great Ponds (original) (raw)

Suicide as Redemption: an Analysis of Elechi Amadi's The Great Ponds

2020

This article looks at Elechi Amadi's The Great Ponds and explores how suicide is for Wago a state of self healing. It will argue how Wago takes his life not out of cowardice but as a rejection of what society demands of him. The fatal removal of the self will be shown as an attempt to reject that society for the finality of death. It will be argued how suicide is a weapon of choice that heroic characters make use of when all other methods, civil and military, have failed. The damnation of death is seen not as a curse of the self but a final statement about society and its relationship with the individual. In essence the text explores how suicide in African literature is appraised especially in a setting where Christian or European notions of sin are nonexistent.

Suicide and the Question of Leadership in Ngugi's Devil on the Cross and Okey Ndibe's Arrows of Rain

Papers in English and Linguistics (PEL) Vol. 20, (3&4), 2019

Suicide is the act of deliberately killing oneself or doing something against one's interest while leadership is the ability to provide guidance for a people. When the leadership fails in its bid to dispense its duties justifiably, the people are pushed to such an extent that they contemplate the termination of their lives. Africa has suffered more of leadership problems than any other continent, and it is not surprising that writers from this region have devoted their artistry to painting the gloomy situations. As we shall see in the selected novels, suicide is a direct response to the failure of African leadership. Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Okey Ndibe show through a Marxist Existentialist postulation that life is an unending struggle. The paper considers their art from the perspective of a bildungsroman, and extends it to a hagiography in the case of Wariinga in Ngugi's novel. It raises questions concerning the meaning of life, and concludes that if the leaders would truly lead and forsake their greed, less and less more people would find meanings for their existence; they would want to live and not commit suicide, for there would not be any social, economic, political or personal reason to do so.

Self-Immolation in The Extinction of Menai by Chuma Nwokolo

3L The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 2020

This study explores the concept of self-immolation within the African literary space. It observes how people bear witness to express causes through protests, with their words, action and the self-application of lethal harm. With growing incidences of suicides around the world, self-Immolation remains peculiar generally for its politicization and likening to a sacrifice for a cause, drawing attention to social injustice and giving voice to acts of persecution which could have been voiceless. Although self-Immolation has gained interdisciplinary attention, there is an observable dearth of scholarship in the field of literature. In African literature, writers have adopted suicide as a way of dying for their characters; the much-celebrated work of Chinua Achebe gives credence to this. Studies exploring the underlying aetiology of self-inflicted deaths in novels remain sparse. In this study, we focus on The Extinction of Menai (2018) by Chuma Nwokolo, a contemporary African writer. Using the work of Emile Durkheim on Suicide as an operative framework, we explore incidences of self-inflicted deaths as a protest mechanism. We establish the use of suicide for protests by characters that cut across gender lines. We equally note the underlying cultural melody behind all acts of suicide witnessed in this novel by Chuma Nwokolo.

Rethinking Suicide: Echoes in Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman and Achebe's Things Fall Apart

The Noun Scholar: National Open University Journal of Humanities, 2021

Suicide is the wilful, abrupt termination of one's life by oneself. While some people understand it as a negative, depressive phenomenon which requires pity, other people view suicide victims as cowards. Yet many others view them as heroes. In this way, scholars are challenged to properly categorize suicide as negative or as deserving pity. The problem is made more difficult by the way the phenomenon is represented in some literary texts. In Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, the deaths of Elesin Oba and Okonkwo respectively, do not do justice to the debate whether suicide is an act which deserves reproach or acclaim. While we can argue that many people who commit suicide in real life do so out of depression, the two characters in the texts mentioned above are not victims of depression, therefore, their deaths deserve reproach and condemnation. Their suicide is a direct act of cowardice. Relying on the theory of psychoanalysis, this paper argues that Elesin Oba and Okonkwo's suicides are inconsiderate, dastard acts of cowardice which should not be blamed on depression. From the texts chosen for this study, both Elesin Oba and Okonkwo were not brave enough to face the consequences of their realities. Therefore, they decided to kill themselves without consideration for the fate of society. Certainly, humanity will love to see the end of suicide in the world. Literary texts, which are generally seen as a reflection of life, should continuously, portray suicide as a negative practice and those who commit it as cowards. This will help in checkmating the scourge of the phenomenon.

Text to context: an interpretation of suicide in selected plays of Soyinka, Rotimi and Ogunyemi

2017

The study engages in a critical interpretation of the phenomenon of suicide and how it is represented in selected plays of three Nigerian authors. The purpose is to understand the discursive nature of suicide in Nigerian dramatic literature with particular focus on; Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's horseman (1975), Ola Rotimi's Kurunmi (1971) and Wale Ogunyemi's The Vow (1985). The study also looks at how the act of suicide is interpreted in the selected plays and foregrounds Yoruba cultural understanding against western hegemonic thought. Its central thesis is that ritual and culture significantly influence suicide in traditional African society and Yoruba society in particular. This study uses textual analysis as its methodology to probe the historical, cultural and social context of the selected plays. The approach is descriptive and interrogative as it illuminates the circumstances that surround the suicides of the protagonist characters in the selected plays as well as how the plays mediate the reality of suicide as perceived in Yoruba tradition in opposition to western epistemology. The study uses Marxist literary theory to probe the effects of social structure and how economic relations impact the acts of suicide in the plays. In addition, the study suggests that the suicides as manifest in the plays are not mainly an escape from shame but serve as a necessary and pragmatic step consonant with the Yoruba belief system and mythical tradition. Finally, the study explores yet another caveat, the abuse of the Yoruba mythical tradition for personal gain. It concludes by determining that the failure of traditional elites to manipulate culture and tradition for their political interests leads them to frustration, and subsequently motivates suicide as a form of escapism. viii LIST OF DIAGRAMS Figure 1.1 Wole Soyinka dramatic and theatrical vision 93 ix

Suicide in Late Colonial Africa: The Evidence of Inquests from Nyasaland

The American Historical Review, 2010

IN THE EXTENSIVE LITERATURE on the history of suicide, the societies of the African continent barely feature, except in brief discussions of folk beliefs and practices. 1 A simple explanation for the relative lack of attention given to this issue is that historically African societies have been assumed to have very low rates of suicide. But that assumption itself needs historicizing. The statistical evidence for suicide in most African countries is extremely weak, and longitudinal data is almost nonexistent, so while there are reasons to suggest the need for a reevaluation of suicide rates in Africa, it is not currently possible to provide one. However, the intellectual history of suicide in Africa can shed light on the issue, as can some evidence from the British colony of Nyasaland (now Malawi) in the late colonial period. In contemporary southern and eastern Africa, concerns over apparently rising suicide rates are being expressed both by mental health professionals and in the popular press. It is tempting to argue that these parts of Africa are experiencing the equivalent of the intensification of anxiety about suicide that surfaced periodically in early modern and nineteenth-century Europe-a kind of "moral panic." 2 As in This research forms part of a larger, collaborative study, "Death in Africa: A History c1800 to Present Day," funded by the Arts and Humanities Council of the United Kingdom. I am extremely grateful to the AHRC and to my colleagues on that project:

TRADITION AND LEADERSHIP IN ELECHI AMADI'S THE GREAT PONDS

International Journal of Social Sciences Humanities Review, 2021

Explorations of indigenous African traditions in pre-colonial and colonial African societies in imaginative literatures have historical and aesthetic values. Historical for the great insights they offer on the human condition and social experience in pre-literate communities; and aesthetic for the refreshing and exciting images of the African world recreated through the human imagination and the genius of gifted writers. Elechi Amadi's The Great Ponds is a quintessential novel that imaginatively recreates an authentic African community totally regulated by its tradition to the exclusion of any Western or foreign influence. This paper explores tradition as a central motif in the novel with an aim to highlight its centrality in regulating social existence and communal harmony in the society depicted in the text. It also interrogates leadership and the models reflected in the novel on political and military planes. The study is a qualitative and library based one limited to content analysis of the novel in focus. It therefore contributes to criticism on the nexus of history and literature. It highlights supernatural and mythical social experiences through analyses of traditional world-views about gods, ancestors, the dibia, and leadership in traditional Igbo societies. New historicism is the theoretical perspective deployed in the paper.

An Afrocentric Critique on Suicide in our Contemporary Society: An Ethical Perspective

2023

In contemporary African society, the rate at which people commit suicide increases daily. Committing suicide is one thing, and the purpose for committing suicide is another. In contemporary African settings, suicide has become a problematic phenomenon. Even more so because it does not fit into our value system. In order to solve the problem of suicide in contemporary African society, there is a great need to revisit our roots and trace our view on suicide, the value of life, the purpose of existence and respect for the human body. We would analyze how suicide can be minimized from an ethical perspective. To achieve our aim, it will adopt philosophical argumentation, use of texts and prescriptive methods of philosophical inquiry. We are going to do conceptual clarification on the concept of suicide from the western and African purview. We will also do a comparative analysis of both the western and African concepts of suicide. There is a necessity for us also to adopt the critical appraisal of the concept of suicide. We are also going to employ the prescriptive methodology during this research.