Dystopian/Utopian Vision in A Dance of the Forests
Name : Latta Baraiya
Paper : African Literature
Roll no : 11
Enrollment no : 3069206420200003
Email id : lattabaraiya1204@gmail.com
Batch : 2020-22
Submitted to : Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English, MKBU
Introduction
Very few critics have sought to study Wole Soyinka's A Dance of the Forests because of its apparent complexity; those who have done so consider it as a symbolic remark on Nigeria's geopolitical predicament. While such views may be correct, given that the play was written in 1960 to commemorate Nigeria's independence, the difficulty with such interpretations is that they ignore the play's structure, in which Soyinka links the past to the present in order to predict a dystopian future. While a utopian past and dystopian present are frequently presented as a narrative gesture that leads to a utopian future. According to Solomon Omatsola Azumurana,
Soyinka's A Dance of the Forests links the hopeless past with the fruitless present to project a bleak future. (Azumurana, Solomon Omatsola)
While the play's inspiration came from the betrayal of trust and optimism in the Nigerian socio-political context, the play's message is universal. Soyinka maintains that the atrocities that have defined human interactions in general are unavoidable in this regard. Nonetheless, by depicting the inevitability of these human crimes, Soyinka is compelled to seek a utopian future.
Dystopian/Utopian Vision in ‘A Dance of the Forests
This is the most recognized play of Wole Soyinka. The play was performed on the celebration of independence of Nigeria – 1960. The play was published in 1963. This iconoclastic work that irritated many of the elite in Soyinka's native Nigeria demands freedom from European imperialism. We see a portrayal of post-colonial Nigerian politics aimless and corrupt. Derek Wright points to the difficulty and elusiveness of the play when he states that it is "the most uncentered of works, there is no discernible main character or plot line, and critics have been at a loss to say what kind of play it is or if it is a play at all and not a pageant, carnival or festival"
The framework of a play is a significant factor in determining the playwright's aesthetic vision. But the structure which refer here is not the conventional dramatic structure of exposition, complication, climax, anti-climax, and denouement that is the paraphernalia of plays in general; but the plot structure that is distinctive to individual plays or artistic visions. Booker identifies this distinctive plot structure, especially as it pertains to dystopian/utopian artistic vision, when he avers that
"Utopia and dystopia are very much part of the same project in that both describe an other world, spatially and/or temporally removed from that of the author and/or intended readership" (Phillips, Richard)
While a utopian past and dystopian present is often enacted as a narrative gesture that concomitantly leads to a futurity that is utopian (Paul F. Starrs and John B. Wright 98), the reverse is the case in this play.
Soyinka's A Dance of the Forests is the hopeless past with the fruitless present to project a bleak future.(Azumurana)
Based on this negative reconstruction of the African past, which is antithetical to its glorification in the works of négritude writers, Soyinka insists, to borrow the words of that there is no "lost way of life and a lost course of pursuits" (Wiegman). This is so because in a work that searches for a utopian future, the past must be reconstructed in such a way that the living seek to recapture the past in the future.
But as Anyokwu observes "Soyinka" in this play "dramatizes man's proclivity to selectively 'edit' his past, turn a blind eye to the warts and welts of his ignoble past and choose to highlight the halcyon days instead" (Anyokwu)
The play is metaphorical commentary of the socio-political situation in Nigeria. If we see the structure of the play, Soyinka traces the past to the present to forecast a dystopian future.
Utopian past ➡️ Dystopian present ➡️ Utopian future
It means Soyinka wants to tell that, the past of Nigeria was utopian, where their people are living without any disturbance but the present is dystopian. Where people became selfish. They are killing people like Demoke. So Soyinka asked a question here: how will the future become utopian ? This expectation has not become true here.
Past and the present as the failure of the future
The plot of this play is one in which there is a “gathering of the tribes” in a festivity in which the living asks their gods to invite some of their illustrious ancestors. These illustrious ancestors are supposed to be reminders of a magnificent past. But instead of legendary ancestors,Forest Father/Head—the supreme divinity of the play, sends the living “two spirits of the restless dead” . It is this action of Forest Father that sets in motion the conflict of the play between the dead and the living, and between humans and the gods. But beyond these conflicts is the new world envisaged by Soyinka: a world in which, to borrow the words of Miller, all that is presently separated are united (Miller).
Aroni wants to reveal the sins of all people who have done wrong with dead women and dead men in past life. They did sins in their present life also. If their past and present is like this, how can they build a good future ? This question Soyinka tries to unfold. As Wiegman sees the apocalyptic or dystopic as a work "which writes the present as the failure of the future" and this is what obtains in A Dance of the Forests in which Soyinka stretches Wiegman's explanation/or observation by writing the past and the present as the failure of the future. This is evident, as already noted, from the past and present violent actions of Soyinka's major characters. This is a play therefore in which the past and the present conflate in a metonymic reenactment of violence and bloodshed. Soyinka traces the history of a hopeless past, and compares it with a defective present to forecast a bleak future. In the prologue to the play, Aroni (Lieutenant to Forest Father) states:
Even this might have passed unnoticed by Oro if Demoke had left araba's height undiminished. But Demoke is a victim of giddiness and cannot gain araba's heights. He would shorten the tree, but apprentice to him is one OREMOLE, a follower of Oro who fought against this sacrilege to his god. And Oremole won support with his mockery of the carver who was tied to earth. The apprentice began to work above his master's head; Demoke reached a hand and plucked him down. (Soyinka- A Dance of the Forests)
It is also significant that the Dead Man and Dead Woman have come not to celebrate with the living, but to judge them. As what they have done in past and in the present also they are not giving them justice. Even nobody takes the case of a dead man. They repeatedly implore "Will you take my case?" (Soyinka), which is also the opening statement of the play, is an indication that they have come to right the wrongs against them in their previous existence, eight centuries ago. As Miller rightly observes,
"dystopias [are] motivated out of a utopian pessimism in that they force us to confront the dystopian elements... so that we can work through them and begin again" (Miller).
In this sense, Dead Woman's observation that nothing has changed after eight centuries is in itself a call for a new beginning that would guarantee a promising future. What happened to them in the past is happening in the present also. The king and the members of courtship done wrong with dead man and dead woman. In the present at the end nothing has happened and they didn't get justice. We can say that the past is gone, the present is here, but the future is yet to come. By painting a dystopian past and present, and forecasting a gloomy future, Soyinka warns that the mistakes of the past and the present should be avoided for a better future.
Despite the dystopian images that populate Soyinka’s play, he still hints at the regeneration of the human world. For instance, the plot which is in itself dystopian,still has a utopian element implicated in it.
Conclusion
To wind up we can find that, it may be claimed that Soyinka's aesthetic rumination within the utopian literary genre is that the past should not be constructed in such a way that it is glorified and romanticised as a projection of a happy future. The past and present, according to Soyinka, must be criticised in order for the future to be hopeful. In the novel the author said that the past of the country was not glorified and the present is not hopeful. As may already be deduced, he criticises the past and present, and foresees a dystopian future in order to direct action that will prevent it from becoming a reality. As a result, Soyinka's apocalyptic terrain is inextricably linked to his utopian vision. longing for a better future.
Works Cited
Anyokwu , Christopher. “HOPE EGHAGHA AS POET: SATIRE, SELF AND SOCIETY .” SKASE Journal of Literary Studies, vol. 4, 20 Dec. 2012.
Azumurana, Solomon Omatsola. “Wole Soyinka’s Dystopian/Utopian Vision in a Dance of the Forests.” Tydskrif Vir Letterkunde, vol. 51, no. 2, 2017, pp. 71–81., https://doi.org/10.4314/tvl.v51i2.6.
Miller, Jim. “Post-Apocalyptic Hoping: Octavia Butler’s Dystopian/Utopian Vision.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, SF-TH Inc, 1998, pp. 336–60, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4240705.
Phillips, Richard. “Dystopian Space in Colonial Representations and Interventions: Sierra Leone as ‘the White Man's Grave.’” Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, vol. 84, no. 3-4, 2002, pp. 189–200., https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0435-3684.2002.00123.x.
Soyinka, Wole. A Dance of the Forests: A Play. Oxford University Press, 1976.
Starrs, Paul F., and John B. Wright. “Utopia, Dystopia, and Sublime Apocalypse in Montana's Church Universal and Triumphant.” Geographical Review, vol. 95, no. 1, 2005, pp. 97–121., https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1931-0846.2005.tb00193.x.
Wiegman, Robyn. “Feminism’s Apocalyptic Futures.” New Literary History, vol. 31, no. 4, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000, pp. 805–25, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057637.
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