Welcome readers! This blog is written in response as a part of my last Semester assignment in Paper No. 206 The African Literature. In this blog, I will explore the topic 'Symbolic significance in Wole Soyinka’s Play A Dance of the Forests'.
● Name :- Hetal Pathak
● Roll No. :- 09
● Semester :- 4 [ Batch 2022- 2024]
● Enrollment No. :- 4069206420220022
● Paper No. :- 206
● Paper Name :- The African Literature
● Topic :- Symbolic Representations in Wole Soyinka's Play ‘A Dance of the Forests’
● Submitted to :- Smt. S.B. Gardi Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
● Email Address :- hetalpathak28@gmail.com
● Date of Submission :- 26th April, 2024
Symbolic Representations in Wole Soyinka's Play - ‘A Dance of the Forests’
□ Table of Contents
● Introduction
● About Wole Soyinka
● An Overview of Wole Soyinka's Play ‘A Dance of the Forests’
● The Significance of Symbolism in the Play
● The Ritual Dances and ceremonies
● Mask as a Symbol
● Conclusion
Introduction
Wole Soyinka's Play ‘A Dance of the Forests’ is a complex Play in which the living ask their illustrious ancestors. But instead of legendary ancestors, Forest Father / Head - the supreme divinity in Soyinka's Fictionalised world, seeds the living ‘two spirits of the restless dead’ referred in the Play as Dead Man and Dead woman.
'A Dance of the Forests’ was first performed in 1960 during the Nigerian independence celebrations. In part 1 of the play, Aroni ( the messenger for the Youruba God and Forest Father or Forest Head) tells the audience that he has agreed to invite two dead people to the eponymous Dance of the Forests because he feels sorry for them. The Play that follows is an allegory for turmoil in Nigerian history and the tendency of those in power to glorify the past. The play earned the ire of many Nigerian elites for its largely Negative allegorical representation of them.
About Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka (born 13th July, 1934, Abeokuta, Nigeria) is a Nigerian Playwright and Political activist who received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1986. He sometimes wrote of modern west Africa in a satirical style, but his serious intent and his belief in the evils inherent in the exercise of power were usually evident in his work as well. A member of the Yoruba people, Soyinka attended Government college and University college in Ibadan before graduating in 1958 with a degree in English from the University of Leeds in England. Upon his return to Nigeria, he founded an acting company and wrote his first Important Play, ‘A Dance of the Forests’. ( Produced 1960; Published 1963), for the Nigerian independence celebrations. The Play satirises the Fledgling nation by stripping it of romantic legend and by showing that the present is no more a golden age than was the past.
During the Civil War in Nigeria, Soyinka appealed in an article for cease - fire. For this he was arrested in 1967, accused of conspiring with the Biafra- rebels, and was held as a political Prisoner for 22 months until 1969. Soyinka has published about 20 works : Drama, novels, and Poetry. He writes in English and his literary language is marked by great scope and richness of words.
As a dramatist, Soyinka has been influenced by, among others, the Irish writer, J.M. Synge, but links up with the traditional popular African theatre with its combination of dance, music and action. He bases his writings on the mythology of his own tribe - the Yoruba - with , the god of iron and war, at the centre.
In addition to literary achievements, Wole Soyinka has been a vocal critic of political corruption and human rights abuses in Nigeria and other African countries. He has been imprisoned several times for his political activism, including during Nigeria’s civil war. Soyinka’s poems show a close connection to his plays. The Nobel prize in literature 1986 was awarded to Wole Soyinka “Who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence.”
An outspoken opponent of oppression and tyranny worldwide and a critic of the political situations in Nigeria. Soyinka has taught at a number of universities worldwide, among them Ife University, Cambridge University, Yale University and Emory University.
An Overview of Wole Soyinka's Play ‘A Dance of the Forests’
Wole Soyinka's theatrical debut, ‘A Dance of the Forests’ was presented at the Nigerian Independence celebrations in october 1960. In it, Soyinka reveals the rotten aspects of society and demonstrates that the past is no better than the present when it comes to the seamy side of life. Soyinka lays bare the fabric of Nigerian society and warns people as they are on the brink of a new stage in their history.
‘A Dance of the Forests’ is considered one of Soyinka's early and significant works. The Play is known for its complex and Symbolic narrative, which explores themes related to Nigerian identity, the impact of colonisation, and tension between tradition and modernity. It delves into the rich cultural heritage of Nigeria, drawing on Yoruba mythology and symbolism. The entire Play revolves around a community and gathers in the forest to perform a ritual dance. Throughout the Performance, various characters embody different aspects of Nigerian society, and the narrative unfolds through a series of symbolic encounters and dialogues. Wole Soyinka uses traditional African elements such as Dance, and music to convey the deeper meanings of messages.
As With many of Soyinka's works, ‘A Dance of the Forests’ reflects the complexities of post colonial African identity and the challenges faced by a nation transforming from colonial rule to independence. It is a layered and thought provoking Play that invites readers and viewers to engage with its themes and interpretations.
The Significance of Symbolism in the Play
Culture has always been producing constructs and leading them to literature. Every nation and every Civilization because of its Inevitable novelty possesses a distinct culture and subsequently the culture gave birth to various institutions. In a Paper read at a literary conference in sweden in 1967, Wole Soyinka declared that the ;
“Artist has always been functional in African society as the record of the masses and experience of his society and voices and vision in his time.”
Wole Soyinka's Plays stand as testimonials to the aforesaid Argument. Soyinka's Plays are essentially African in their ethos and their appeal is worldwide. One need not search for a definition of African identity in his Plays, as the ethos is too full of African themes.
In ‘A Dance of the Forests’ a Nigerian Independence Play, Soyinka borrows from basic Yourba beliefs to Produce an atmosphere in which at one and the same time we are in contact with the living and the dead, the Unearthly and earthly, with the Present, the past and the future. According to beliefs in Africa the continuity of life from before to after death is common. Wole Soyinka's own culture (Yourba) also strongly holds firm to the belief. Soyinka extends through the play this idea and gives it physical reality. The Play opens with a couple coming straight out of the earth to walk among the living.
‘An empty clearing in the forest. Suddenly the soil appears to be breaking and the head of the Dead Woman pushes its way up. Some distance from her, another head begins to appear, that of a man. They both come up slowly. The man is fat and bloated, wears a dated warrior's outfit, now mouldy. The woman is pregnant. They come up, appear to listen. They do not seem to see each other.’
Soyinka takes the audience into a fantastic folk - tale world where the dead mingle with the living and gods with men. With the Proceedings of the play we are taken further and further into Significant fantasy. The Dead woman is pregnant for eight centuries at the beginning of the play and gives birth at the end. The woman is a symbol of ambivalent fusion of the dead and the living. The Dead Woman carries life in her, the Past carries the unfulfilled vision of future and the present becomes a venue for the fusion and the developments thereafter. The child born is only a symbolic half - child and appears in the final showdown. The totem of Demoke and the rivalry caused due to it brings added interest in the final showdown. All human characters have double histories whom soyinka releases from the prison in particular and makes them symbols of general humanity.
The last section of the play is full of complex Symbolism engaged in the chronic invocation of future. The general assembly comprises all the various kinds of characters in the play : Humans who by this time have been shown in the present as well as the past, the ‘guests of honour’ who have come from the world of the dead, and the gods, and spirits. Besides these there are purely symbolic figures - the spirits of the palm, Darkness, Precious Stones, Pachyderms, etc.
There is a Play in the Play ‘A Dance of the Forests’. The Play shows this soldier standing within by watching the future being conjured up a hundred generations later, and it becomes symbolically clear that in fact nothing has changed and that his earlier predictions are still valid. The Dead Man and the Dead Woman are the bearers of the truth of the past.
In the Play there is a culmination of the invocation of history and the future to present a pessimistic view of the human race. Thus in an ethnic mould the thematic concerns of modern civilization is cast, thereby creating a compatible approach to past, present and future vise - versa the development of the human race. All characters testify to the fact that a Spiritual stagnation has crept into the human beings. The fate of the half child, symbolising the future of mankind, is entrusted to Demoke, the artist, whose works has been earlier described by no less than Forest Head in the guise of Obaneji as the kind of action that redeems mankind? Hope is therefore essential human progress in souls like these. They should never stop trying.
Ritual Dance and Ceremonies
Wole Soyinka’s works are not only marked by the cultural and psychological consequences of colonisation, but also by the atmosphere of disillusionment and the situation of instability which characterised the post-independence period in Nigeria. In Soyinka’s plays, dance is dual in the sense that it stands out both as the opposite of language – an unreachable oddity linked with the unspeakable, spiritual experience of the ritual trance – and as a strategic medium of expression which is conceived as a form of counter-discourse. Soyinka often turns the dancing body into a paradoxical discursive image which mediates a controlled, subversive message targeting the ideological constructs of power and authority. Suggesting that dance acts as a rebellious, disruptive discourse in some of Soyinka’s plays does not imply that the specificity and autonomy of dance is being ignored in favour of a logocentric stance.
In A Dance of the Forests, a play which was produced in 1960 as part of the celebrations
For the independence of Nigeria, dance is linked to the necessary escape from intellectual paralysis and political status quo. It is seen as a critical test supposed to trigger an awakening of the Nigerian nation facing its new life. As Biodun Jeyifo explains in Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics and Postcolonialism, the central action of the play hinges round “a gathering of the tribes” which is meant to “celebrate the glorious past and hopeful future” of Africa but will eventually turn into a judicial confrontation with the “monstrous evils of the past and present life of the community”. Soyinka draws a parallel between this gathering of the tribes and the contemporary situation of Nigeria invested with the “historic task of forging a nation out of diverse peoples and communities which the celebrations symbolically entailed.”
Within this particular context the dance in the forest, which is part and parcel of the“trial” condemning the infamous past of Africa, can be interpreted as a critical, initiatory and transitional moment when the human community (represented by three fallible characters, Demoke, Rola and Adenebi), the mirror of the newly independent Nigeria, chooses its future, symbolised by the half-child. The expiatory and inevitable dimension of the dance in the forest that occurs at the end of the play is underlined by Aroni (a forest dweller) in the prologue: “Forest Head, the one who we call OBANEJI, invited Demoke, Adenebi, and Rola to be present at the dance. They followed him, unwillingly, but they had no choice.” This idea of a compulsory step that needs to be taken in order to try and rebuild the community on a democratic and peaceful basis is also present in the stage directions describing the “Dance of the Unwilling Sacrifice” which takes place in the village after Demoke has restored the half-child to his mother: “Dance of the Unwilling Sacrifice, in which Eshuoro and Demoke relentlessly towards the totem and the silent dancing figures. Rola and Adenebi are made to sprinkle libation on the scene, continuously as in a trance.”
The reference to dawn breaking at the end of the play, along with the idea of a rite of purification undergone by Demoke and Rola, leave room for the possibility of some kind of regeneration despite the absence of a clear answer to Agboreko’s question about the future of the community: “Does that mean something wise, child? [Sneaking up to Demoke.] In the future, did you learn anything?” In fact, Rola looks chastened and Demoke mentions the lightning that seared [them both] through the head.
However, the historical events that took place in Nigeria a few years after independence (among which the Civil War, 1967-1970) must not lead us to underestimate the powerful potential of change which dance symbolises this play. Taking place at night, in the mysterious ritual space of the forest, the dance, which in Aroni’s words was not “as dignified a Dance as it should be because of the vengeful presence of Eshuoro.
In spite of the general atmosphere of violence, danger and death that prevails during the climactic scene of the play, the dance stands out as the eloquent medium used by Forest Head to “pierce the encrustations of soul-deadening habit” the prerequisite for a possible change and revolution in the ways of thinking of the human community. Interestingly, in the 1960 production of the play, “the Dance for the Half-Child” – which takes a different form partly for technical reasons – contains a dance of the Ibos, called “an ‘atilogwu’-ordered dance” in the stage directions, ‘Atilogwu’ meaning literally “putting in the medicine” The potential therapeutic value of dance is underlined even more clearly, despite the fact that this dance is instigated by the Interpreter, Eshuoro’s Jester.
Mask as a Symbol :-
In A Dance of the Forests during the ‘Dance of Welcome’, the masked humans in a state of possession by different spirits proclaim doom for the new Nigerian nation. The Spirit of Palm for example, envisions hatred, discord and eventual bloodshed:
White skeins wove me, I, Spirit of Palm
No course I red.
I who suckle blackened hearts, know
Heads will fall down
Crimson in their bed.
This predicted chaos was to be confirmed ten years later with the bloody Nigerian civil war of 1970. When the masks are removed, the spirits depart and the human characters come back to normal and can no longer speak with a prophetic tongue. Similarly, they can no longer remember what they said. The masked, possessed humans who speak in the voice of gods in A Dance of the Forests is a classic example of the ‘god- apparent or god- become man' phenomenon.
The role of the Yoruba mask or sculpture is not only to create a link between existences. There are masks in addition to cult order sacred masks that perform different functions; This shows that some Yoruba masks in the past used to function as the police of the society. The Yoruba mask therefore is evidence of one’s cultural attachment.
In his work Soyinka uses the mask as a multifaceted symbol. According to L. Marfurt (1968), the mask has the dual effect of disguising or transforming the wearer and the ambivalence of serving good and evil ends. In A Dance of the Forests during the ‘Dance of Welcome’ intended to bring human criminals to justice, Forest Head (the Supreme Deity) masquerades as a filing clerk for the courts to carry out his design of letting the human characters judge themselves. Similarly, Eshuoro (a trickster and vengeful spirit) and Aroni (lame spirit and servant to Forest Head) masquerade as Questioner and The Figure in Red respectively. These masks make it possible for them to play their desired roles of judge and foe. Furthermore, Soyinka uses another sculpture-totem to underline the difference between tradition-bound masks and masks of hypocrisy and deception. Adenebi, a proponent of the carving of the totem, in the course of his conversation with Demoke’s father declares;
‘By the way, I really ought to tell you how disappointed I was with your son’s handiwork. Don’t you think it was rather pagan? I should have thought something more in keeping with our progress would be more appropriate’
Dead Man and Dead Woman as guests at the Gathering, is an indication of the human distaste for the unvarnished truth. The ‘accumulated heritage’ which Adenebi says is being celebrated in this ‘era of greatness’ is less a record of goodness and justice than of villainy and violent injustice. Jonathan Peters’ comments suggest that the totem which Demoke carves unconsciously becomes a fitting symbol of the turbulent times the nation is passing through.
Conclusion :-
In Wole Soyinka's "Dance of the Forests," symbolic significance abounds, reflecting Nigeria's post-independence struggles and aspirations. Through intricate dances, masks, and characters, Soyinka weaves a tapestry of cultural, political, and spiritual themes, inviting audiences to contemplate the complexities of nationhood, identity, and the quest for renewal. The play serves as a powerful reminder of the enduring relevance of indigenous traditions and the need for cultural regeneration amidst modern challenges.
References :-
Azumurana, Solomon Omatsola. “Wole Soyinka’s Dystopian/Utopian Vision in a Dance of the Forests.” Tydskrif Vir Letterkunde, Tydskrif Vir Letterkunde Association, scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0041-476X2014000200006. Accessed 26 Apr. 2024.
Bigot, Inés. “Dance and Dissidence in Wole Soyinka’s Plays: From Status Quo to Re...” Commonwealth Essays and Studies, SEPC-Société d’Etude Des Pays Du Commonwealth, 20 Dec. 2019, journals.openedition.org/ces/609. Accessed 26 Apr. 2024.
Chaturvedi, Ravi. Ethnicity and Identity: Global Performance. Rawat Publications, 2005.
“The Nobel Prize in Literature 1986.” NobelPrize.Org, www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1986/soyinka/biographical/. Accessed 26 Apr. 2024.
“Wole Soyinka.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 9 Apr. 2024, www.britannica.com/biography/Wole-Soyinka. Accessed 26 Apr. 2024.
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[ Images :- 03]
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