Wole Soyinka

Karl Marx is a social, political and an economic philosophy. He gave us a theory of society where he explained of how society works and how history has unfolded. His theory was later on referred to as Marxism. Marxism is therefore defined as the scientific theory of human societies and transforming them. (Oxford Dictionary. 2009) He added on to say that Marxism has to deliver is the story of the struggles of men and women to free themselves from certain forms of exploitation and oppression.…

transgression, foreshadowing the country’s Civil War to come. Okri uses ironic distance in this novel as well. Like other magical realist authors such as Isabel Allende, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Allejo Carpentier, Syl Cheney-Coker, Kojo Laing, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison, Ben Okri has his own idea that overwhelms the possibility of rejuvenation in magical realism. Magical realism as a journey of soul searching plays its vital role. Ben Okri along with other…

Colonization was very crucial to those looking to expand their land and resources. In the 19th - 20th century the scramble of Africa was a huge competition in who could acquire more land. While, colonizing Africa many negative things happened such as brutal behavior, the removal from their homes and culture changes. Native Africans were treated horribly by the Belgians. They informally enslaved Natives and made them work for countless hours until the task that was assigned for them was complete…

Introduction: Welcome listeners to this Episode of Literature Round Table in our Open Learning Podcast Series. Today, we are going on a journey into the magnificent world of poetry and I am your host David Sea, a student from Indooroopilly State High School. Poetry to me is unique. It does not need a plethora of explanation, just a powerful message, image and meaning of the sweetness or the bitterness experiences from the bottom of the poet’s heart to tell the story. However, different poets…

How do the poems “If—”, “Telephone Conversation”, “Remember”, and three other poems present and explore conflict. Conflict occurs everywhere, anytime, and doesn’t have to involve many people. “If—” presents the conflict between an individual and other people, which is also an individual’s conflict with society. “Telephone Conversation” presents the conflict between races in society. Both of these are examples of external conflict, which involves more than one person. “Remember”, on the other…

Human nature can be of full compassion, care and understanding, but elements of sorrow, corruption and violence can also reside in our characters. Louis MacNeice’s “Prayer Before Birth”, Gabriel Okara’s “Once Upon a Time” and Carol Ann Duffy’s “War Photographer” all seek to explore the negative characteristics that are crucial to the human condition. MacNeice’s “Prayer Before Birth” was written during the Second World War. The poem explores the negative aspects of human nature through the…

The European colonial period went on for centuries and its consequences can still be seen around the world. Colonialism brought with it a huge cost in human lives and arguably a jus a big loss in faith in humanity as so many wrong decisions were made. The time of cruel exploitation and inhumane living conditions for the colonised supposedly ended with the beginning of postcolonialism that sought to settle the issues that had come with world leaders’ colonial greed. However, the conception of the…

Unlike Peter Abraham and Ousmane Sambene, who knew and projected the worth of women, the Nigeria writers have in many instances portrayed women negatively or in their subordination to men. In Ekwensi, Jagua Nana the woman is presented as prostitute; Wole Soyinka’s Amope in The Trials of Brother Jero is a ceaselessly nagging woman who makes life intolerable for her husband. Achebe’s Miss Mark does not hesitate to put her sex appeal to work in order to attain desired objectives. In J. P. Clark’s…

During Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror in Russia, communism was the main political movement that was at its peak during Stalin’s rule. George Orwell portrays this exact same situation in his novel Animal Farm. In the novel, Orwell basically depicts this exact same scenario but with animals as symbolic representations of real people in Stalin’s Russia. In Orwell’s novel, the animal that is the symbolic representation of Stalin is a pig named Napoleon. Orwell was very clever in this selection of…

According to Ngugi, “literature is a reflection on the aesthetic and imaginative planes, of a community’s wrestling with its total environment to produce the basic means of life… and in the process creating and re-creating itself in history.” This is also the basic premise of the play which sensitively registers the account of the Mau Mau, which had effectively sublimated in the documented history of the Jomo Kenyatta regime. It is noteworthy that the play opens with a song by a crowd of…