Myth Formation

in the Fiction of
Chinua Achebe
and Amitav Ghosh
Myth Formation
in the Fiction of
Chinua Achebe
and Amitav Ghosh
By

Nilanjan Chakraborty
Myth Formation in the Fiction of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

By Nilanjan Chakraborty

This book first published 2020

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2020 by Nilanjan Chakraborty

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-5275-5705-7

ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-5705-5
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................ 1

Chapter One .............................................................................................. 13

A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism

Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 51

'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings'

Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 92

'And we will keep the darker legend'

Chapter Four ........................................................................................... 132

'Tyger Tyger, burning bright'

Chapter Five ........................................................................................... 169

'As though of hemlock I had drunk'

Chapter Six ............................................................................................. 207

A Brief Comparative Analysis of Myth Formation in the Fiction
of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

Chapter Seven......................................................................................... 242

Bibliography ........................................................................................... 248

 INTRODUCTION

Myths, as we often understand them, stand as cultural products that

construct the idea of the supernatural. It is this notion that often forces us to
believe that myths are removed from a cognitive understanding of everyday
reality and are therefore to be studied in the context of removed from reality.
Myth studies is not a new discipline because, from the very inception of
human civilization, myths have linked the human desire to know the
unknown and the attempt made to represent that unknown. However, myths
have different degrees of understanding and representations in various
cultures, and those understandings have changed with time. Myths have
existed from the very inception of humankind. In the Palaeolithic Age,
humans drew pictures on cave walls, depicting strange creatures and
animals they imagined as representatives of natural objects and phenomena.
These are myths, and so are the stories they used to narrate and share about
things unknown and incomprehensible. Advanced civilizations in the
ancient ages, like those in Maya, Egypt, Iran, Greece, Mesopotamia, and the
Indus Valley, created numerous myths that sought to explain the supposedly
supernatural happenings around them through stories of gods and other
supernatural beings. Storytellers constructed stories to explain otherwise
inexplicable happenings like death, famine, thunder and lightning, floods,
diseases, and weather patterns. Invariably, figures more powerful than
ordinary human beings would be drawn, and they were given supernatural
powers to make these things happen. This urge to explain the inexplicable
forms the basis of myth formation in ancient times. As a corollary to myths,
rituals are also designed to give a more tangible representation to the myths.
Myths are relegated more to aesthetic media – in paintings, sculptures, oral
storytelling, poetry, songs, dance, and, later on, written literature. Rituals,
on the other hand, are developed as sacred practices in order to maintain the
sanctity of the myths and to give them a certain tangible representation in
the domain of religion. Myths and rituals, then, form part of a continuum
ranging from the aesthetic to the real. However, this is not to suggest that a
neat binary exists between the aesthetic and the real as rituals can be
aesthetic in the exercising medium and myths might exist in the domain of
real experiences too. Hence, to treat myths and rituals as a part of a
continuum seems more plausible.
2 Introduction

With the march of human civilization, myths started to become more

complex and political, with social hierarchies influencing the way myths got
constructed. In an agrarian feudal society, myths are a means by which the
power of the feudal lord is validated. This validation comes in the form of
stories that depict the power of the gods and then equate them with the
power of the local patriarch. As we move into the age of printed literature,
myths still dominate narrative spaces as they are cultural and political
representations of the immediate reality that the literature claims to
represent. This book concentrates on the novels of Chinua Achebe and
Amitav Ghosh and how they use myths to give shape to their literary
politics. Achebe comes from the Igbo tribe of Nigeria, and since his
upbringing was in the tribal hinterlands of Igbo Nigeria, he was exposed to
Igbo myths and rituals from childhood. This shaped his literary taste, and
when he set out to write novels, he could not ignore the immediate social
and aesthetic reality with which he had grown up. On the other hand, Amitav
Ghosh is more diasporic, and, in a specific manner, a more urbane writer.
He shuttles between Kolkata and New York and has travelled to parts of
China, Sri Lanka, and South-East Asia to research the subject matter of his
novels. So, he does not have a specific geographical locale that he intends
to represent in his novels, and that explains the difference between the two
writers’ approach to the use and formation of myths in their novels.

The book will open with a short introduction to the history of myth criticism.
It is not possible to look into the whole gamut of myth criticism within the
scope of one chapter; it demands perhaps a whole book. However, it is
necessary to look briefly at the various schools and strands of thought
associated with myth criticism because that will provide a necessary lead
into the main debate of myth formation in the fiction of Chinua Achebe and
Amitav Ghosh. Myths have existed from antiquity, but an institutionalized
effort to construct a body of criticism surrounding myths started with Plato.
Greek classical criticism was not always in favour of myths as an aesthetic
medium; philosophers like Plato and Socrates considered myths detrimental
to the project of rationality since the glorification of the mythical hero might
lead to political unrest since the hero’s stature might outshine that of the
state. Aristotle, however, showed a more favourable opinion of myths as he
talks about the kernel or the inner truth that every art production imitates.
The chapter then proceeds to take a look at the German Romantic
philosophers and their take on myths. The twentieth century showed a
renewed vigour in myth criticism, especially post-James Frazer and his
enthusiasm for anthropology and the evolution of totems. The chapter then
looks at the justification behind the title of the book and ends with a
 Myth Formation in the Fiction of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh 3

discussion on the myth-ritual interface and how the two vary in practice and
conjoin in a continuum.

The book will attempt to look at the way myth criticism has evolved over
the years, how myths and rituals can be looked at as part of a continuum,
and then it will look at the individual works of both the authors in order to
discern the way myths are reproduced in those works. A central question
that arises is why we are looking at two authors who are culturally, and
therefore spatially, so distant from each other under the same umbrella of
myth formation. Other than the highly problematic and overarching term
‘postcolonial’, there seems to be no connecting factor between Achebe and
Ghosh. The term postcolonial is problematic because there is a debate as to
whether it can be used as a temporal quality of a text, as something that is
produced after the colonial era is over, or whether it must have a more
qualitative approach. However, with respect to the specific question of
Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh, what this book proposes to do is not go
into a comparative study of their formations of myths but rather to look into
their respective approaches to the given subject, given that their cultural
moorings are quite different. However, the connecting factor lies in their
politics of using myths in their texts. The politics is that of identity
construction. Whereas identity construction may be a common factor in a
large gamut of literature, identity construction through myth formation is
the specific area that the book looks into with respect to the works of Chinua
Achebe and Amitav Ghosh. It must be kept in mind that both writers are
writing in a postcolonial context, though the context is not unproblematically
the same since the Nigerian postcolonial and the Indian postcolonial cannot
be said to have the same implicative connotations. However, the thread that
binds them is the use of myths to represent the identity of the cultures they
seek to represent, using the novel as the medium. And in that commonality
lies the difference too, as the way they look at myths and their negotiation
with culture is not the same.

Let us now look at an excerpt from an interview that Chinua Achebe gave
to Jeffrey Brown on May 27, 2008.
CHINUA ACHEBE, Author, Things Fall Apart: I knew that something
needed to be done.

JEFFREY BROWN: Something needed to be done?

CHINUA ACHEBE: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: And what was that?

4 Introduction

CHINUA ACHEBE: That was my place in the world, my story, the story of
myself, the story of my people. I was already familiar with the stories of
different people.

JEFFREY BROWN: Because you grew up reading English literature…

CHINUA ACHEBE: Yes, and having an English education and

encountering accounts of events of people. And, at some point, I began to
miss my own. Think of it in terms of a gap in the bookshelf, you know,
where a book has been taken out and the gap is there. (Achebe: 2008)

Achebe’s politics become quite apparent in this interview as he stresses

telling the story of “my people”. It is a fact that English literature in the
postcolonial period could not be Anglo-centric anymore as realities outside
the domain of England and America existed and could be represented in the
English language, though they called for new poetics. Achebe, and, for that
matter, the Black African writers of his time, like Senghor, Fanon, Wa
Thiong’ o, and Soyinka, would consider writing an act of the empire writing
back, constructing a new language of resistance and giving rise to a new
world in literature that readers of English literature had not been exposed to
before. Achebe uses myths as an important ingredient to expose the rest of
the world to the African way of life – its social ideology and religious
institutions. The word ‘African’, however, needs to be treated cautiously
since Africa is not a monolithic whole. It is a vast continent with numerous
cultures, languages and tribes, with different tribal, agrarian and urban
conglomerations, possessing different cultural ingredients. Such a multi-
cultural space cannot be clubbed under the term ‘African’, though that was
precisely the colonial project - to stereotype the colonized as an entity. For
intellectuals like Achebe, writing becomes an act of resistance and a way by
which the different cultures of Africa are ‘discovered’ by the rest of the
world, even though they have existed for centuries.

Achebe uses myth as an important component in his novels because the Igbo
tribe that he represents has an institutionalized system of myths that govern
the way the Igbo society is run. Myths form an important aspect of the Igbo
cosmology, which is governed by chi, or destiny. To Achebe, myths are
political in intent in his narrative strategy since they help construct the
collective social identity of the Igbos. Achebe sort of de-territorializes
English as a language as he puts English in the Igbo context and then
constructs the poetics of his art through that language, which he appropriates
for his politics. In 2012, Achebe wrote a book called There was a Country:
A Personal History of Biafra, which is an autobiographical narrative on the
various incidents in his life. He includes a section on the compositional
 Myth Formation in the Fiction of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh 5

history of Things Fall Apart. Let us devote some time to this book because
that will give us a lead into the various aspects of myth formation discussed
at length in the main chapters. Achebe, in the section on the compositional
history of his first novel, writes
I have written elsewhere of how I fared when I entered a short story
competition in the result, which was that nobody who entered the
competition was good enough. I was more or less singled out as someone
with some promise, but the story I submitted lacked “form”. Understandably,
I wanted to find out more about what the professor meant by form. It seemed
to me that there was some secret competence that I needed to be taught. But
when I then applied some pressure on this professor to explain to me what
form was, it was clear that she was not prepared – that she could not explain
it to me. And it dawned on me that despite her excellent mind and
background, she was not capable of teaching across cultures, from her
English culture to mine. It was in these circumstances that I was moved to
put down on paper the story that became Things Fall Apart. (Achebe, 2012:
34-35)

It is clear from his explanation what Achebe intends to do with his art. It is
not an exclusivist approach that he has in mind when he says that the British
professor could not explain to him what she actually meant by “form”.
Achebe is aware that she is a product of her cultural background, and she
knows fiction in the form that Europeans have deemed the form of a short
story. But there can be other “forms” too which are not Eurocentric but can
be appropriated into the English language and literary oeuvre through
shifting the parameters of a “form”. Myths in his novels, therefore, perform
the specific function of discerning the Igbo culture for the foreign audience,
and he chooses to write in English so he can reach a wider audience. The
cultural appropriation that Achebe exercises through his art is a dominant
politics in the postcolonial authors as they want to reclaim their identity not
through indigenous means but the colonial enterprise also. Ashcroft,
Griffith and Tiffin in Empire Writes Back observes
The crucial function of language as a medium of power demands that
postcolonial writing defines itself by seizing the language of the centre and
replacing it in a discourse fully adapted to the colonized place. There are
two distinct processes by which it does this. The first, the abrogation or
denial of the privilege of ‘English’ involves a rejection of the metropolitan
power over the means of communication. The second, the appropriation and
reconstruction of language of the centre, the process of capturing and
remoulding the language to new usages, marks a separation from the site of
colonial privilege. (Ashcroft, Griffith and Tiffin, 37)
6 Introduction

This notion of appropriation of language is perhaps the point of view of the

first generation of postcolonial critics, because, later, Homi Bhabha pointed
out in Location of Culture that colonization leads to a hybridization of
culture, where the colonial narrative constantly intrudes into the postcolonial
narrative, giving rise to a hybrid identity in the narrative. To Ashcroft and
Tiffin, the appropriation of the colonial language is almost unilinear, which
leads to a discourse that defines the production of the postcolonial culture
in terms of resisting the colonial centre of privilege. However, as far as
Achebe is concerned, his appropriation of the colonial narrative is not a
unilinear phenomenon because the interface between colonial history and
the postcolonial present is a kind of mixture of cultures. “It is not the
colonialist Self or the colonized Other, but the disturbing in-between that
constitutes the figure of colonial otherness – the white man’s artifice
inscribed on the black man’s body”, states Homi Bhabha (Bhabha, 1994:
45). Achebe’s politics in his literary creations can be seen as a product of
the in-between experience that was his childhood as he negotiated with the
colonial culture in his school, and academia in religion.

In There was a Country, Achebe points to this tension between the colonial
culture and the native ethos that he had to negotiate as a social person as
well as an intellectual. He notes
I can say that my whole artistic career was probably sparked by this tension
between the Christian religion of my parents, which we followed in our
home, and the retreating, older religion of my ancestors, which fortunately
for me was still active outside my home. (Achebe, 2012: 11)

The passage shows that Achebe grew up in a society where assimilation was
perhaps the key factor that drove society towards a mingling of tradition and
modernity. By modernity, we do not mean Christianity in particular, but the
general influence of the colonial culture on the colonized. However, the
word ‘modernity’ must not be interpreted in terms of a lateral growth of
culture towards betterment but should be read in the context of a foreign
influence in the local culture. As an artist who wants to portray the
traditional Igbo way of life, Achebe chooses the point of inflection in
history, that is, the arrival and consolidation of colonialism, in order to
comment on the larger issues of cultural confluence. In novels like Things
Fall Apart and Arrow of God, Achebe does not unproblematically reflect on
the tradition of Igbo culture that would have meant that Achebe was only
interested in constructing a neat binary between the pre-colonial and the
colonial times. At a time when cultures are intermingling and creating
fissures in each other, Achebe discerns the inherent fault lines that run
 Myth Formation in the Fiction of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh 7

through the centre of Igbo life. He shows how myths function as

authoritarian agents at times as society is duty bound to follow them, and at
other times he delineates how those very myths are twisted and strategically
re-interpreted by people in power, like Okonkwo and Ezeulu, to galvanize
their self-interest and strengthen their power. This makes Achebe a
politically complex novelist to interpret. He is not a nationalist but a critic
of cultures – both the colonial and postcolonial societies. The chapters that
follow examine his texts and specifically focus on myth formation and how
it contributes to the issue of identity construction. In the novel No Longer
at Ease, myths prove to be detrimental to the hero Obi, who cannot marry
the woman of his choice because she is an osu. In this case, Obi resists the
traditional society governed by myths since he is a product of the
postcolonial society who is also shaped by English education and does not
consider tradition as a principle to take into account when making a
decision.

Talking about the tension between tradition and modernity in Achebe’s

novels, Achebe mentions an incident in There was a Country that happened
to his mother. Kola-nuts are considered sacred according to Igbo rituals and
they are not supposed to be picked from the tree. One is allowed to collect
them only when the fruit ripens and falls to the ground. However, Achebe's
mother, being a Christian, picked a kola-nut from the tree and her Christian
neighbour (who was also her relative) reported the matter to the local priest
as an "insult to our culture". However, Achebe's mother did not give in to
any pressure and said that she had every right to pick the fruit, especially
when the tree was in her compound. Achebe concludes by saying "One can
appreciate the fact that she had won a battle for Christianity, women's rights
and freedom" (Achebe, 2012: 10). These autobiographical anecdotes are a
glimpse into the kind of society Achebe fictionalizes in his novels. The strife
between Igbo tradition and Christian modernity is centred around the debate
of how the older belief systems are to be negotiated. Myths, therefore, form
a central discourse in the debate, and it is the perspective on myths that
contributes to the social tension surrounding the pre-colonial and postcolonial
times.

The other author that the book proposes to look at in terms of myth
formation is Amitav Ghosh. Ghosh's context is quite different from
Achebe’s, not only because Achebe is Nigerian and Ghosh is a diasporic
Indian author but also because Ghosh follows a different politics in his
novels. The postcoloniality of Ghosh is not the same as that of Achebe's.
The novels The Hungry Tide, Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, and Flood of
Fire are not social critiques of a colonial condition but talk of characters
8 Introduction

engaging with the colonial force to make their living. The Hungry Tide,
however, should not be bracketed with the other three as they are part of the
Ibis trilogy, set in 19th-century Bengal, Bombay and Canton, during the
Opium Wars. The Hungry Tide is a depiction of the Bon Bibi myth that
functions as a major ritualistic order in the Sunderban region. The chapter
on this novel discusses the myth and its significance on the characters in
detail. It must be kept in mind that Ghosh is a half-Diasporic and half-native
author because he shuttles between Kolkata and the USA, and he even
travels to various parts of the world to research the topics he intends to
fictionalize. In an interview, Ghosh stated
I lived in a small village in the Sunderbans for a while, on an island called
Satjelia. I travelled through the khals [canals] and creeks, got a boat and
spent time with the fishermen, learnt how to catch crabs and heard their
stories. Yes, it was a long process of research. (Ghosh, 2004: 6)

Amitav Ghosh is an avid researcher who not only depends on secondary

sources for his research but conducts field research as well to get first-hand
experience of the local cultures. Perhaps his training as an anthropologist
helped him adopt this approach. The fact that Ghosh stayed in the Sunderbans
to collect material for the novel shows in the way he fictionalizes the Bon
Bibi myth in the novel because there is a tone of immediacy in the details
of the myth. The Bon Bibi myth gives a hyper-localized temper to the text
because the society governed by this myth is not a large one at all. The
population of the Sunderban, though constantly increasing, does not have a
large population, and even within it, only that part of the population that
lives very close to the delta and the mangroves negotiates directly with the
myths and rituals of Bon Bibi. Bon Bibi is the protective mother to all those
who enter the forest as she is said to have the power to protect humankind
from the attacks of the tiger. It is untenable to go into the details of the myth
here as it is discussed at great length in the subsequent chapters, but what
needs to be stressed here is Ghosh's aim to focus on the local in the novel.
A debate might be raised as to whether the Bon Bibi narrative is a myth or
more of a cult because the spatial influence of the narrative is not large.
However, it is problematic enough to note that, based on the number of
followers, a myth can be distinguished from a cult. Also, a myth might have
many figures in it as divinities, but a cult is more directed towards an
individual divine figure. However, in the case of Bon Bibi, there are other
characters like Dakkhin Ray and Dukhe who are a part of the narrative and
hence it will not be too deviant to say that Bon Bibi does lead up to a myth.
A myth normally has a well- structured system of belief, which is
manifested through rituals and, in the case of the Bon Bibi narrative, the
 Myth Formation in the Fiction of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh 9

rituals form a coherent system of faith, as is evident in the rituals practised

by characters like Malati and Fokir in the novel. The tension in The Hungry
Tide is created by the reception of the myths and rituals by Piya – a diasporic
Bengali who has settled in America and comes to Sunderban to research the
Gangetic dolphins. Her ignorance about the local myths can be interpreted
as the colonizer's ignorance of the local culture, but Piya is more receptive
to gaining knowledge about the myths and rituals of the place that govern
the lives of characters like Fokir. It is this fluidity in Piya that gives a
different perspective on the myths because as an outsider who is not
appropriated into the folds of the local culture, she is a different receptor to
them. Fokir looks at myths with absolute faith; Nirmal dismisses them
totally as he is a Communist and hence a non-believer in such narratives of
faith. Piya, however, looks at mythology as a knowledge capital that
produces a certain culture. The alternate gaze to the myth of Bon Bibi
through the character of Piya is the objectivity that Ghosh attempts to bring
in his narrative.

The other three novels that the book proposes to look at in terms of myth
formation are Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire. These three
novels are a part of the Ibis trilogy set in 19th-century Bengal, South-East
Asia (briefly) and Canton during the Opium War. In these novels, myth
formation takes place through the construction of various belief systems that
were dominant in the 19th century in the various parts of Asia that Ghosh
depicts. The three novels fictionalize various historical events that occurred
during the Opium War, a war fought between Britain and China over the
control of opium exports from the port of Canton. Ghosh inducts myths in
his narrative as a statement of the social belief systems functioning during
the time. Apart from this, the issue of class also pervades the myth formation
in the texts. Deeti, who is a lower-class woman from Bihar, marginalized in
terms of class and gender, negotiates with the myth of Sati and the related
rituals. She is also, however, projected as the goddess when she proves to
be the binding factor among the girmitiyas (coolies) aboard the ship to
Mauritius, where they are being taken as plantation workers by the British.
On the other hand, Babu Nob Kissin, who is a manager in Mr. Burnham’s
firm, experiences gender fluidity as he associates himself with the myth of
Rashleela in which Lord Krishna engaged in playful romancing with the
ladies of Vrindavana. Babu Nob Kissin imagines himself as one of the
sakhis, or playmates, of the Lord. He feels that his male body is being
appropriated by his spiritual guide and mother, Ma Taramony, and hence
that he is becoming feminine, both ontologically and psychologically. In the
case of Deeti, myth works as a repressive force because she is
underprivileged in terms of her class and gender, and society finds in her a
10 Introduction

suitable subject on whom to impose social narratives. On the other hand, for
Babu Nob Kissin, myths serve as a liberating force that helps him come to
terms with his body and gender. This emancipating aspect of the myth is
made possible by Nob Kissin’s affluent class affiliation. Deeti’s resistance
to social norms after she is taken away from the funeral pyre of her husband
by Kalua is met with derision and social stigma. She and Kalua have to
escape after marrying because society and her in-laws will not accept a
woman who escapes being a Sati and then marries a man lower in class.
Babu Nob Kissin, however, faces no such social stigma, at least not
apparently. He does have to face some social derision from people like Mr.
Burnham for being so "feminine" in a man's body, but he does not have to
face social expulsion like Deeti because he is a manager in a British-owned
firm, and also he is a man. When we look at the issue of myth formation in
the text of Amitav Ghosh, this issue of class needs to be kept in mind
especially because that determines how myths are received by the
characters. In the Ibis, there is a conglomeration of classes, which by itself
is an interrogation of the existing system of belief. In fact, the only identity
that the characters possess on the ship is that they are all coolies. It does not
matter that the coolies comprise of Deeti and Kalua from Bihar; Paulette, an
British orphan who had been brought up by Indian foster parents and Mr
and Mrs. Burnham; Neel, the deposed zamindar of Rashkhali, who is tricked
into bankruptcy by Mr. Burnham; and Ah-Fatt, a half-Chinese, half-Indian
led astray by opium abuse. These characters are socially distant, and before
they come on board the Ibis, they didn’t know each other. However, once
on the Ibis, class becomes a secondary issue as everyone’s identities are
reoriented and they are assigned another –colonized subjects under the
control of their British masters.

In the interview that we quoted above, Amitav Ghosh gave his reason for
choosing the novel as a form to express his thoughts as an artist. He says
For me, the value of the novel as a form is that it is able to incorporate
elements of every aspect of life – history, natural history, rhetoric, politics,
beliefs, religion, family love, sexuality. As I see it, the novel lets you write
anything you want to, as long as what you write remains pertinent to the
bigger story. You create a world where you can include every part of you
and the usual distinctions between historian, journalist, anthropologist
dissolve. (Ghosh, 2004: 8)

This is why the researcher is tempted to call Ghosh a postmodern novelist.

Ghosh seems to have an approach of generic synthesis in his novels, which
is deemed to be an important feature of postmodernism. However, such
tagging of authors is not unproblematic and the chapters on Ghosh will take
 Myth Formation in the Fiction of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh 11

a close textual look to find whether Ghosh can be called postmodern with
respect to myth formation or whether he slips away from any such
terminological contouring.

A question that crops up during the book is how we can synthesize history
with myth, and if that is tenable at all. In the poststructuralist tradition of
Derrida, language is limited to all possible experiences and hence limited to
transcendental subjectivity. So, history and myth are products of language
that cannot construct a transcendental phenomenon and are hence tied to a
continuum with facts at one end and fiction at the other. It is not quite correct
to say that myth and history are completely different. In fact, to use Derrida's
theory of différance, it might be argued that myth is understood in terms of
negation of its meaning with history, and vice-versa. In such a scenario,
myth and history spiral towards an endless chain of signifieds since both
operate to discern their meaning through an infinite possibility of negation
of signification. In the Ibis trilogy, apart from the myths and rituals, Ghosh
uses history itself as a form of constructing the mythical narrative. This does
not mean that history becomes myth, but rather it signifies that history
becomes a possibility for mythical narratives to be constructed where
mythology is not entirely dependent on stories of gods to discern its
meaning but can operate to produce meaning at the scale of fact fusing with
fiction and belief. In an interview, Amitav Ghosh was asked why he chooses
to write historical novels and not history. And this was his answer.
Mahmood Kuria: What makes you comfortable to write historical novels and
not academic history?

Amitav Ghosh: I do not really know how to answer that. To put it simply, I
am just not interested in writing academic history, mainly because it is just
a different set of questions that one asks. In the first instance, I am interested
in characters, in people, in individual stories, and the history is a backdrop.
But there is a huge difference between writing a historical novel and writing
history. If I may put it like this: history is like a river, and the historian is
writing about the ways the river flows and the currents and crosscurrents in
the river. But, within this river, there are also fish, and the fish can swim in
many different directions. So, I am looking at it from the fish’s point of view
and which direction the fish swims in. So, history is the water in which it
swims, and it is important for me to know the flow of the water. But in the
end, I am interested in the fish. The novelist’s approach to the past, through
the eyes of characters, is substantially different from the approach of the
historian. For me, seeing the past through the prism of a character allows me
to understand some aspects of the past that historians don’t deal with. But I
must admit that doing this would not be possible if historians had not laid
the foundations. (Ghosh, 2013: 9)
12 Introduction

The metaphor of the fish helps Amitav Ghosh declare that he does not
consider history as a closed narrative that cannot be used for further
dissemination of meaning. It is here that myth interjects within the historical
narrative. Popular beliefs, cults and ritualistic practices intervene to
construct a multifaceted narrative of history. It also contributes to the
process of having multiple voices to a given narrative of history, and those
voices need not always come from academically established discourses.

The book ends with a comparative look at the formation of myth in Chinua
Achebe and Amitav Ghosh. The last chapter will delve into the
methodological differences in myth formation between Chinua Achebe and
Amitav Ghosh. It is stating the obvious to say that due to the temporal and
cultural differences between the two authors, myth formation will be
different because the very sources and content of the myths will be different.
That is not something that we propose to look at. The focus will be on the
politics of identity construction through myth and how that informs the
difference in approach of the two authors. Achebe has more immediacy in
postcolonial politics. Writing from his Black African identity, he needs to
assert the cultural ties of his community to the white European and
American world and rescue it from the severe racial stereotypification and
violence that it has suffered for centuries from the colonizers. On the other
hand, Amitav Ghosh is not compulsively postcolonial. His novels, though
set at times in the colonial period, are not politicized by an immediate
identity construction of the postcolonial. Ghosh does not have the
compulsion to construct a narrative of resistance. However, his identity
construction is more fluid in terms of community and race. His myths
operate at various sections of the society, which comprise of Indians from
various parts of the country, British colonizers, diasporic characters,
expatriates, and even Chinese. Ghosh's politics of identity is more directed
at the late twentieth century and early twenty-first-century globalized world
where transnational travel and displacement, whether forced or self-willed,
construct the notion of selfhood situated in various locations of the world.
Displacement is a major theme in the Ibis trilogy and this, in turn, reorients
myths as rooting factors for the culturally dislocated as well as the liberation
of the self, as in the case of Babu Nob Kissin. The book will attempt to find
the essential ruptures and differences that define the process of myth
formation in the texts of the two authors under scrutiny.
 CHAPTER ONE

A SHORT OVERVIEW OF MYTH

AND MYTH CRITICISM

1.1 A Short History of Myth Criticism

The word ‘myth’ has received many critical and literary receptions across
the generations in various cultures, and the receptions are as varied as they
are fluid. Myth making is perhaps mankind's oldest form of cultural and
aesthetic production. The cave paintings of the Neolithic age reflect people's
desire to represent their world in terms of cognitive symbols, often taking
the form of sequential art, leading to narratives through visual representations.
As human reception of scientific and geographical phenomena has changed
over the centuries, the representation of these aspects has also changed. It is
difficult to ascertain why natural phenomena like thunder, lightning, fire,
and death were given certain divine symbols – perhaps because of man’s
relative incompetency to understand the reason behind such phenomena in
the early stages of civilisation. Myth studies as an academic or
anthropological discipline is a relatively new area of study and it came into
existence only after the Renaissance in Europe when there was a growing
interest in studying man as a biological product. But myth as a form of
representation has received critical attention from classical theorists, who
have often denigrated myth as being anti-rational, that which goes beyond
the scope of logos. This chapter will not focus so much on the history of
myth making as on the theories that have cropped up to explain the various
aspects of myth making. Therefore, an attempt is made to graph the various
approaches to myth criticism, both from Europe and elsewhere. In classical
Greece, the earliest critical thinking on myth was done perhaps by Hesiod,
followed by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, as well as the Sophists. Hesiod
identifies logos as the principle of reason and argument, and contrasts that
with mythos. Bruce Lincoln, while identifying the term logos in Greek
literary history, states
In the Homeric poems (hymns as well as epics), the term logos covers much
the same semantic range that it does in Hesiod, although with a few different
nuances and shades of meaning. Most striking, Homer's logoi are always set
14 Chapter One

in opposition to some situation or threat of violent struggle. In all instances,

the term denotes acts of speech-often soothing, sometimes deceitful – that
persuade men either to abandon the battlefield and renounce physical force
or to find comfort and solace in moments of peace. The voices of official
and conventional morality, however, tend to depict those who use and those
who are influenced by such speech as irresponsible, womanly, or childish
in nature. (Lincoln, 8)

Lincoln’s theorization leads us to the point that Homer used logos as the
principle of rational philosophy that constructs State and citizenship in
terms of a certain mode of power hierarchy where violence becomes the
right of the State, as common citizens are not allowed to take up arms,
effectively meaning that they must not go against the State – one of the
earliest examples where the state is represented as sacred. In contrast to
logos is mythos, where Hesiod in Theogony tends to direct his argument
towards speeches made during war, thereby engaging that speech with
violence and a show of power. In texts like Iliad and Odysseus, according
to Bruce Lincoln, myth making takes a major form in the epic narrative.
However, the difference between logos and mythos lies in the fact that
whereas the former intends to avoid violence, the latter is engaged with
violence. Perhaps this is the reason why some Greek intellectuals prefer
logos over mythos, because any ideology that moves towards violence is a
threat to the establishment, especially if that violence is purported by a
private individual. Myth making involves the mystification, self-
glorification, exaggeration, and legitimization of the immense power of the
mythical hero and hence there is a danger that his representation may
outshine the State. However, there is a clear divide in the opinion of the
ancients regarding mythos. Heraclitus and Plato denounce myth as the
falsification of reality and an unnecessary story that encourages the practice
of deception in both the individual and the political order. Plato in Republic
II and X is critical of the role that the poets play in society, and therefore by
extension he also denounces their myth making capabilities, especially that
of Homer. Plato adds that since poetry is an act of mimesis that imitates the
real, therefore mythos itself becomes an act of sub-standard imitation. In
addition, since a poet claims to be divinely-inspired, where the Muse speaks
through him, he loses all originality and becomes a kind of a cipher for
divine dispensation.1 These charges by Plato were refuted by Aristotle when
he claimed in Poetics that mimesis is not an imitation of the real but of a
kernel, the inner aesthetic spirit of a work.2 Myth by extension also becomes
an aesthetic simulation of that kernel and is not to be consigned to the
stratum of the irrational or illogical. Heraclitus, Pindar and Xenophanes did
not consider mythos enlightening enough, and even though poets like Pindar
 A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism 15

told stories of gods and goddesses, they mostly preferred logos over
mythos.3 However, what comes from a closer critical inspection is that all
the ancients who did not prefer myth making in their creative or critical
thinking were actually involved in myth making. The dialogues of Socrates
in a book like Phaedrus, for example, are replete with myths and
mythological constructions, as also devised later by Plato. The myths serve
the function of establishing a certain code and hierarchy in the
political/social order that must be convincing to the philosopher as well as
the larger citizen public.

However, since the two authors in question, namely Chinua Achebe and
Amitav Ghosh, are writers from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it
will be perhaps more relevant to look at the myth studies of the modern era.
Before coming to the twentieth century, we need to look briefly at the
German Romantic movement, which shaped the way anthropologists and
the cultural historians of later ages looked at myth. We will glance at the
work of Friedrich Schlegel, Schelling and Arthur Schopenhauer and attempt
a critical analysis of their general trend of thought vis-à-vis myth criticism.
Schlegel looks at mythology as a unifying principle of Western art and
artistic consciousness that binds the different areas of thought and
philosophy together, such as history, poetry and science. In “Talk of
Mythology”, Schlegel observes
Our poetry, I maintain, lacks a focal point, such as mythology was for the
ancients; and one could summarize all the essentials in which modern poetry
is inferior to the ancient in these words: we have no mythology. But, I add,
we are close to obtaining one or, rather, it is time that we earnestly work
together to create one. (Schlegel, 309)

Mythology to Schlegel is therefore an aesthetic agent that binds knowledge

capital in a singular strain of thought. Contemporary sensibility will
categorize such a thought process as intellectual hegemony since mythology
is constructed as a necessary parameter to inspect the quality of art
production. He adds that “poetry and mythology are inseparable” (ibid, 310)
and thus the two become qualities of antiquity. Schlegel is of the point of
view that classical poetry is a perfect and indivisible form of art because it
employed mythology in its construction. Schlegel belongs to a group of
antiquarians, along with Schiller and Schopenhauer of his age and later
artists like Eliot, Joyce and Pound, who felt the need to unify the sensibilities
in art as practised by classical artists. Schlegel defines mythology as
something that must be “forged from the deepest depths of the spirit” that
will form the “eternal fountainhead of poetry” (ibid). Schlegel invokes
Spinoza to link his conception of mythology with the sublime. He states
16 Chapter One

Mythology is such a work of art created by nature. In its texture the sublime
is really formed; everything is relation and metamorphosis, conformed and
transformed, and this conformation and transformation is its peculiar
process, its inner life and method. (ibid, 312)

Mythology is related to the cult of the sublime, as theorized by Schlegel,

which puts mythology on a platform of antiquarian idealism. Kant and
Spinoza put sublime in the realm of absolute greatness,4 which means that
sublimity cannot be imitated, it is beyond imitation. Mythology, if equated
with sublimity, becomes an idealized state of aesthetic production that
cannot be imitated. In other words, it is almost divine (philosophically, and
not necessarily in religious terms) in nature and hence can exist outside the
purview of imitation. As such a canon is constructed around the narrative
and theories of mythology. The narrative quality of mythology is put on a
platform of a higher synthesizing capacity where history, philosophy and
poetry can coexist in a synthesized space. It is true that Schlegel’s point of
view is echoed in Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria but Coleridge’s focus is
on the object of poetry whereas Schlegel has a wider interest in literary,
aesthetic and philosophical debates. Schlegel, in The Athenaeum, observes
that
Romantic poetry is a progressive universal poetry. Its mission is not merely
to reunite all separate genres of poetry … It will, and should, now mingle
and now amalgamate poetry and prose, genius and criticism, the poetry of
art and the poetry of nature… fill and saturate the forms of art with solid
cultural material of every kind. (Schlegel, 314)

The moment some kind of art production becomes universal, the critic faces
the charge of disbursing a kind of critical school that positions it as “the art”.
Schlegel’s theory of mythology and Romantic art is a reaction to the
empiricist philosophy of Locke and Hume, and his effort is to guide
criticism to a space where the mystical can be justified under certain rational
tenets like imitation and the qualitative approach to art in terms of that
mythical dimension. Schlegel’s argument is taken up by Schelling and
Schopenhauer to construct mythology as a synthesizing agency between the
ideal and the profane. The ideal, however, need not be taken as universally
acceptable because the ideal in all cases is politically inclined in its narrative
and hence not free from interrogation based on intellectual and philosophical
debate.

Schelling’s conception of mythology comes closer to what Nietzsche later

theorized. Schelling’s view of mythology is appropriated from the narrative
of the polytheistic practice of the Greeks. He observes that “God” has
 A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism 17

existed from the very inception of human culture/civilisation but in the pre-
modern existence, God was monotheistic. Schelling identifies myth making
as a rich cultural production only when monotheism gave way to
polytheism; as Nietzsche would later say, it is the Dionysiac principle that
propelled the making of the great classical tragedies. Schelling observes
Mythology is essentially a successive polytheism, which can arise only
through an actual successive sequence of potencies, in which each power
supposes and makes necessary what follows and is completed by what
preceded, so that true unity is established again at last. (Schelling, 326)

Schelling’s conception of an Aristotelian Unity of Action (Aristotle's theory

that every succeeding action must be a logical result of a preceding action
is imitated in Schelling's theory that myth narratives follow a sequential
code) points to myth making as a linear process in culture where succeeding
myths contribute to the generation of newer myths, and that in turn
contributes to myth making in future. However, this linear progression in
myths, according to Schelling, is possible only when there is a polytheistic
structure of religion because without that myth narratives could not have the
plurality that can generate multiple meanings. Schelling notes that
mythology cannot exist outside consciousness; that is, man’s conception of
reality and hence polytheism reflects the multiplicity of human experience.
Schelling belongs to the group of theorists who theorize mythology in terms
of its approximation to social reality. Schelling is of the view that
polytheism frees culture from the hegemony of the monotheistic
appropriation of religious/ritualistic discourses. Schelling’s originality in the
larger Romantic conception of mythology lies in the fact that he tries to trace
the development of mythology from the perspective of polytheistic
discourses in Europe. Myth making involves a multiple approach to
narrative construction, involving a plurality of voices, therefore it thrives in
polytheistic religious cultures. Of course, this idea can be challenged in the
context of monotheistic cultures but it is true that to a large extent
polytheistic discourses open up the opportunity for myth making to become
more complex, multi-voiced and plural in intent. This also opens up the
debate about the origin of myths. The classical theorists of myth would like
to believe that myths generated from one single source (also later argued by
Max Mueller and Jung) but Schelling argues that myths have multiple
sources which are culture-specific, and thus from a macro-narrative on
myth, Schelling thrusts the arguments on myth criticism towards a micro-
narrative reception. So, instead of focusing on one source to understand the
etymological root of a myth, Schelling proposes that one needs to look at
the various sources that might have contributed to the generation of that
18 Chapter One

myth and hence the focus shifts from a macro level enquiry to a micro level
investigation on the narratives and sub-narratives that would have generated
a given myth in the present form.

Schopenhauer’s conception of myth is based on an esoteric notion that myth

represents a kind of privileged knowledge that is hidden from the
commonplace and is accessible only to the wise. Schopenhauer was
interested in Indian religious scriptures, especially from the Aryan period,
like the Vedas and the Upanishads. He calls this the cult of Brahmanism
and accepts it as an eternal truth. Schopenhauer’s thoughts seem to stem
from an acute sense of superiority of intellect and the hierarchization of the
human mind according to its capability to retain intellectual discourses. He
observes
This is the object of religious teachings, since these are all the mythical
garments of the truth which is inaccessible to the crude human intellect. In
this sense, that myth might be called in Kant’s language a postulate of
practical reason (Vernunft), but considered as such, it has the great
advantage of containing absolutely no elements but those which lie before
our eyes in the realm of reality, and thus of being able to support all its
concepts with perceptions. (Schopenhauer, 362)

Kant’s practical reason, found in one of his Critiques, is based on the

assumption that the determination of will cannot become a law until that
will presupposes the existence of another previous desire. What
Schopenhauer intends to say here is that myth is not a universal law since
myths presuppose that the receiving subject will act on the narrative of faith.
Hence Schopenhauer shifts the focus from myth being the universal
repository of human knowledge or consciousness. However, at the same
time, he states that the Indian sources of myth like the Upanishads and the
Vedas are esoteric in nature and are sources of the European intellectual
mindscape since the Indian texts shaped and aligned the way European
intellectual activities developed, especially post- eighteenth century. He
also adds that myths function as a receptacle, a kind of vehicle that reveals
esoteric truths to general humanity. Since the highest forms of knowledge
are understood through revelations by intellectually superior people, myths
are needed to pass that esoteric system of values to the intellectually inferior.
Not only is Schopenhauer’s theorization anthropologically classicist but
also, to an extent, Modernist by supporting a culture of thought that accepts
knowledge as privileged. The functionality of myth formation is pushed by
Schopenhauer as a mere carrier in the chain of representation, and that also
on an unequal scale. Myth then becomes a mere transporter of ideas from
the intellectual to the non-intellectual, and hence as a narrative must adhere
 A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism 19

to some kind of demotion in quality as the idea, which itself is of a higher

order, must be presented to subjects in terms of easy representation. Myth
fulfils that function.

In the twentieth century, there was a surge of anthropological studies by

researchers like Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski. Malinowski in
particular contributed greatly to the development of myth studies as an
academic discipline with the publication of Magic, Science and Religion
and Other Essays (1948). Malinowski was not an academic theorist but was
a field researcher in cultural/social anthropology and had conducted
research in Australia and the Trobriand islands to observe the patterns of
myth and ritual in tribal societies. For our purposes, we will look at one of
the essays in this book, “Myth in Primitive Psychology”. At the very
beginning of the essay, Malinowski attacks the Society for the Comparative
Study of Myth, which was founded in Berlin in 1906. He observes that this
school of criticism, led by Ehrenreich, Siecke, Winckler, and Frobenius,
chose to look at myth only from certain symbolic associations with objects
of nature, like the sun and the moon, and then relate every myth narrative to
some larger symbolic association of them. Malinowski came up with the
idea that myth is not a symbolic codification of a natural or a historical event
but rather a cultural or aesthetic production that exists by its autonomous
right to be there. Therefore, Malinowski was one of the first critics in the
modern era to link myth with aesthetic values and thereby construct it as a
literary narrative having the values of an art form. He states
Studied alive, myth, as we shall see, is not symbolic, but a direct expression
of its subject-matter; it is not an explanation in satisfaction of a scientific
interest, but a narrative resurrection of a primeval reality, told in satisfaction
of deep religious wants, moral cravings, social submissions, assertions, even
practical requirements. Myth fulfils in primitive culture an indispensable
function: it expresses, enhances, and codifies belief; it safeguards and
enforces morality; it vouches for the efficiency of ritual and contains
practical rules for the guidance of man. Myth is thus a vital ingredient of
human civilization; it is not an idle tale, but a hard-worked active force; it
is not an intellectual explanation or an artistic imagery, but a pragmatic
charter of primitive faith and moral wisdom. (Malinowski, 79)

If we choose to leave aside the clutter of Modernist grand narratives in

relation to morality and primality, then it becomes tenable to see that
Malinowski is actually concentrating on giving myths a certain ideological
position. It seems that he is trying to construct a certain ideological strategic
deployment in order to give myth a value in the world of academia instead
of being merely fantastical tales of improbable events. Malinowski’s
20 Chapter One

approach is therefore a sociological chartering of myths and their

functionality in shaping the discourses of the artistic culture of a society.
However, his approach is that of a field anthropologist’s and therefore he
backs his theoretical assumptions through field research and case studies.
He mainly uses the myths of the Trobriand islanders to substantiate his
points on myth criticism. Malinowski does not generalize his observations
to all the cultures. He rather stresses on the micro-management of myth
criticism, toning down each and every observation to the socio-cultural and
political context of the society in which the myth was generated as a medium
of communication. This is important to understand because critics like
James Frazer and Jung (from the psycho-analytical perspective) had a too-
general approach to myth criticism, imposing their readings on each cultural
context, thereby proposing a grand narrative on the subject. Malinowski
states that since the sociological approach is heavily dependent on field
research, a micro-narrative theorizing the field studies should be in place,
which will remain contextualized in the time-space continuum within which
it is being studied. At the same time, Malinowski also makes the important
observation that like any narrative, myth is not static. Myth narratives are
“constantly regenerated” and are a “constant by-product of living faith” and
sanctions a certain “moral rule” in society (ibid, 122). It is to be noted here
that Malinowski seems to have a two-pronged observation of myths. On one
hand he accepts that myths are subject to a certain fluidity in their narrative.
In the primitive society that Malinowski refers to, myths generally take the
form of oral performances or rituals, and so they are constantly shifting in
content and form to suit the sociological context in the ever-changing time
scale. On the other hand, Malinowski imposes a moral order on myths,
making them a part of the sacred. If myths are treated as sacred, then they
become teleological in intent and theosophical in purpose. It can be
observed that Malinowski is differentiating between the aesthetic purpose
of myths and their narratological evolution. He belongs to the strand of
Modernist thinking where the moral purpose of any aesthetic production is
of great significance and that is why he connects myth with the moral order
of society. At the same time, he does not consider myth narratives as frozen
in their meaning generation but they change in content and expression with
the change of historical circumstances. Malinowski’s contribution in the
field of myth of criticism lies in the point that he historicizes myth and
dislocates the grand narrative surrounding myths that they are some form of
expression of human desire or divine order.

James Frazer’s The Golden Bough was published in 1922 and is one of the
most influential books on myth criticism in the Modernist era, influencing
the works of Modernists like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, D.H.
 A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism 21

Lawrence and W.B. Yeats, among others. Frazer’s work is an extension of

the social anthropology that seemed to have captured the imagination of the
critics working in the area of myth, ritual and magic of that era. Frazer, like
Malinowski, worked as a field researcher in the domain of social
anthropology and his methodology is the same; he theorizes on myth and
ritual after citing social practices from his own field work. However, he also
uses secondary sources to validate his points. One of the problems with
Frazer’s theorization lies in his construction of a binary between
contemporary modernity and past savagery. The entire Modernist discourse
was no doubt a culmination of the Enlightenment project of Europe, and in
that project, there was a clear-cut demarcation in the intellectual capacities
of modern age and pre-modern man. The problem with such a construction
is that myths and rituals are immediately certified as the narrative of
“savages”, thereby constructing stereotypes. For example, while explaining
the Diana Virbius myth from classical Roman antiquity, Frazer observes
No one will probably deny that such a custom savours of a barbarous age,
and, surviving into imperial times, stands out in striking isolation from the
polished Italian society of the day, like a primaeval rock rising from the
smooth-shaven lawn. It is the very rudeness and the barbarity of the custom
which allows us a hope of explaining it. (Frazer, 2)

The rude and barbarous custom that Frazer is referring to is that of the
worship of Diana constituted by Orestes. He killed Thoas, the king of the
Tauric Chersonese, and took the image of the Tauric Diana with him to Italy.
It is said that anyone who lands on the shore where Diana’s shrine is kept is
sacrificed on her altar because of the violence that preceded the
establishment of her shrine. Frazer calls this a “bloody ritual” (ibid, 3) when
binarizing between modernity and the “savage” past; the undertone of
Christian rebuke for pagan sentiments is clearly discernible. Another
illustration from Frazer, this time from the Congo Basin in Africa, proposes
an even greater intellectual trapping since cultural and social anthropologists
from Europe of the nineteenth century imaged Africa as the cradle of
primitivism and savagery, the dark and uncultured Other of Europe. Frazer
points out a particular myth related to sin atonement and the associated ritual
practised in the Congo Basin. Men and women have to bathe in two separate
streams, spend two nights in the open street in the market, and then pass the
house of the Kalamba (the head priest of the Bashinge tribe) completely
naked. Then, as Frazer observes,
They return to the marketplace and dress, after which they undergo the
pepper ordeal. Pepper is dropped into the eyes of each of them, and while
this is being done the sufferer has to make a confession of all his sins, to
22 Chapter One

answer all questions that may be put to him, and to take certain vows.
(Frazer, 239)

There is undoubtedly violence in the ritual and the establishment of social

hierarchy based on religious ranking. However, Frazer’s analysis is more
about denigrating the Other than an analytical critique of the rituals. The
obvious pitfall of such an approach is that it marginalizes cultures by placing
Europe in the centre, thereby exposing Frazer's colonial racial tendency.
Frazer also goes back to the rituals of classical Greece, like that of Adonis,
and connects the rituals with seasonal changes in nature. He notes that
Adonis is said to have been born of a myrrh tree and after ten months of
gestation, a wild boar ripped open the bark of the tree and the infant was
born. Frazer is of the point of the view that Adonis “represented vegetation,
especially the corn, which lies buried in the earth half the year and reappears
above ground the other half” (Frazer, 406). Frazer’s approach here is to link
natural phenomena with mythical tales. He considers myths or rituals
aesthetic manifestations of the natural cycle operating in the external
environment, thereby falling in line with critics like Jung and Northrop
Frye, who identified certain common patterns in the way myths operate in
terms of portraying natural phenomena across cultures. Frazer attempts to
study a large cross section of taboos, rituals, religious practices, and myths
that operate at various levels in different cultures to arrive at a conclusion
that myths define the archetypal human quest to define and concretely
symbolize the natural happenings around him.

With Jung’s arrival, the study of myth entered a new critical school, that of
archetypal criticism. Freud had already worked on rituals from the
perspective of psychoanalysis in a series of essays titled Totem and Taboo,
published between 1912 and 1913. Consistent with his main theories on the
id, he saw rituals as manifestations of repression and symbolic acts to
express the primordial desires of the human unconscious. He observes
In the first place, then, it must be said that there is no sense in asking savages
to tell us the real reason for their prohibitions – the origin of taboo. It follows
from our postulates that they cannot answer, since their real reason must be
‘unconscious’. We can, however, reconstruct the history of taboo as follows
on the model of obsessional prohibitions. Taboos, we must suppose, are
prohibitions of primeval antiquity which were at some time externally
imposed upon a generation of primitive men; they must, that is to say, no
doubt have been impressed on them violently by the previous generation.
These prohibitions must have concerned activities towards which there was
a strong inclination. They must then have persisted from generation to
 A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism 23

generation, perhaps merely as a result of tradition transmitted through

parental and social authority. (Freud, 36-37)

Freud’s account is more on rituals than mythology proper and he considers

rituals as symbolic expressions of suppressed desires. Freud stated in his
earlier essays, as in “Creative Writers and Day Dreaming”, that suppression
often leads to violence, which may take the form of sexuality, aesthetic
creativity or rituals. Jung of course deviated from Freud’s ideology and
began to publish his own ideas on the collective unconscious,5which led to
the construction of archetypes in the field of mythological studies. Jung
identifies a series of archetypal images in myths and legends to interpret the
collective unconscious of desire latent in human psyche from the pre-
conscious stage. In the essay “Psychology and Literature”, Jung says
The experience that furnishes the material for artistic expression is no longer
familiar. It is a strange something that derives its existence from the
hinterland of man’s mind – that suggests the abyss of time separating us
from pre-human ages or evokes a super-human world of contrasting light
and darkness. It is a primordial experience which surpasses man’s
understanding… (1972: 178)

In this extract, the phrase “super-human world” refers to the construction of

myth in accordance with Jung’s conception of archetypes. The archetypes
were constructed in the first place, according to Jung, as symbolic modes of
representation to express the unconscious fears or desires through
mythological constructions. So, myths are explainable in terms of archetypes
like the superhero, the avenging hero, demons, seasonal movements, and so
on. In another book, Essays on a Science of Mythology (first published in
1941) with C. Kerenyi, Jung states
The hero’s main feat is to overcome the monster of darkness: the long hoped
for and expected triumph of consciousness over the unconscious. Day and
light are synonymous for consciousness, night and dark for the unconscious.
The coming of consciousness was probably the most tremendous experience
of primeval times for with it a world came into being whose existence no
one had suspected before. (1950: 118-19)

Jung’s theory of the archetypes therefore sets some images as part of the
“eternal” desires or inhibitions of man in terms of subconscious thought
processes. One problem with this theory is its Euro-centricity. Jung
mentions that the collective unconscious is knowable through the archetypal
images but one cannot miss the underlying racist tone in associating light
and day with the conscious and night and dark with the unconscious. A
binary seems to be imposed in the representative space of the theory where
24 Chapter One

the non-white race is deemed to be associated with the Dionysiac cult of the
unconscious. When this theory was applied to literature by writers like
Conrad, there was inevitably a tendency to associate the Dionysiac and the
atavistic with the non-European world. However, Jung does not explicitly
binarize between European and non-European spaces, though throughout
the essay there are tacit references to the lack that man suffers by failing to
differentiate between a “transcendental subject of cognition” and “an
empirical universe” that gives rise to the “hero-myth” (ibid, 125). It is the
hero who can transcend to the cognitive and symbolic self of transcendence
and can free man from the darker forces of the unconscious. Jung constructs
a difference between an undifferentiated consciousness when primeval man
mistook symbols for reality (and hence myths became ritualistic since they
needed to be followed to remain a part of the larger cosmic order, which
was undefinable to primeval man) and a differentiated consciousness when
man began to understand the difference between symbols and reality. Here
also, Jung can be critiqued for binarizing man’s chronological development
of his rational self. Man’s rationale will develop in terms of chronology but
a subjective binarization in terms of its quality may not be tenable. That is,
to say that only modern man has the ability to distinguish between the false
representations in myths and the empirical reality outside is to perhaps cast
doubt on rationality in ancient times. It simplifies the whole debate on man’s
progression in terms of knowledge capital and also puts the debate on
mythology on a facile platform – whether to believe in the tales or not. That
cannot be a founding proposition for mythology studies because the answer
is obvious, but the answer does not capture the complexities in this field of
research.

Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism (1957) is a study of how symbols

began to have mythical significance in the general movement of aesthetic
history and Frye develops on the Jungian archetypes in the four essays he
writes for this book. For the purposes of our book we will concentrate only
on the third essay, “Archetypal Criticism: Theory of Myths”, and a part of
the second essay sub-titled “Mythical Phase: Symbol as Archetype”. To
begin with the latter, Frye makes his position as critic clear; that is, his being
part of the New Criticism movement started by Eliot in the 1920s with “The
Sacred Wood”, which believes in the autonomy of the text and seeks to
disconnect the text from its historical, political and social contexts. Frye
refers to the word “poem” as associated with classical forms of art, mainly
tragedy, comedy, epic, and narrative verse, and says that poems do not
belong to the class of art or speech but rather represents its own class, a
“techne” or artefact, and needs to be examined “without immediate
reference to other things” (Frye, 95). This being Frye's subject position
 A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism 25

makes it clear that he will follow the new critical school of studies,
preferring to study the text as an artefact and not as part of any larger cultural
production. He then goes on to define archetypes as
The repetition of certain common images of physical nature like the sea or
the forest in a large number of poems cannot in itself be called
‘coincidence’… But it does indicate a certain unity in the nature that poetry
imitates, and in the communicating activity of which poetry forms part.
Because of the larger communicative context of education, it is possible for
a story about the sea to be archetypal, to make a profound imaginative
impact on a reader… (Frye, 99)

A close look at the above passage reveals that Frye is stressing the
antiquarian value of the images that can transform themselves into
archetypes. One point that he seems to have overlooked is the cultural
context of imagery. Images are contextualized in a given frame of culture
and the image-meaning relationship is established through a long tradition
of encoding a specific meaning in a given image. So, even though Frye
would like to believe that the sea or the forest will have the same semantic
connotation across all peoples, in line with the collective unconscious, that
is not the case. For example, when writers like Christopher Okigbo and
Achebe talk about the African forest, there is a mythological reverence for
the native space. Their political position can be critiqued but what needs to
be understood is that their reception of the forest flora and fauna will be
based on the oral and mythical traditions of the tribes they belong to and so
the literary meaning ascribed to the archetypes there will not be like, say,
when Conrad talks about the African forest in Heart of Darkness, where the
forest imagery is archetyped from the perspective of the white Christian
colonizer. The “profundity” that Frye refers to seems to be a politicization
of the imagery itself towards the Eurocentric spectrum. Frye calls archetypes
“associative clusters”, which “differ from signs in being complex variables”
(Frye, 102). It is this association that is cultural and connected through
cultural variables like religion and rituals. However, cultural variables differ
in terms of space and context, something which Frye seems to wilfully
neglect, thereby leaving himself open to criticism of being Eurocentric and
Christianised in his perspective. He mentions that sometimes symbols
become so deeply ingrained in the cultural space that they can hardly escape
being an archetype. For example, the geometrical figure of a cross
“inevitably” symbolizes Christ’s sacrifice but the geometrical shape of a
cross in a culture that lies outside the ambit of Christianity will not become
an archetype for Christ’s holy sacrifice as the association there will not have
the already imbued meaning as its functionality.
26 Chapter One

As for Frye’s theorization of myth, he approaches the subject from the

perspective of identifying myths as elements of human desire that manifest
through archetypal images. He states that “in terms of narrative, myth is the
imitation of actions near or at the conceivable limits of desire” (Frye, 136).
If myth is a mimetic act, then it can be observed that myths imitate a desire
for wish fulfilment, out of which arise the archetypes that serve as
expressions of those desires. Frye adds that “myth is an art of implicit
metaphorical identity” (ibid). He is of the opinion therefore that myth does
not simply propose a world of fantasy but through its suggestive metaphors
suggests a degree of mimesis that can be achieved through aesthetic
reproductions. Caroline Spurgeon, in her seminal text Shakespeare’s
Imagery and What It Tells Us, suggests
The imagery he instinctively uses is thus a revelation, largely unconscious,
given at a moment of heightened feeling, of the furniture of his mind, the
channels of his thought, the qualities of things, the objects and incidents he
observes and remembers, and perhaps most significant of all, those which
he does not observe or remember. (Spurgeon, 4)

Caroline Spurgeon’s assertion that imagery is a part of the author’s

unconscious corroborates the line of thought followed by Jung and Frye,
that archetypes are part of the larger collective unconscious that manifests
through symbols, and when symbols become an archetype, a myth is
constructed, provided the archetypes transform into a sequential art form.
Frye then goes on to explain that myths and archetypal symbols have three
organizations. First, he says, there are “undisplaced myths” which deal with
total metaphorical identification where a binary is created between hell and
heaven. So, heaven becomes the desirable entity and hell becomes the
undesirable one and the myth functions on the plane of this opposition.
Secondly, there is the world of “romance” where there is an implicit
metaphorical connection between the real world and the world of myth. This
comes closer to the principle of verisimilitude. The third category,
something that he disapproves of, Frye identifies as the tendency for
“realism” where the focus is on the representational modes rather than the
“shape” of the story (Frye, 139-140). Frye is systematic in his categorization
of archetypal imagery in his chapter on myth. He divides the theory on
archetypal meaning into three categories – apocalyptic imagery, demonic
imagery and analogical imagery. The first one, apocalyptic imagery, relates
to the myths and mythical symbols related to the world of Apollo, or heaven.
The form imposed by the human on the vegetable world relates to the garden
or the park (as in the Garden of Eden), and on the animal world it relates to
sheep, used in the theological imagery of the Bible. Frye defines the second
 A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism 27

category, that is, the demonic imagery, as the “presentation of the world that
desire totally rejects: the world of the nightmare and the scapegoat, of
bondage and pain and confusion” (Frye, 147). In this section, myths and
symbols relate to the demonic erotic, taking the form of hermaphroditism,
incest and homosexuality. Frye’s obvious involvement with moral
codifications is made evident here as he considers certain normal human
traits as demonic representations of myths, thereby falling into the trap of
the normative code of social conduct and aesthetic representation. Demonic
imagery also relates to animals, as in beasts of prey like dragons or serpents.
Demonic imagery related to flora and fauna take the form of enchanted
gardens with evil intentions. Frye’s categorization here seems to be over-
simplified and loaded with Christian tenets of morality, and hence becomes
a Christianised version of the study of myths. In the analogical category,
gods or authorial figures become parental, like Shakespeare's Prospero and
Tennyson's Sir Galahad, and nature takes the form of spiritual guardianship.
Again, the categorization seems over-simplified as guardianship itself is a
position of power and control, and to simply give that a “spiritual”
dimension is to miss many nuances, even in the mythical mode of
representation.

In the last section of the essay, Fry gives an archetypal approach to the study
of mythos, pointing to certain universal images that gain mythical symbolic
value through their acceptance across the general space of cognition. In the
“divine world”, he says, “the central process or movement is that of the
death and rebirth” (Frye, 158). Thus, any artefact that talks of death and
rebirth will have a cognitive understanding of these two phenomena as
being manifested by some divine form. The cyclical process of nature can
be identified in myths as in the gods of birth and death and their identity is
constructed in the continuum of the birth-death-rebirth cycle. The fire world
finds representation through myths related to the sun and its daily odyssey
across the sky, giving it a temporal form as well. The human world is
represented through the mythical anti-thesis between innocence and
experience. The vegetable world is mythically represented through the four
seasons, and water symbolism is represented through the movement of
water from the rain to the river and then to the snow. Thus, archetypal
criticism of myths tries and identifies certain types of images that run across
all the myths, overarching certain macro-narrative themes like birth, death,
nature elements, and seasonal movements, and comes to the conclusion that
since myths have archetypes in common, they reflect the collective
unconscious of the human race. The theory can be critiqued in terms of
being too assuming of the universality of the archetypes. Since any art form
28 Chapter One

is essentially a cultural production, imposing any universalist meaning to it

is untenable.

Twentieth-century criticism of myth is marked by Claude Levi-Strauss’s

contribution to the field. His Structural Anthropology (1963) and
subsequent four volumes of Mythologiques (written between 1969 and
1981) have come to be known as one of the best-known studies in the field
of structural anthropology and myth criticism. For the sake of our study, we
will take a close look at the chapter “The Structural Study of Myth” from
Structural Anthropology and then briefly at the Mythologiques. In “The
Structural Study of Myth”, Levi-Strauss’s methodology is to study the
structures of myth in terms of Saussure's structuralist criticism of language.
Levi-Strauss begins his argument with Saussure’s distinction between
‘langue’ and ‘parole’, where langue is the structural side of the language
and parole the statistical side of it. Langue refers to the pre-existing rules of
the language in a signifying system over which the signifying subject has
no control, and parole refers to the “speech acts” made by the signifying
subject in the way the subject chooses to use the already structured langue.
Saussure in “The Object of Study” mentions
Language in its entirety has many different and disparate aspects. It is at the
same time physical, physiological and psychological. It belongs both to the
individual and to the society. No classification of human phenomena
provides any single place for it, because language as such has no discernible
unity. (Saussure, 21)

The closed structure Saussure gives to language was later critiqued by

Derrida through his deconstructionist hermeneutics but Levi-Strauss takes
Saussure as the starting point of his study of myth and considers myth as a
speech act of the signifying subject. Levi-Strauss observes
Whatever our ignorance of the language and culture of the people where it
originated, a myth is still felt as a myth by any reader anywhere in the world.
Its substance does not lie in its style, its original music, or its syntax, but in
the story which it tells. Myth is language, functioning on an especially high
level where meaning succeeds practically at ‘taking off’ from the linguistic
ground on which it keeps on rolling. (1963: 210)

The reading of Levi-Strauss is slightly different from the universalist claims

of Jung and Northrop Frye in their study of myth. Levi-Strauss is not
imposing a universalist aesthetic proposition for myths but is implying that
the form of narration in a myth designates it as culture-specific. So, for
Strauss, the content of narration is not as significant as the mode of
narration. By saying that “myth is language”, Strauss is hinting at a
 A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism 29

signifying system at the level of the structure of the myth that operates
through the signifier-signified dialectic. The signifier is the story and the
signified is the meaning ascribed to that story on the linguistic plane but the
communication is not arbitrary. In fact, according to the Saussurean
structure, communication is based on the pre-conceived receptivity between
the signifier and the signified in which meaning is ascribed to the sign by
the signifier. That is why Strauss makes the point that even though the myth
that is being communicated may be totally different from the culture of the
receptor, since myth as a sign has a certain signified set, its reception is
made within the matrix of being a myth and it is not understood in terms of
any other sign. So, myth as a sign has a certain degree of universality but
that relates to its linguistic form and not its content. Post-Derrida, however,
the universalist proposition in the linguistic structure is bound to get
critiqued for its alleged fixity and the failure to understand the fluidity of
the signifier-signified dialectic itself.

Levi-Strauss then goes on to argue that just as language has its constituent
parts, like the phonemes, morphemes and sememes,6 myth also has its
constituent elements, which Levi-Strauss calls the “mythemes”. He states
that “the true constituent units of a myth are not the isolated relations but
bundles of such relations, and it is only as bundles that these relations can
be put to use and combines so as to produce a meaning” (1963: 211). As in
language the smallest unit must produce the meaning in the semantic field,
similarly a mytheme is regarded by Levi-Strauss as the smallest constituent
unit of a myth that helps in the generation of its meaning. Now, what Levi-
Strauss adds is that myths cannot be found among the units of language
because myths can only operate at a “higher level”; otherwise they would
be confused with other forms of speech. What constitutes the higher
semantic range of a mytheme compared to phonemes or morphemes is their
sequential nature. They proceed from one unit to the other to form a
narrative, whereas other speech units cannot form a narrative on their own.
When the mythemes are arranged according to their units, they form a
sequence of events that leads to the formation of the narrative. Levi-Strauss
cites the example of the Oedipus myth and states that the killing by the
Spartoi, Oedipus killing his father and Eteocles killing his brother
Polynices, constitutes the individual mythemes and they form a sequence of
events. They are also related diachronically in terms of the theme of killing
through misjudgements and hence form the narrative of tragedy. Thus,
mythemes are not simply the constituent elements of speech acts, as is the
case with linguistics; they are of the “higher” plane because through their
sequentiality they form the narrative structure of the myth. In the
30 Chapter One

introduction to the book Introduction to the Work of Marcell Mauss, Levi-

Strauss stresses the symbolic function of myth in the larger social narrative.
The nature of society is to express itself symbolically in its customs and its
institutions; normal modes of individual behaviour are, on the contrary,
never symbolic in themselves: they are the elements out of which a symbolic
system, which can only be collective, builds itself. (1950: xvi)

The most significant part of this comment is Levi-Strauss’s emphasis on the

collective quality of the generation of meaning out of a given myth. That is,
myths are not individual expressions of an artist or writer or an oral poet; it
is in fact a system that is generated through a collective social narrative.
Myth is not art produced through a single artist’s conception. It has a
collectivist narrative that uses symbols at various levels to arrive at a code
of meaning that is understood by the receptor(s) based on the larger
consensus on the meaning of that code. However, Levi-Strauss is aware of
the problematic term called society. Society is not a homogenous linear
mass that can be defined under a single grand narrative. In that case, the
collective symbolic productions that Levi-Strauss is talking about are not a
system either. In the same introduction, Strauss notes
No society is ever wholly and completely symbolic, because a society is
always a spatio-temporal given, and therefore subject to the impact of other
societies and of earlier states of its own development;… Instead of saying
that a society is never completely symbolic, it would be more accurate to
say that it could never manage to give all its members, to the same degree,
the means to apply themselves entirely to the building of a symbolic
structure, which for normal thinking is only realizable on the level of social
life. (ibid, xix-xx)

Society is not linear according to Levi-Strauss; it is not based on a single

given plane of time but rather a conglomeration of space and time. When
we talk of a society, we always imply a certain spatio-temporal coordinate
in which a given society is located so it is obvious that any symbolic system
generated is also subject to the spatio-temporal coordinate in which the
society is located. In other words, according to Levi-Strauss, society is the
macro-narrative in which there are many micronarratives at the symbolic
level of signification. Myth is one of those micronarratives that operate
within the larger narrative of the society, and the symbolic signification will
change with the movement of the coordinate. So, the symbolic signification
does not move in the horizontal axis only if that axis is taken to be space
and time. It also moves vertically. The vertical axis relates to the various
subjects that produce the symbolic systems and those subjects are
 A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism 31

distinguished in terms of class and gender and other possible variables. With
the change in the subject that produces the meaning of the collective art, the
symbolic code will also change as both the producer and receiver of those
symbols will have a different social contract within which to create and
understand symbols. Hence, myths are dynamic social arts that command a
certain sense of fluidity that other forms of art may not possess.

The first volume of Mythologiques, titled The Raw and the Cooked (first
published in France in 1964), reveals the methodology of Levi-Strauss’s
examination of myths. The book is a case study of the myths and rituals of
the Bororo tribe in Central America, but before he goes into a detailed study
of the myths of the tribe, Levi-Strauss gives a broad framework of his
method of analysis, which may be called his theorization of myth studies in
general. At the very outset, Strauss makes it clear that he wants to arrive at
a certain universal proposition on the structural analysis of myth, though he
guards himself against the possible attack of being called a revisionist grand
narrative writer. As a structuralist reader of myths, Levi-Strauss tries to find
axes of patterns in the different myths of the same community or between
different communities tied together by some social or geographical
commonality. He tries to find “isomorphic links between sequences derived
from several myths originating in the same community” (Levi-Strauss,
1969: 2). However, he is also aware of the fact that it is impossible to know
a myth generation in a particular community in its entirety because myths
are part of a “shifting reality” and narratives change in space and time so
where a particular myth originates is not quite known. In fact, myths might
originate from a different community than the one being studied and hence
to construct a structure of myths is not tenable. Levi-Strauss moves slightly
away from the normative structure of Saussure's linguistics and steps into
the arbitrary world of shifting signs of poststructuralism, though he cannot
be tagged as either of the two. So, on one hand, he proposes to construct a
spiral structure of myth studies so that new ideas can always be incorporated
into the text and he also looks into the pseudo-historical sources like
legends, folktales and ceremonies to study the structure of myth. In this
regard, Levi-Strauss looks forward to the postmodern praxis of engaging
oral sources into the final draft of a text of criticism, looking beyond the
traditional sources of written or documented literature as the only sources
of study. He adds that “there is no end to mythological analysis, no hidden
unity to be grasped” (ibid, 5) and this decentred approach to mythological
studies opens up the possibility to look into the various sources of myths
and then reorganize the structural study as and when the researcher receives
different reports. Levi-Strauss therefore wants to keep the study of myth
open-ended. He calls the study of myth “anaclastic”, implying the refractive
32 Chapter One

mechanism that allows the bending of light so that the constituent light
elements can be studied. However, certain points of dissent can be raised
against Levi-Strauss’s theorization. Simon Clarke observes in his study of
Levi-Strauss
If myths are to be subjected to an immanent analysis, and the meaning of
the elements of myth determined without reference to cultural beliefs or
subjective intentions, it is necessary to discover some way of uncovering
the meaning of the elements without going beyond the mythical universe. It
is necessary to discover the metalinguistic rules of myth which define the
mythical meaning of the elements purely in relation to one another. (Clarke,
185)

Clarke’s main objection is that constructing a linguistic approach towards

myth divorces the study from the various other parameters that go into the
making of any cultural product. To take the argument of Clarke forward, it
can be said that by giving a structural paradigm to myth criticism, Levi-
Strauss is missing vital elements of art production like authorship, social
contexts and the receptor’s identity in manoeuvring the politics of meaning
generation of the text. To use Levi-Strauss’s own argument, once we accept
pseudo-historical sources to study myth, finding a structure at the mythemic
level can be difficult because the sources themselves will have varied
structures at their narrative level. In fact, if the field researcher gathers, say,
five narratives from these sources, they will each have their own structural
pattern. Now, even if the researcher can discern a common mytheme factor
from those narratives, the problem is that the constituent “mythemes” may
have different structures since they belong to different narrative strands. To
impose a structural unity in that resultant myth might be untenable as it will
have to then disregard the textual variance latent in that myth itself.
However, this should not lead us to believe that Levi-Strauss is only
constructing strict structural compulsions in the study of myth. He speaks
of “psycho-physiological time”, which constructs the meaning of the
myth/performance for the listener because it involves “the periodicity of
cerebral waves and organic rhythms, the strength of the memory, and the
power of attention” (Levi-Strauss, 1969: 16). He adds that mythology
demands the attention of the neuromental aspects of the listener since he
needs to constantly connect the narrative of the performance to decipher the
meaning at the end. However, the question is which art does not require the
listener to connect in time and space? The story revealed by any art form
presupposes that the receptor will connect between the present and the past,
otherwise the complete range of meanings will not be discernible. Calling
myths anonymous, as they are “elements embodied in a tradition” (ibid, 18),
does not call into question the sociological aspects involved in the creation
 A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism 33

of myths. Myths may not have a single point of reference in fixing their
authorship but at the same time it must be remembered that since myths are
traditionally expressed through oral poetry, song and dance (at least in the
cultures that Levi-Strauss researches), the dissemination of their significance
is equally participative of the audience. In that case, a structural analysis
will have to not only concentrate on the performer’s or teller’s version of
the oral text but also the version of the text constructed at the receiver's end.
Hence Clarke states
Because Lévi-Strauss insists that myth is the product of an unconscious to
which the analyst has no means of access other than through the myth, the
analyst has no means of discovering what are and what are not elements,
oppositions and transformations of the myth. There is therefore no means of
discovering whether the analyst's constructs in fact pertain to the myth, or
whether they are simply his or her own creation. Moreover, the terms
opposition and transformation are applied so loosely that the structures
uncovered could be uncovered anywhere. Hence there is not any way of
discovering whether the corpus in question is or is not generated by
structural mechanisms of the kind outlined. It might conceivably be the case
that they are so structured, but there is absolutely no way of discovering
this. Hence, finally, there is no justification whatever for concluding that the
structures uncovered can tell us anything about the mind. The conclusion
must be that the analysis of myth offered by Lévi-Strauss is necessarily
arbitrary. (Clarke, 204).

In the final analysis however, in the history of ideas, Levi-Strauss’s

contribution to the field of myth studies can hardly be exaggerated. He
opened a new paradigm to look at myth and gave it a scientific temper rather
than denigrating myths as the “uneducated pastime” of the “savage mind”.
His field studies are still considered important for the process of archiving
the ethnographic details of tribes that are no longer present due to the spread
of urbanization. This definitely helps us to know the history of myths in
different tribes from remote locations and to arrive at larger and more
comprehensive theories in the study of myth and how it is generated in
modern culture and aesthetics.

Roland Barthes’s Mythologiques, published in France in 1957, looks at the

various contemporary forms of popular culture and analyses how myths are
formed from them. However, for the sake of our argument, we will look
only briefly at the last chapter of the book: “Myth Today”. In this chapter,
Barthes stresses the form of myth as an important parameter to analyse myth
rather than its content. He builds on the argument of Levi-Strauss but unlike
Levi-Strauss Barthes is not a field anthropologist, and his modus operandi
is not about arriving at some conclusion from the various field reports.
34 Chapter One

Rather, Barthes concentrates more on popular cultural forms like films,

wrestling and advertisements to look into the semiology of myth in
contemporary times. Therefore, it can be said that Barthes sheds the tag of
‘ancient’ from mythical discourses and shows how myths can be generated
out of popular cultural forms too. He observes that “myth is a system of
communication, that it is a message. This allows one to perceive that myth
cannot possibly be an object, a concept, or an idea; it is a mode of
signification, a form” (2009: 131). If myth is a mode of signification, as
Barthes states, then a certain degree of fluidity is rendered into the
narratological construct of the text of myth. If myth is divorced from the
abstract qualitative approach of being an object or idea, then myths become
a linguistic web of meaning generated by the receiver of the communication.
A concept or an idea always carries the ideological baggage of the teller,
but if a myth is seen as purely a form, then that form can be reconstructed
at the behest of the receiver of the message on the basis of the signs that he
receives. Barthes argues that since myth is a kind of message, it cannot be
confined only to oral speech; cinema, sports, shows, publicity, reporting,
and photography can also be sources for mythical speech. Barthes does not
look at myths from the paradigm of certain time-inflected narratives that get
constructed only through tales; he sees myth as a part of a “second-order
semiological system”, “that which is a sign in the first system, becomes a
mere signifier in the second” (ibid, 137). By the term ‘sign’, Barthes means
the associative total between the sign and the concept. Barthes himself gives
the example of a billboard where a black soldier is saluting the French
tricolour. On the plane of the linguistic signifier and signified, the billboard
will mean the passion of a subject towards his country of birth. But this
signified “passion” will serve as the signifier on the mythical plane because
the passion then will have the added significance of race, where every
citizen, irrespective of his or her skin colour, displays the same passion for
their country, which will construct a new signified of the democratic values
of France. So, by carefully choosing the signifier, the myth creator can
construct levels of signs and each sign will have a mythical operational area
in the field of myth-meaning generation.

Barthes relates the history or the pastness of meaning generation of myth

not through the temporal gap that exists between the signifier and signified
but rather through the observation that myths “belong to history” (ibid, 140).
This is different from the sociological view that myths have an antiquarian
value. What Barthes means is that the myth maker uses signs from the
historically validated systems of signification and out of them layers of
mythical speech are constructed. The sensory reality of the signifier already
grasps the meaning of the text through the external stimulus but the second
 A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism 35

order of meaning (like the race of the soldier and the unquestionable
authority of the French State) is built through social narratives operating in
the realm of history. The modern idea of the French State is built through
the ideal of 1789 and hence the symbolic act of the speech communicated
through the external stimulus of the text is built around the myth built by
history. Hence the importance of the form. It is the politics of representation
that helps attach any speech act with the symbolic signification of history,
thereby constructing mythical speech in the second order of the
semiological chain. “The form of the myth is not a symbol,” argues Barthes,
it is the myth speech (ibid, 142). Since myth can be generated endlessly on
the plane of communication, Barthes argues that “there is no fixity in
mythical concepts: they can come into being, alter, disintegrate, disappear
completely” (ibid, 144). Barthes’s critical eye is directed at the historicizing
of myth narratives through the lens of structural analogy. To Barthes history
is not a simple categorization of events in the time scale but a process of
signification through narratives. Paul Ricoeur, in his essay “Historical
Time”, mentions that Krzysztof Pomian in L’Ordre du Temps differentiates
among four ways in which historical time can be categorized to translate
time into sign – chronometry, chronology, chronography, and chronosophy.
The first three in some way or other divide history into eras and, based on
the amount of time being referred to, are the distinctions drawn between the
terms. What Ricoeur concentrates on is the term chronosophy, which he
defines thus
As for chronosophy, which will take more of our time, it exceeds the project
of a critical history that has become our project. It has been cultivated by
numerous families of thought that arrange times in terms of rich typologies
opposing stationary time to reversible time, which may be cyclical or linear.
The history we may construct of these great schemes is equivalent to a
“history of history,” from which professional historians may never
completely free themselves, once it is a question of assigning a significance
to facts: continuity vs. discontinuity, cycle vs. linearity, the distinction of
periods or eras. (Ricoeur, 156)

Looked at from this perspective, mythology is closer to this concept of

historicizing narrative in time, where the amorphous character of the
signifying system comes to the forefront as far as location of that narrative
in time is concerned. This is what Barthes means when he says there is no
fixity in the concept of myths. Since the process of signification is not a
linear or static quality, myths get constructed and broken in the narrative
space since the signifier changes and so does the signified. Instead of
debating the realism or the lack of it in myth, Barthes argues that “myth is
neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion” (1969: 153). An inflection
36 Chapter One

necessitates a change in form, and since Barthes places so much stress on

the form of a myth, it can be said that the form of a myth is also subject to
change depending on what semiological stage it is working at to generate
meaning. So, by retrospective inspection, myths can be studied, according
to Barthes, as significations that create signs at various stages of
semiological development.

In such a short space as this it is impossible to list the entire gamut of myth
criticism in the history of ideas. However, before going on to the next sub-
section of the chapter, we will look briefly into some other critics working
on myth. The first one among them is Mircea Eliade, especially his essay
“Cosmogonic Myth and ‘Scared History’”. He prefers to work with “living
myths”, that is, myths that express themselves through rituals or other forms
of social practice and are “connected with a cult, inspiring and justifying a
religious behaviour” (Eliade, 167). Eliade observes that there is a difference
between the “great myths” and the myths of lesser importance, or the
“parasitic myths”. Eliade then clearly sides with myths that are prominent
in popular folklore or cults and states that those myths continue to shape and
influence culture at large while the myths of lesser value do not contribute
much to cultural capital. Eliade in fact comments that cosmogony acquires
a special place in the hierarchy of myth representations, that is, myths
related to the creation of the world. However, it seems that he belongs to the
rightist spectrum of ideology as he supports the view of myth being sacred
since they relate to the actions of gods and their justification. He sees
cosmogonic myths as a part of sacred history since they come under
“historical myth” (Eliade, 178), thereby confirming his rightist vision of
treating history in terms of tradition and aristocracy. In his essay “The
Transition to the Higher Mental Types”, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, like Eliade,
shows a rightist ideological preference in binarizing between the qualities
of the mind that produce culture. He believes that since “primitive minds”
suffered from a lack of scientific or rational explanation of natural
phenomena, they resorted to myths to mystify reality. He opines that
“prelogical, mystic mentality is oriented differently from our own” (Lévy-
Bruhl, 52). Hence, the “mystic imprint” (ibid, 59) is preserved in the myths
as a specific art form that seeks to give a non-logical explanation to
phenomena that are beyond the understanding of “primitive” man through
the available data of scientific reasoning. Whereas one cannot deny the fact
that human history is about development in scientific reasoning and logical
argument, the mystical aspect of a myth is still wrought with a prejudiced
viewpoint of colonial energy. Europe has long considered post-Renaissance
modernity as the point of inflection at which the turn from the “primitive”
(therefore before culture or pre-linguistic) to the “modern” took place.
 A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism 37

Lévy-Bruhl observes that whereas ancient Greece could go up the ladder of

progress because neo-rationalists could explain the mystical elements of
Greek myths, India failed to do so because rationality and modernity have
not entered into the collective representation of her people. Lévy-Bruhl’s
theorization is fraught with a colonial mindset to impose Eurocentric
concerns with modernity and therefore cannot be taken too seriously in the
ideation of myth criticism.

Susanne K. Langer, in her essay “Life Symbols: The Roots of Myth”, takes
an essentialist point of view when analysing the formation of myth symbols.
She actually dismisses myths as a “remarkable form of nonsense” guided
by “unempirical law” (Langer, 64-65), thereby making it clear that she does
not consider myths as appropriate forms of cultural reproduction for the
enlightened mind. Langer worked mainly in the 1950s and therefore the
residual Modernist love for high art can be seen in the way she comments
on myth. In fact, she tries to ascertain the fact that myths belong “to the
civilised races of Europe just as much as to the savage cultures of darker
continents” (Langer, 66). A critic who is so blatantly Eurocentric cannot be
taken seriously as a researcher in the field of myth. In any case, Langer’s
narrative seems to be replete with the grand narratives of the Modernist
legacy as she points out that the “subjective symbols” of myths do at times
point to the moral seriousness of social practices, but more than that, she
stresses how symbols used in myths are derived from nature. She believes
that if utopian ideas are conveyed through improbable symbols, then a
“certain importance, an emotional interest” (Langer, 68) can be attached to
the narrative. In other words, she sees myths as wish-fulfilment devices for
the human population who listen to them in order to gain access to a mental
state where the make-believe world is made more believable. She
distinguishes between the “enlightened mind”, which is capable of critical
thinking, and the “savage mind” which takes such bizarre elements in a story
as true. This is indeed a unidimensional, uncritical and almost propagandist
form of literature where Langer is simply determined to dismiss myths as a
pre-modern and “uncultured” form of art production. She also reads the
repetitive nature of symbols in myths as a necessary strategy to build upon
a conceptual form. So, the moon, which repeats itself in many mythical
narratives, builds on the concept of mortality through her rising and setting
every day; it also stands for femininity (and hence the gendered social
narrative of passivity related to women) because of the relative dominance
of the sun in relation to the moon. Whereas the symbolic obviation in myths
is a valid point, Langer can be critiqued for her standpoint of relating myths
to the irrational psyche because myths do not necessarily have to perform
any artistic function; for that matter no art form has the duty to self-explain
38 Chapter One

in terms of probability because in the aesthetic space art can exist without
any cause or functionality. Ernst Cassirer, a contemporary of Langer, wrote
an influential essay on myth criticism titled “The Place of Language and
Myth in the Pattern of Human Culture”. We will come to this essay in the
second sub-section of this chapter so here we will briefly glance over the
ideas not mentioned elsewhere. He writes
The mythical form of conception is not something superadded to certain
definite elements of empirical existence; instead, the primary ‘experience’
itself is steeped in the imagery of myth and saturated with its atmosphere.
Man lives with objects only in so far as he lives with these forms; he reveals
reality to himself, and himself to reality, in that he lets himself and the
environment enter into this plastic medium, in which the two do not merely
make contact, but fuse with each other. (Cassirer, 91)

This seems to be the other extreme of Langer’s point of view. In order to

instate myth in the domain of an intellectual discourse, Cassirer seems to
project realism as an ideological strategic deployment to justify myths as a
negotiating factor between human experience and reality with art
production. Cassirer seems to be searching for a social or aesthetic function
that will justify the apparent lack of rationality in myths, and he suggests
that as improbable myth narratives are, they symbolically relate to man’s
experience with nature or other forms of reality. Neither Cassirer nor Langer
looks at myth as cultural capital but as narratives that are in need of
intellectual justification to stay afloat in the world of meaning. Durkheim
and Mauss followed this route of justifying myths as “legitimate” aesthetic
discourses when they used the term “sociocentrism” in relation to myth
studies in the book Primitive Classifications (first published in 1900). They
observe
The centre of the first schemes of nature is not the individual; it is society.
It is this that is objectified, not man. (Durkheim and Mauss, 197)

Durkheim and Mauss are talking about the process through which symbolic
codifications gain access to a myth narrative and point out that that it is
wrong to say humans began to “conceive” things in relation to themselves.
Rather, the concepts grow out of human’s relation with society and the
mythic symbols relate to this sociological aspect of representation rather
than an individual perception of things. However, they prefer to represent
society on the microcosmic scale since in primitive times society was
“modelled on the closest and the most fundamental form of social
organization” (ibid, 195). Since Mauss and Durkheim are primarily working
on a classificatory project, they try and classify myths according to the
 A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism 39

closed space of small social organizations in primitive societies, giving a

proper scientific modus operandi with which to classify myths rather than
being overtly empiricist in approach.

1.2. What do we mean by “myth formation”?

In this sub-section, we will try and look at the significance of the term “myth
formation” contained in the title of this book. Since this book primarily
looks at the novels of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh, it is necessary to
address the question of what “myth formation” is happening in their fiction.
Of course, a detailed study of some of their individual work is done in the
subsequent chapters so in this section we will not go into the textual analysis
of their novels from the perspective of myth formation but rather will look
into the very question of the meaning of myth formation vis-à-vis the fiction
of the two authors concerned. A pedestrian conception of myth formation is
that it takes place through antiquity; a certain timeless quality is given to the
narratives, from which arises the essentialist point of view that they
represent some cultural or religious truth. It has been discussed that myths
are sourced primarily from oral literature, especially in African and Indian
contexts. The Indian epics, for example, which are considered to be a major
repository of myths, were part of the oral space for a long time before they
were actually written down in the form of epics. In Africa, oral literature
had a rich tradition over centuries before European “modernity”, when, as a
direct result of the colonial interface, the written began to gain importance
over the oral. So, when Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh use myths in
their written texts, are they participating in myth formation or is it merely a
case of myth appropriation. Instead of giving an unequivocal answer, we
need to problematize the very concept of “formation”. Nowadays, language
is no longer a grand narrative used as a tool of communication which
supposes that meaning is fixed by pre-fixed markers of meaning generation.
After the Deconstruction movement, the whole idea of the signifier and the
signified became floating7and the idea of meaning itself has become a fluid
entity. In this scenario, the very concept of formation needs a paradigm shift
because the Enlightenment concept of meaning as divorced from the
subjective self, leading to a kind of objective originality, is no longer
tenable.

However, we need to start with the classical definition of imitation. Socrates

mentioned in his dialogues that poets are to be banished from his ideal city
since they are imitative in nature. Plato repeatedly hints at poetry being
derogatory since it is an imitative art which contributes nothing to the
40 Chapter One

betterment of philosophy in Republic X; poetry is “at a third removed from

the truth” (Plato, 2). This does not require further explanation as readers are
well aware of his reason for doing this.
The imitative poet instills a bad constitution in the private soul of each
person, gratifying the part of the soul that is thoughtless and doesn’t
distinguish the bigger from the smaller, but supposes that the same things
are at one time large and another time small. (Plato, 22)

So, for Socrates and Plato, imitation is an ontologically derivative form that
does not require much intellectual introspection. Since poetry (by which
they mean tragic, epic and narrative poems) to them is always already a
critical misadventure in the realm of secondary imitation, any form of
appropriation is bound to be labelled derivative and unoriginal. Plato, of
course, belonged to the rationalist school of Athens and hence he did not
approve of pleasure as an end of art since that takes culture in the direction
of immorality and chaos; so imitation of pleasure and emotional excesses
are to be avoided at any cost. Aristotle’s theory of imitation had a new
perspective though, and his argument will help us address the question of
myth formation in our context. Aristotle revised the whole issue of imitation
and redefined the concept of what is being imitated. He writes in Poetics
that “what the imitator imitates are actions” (Aristotle, 2). So, imitation is
not a servile copying of the Ideal but a representation of human passion and
emotion, as well as their moral construct. Poetry is not an imitation of a
shadow but rather an imitation of the very essence of things, which Aristotle
calls the kernel. We actually need to quote a long passage by Aristotle on
imitation here to contextualize our argument. He states
It is clear that the general origin of poetry was due to two causes, each of
them part of human nature. Imitation is natural to human beings from
childhood, one of our advantages over the lower animals being this: that we
are the most imitative creatures in the world and learn at first by imitation.
And it is also natural for all to delight in works of imitation. The truth of
this second point is shown by experience: though the objects themselves
may be painful to see, we delight to view the most realistic representations
of them in art—the forms, for example, of the lowest animals and of dead
bodies. The explanation is to be found in a further fact: to be learning
something is the greatest of pleasures, not only to the philosopher, but also
to the rest of humanity, however small our capacity for it. The reason of the
delight in seeing the picture is that one is at the same time learning—
gathering the meaning of things, for instance, that the man there is so-and-
so. For if one has not seen the thing before, one’s pleasure will not be in the
picture as an imitation of it but will be due to the execution or colouring or
some similar cause. Imitation, then, being natural to us—as also the sense
 A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism 41

of melody and rhythm, the metres being obviously types of rhythms—it was
through their original aptitude, and by a series of improvements for the most
part gradual on their first efforts, that they created poetry out of their
improvisations. (4-5)

Aristotle’s argument is that art reproduction is a case of creative imitation

and not the kind of blind copying that Socrates and Plato are accusing the
poets of. That is, the aesthetic spirit of a work of art brings delight to the
receptor because he gets an aesthetic pleasure out of that act of receptivity.
He equates poetry with painting and music in the sense that although the
different forms of art are distinguishable by the medium of their imitation,
they meet on the common area of providing aesthetic pleasure to the
onlooker. This aesthetic pleasure cannot be quantified in terms of any
utilitarian value, something Plato sought from art, the rationalist he is. If
imitation is a natural habit of human beings from their birth, the human brain
has the power to assimilate the different forms of reality and then recreate
another reality in its image of that reality. That is, the human perception of
reality is not confined to the servitude of copying images from reality but
also using imagination to reconstruct the images of reality towards an
aesthetic production. Similarly, poets simply do not copy from any Ideal.
They creatively reconfigure the actions around them and represent them
through the medium of imitation of their choice (epic, narrative poetry,
tragedy or comedy) in order to construct their creative version of reality.
Aristotle therefore calls for an interpretation of art where imitation will be
judged not by causality but by probability. Imitation in art is not about what
is but what could be; it proposes an alternative realm of moral scale which
is not to be equated with social norms and traditions, and it has a parallel
aesthetic essence.

When Aristotle’s conception is taken into account, then it is observable that

imitation does not necessarily mean copying and that originality is not
always about coming up with a new plot. Both Chinua Achebe and Amitav
Ghosh derive their myths from secondary sources, which include both oral
and written forms. However, it must be remembered that originality in
narrative is highly dependent on a point of reference. For example, when
Amitav Ghosh takes the Bon Bibi myth for his The Hungry Tide from Bon
Bibir Johuranama, the novel becomes the primary text and the source of the
myth becomes the secondary source. However, Bon Bibir Johuranama itself
is a fluid text. There is no one point of origin. The text is a conglomeration
of a large number of oral sources and they differ in their versions, as is to
be expected from oral sources that are highly fluid in their transmission. So,
what then is the original text of Bon Bibir Johuranama? Nothing. By this,
42 Chapter One

however, we do not imply that as a myth narrative, Bon Bibir Johuranama

lacks origin because then that becomes transcendental. What we mean is
that myth does not have any one point of origin, especially oral myths such
as those related to Bon Bibi, and so one single source of origin cannot be
found. If there is not one singular point of reference, then discerning the
original is not a plausible proposition. Now, the issue is, if Ghosh’s source
does not have one single point of origin in its reference to the myth, then
why can’t we say that Ghosh’s novel is itself another rendition of Bon Bibi’s
myth? In the postmodern context of textuality, the signified is endlessly
redefined in its relation to signs. Since the apparent primary text of Bon
Bibi’s myth itself is not a primary source but one of the many sources that
move spirally towards a hypothetical point of origination, then Ghosh’s
novel becomes another primary source by which we can disseminate Bon
Bibir. The argument that Ghosh is not participating in myth formation but
only appropriating myths becomes fallacious because, as we have seen, no
author can be designated as having formed the myth since for every text
there is a previous point of origin and hence no text is a primary source.
Every text is a secondary source and every text participates in myth
formation with a new order of signifieds, so Ghosh’s text is as much taking
part in myth formation as the previous texts. Such is also the case with
Chinua Achebe's novels and Amitav Ghosh's other novels. The novelists
have picked up myths from various sources, both written and oral, and the
sources cannot be said to have any authoritarian claims because those texts
would have been constructed out of previous texts and so, ultimately, the
novel in question also becomes part of myth formation since at every level
of artistic representation, new narratives and perspectives are added to the
texts. Jacques Derrida observes
Henceforth, it was necessary to begin thinking that there was no center, that
the center could not be thought in the form of a present-being, that the center
had no natural site, that it was not a fixed locus but a function, a sort of
nonlocus in which an infinite number of sign-substitutions came into play…
in the absence of a center or origin, everything became discourse. (1988:
109)

It may sound inappropriate to quote Aristotle and Derrida in the same breath
as the two share absolutely no contextual similarity. However, the two meet
at the point of the question of the originality of texts. Aristotle mentions that
imitation is not about blind copying but a representation of actions in an
aesthetic medium, and Derrida in his poststructuralist politics observes that
representation does not have any centre or point of origin because discourses
 A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism 43

have infinite centres of origin and they spiral towards a kind of “radiant
textuality”8.

Ernst Cassirer rejects the Platonic argument that imitation is nothing but a
case of secondary production. He calls for measuring the value of works of
art through “their truth and intrinsic meaning”. Cassirer goes on to say that
myth, language and other art forms should be looked at as symbols, not in
the sense of attaching meaning to an object in respect to something else but
“in the sense of forces each of which produces and posits a world of its
own”. He therefore considers “special symbolic forms” like myths not
imitations but “organs of reality” (Cassirer, 90). Cassirer rejects the
presence of any absolute reality, which is the central thesis in the Platonic
conception of Ideas and stresses the relativeness of meaning while talking
about the generation of meaning in art production. Whereas we are tempted
to agree with Cassirer on the central tenets of his argument, especially since
they corroborate our readings on myth formation, a slight note of caution
needs to be registered. When Cassirer talks about myths being organs of
reality, there seems to be a desire to heighten myth to the level of highbrow
literature. It is a product of the Victorian ethos of realism but one need not
justify the presence of any work of art through its verisimilitude to reality
as conceived through the lens of empiricism. However, Cassirer’s argument
that myths are symbols in producing an effect of autonomy is agreeable and
confirms our reading that myth formation can happen through any form of
art production and need not be necessarily and essentially constricted to
texts traditionally deemed as mythical.

Myth criticism cannot avoid mentioning Eliot’s 1923 essay on the use of
myth in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Published in The Dial, the essay provides a
rare glimpse into how a modernist grapples with one of the greatest literary
productions of High Modernism. Eliot praises Joyce's mythical method,
which he believes has challenged the classic realist form of the novel as “it
[the use of myth in the narrative] is simply a way of controlling, of ordering,
of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and
anarchy which is contemporary history” (1923: web). Eliot looks at Joyce’s
use of myth not only as content but also as a form that has the capacity to
dislodge the very traditional form of the novel. Eliot does not look at myth
as imitative of antiquarian tales but as a dynamic strategy to enhance the
“make it new” project of Modernism. This politics of using myth to
construct a new form is perhaps important to understand the literary politics
of Chinua Achebe. Achebe writes with a definitive aim in mind – that is of
writing back in a postcolonial scenario to challenge the Eurocentric colonial
discourses of Africa in general, and Nigeria in particular. However, Achebe
44 Chapter One

was not particularly blind to the positive aspects of the political, social,
cultural, and intellectual world that was imbibed by Nigeria as a direct result
of the colonial interface. So, while using myth from Igbo antiquity and oral
traditions, he engages in myth formation not only because he is textually
reinterpreting and re-presenting the myths through a new medium of
imitation but also because he is de-engaging the Igbos from the
stereotypified racial image that the colonial energy constructed for them as
a truism. So, myth formation is not constricted to the textual space; it spills
over to the domain of social politics as well. Being a writer of postcolonial
angst, Achebe uses myth as a subversive purpose specifically to point out
the racial violence of the British as well as portray the internal conflicts and
contradictions of the Igbo tribe in their relationship with the sacred ties. In
sometimes creating a perspectival shift to look at myths from a more critical
angle, as during the death of Ikemefuna in Things Fall Apart, Achebe is
constructing myth formation through subversion. Amitav Ghosh is not a
postcolonial in the same sense that Achebe is, which is discussed at length
in the last chapter. His myth formation does not have the same political or
subversive angle Achebe does. But he too reintegrates myth with other
forms of narrative to contextually create a new space for the antiquarian
tales. In fact, the way the characters deal with myths and engage with them
in contexts that are unknown even to them gives the myths a new textual
dimension. Every new context gives rise to a new text, and judging from
this perspective, Ghosh too engages in myth formation rather than simply
doing myth appropriation. Vijay Mishra and Bob Hodge observe
If we catalogue the crucial features of postcolonialism – we find that we are
drawn… to propose a counter literary history functioning as the underside
of the dominant literary history. The postcolonial is a ghost that stalks the
parent literary history. (Mishra and Hodge, 288)

It is precisely from this subaltern perspective that myths can be formed as

stories that re-engage with history and identity from an angle that is still
unchartered.

1.3. Myth-Ritual interface

While critically engaging in a study of myths, quite a few words need to be
understood as a glossary of literary terms. The two most common among
them in the ambit of our research are myth and ritual. We will end our
discussion with a very brief look at two other terms – legend and folktale –
but we will primarily focus on the first two because they are the ones that
will crop up in the chapters to follow. We have already seen the various
 A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism 45

perspectives from which myth has been defined in the first sub-section of
this chapter, and a close case- by-case analysis will be done in the chapters
to come. Here, we will try and find out to what extent myths and rituals are
different in their scope and appeal, and how can the two terms be
distinguished, if at all, in the field of literary and cultural studies.

If a broad consensus can be reached that myths (from the Greek mythos) are
basically stories that are constantly being generated and regenerated in the
semantic range of literature, then it can be stated, albeit in an extremely
broad sense, that myths operate at the level of literary representation. This
literary space includes both the written and oral forms as well as other
possible forms of art like music and painting (and indeed the digital space
of contemporary times). On the other hand, rituals are not always operative
only through literary representations, but more through social practices and
shamans. Of course, trying to distinguish between the two terms is almost
impossible because they are not exclusivist in their representations and they
are fluid and merge into the semantic space. Malinowski puts myth above
rituals as he says that “there is no important magic, no ceremony, no ritual
without belief; and the belief is spun out into accounts of concrete
precedent” (2009: 154). In other words, Malinowski puts myth as the
originating form of representation that evolves into a “concrete precedence”,
or rituals. Rituals are considered by Malinowski as social practices that exist
in order to give a concrete social participation to literary narratives. In
“Structure and Dialectics”, Levi-Strauss critiques Malinowski, Durkheim
and Levi-Bruhl to consider myth and rituals as dependent on each other for
their representations. He states
Some of these thinkers see in each myth the ideological projection of a rite,
the purpose of the myth being to provide a foundation for the rite. Others
reverse the relationship and regard ritual as a kind of dramatized illustration
of the myth… In both cases one assumes an orderly correspondence
between the two – in other words a homology. (1963: 232)

Levi-Strauss is of the opinion that using such a homologous structure to

unproblematically say that myth belongs to the realm of concepts and rituals
to action is not the right approach since a myth may not always correspond
to a ritualistic practise and a ritual may not always stem from a mythical
narrative. Levi-Strauss’s argument seems to be limiting because even
though a particular myth may not have a relationship with a particular form
of ritual, on a more general level, myths and rituals cannot be said to be
totally exclusive of each other. The lowest possible denominator of
agreement on myths might be that they are a set of belief systems. Now, in
every sector of knowledge and its dissemination, forms of expression must
46 Chapter One

be evolved in order to allow belief systems to attain a state of authoritarian

narrative. In the cultural domain, authority by a particular belief system
must be imposed in order to make that belief sacred. Myths thrive on the
binary between the sacred and the profane. We can certainly critique the
politics of constructing something as sacred that instils hegemony in the
social sections within which it functions, but that comes later to the fact that
it is the sacredness of the belief system in question that constructs the
validity of a myth. This sacredness, other than remaining at the narrative
level through oral poetry, performance or written literature, must also find
certain acts by which the sacredness of myths can be imposed on the social
psyche. These acts are the rituals. Questions may be raised as to whether
myths are not acts too. They are, but through an art medium, as in oral
poetry, written forms of literature, dramatic performances, songs, dances,
and other modes of artistic communication. Rituals are more on the side of
actions, what can be called the social implementation of myths. That is,
rituals are more indicative of how actions related to religious practices may
be communicated in a certain way that will allow the belief systems to
function as hegemony. Myths might be fluid in their renditions, as in the
case of oral performances, but rituals are made to remain as closed as
possible so that society takes those actions as sacred. It would be more apt
perhaps to take myths and rituals as part of a continuum, starting with myths,
traversing through legends and folklores/folktales, and ending with rituals.
At the far end of the continuum therefore lies the sacred actions that stem
from the aesthetic modulations on the other end of the continuum, not as a
case-by-case particularity but as a more general nebula of discourse. That is
why we propose that the very methodology with which Levi-Strauss tries to
mark an antithetical dialectic between myth and ritual is a bit too structured
because a continuum is fluid and flows freely from one domain of
representation to the other with overlapping edges. Writing with Levi-
Strauss, Christopher Johnson observes
Whereas myth is the schematic dividing up the continuum of reality in order
to create a signifying system based on the opposition of elements, the
operations of ritual are a desperate attempt to re-establish the continuity of
lived experience. (85)

It is not lived experiences that Johnson claims to be the opposite of myth

and ritual, but the medium of imitation and the discursive elements of the
sacred that create the continuum, and myths and rituals differ in that
continuum in different degrees to enforce that sacredness. The Cambridge
Ritualists, headed by James Frazer and seconded by Jane E Harrison, A.B.
Cook and Gilbert Murray, believed that myths arise out of rites. One of the
 A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism 47

classicists of the period, Hyman, in “The Ritual View of the Myth and the
Mythic” states that it is preferable to “keep clearly in mind that myth tells a
story sanctioning a rite” (146), but once again we propose that myth and
rituals create a continuum where ideological spaces merge and coalesce at
the edges, without being mutually exclusive. Isidore Okpewho perhaps
rightly observes
the myth predates the ritual; there was first a root story (whatever its source)
about the original men who sought from the spiritual world a solution to
certain problems plaguing them; the rest of the text is a tissue of accretions
brought on by generation of performances and has simply dominated the
initial plot. (Okpewho, 51-52)

This historicized analysis of the myth-ritual continuum is an apt

representation of our stance on the topic as we look into the representation
of myth and ritual in the texts of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh.

There are two other terms that need a brief explanation here – legends and
folktales. The most famous work on folktales is Morphology of the Folktale
by V. Propp, though Malinowski has something to say on the folktales too.
Malinowski defines the folktale as “a seasonal performance and an act of
sociability” (2009: 154). However, this does not differentiate folktales from
rituals because rituals are seasonal performances too in many cases, and so
Malinowski does not particularize folktales. V. Propp is a formalist and
ascribes as many as 31 functions to fairy tales and adds 150 constituent
elements to those functions, and he believes that in that way “we could enter
every fairy tale in existence on the chart: conversely every tale that could be
entered on the chart is a fairy tale and every one that cannot belongs to
another class of tale” (1972: 140). Though Propp continues to use the term
“fairy tale” in his morphological distinction of the genre with other forms
of tales, his seminal book is titled Morphology of the Folktale. There he
states
Morphologically, a tale may be termed any development proceeding from
villainy or a lack, through intermediary functions of marriage, or to other
functions employed as denouement. (1968: 92)

The problem with Propp's thesis is that any categorization based on the
functionality of a tale may be extremely risky because an analysis of the
morphology of the tales might reveal that it can be termed a folktale as well
as a myth. Categorical divisions like “the villain attempts to deceive his
victim”, “the villain causes harm to a member of the family”, “the hero
acquires the use of a magical agent” and so on are mythical in their intent
48 Chapter One

too. So, a morphological division might end up being an untrustworthy

methodology for delimitation. The other term, legend, also comes close to
Propp’s functional distinguishing of folktales. Malinowski describes
legends as “provoked by contact with unusual reality, opens up past
historical vistas” (2009: 154). Legends are often associated with some
historical factual truth that metamorphoses, through oral refashioning, into
something larger than life. However, legends can have some of the same
elements that Propp enlists for folktales, even though it is of general
agreement that folktales have no historicity at all. One difference can be
drawn that in almost all cases myths include divinity but folktales need not
always have figures of divinity in them, but again such a distinguishing
parameter needs to be read in a given specific context. Chinua Achebe and
Amitav Ghosh do not include folktales and legends, as defined by the
theorists discussed above, in their narrative as such. They have myths and
rituals in their narrative with specific politics pertaining to history and
postcolonial identity in mind, which will be discussed at length in the
subsequent chapters. Here, it is sufficient to conclude with the observation
that it is perhaps advisable to consider myth, folktale, legend, and ritual as
parts of a continuum, in the order mentioned, moving from oral aestheticism
to a historicized documentation of the past and spilling into a social
expression through ritualism to give a cognitive representation of the
narratives in myth, folktale and legends.

Notes
1 Plato’s view on poetry revolved around the question of imitation. Since he had a
dislike for imitative art, he proposed to banish poets from his Commonwealth, citing
that poets are perpetrators of immorality and mere imitators. Hence, by extension,
any poetry that constructs mythos is equally reprehensible since that is also imitative
and cannot be considered philosophically valid. To Plato, the claim of truth by poets
is nothing but a falsified representation of it, coloured by the imagination of the poet.
2 The word ‘kernel’ refers to the essence of something, coming from the Greek
‘essentia’. That is, Aristotle is referring to the fact that the core issue of imitation is
not any external ideal reality but an internal core of ideas that may not have the
morality followed in the empirical order of things.
3 Pindarassociates mythos with treachery and deception in texts like Olympian and
Nemean. Herodotus held the same position, preferring logos over mythos, but
Heraclitus had a somewhat sympathetic view of mythos. For more reading, see
Bruce Lincoln’s Theorizing Myth (1999).
 A Short Overview of Myth and Myth Criticism 49

4 Kant’s theory is based on the idea that sublimity cannot be apprehended in terms

of form. Even beauty has a form but when an object of cognition goes into a formless
state, it becomes sublime and cannot be understood through rational empiricism. See
Robert Doran, The Theory of the Sublime: From Longinus to Kant. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge: 2015.
5 The term “collective unconscious” was used by Jung in 1916 in an essay called

“The Structure of the Unconscious”. In "The Significance of Constitution and

Heredity in Psychology" (November 1929), Jung wrote:

And the essential thing, psychologically, is that in dreams, fantasies, and

other exceptional states of mind the most far-fetched mythological motifs
and symbols can appear autochthonously at any time, often, apparently, as
the result of particular influences, traditions, and excitations working on the
individual, but more often without any sign of them. These "primordial
images" or "archetypes," as I have called them, belong to the basic stock of
the unconscious psyche and cannot be explained as personal acquisitions.
Together they make up that psychic stratum which has been called the
collective unconscious. The existence of the collective unconscious means
that individual consciousness is anything but a tabula rasa and is not
immune to predetermining influences. On the contrary, it is in the highest
degree influenced by inherited presuppositions, quite apart from the
unavoidable influences exerted upon it by the environment. The collective
unconscious comprises in itself the psychic life of our ancestors right back
to the earliest beginnings. It is the matrix of all conscious psychic
occurrences, and hence it exerts an influence that compromises the freedom
of consciousness in the highest degree, since it is continually striving to lead
all conscious processes back into the old path (See Jung, Collected Works
vol. 8 "The Significance of Constitution and Heredity in Psychology"
(1929). Trans. R F C Hull. Routledge, London: 1960 (p. 112)).
6 Phoneme is the smallest phonetic unit in a language which is capable of conveying

a distinction in meaning. Morpheme is a meaningful morphological unit of a

language that cannot be further divided. Sememe is the unit of meaning carried by
morpheme. See www.thefreedictionary.com
7 Also known as empty signifiers, the term ‘floating signifiers’ refers to a signifier
without a specific signified or referent. The term was first used by Levi-Strauss in
Structural Anthropology in reference to myths that have similar structures and have
dispersed in foreign cultures, giving rise to a multiplicity of meaning and
interpretation. Later, Derrida used the term to denote the endless signifieds that are
possible for a given signifier, thereby starting the postmodern conception of a fluid
relation between the signifier and the signified.
8 Theterm is taken from Jerome J. McGann, Radiant Textuality: Literature After the
World Wide Web. Palgrave, New York: 2001. McGann offers an analysis of textual
50 Chapter One

space in the world of digital media, where centres of authorial origin, or a fixed
textual space, are untenable post the internet revolution.
 CHAPTER TWO

'THE SINISTER GRIN OF AFRICA'S IDIOT-KINGS'

In terms of being a myth maker in his fiction, Achebe is seen as an author

of narrative disjuncture. Narrative disjuncture looks at history and myth as
cultural signifiers that encapsulate the way in which a particular culture has
evolved through various epochs of human civilization. The narrative politics
in Achebe move back and forth along the axis of time – looking backward
at the original narrative of the myth (the term original used not in terms of
an authentic documentation of facts) and anticipating a reality that came into
existence when Africa was trying to cope with the onslaught of European
colonialism. In Achebe’s novels, there is hardly a single strand of myth;
rather, there are multiple strands being used in the narrative to give it the
shape and form of a system. The system, however, is not a closed one; it
does not follow the patterns of a strictly codified system of symbols. What
it does is construct a time-inflected narrative, placing the text in its cultural
context; and there is a simultaneous effort to give it the paradigm of a
metaphysical entity. Traditional criticism has taken mythology to be the
sensational stories of gods and goddesses though this idea has long been
challenged, especially after the body of works produced by Levi-Straus.
Achebe’s fictional narratives have the quality of combining different
approaches to myths, be it gender, the heroic cult of the Igbo society, inter-
clan politics, or negotiating history in terms of conflict and reorientation.
Achebe does not use myth unproblematically, nor does myth become a mere
narrative strategy to give his fiction a postcolonial tone in order to re-
construct the Igbo order of the past. His novels are either placed in the time
of transition, as in Things Fall Apart and Arrow Of God, where the agro- or
tribe-based Igbo society is struggling to come to terms with the onslaught
of the newly arrived British colonialism, or as his later works placed in a
postcolonial reality where the military dictatorship creates a hegemony at
the political level and there is no freedom of press or expression. In either
case the use of myth comes across as an effective subtext that defines the
relationships shared by the characters in terms of the narrator as well as well
as the narrative structure of the work. The myths that Achebe uses in his
narratives not only bring about an inter play between the various thematic
concerns of the novels they also have enough space to be considered texts
52 Chapter Two

that reflect the pre-colonial as well as the postcolonial issues that are raised
in Nigeria, taking readers back and forth in time as well as. In this chapter,
two of Achebe's novels will be considered for critical analysis – Things Fall
Apart and No Longer at Ease – which use myth as the main textual narrative
that reflects the cultural rites of the Nigerian Igbo society and culture. The
novels use myth as a direct narrative strategy to create the foundation of the
discourse, the arrival of the ‘White man’ to the Igbo land, which, apart from
creating political coercion, also creates tension at the cultural level as the
British used Christianity as a tool of political domination and the natives
wanted to preserve the ‘purity’ of their erstwhile religion. Myths form an
essential narrative in this politics of coercion since they represent the
cultural normativity of the Igbos, which they want to preserve in order to
prevent the tribe from being contaminated by the alien British influence. In
the true sense of the term, like in any other colonial history, the advent of
the British brings about a clash of cultures.

Achebe's fiction engages in identity politics through the use of myths, and
myths governed the social psyche of the Igbo and the Yoruba tribes (the two
major tribes in Nigeria) until the colonial phase of their history and beyond.
Like in almost all other cultures, myths were part of an oral tradition. In fact,
it is believed that Africa did not have a written language until the spread of
Islam in the eighth and ninth centuries from across the Mediterranean.
Minstrels often engaged in impromptu performances in front of live
audiences and the stories were mainly taken from myths and tales, which
suffered many interpolations as the bards had to satisfy public taste, which
differs among the tribes. Achebe uses myths to make the statement that
Africa is not a land of uncivilised savages but rather has its own indigenous
culture and aesthetics that cannot be understood in terms of Eurocentric
ideology. In the African pantheon of gods, there is a large variety in their
terminology as well as well as the functions they perform in deciding the
fates of men. The myths vary from one tribe to the other but there is a
thematic link between them and as well as some similarities in plot. The
creation myths, the trickster myths and myths on death are found in
abundance in oral literature. One famous creation myth tells how the sky
and the earth used to be close to each other, so close that women could mix
some blue into their yam soup. One day a pestle that the women were using
to pound yams hit the high god in the skies; he rose in fury and thus man
was separated from god. In the Igbo pantheon of gods, Chukwu is the
godhead and is believed to have created man in close communion with the
sun. Chukwu is often represented as the chameleon who can change his
clothes to show his power of deception. Once, Mermaid, the queen of oceans
and lakes, challenged Chukwu on their sophistication and gaudiness, only
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 53

to be eventually defeated. Whatever Mermaid wore, Chukwu could match

it because he can change his appearance at will and hence proved that he is
unmatchable in glamour and beauty; since that day, he has never been
challenged as the supreme god. Chukwu has his parallel in the neighbouring
Yoruba mythology, where Olorun or Olodumare is the principal god who
made both the sun and the moon, but sun won the battle over moon to assert
his superiority. Then Olodumare sent the god Obatala to create man
(Achebe, 1975: 99). In fact the god Eshu is responsible for acting as an agent
between the high god Olorun and man because he was tired of doing nothing
and so was given the job of fetching yams from the fields of earth (and hence
the sacred cult around yams, believed to have been introduced to humans
by none other than Chukwu himself). The Igbos consider Chukwu as the
highest god, who controls man’s ‘chi’ or destiny. Chukwu is from the solar
realm and, as Achebe points out in his essay, the sun is seen as the agent of
the great god himself (ibid). Achebe says that Igbos associate sunrays with
the order of Chukwu, which explains “the invocation of chi from the face
of the sun at the consecration of its shrine” (ibid). Many African dynasties
locate their origin in the sky gods, as in the Zulus of South Africa and the
tribes around the Great Lakes, who claim that their kings were lowered to
the earth by the sky gods. Next comes the myths on death, and the story
goes that after making man an agriculturist, Chukwu asks Ezenri and
Ezadama, two gods from other realms, to plant yams despite the ground
being wet, which suggests, according to Achebe, an awareness of death in
the absence of colonization through agricultural activities. Another
variation of the death-related myths refers to how god sent both a chameleon
and a lizard to tell man about the phenomenon of myth, but the lizard won
the race and death was brought to the world. The Igbos have mother
goddesses as well, who are associated with childbirth and the cult of
motherhood. Ogbuide is the goddess of fertility; she is said to be very
beautiful and is offered prayers and other objects by women to please her
so they can give birth to heirs. Gender politics becomes predominant here
as women are seen as forces, producing male heirs for tribal leaders and
other men. Fertility cults are also practised among other tribes, as in the
Oromo of Ethiopia, who marginalize childless women as barren and
incapacitated. The entire animal kingdom represents some divine quality or
the other – lizards, snakes, tortoises, rabbits, hares, and elephants are all
agents of a god and are to be revered by the human world. Another large
group of myth is the trickster myths, which are found across all the tribes
though with some variations in the tale or the names. Trickster gods are
basically the agents of chaos and deception and they test the obedience of
man for the high gods. There is a popular trickster myth in the Akan and
54 Chapter Two

Ashante tribes of Ghana, where Ananse is the spider trickster who promises
to save the mother of Nyame, the supreme being, but fails to keep the
promise. He is captivated by Nyame but he makes his son burrow under his
prison, forcing Nyame to release Ananse because the Ashante tribe will die
if Ananse is killed. In the Igbo mythology, Ekwensu is the trickster god with
command over the destructive forces of nature. Another trickster god is
Legba, found in the tales of the Fon people of Benin, who manipulates
situations through the misrepresentation of language. So, myths are a very
important ingredient in the construction of the social psyche of African
tribes, and define and maintain the various social, religious and legal
institutions. In fact, the family, marriage, childbirth – everything is decided
by references to myths. Wars are fought in reference to myths and the
village priestesses function according to well-established traditions and
norms validated by myths across a long period of history. The very social
and religious normativity stood on the pillars of myth until the colonisers
came and began to destabilise this cultural face of the tribes. Achebe
captures this particular moment of history of the Igbos in his fiction and
comments on the various clashes at the cultural and socio-political levels,
an inevitable product of the coercive colonial politics of the British in
Africa.

Chinua Achebe problematises his fiction by not constructing a neat ethical

or moral binary between the 'innocent' colonised nation and the 'evil'
coloniser, as he does not look at the colonial history in terms of such
absolute opposites. The Igbo tribe that he represents in almost all his novels
is not a romantic description of colonised people facing oppression under
the colonial hegemony of the British. Certainly, he has much to say against
colonial politics but Achebe also points out the socio-political fissures and
the cultural contradictions ingrained in the native politics, and that make his
fiction more complex. This question needs to be addressed because the
present book does not want to propose any grand narrative nor does it aim
at reaching any specific conclusion. However, it is important for us to see
whether Achebe is following any models of criticism in his fictional
narrative or if his creative genius is constructing ways for parallel models
of myth criticism or theoretical paradigms. Things Fall Apart in this context
is a ground-breaking work because it managed to revise and reconstruct the
very way novels were written in the English language, especially when it
began its counter-offensive journey, moving outside its safe haven of
Eurocentrism. Myth has always been a defining component for culture for
the African audience. Myths are not just fantastic tales of gods descending
upon the stage to rescue man from his pitiable state. They contain a whole
range of complex strands of significance, starting from delineating social
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 55

reality to psychic thought processes at the level of culture. Talking about

myth being used as a narrative strategy in the fictional mode, Isidore
Okpewho writes
It is therefore important to establish that when the narrator counterbalances
the ‘pastness’ of his tale by giving it a contemporary stamp, he is not merely
dragging it from one extreme to the other but seeking a balance which frees
the tale from any kind of commitment to determinable time… But the ideal
of the mythmaking effort remains one in which the narrator manages not to
overstrain our sense either of the pastness or of the presentness of the tale.
(Okpewho, 1983:105)

The key phrase used by Okpewho here is ‘determinable time’ since it

projects myth as both slightly different and complimentary to history.
History claims a determined spatiality in terms of the narrative as well as
the experience contained in the ‘story’, but myth seems to be a part of a
different stratum of experience, starting as a historicised narrative but then
shooting off to the metaphysical domain. Now, the term metaphysical
requires extreme caution because of the cultural differences between Europe
and Africa. In the Eurocentric philosophy, ‘being’ and its relationship to the
world is paramount. As Heidegger has pointed out, being is an unchanging
ontological reality and should not be confused with beings, which change
in the time-space continuum. On the other hand, the cultural politics of the
Igbo cosmology consider the metaphysical as being a real communal
experience that happened to the forefathers many years ago and must be
revered for the good of the community. Being for them is not an
unchangeable ontology; it is part of the shared communal experience. So
the past is not really fictitious (in terms of being unbelievable), nor should
it be dislodged as the hegemony of cultural rites; myths arise out of the
necessity to protect the Igbo community intact, and in a time-inflected
space, the past becomes as much a real presence as the present. This is a
good starting point for our discussion of the two aforesaid novels, in which
myths form the essential ingredient for the narrator’s portrayal and critique
of the sacred ties in the Igbo tribe.

Things Fall Apart starts at a point of crisis – a personal crisis for Okonkwo.
This is where Okpewho’s concern about the time frame becomes important
for our discussion. Okonkwo's mythical past is a way of narrating a story in
the oral tradition whereby the audience’s interest is invoked through the
distancing of the hero, both in space and time. Okonkwo has been delineated
as a character at the centre of the political structure of the Igbo tribe and his
stature as ‘heroic man’ makes him a mythical presence perceived to be
beyond time and history, which of course he is not, but that is the image
56 Chapter Two

constructed in the mind of his Igbo mates. The thing about Okonkwo is that
he almost commits psychological parricide in his desperate attempt to
become as different from his father as possible. The myth of manliness or
manhood becomes the crux of the problem in Okonkwo’s life, something
that creates doubts and fissures in the troubled psyche of a man striving to
be part of the Igbo hero cult. In a note of defiance, Okonkwo is said to be
comfortable with the sight of blood and, unlike his father Unoka, he can use
violence to construct his concept of the heroic practice – a point that Achebe
interrogates and reinterprets throughout the novel. The cult of violence is
underlined in the character of Okonkwo.
He was a man of action, a man of war. Unlike his father he could stand the
look of blood. In Umuofia’s latest war he was the first to bring home a
human head. That was the fifth head; and he was not an old man yet. On
great occasions such as the funeral of a village celebrity, he drank his palm-
wine from his first human head. (TFA, 10)1

Violence as a cult practice, at myth level, needs analysis. Achebe does not
praise violence as a practice when critiquing African culture in his novel. In
fact, his point of departure seems to be at this juncture, when he questions
the inherent violence as a necessary prerequisite for manly heroism, though
not at the cost of being Eurocentric. In his essay ‘Colonialist Criticism’
Achebe notes
Certainly anyone, white or black, who chooses to see violence as the abiding
principle of African civilisation is free to do so. But let him not pass himself
off as a restorer of dignity to Africa, or attempt to make out that he is writing
about man and about the state of civilisation in general… (Achebe, 1975:76)

Africa as essentially violent is a product of the colonial interpretation of the

Other, but Achebe is of the point of view that the colonial masters judge
inter-tribal conflicts from their own perspective. This is where the power
hierarchy operates – African violence becomes the manifestation of pre-
civilized animal instincts of the ‘savages’ whereas colonial violence is a
case of either a ‘civilising mission’ or a political necessity. The myth in this
case, that Africans are ‘naturally’ violence-prone, has long anthropological
antecedents. Lee Baker, in his book From Savage to Negro, identifies how
the race theories of the early nineteenth century sought to construct Negroes
as racially inferior to Caucasians and Eurasians. While explaining his thesis,
Baker quotes Jabez L.M. Curry, who, in 1899, noted in Popular Science
Monthly that Negroes were racially inferior and did not possess the moral
and intellectual fortitude to participate in the political process (Baker, web).
So, myths of such nature arise out of a political narrative that looks to
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 57

represent the Other as racially or culturally inferior to the Eurocentric world.

Africans being violence-prone is a product of such anthropological ideas
that deem to analyse human anatomy in terms of biological observation, but
as is evident, what eventually comes out is a deeply prejudiced narrative
based more on cultural stereotypification than objective scientific analysis.
Here the myth of violence as the core structure of the African continent has
been problematized by Achebe, and he guards himself against all the
Eurocentric discourses that try to create a fear psychosis about the Other. It
is left for us, however, to analyse how much Achebe is concerned about the
violence as a practising cult in the tribe he represents in his fiction. The
image of blood and human skulls in the above extract from Things Fall
Apart is sure create a whole series of problematic questions from non-
African readers, especially when one considers that Okonkwo himself sees
this aspect as a necessary part of his individual as well as his political self,
because without the fear factor (if that is all he intends) it is not easy to
become the leader of the tribe. Okonkwo's notion has its origins in his
extreme hatred for his father’s apparent effeminacy – which marginalised
the old man from the mainstream Igbo society. So the myth element in
Achebe becomes rather interesting because not only does it serve as an
index of the communal culture but it is also an effective critique of the
individual psyche, its fears and apprehensions, the insecurity surrounding
the individual self and the tussle between the public sphere and the private
space, which ultimately spells doom in the tragedy of Okonkwo.
Okonkwo’s love for the violent nature of the sacred Igbo ties is more of a
personalised construct than a communal necessity. On certain occasions, the
Agbala priest, who commands the central space of folktale and ritual genesis
of the Igbo tribe, “had forbidden Umuofia to wage a war” (TFA, 12). For
Achebe, myth construction is not constricted to the space of the community
as it also interpellates itself to the private domain in order to redefine the
relationship of the individual vis-à-vis the community. The myths used by
Achebe become a site of contestation between individual aspirations and the
expectations of society, especially those of the elderly village patriarchs. In
fact, the fear that Okonkwo suffers from is deeply rooted in his bias for Igbo
ties, and to start off with, he comes across as a man who considers mythical
constructs as responsible for them. Okonkwo seems to be the cultural
product of “hegemonic masculinity”, where the Igbo tribe produces
patriarchal energy to construct the dominant position of men, subsuming the
role of gender socialisation for the social reproduction of patriarchy.
However, one must be aware of the risk that the concept of “hegemonic
masculinity” runs into. The basic question really is – what is masculinity?
Is it a monolith, a social constant? If not, then the term seems to ignore the
58 Chapter Two

other shades of “masculinity” in society. Okonkwo interprets the myths in

such a manner that will support his politics of “masculinity”, which is not
necessarily agreeable to his community, and it is Okonkwo who gets
coercive when it comes to preserving his power. Achebe notes
But his [Okonkwo] whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and
of weakness. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear
of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father. (TFA, 13)

Okonkwo is ever-struggling to prove his point of view of the various

religious rites and the future-telling of Cheilo, and in that way, on more
occasions than one, he goes against the dictates of the normative communal
structures. When Ikemefuna is taken for sacrifice, Okonkwo accompanies
the procession, which is not quite acceptable according to the rules of the
Igbo community. Obeirika counters Okonkwo and says
If the Oracle said that my son should be killed, I would neither dispute it nor
be the one to do it. (TFA, 67)

For Okonkwo, myths become tools to further his political ambition, and he
shows tendencies to be selective in his acquiescence or opposition to the
various norms of his community, which are determined by myths and oral
history. Okonkwo uses myths in his struggle to assert his individuality
within the highly codified structure of the Igbo society and hence brings
about his own destruction because going against the sacred ties is a sacrilege
beyond any forgiveness – the concept of ‘chi’ in the Igbo cosmology.

The cult of violence and the tremendous tug of war between the community
and individual desires are exemplified in the whole range of issues
surrounding Ikemefuna, Okonkwo's foster son. In fact, the entire structure
of myth versus the personal ramifications of it is represented through the
incidents that occur when Okonkwo brings Ikemefuna to the village as a
war hostage. Okonkwo announced to his oldest wife that the child “belongs
to the clan” (TFA, 14), but this bestowing of clan identity proves fatal not
only to Ikemefuna but also to himself. The ritual of the Igbo community and
inter-tribal relationships were such that after a war was fought, the defeated
tribe had to give the victorious tribe a young boy as a sacrifice for the loss
they have suffered. This was the abiding principle of the sacred ties of the
Igbo community, and such rituals and myths maintain the structural balance
of the society. The patriarch of the clan decides who is to be exchanged and
when as an assertion of power politics. Before the arrival of Ikemefuna,
Okonkwo suffered from the oligarchical attitude of the Cheilo priest,
something that defines Okonkwo’s love-hate relationship with the Igbo
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 59

cosmology. Achebe gives a graphic detail about the priestess-man

relationship before the birth of Okonkwo, which accounts for Okonkwo’s
hatred for his father and later defines his troubled relationship with the
Agbala priest when Ikemefuna is chosen for sacrifice later in the novel. The
images of fire and darkness create the appropriate ambience for the mythical
world to take over, a world that is full of mystic charms and subterfugal
forces of destruction. Unoka, the father of Okonkwo, hated by Okonkwo for
his “feminine” attitudes, goes to the priestess to know how he can praise the
gods, and there is a moment of tension.
The fire did not burn with a flame. The glowing logs only served to light up
vaguely the dark figure of the priestess. (TFA, 17)

What is interesting here is how the world of myth and rituals is able to
decode the problematic power equations between the genders in the Igbo
tribe. Fire, which is one of the basic elements of the Cosmos, acts as the
agent of gender role reversal, where the priestess Chika attains power and
Unoka is left at her mercy. But the question is, isn’t Unoka looking for the
same empowerment within the sacred order of his Igbo clan? If not, then
why would Unoka go to the priestess to know about the future harvests? It
is indeed noteworthy that fire, which is traditionally associated with male
passion, lights up the priestess’s body in a chiaroscuric manner, so does
male hegemony create the mystic charm in the feminine when that same
femininity is sharing its presence with the world of mythical dimensions?
Talking about gender, Julia Kristeva mentions that there are two
frameworks of time within which patriarchy has restricted the voices of
women: “repetition” and “eternity”. On one hand there is a particular
“biological rhythm” that stereotypes women within time that is located in
history; on the other, there is the presence of a “monumental temporality”
that includes certain imaginary spaces where women are mythicized
(Kristeva, 1981: 16). Chika, and later Cheilo, the two Agbala priests in two
generations, represent this politics of mythicizing of women in the Igbo
society, thereby forming a “type”. The gender question vis-à-vis the use of
myth in the narrative will be discussed a bit later but what is significant to
note here is the fact that the Agbala caves are the central premise of the Igbo
cosmology on which the entire tribe depends for their day-to-day activities;
the incantations of the priestess form a part of the ontological being of the
society upon which the sacred ties depend.

In a paper presented to the Kenya Historical Association (Nairobi), Ngugi

wa Thiong’o said, “I want to talk about the past as a way of talking about
the present” (Thiong’o, 1968:39-46), and this past-present dialectic becomes
60 Chapter Two

an effective tool in the hands of Achebe to drive home Okonkwo's struggle

to justify his acts on the lines of traditions that have been followed for
centuries. The ‘pastness’ of African myths however need not be construed
as being irrelevant in the present; one should understand the fact that in a
tribal society, the past is constantly interpellated in the present to reorient
the functionality of myths. Isidore Okpewho, in his book Myth In Africa,
cites Kambili, edited by Charles Bird, and Sunjata: Three Mandinka
Versions, edited by Gordon Innes (Okpewho, 74) to illustrate how the
mythmaker tries to transport the audience to another level or perception of
reality, distant in time and space, taking the reader out of mundane reality
for the mythical tale to take effect. Achebe does not romanticise myths to
assert the cultural autonomy of his community, nor does he indulge in couch
activism to separate the entity of his community from other races. His
representation of the Igbo world is a part of his political agenda, but his
agenda is not right-wing in intent; Achebe does not intend to romanticise
his tribe as hapless sufferers of colonialism. He shows the inner conflicts,
contradictions and cultural oxymorons that are prevalent in his society, and
any society for that matter. For example, kola-nuts are served as a delicacy
to visitors to one’s house, or, in the case of Okonkwo, his obi. However,
kola nuts have an associative presence with the notion of masculinity; their
tough exterior and the hard shell indirectly imply the physical force required
for it to be broken and hence its association with the male-dominated Igbo
world. If it is not offered to the revered guest, then it is considered as an
insult to the guest and a horrific premonition of the things to come.
Interestingly enough, kola-nuts never seem to be present in the domain of
the women because they are supposed to be domestic creatures and hence
the nuts are more familiar with the outside world of war and politics. A
similar object in the external male world seems to be palm wine – another
of the delicacies that men seem to revere as a god-like entity. A small extract
from Things Fall Apart will help to illustrate the point.
The men in the obi had already begun to drink the palm-wine which
Akueke’s suitor had brought. It was a very good wine and powerful for, in
spite of the palm fruit hanging across the mouth of the pot to restrain the
lively liquor, white foam rose and spilled over.

‘That wine is the work of a good tapper’, said Okonkwo.

The young suitor, whose name was Ibe, smiled broadly and said to his father:
‘Do you hear that?’ He then said to the others: ‘He will never admit that I
am a good tapper.’ (TFA, 72)
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 61

Wine as a cultural signifier must not, of course, be confused with its western
counterpart because wine signifies different aspects of cultural norms in
Western society and the Igbo one. Apart from being gendered, wine serves
as the agent for maintaining cultural rites, and the myth of the Igbo ties
proves that wine is respected as an entity of cohesion. Wine is not a taboo
for women; they drink it too but under the supervision of their husbands.
One must be careful not to read this along Western lines as equating it to
the subservience of women. In fact, women in the Igbo tribe do have a titled
presence, something that will be analysed later.

The issue relating to Ikemefuna is indeed one that challenges and

reinterprets the base of cultural normativity of the tribe, which is dominated
by mythical tales. Without trying to sound like a Marxist critic, one can say
that the superstructure of the Igbo tribe falls back frequently to these myths
and rituals as a part of identity creation. Identity itself is highly fluid and
problematic, having no fixed signified at the level of its semantic operation.
However, Achebe’s fiction cannot be put under the critical microscope by
using the reagent of Marxist critical oeuvre or right-wing aesthetics. While
looking at the major concerns in his novel, especially the myths and the
folktales, one is tempted to consider them as the voice of the
underprivileged, who suffer from a lack of voice, and hence the mythical
anecdotes serve as their class weapon to register their protest against the
dominant clans of the Igbo villages. Or there is the temptation to look at the
myths as textual representations of folk aesthetics. Both have an inherent
contradiction in themselves because they are Eurocentric, and one needs to
examine African fiction using the language of Africa. At least that is what
Achebe himself advocates, though he is not averse to using Anglocentric
schools of theories when it suits. Achebe was famously quoted that the
saying 'art for art’s sake' was “just another piece of dog shit” (Achebe,
1975:19). In his essay ‘Africa and Her Writers’, in Morning Yet on Creation
Day, he narrates a myth in order to delineate the importance of seeing Africa
through her eyes. According to a Yoruba story, the god of confusion and
fate, Eshu, once walked down a road where two farmers were working on
the either side of it. Eshu had rubbed himself with charcoal on one side and
white chalk on the other. After he had walked away, one farmer came and
said that a white man had walked down the road, and he was immediately
challenged as the other said that he was black, and a fight ensued. Then
Eshu, as clever and nimble with his imagination as always, came back up
the road. Now the first farmer came and said that the latter was right and the
second one said, no, the former was right and a fight ensued. Achebe
comments,
62 Chapter Two

The recrimination between capitalist and communist aesthetics in our time

is, of course, comparable to the first act of the farmers’ drama – the fight for
the exclusive claim on righteousness and truth. Perhaps Eshu will return one
day and pass again between them down the road and inaugurate the second
act – the fight for self-abasement, for a monopoly on guilt. (Achebe,
1975:20-21)

It might seem here that Achebe is following deeply separatist politics in

following the fascist notion of ‘cultural purity’. However, Achebe is not a
purist; what he tries to achieve is to rescue Africa from being culturally
perspectivized through Eurocentric narratives. He is not against Europe, nor
is he against European cultural narratives, which is evident from the fact
that he chooses to write in English. What he prays for is the representation
of Africa sans stereotypification or overt romanticization. He neither wants
Africa to be presented as the ‘dark continent’ nor to be delineated as a land
of perfection that has been perennially misconstrued by the Europeans – he
wants Africa to be presented as it is, with all its historical blemishes, cultural
vulnerability and topographical beauty. The issue then really is that the
methodology that is used to critique and understand the myths used by
Achebe must be carefully chosen. One cannot fully ignore the theoretical
tradition of the Anglophonic world but one must also be careful to not carry
the baggage of the cultural politics of the Eurocentric academia and then
impose them on the African worldview. Achebe, in his essay ‘Colonialist
Criticism’, cites Honor Tracy, who gives an account of Nigerian novelists.
The Nigerian novelists who have written the charming and bucolic accounts
of domestic harmony in African rural communities are the sons whom the
labours of these women educated; the peaceful village of their childhood to
which they nostalgically look back was one which had been purged of
bloodshed and alcoholism by an ague-ridden district officer and a Scottish
mission lassie whose years were cut short by every kind of intestinal
parasite.

The modern African myth maker hands down a vision of colonial rule in
which the native powers are chivalrously viewed through the eyes of the
hard-won liberal tradition of the late Victorian scholar, while the expatriates
are shown as schoolboys’ black-board caricatures. (Achebe, 1975:4)

So, the Eurocentric perspective, as Honor Tracy observes, is that the

Africans must show some “indebtedness” to the colonial masters for
bringing ‘enlightenment’ and ‘culture’ to the ‘dark continent’, which is
attacked by Achebe as nothing but a tremendous essentialisation of African
history. The politics of Achebe therefore must be understood in terms of
protest literature, but on most occasions, Achebe does not become a right-
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 63

wing writer looking for cultural nationalism. Now, as far as Things Fall
Apart and Arrow Of God are concerned, the sceptical note is not only
relegated to the colonial space, which is the obvious part, if one may say so,
but the interrogative stance is also visible in Achebe’s construction of
Okonkwo’s reaction to the sacred cult and myths of the Igbo tradition. There
is no doubt that Achebe does not accept the tribal norms of his society
unquestioningly, and on more than one occasion, he raises doubts about
Okonkwo’s silence about Ikemefuna’s death. The whole series of events
that unfolds through the sacrifice of Ikemefuna constructs a world of Igbo
lore and folk culture that creates a complex web of issues, that results in a
conflict between the contradictory nature of personal desires on the part of
Okonkwo, related to his communal and personal self, as well as creates a
tussle between the expectations of the Igbo elders and Okonkwo’s studied
silence on the issue. This is precisely where the myth of sacrifice turns into
a social and ideological battlefield, where the individual response of
Okonkwo to power is in conflict with the larger power equations of his
community.

The concept of ‘chi’ is significant in the Igbo cosmology because it is the

sole governing principle of the Igbo consciousness. Achebe, in his essay
‘Chi in Igbo Cosmology’, gives a detailed account about the importance of
chi in the Igbo structure of myths and folklores, and one needs to take a very
close look at it before analysing the cultural politics at work in Okonkwo’s
scheme of things regarding his chi. Achebe states that in Igbo, there are two
distinct meanings of chi, one related to gods or supernatural beings and the
other related to the transitional periods between the daytime and night-time.
So, chi ofufo means daybreak and chi ojiji means nightfall. Chi is essentially
a personal god to the extent that every person will have his personal chi in
the other world, and no two persons can have the same chi. The peculiar
quality about the Igbo system of thought is that there has never been any
attempt to record or write down this version of the philosophy, and hence
the Igbo worldview is symbolically represented through myths and folk
culture. However, to add to Achebe, it is perhaps a universal trend among
folk cultures that nothing is written or represented through codified sign
systems, and the critic has to fall back upon non-codified signifiers in order
to decode the values of the folk culture. For example, in Australian cave
paintings, one can find the totems and taboos to decode the cultural practices
and beliefs of the Australian aborigines. The construction of the hierarchy
of the written language as being superior to that of the spoken one is part of
the legacy of European enlightenment, though the post-structuralists stress
the importance of the spoken dialect as important signifiers to decode socio-
cultural norms. Derrida, as a post-structuralist, looks at the deconstructed
64 Chapter Two

notion of language and observes that since language is more a product of

nomos or institution, rather than physis or nature, the difference between the
written form of language and the non-linguistic form ceases to exist. In fact,
meaning is a matter of convention to Derrida so written language is as
institutionalised as the non-written sign systems and hence language cannot
be ‘naturally’ codified into a written form. Derrida notes in Structure, Sign
and Play in 1966
Always being in language, we must acknowledge the structure of presences
and absences that constitute signs and meanings: in speaking and writing,
we always have something perceived as present (signifiers [sign vehicles]
in verbal sounds, marks and letters, images) and something absent
(meanings, beliefs, values not present in signs but supplied by our
knowledge of the system of relationships in which they appear). (Derrida,
web)

Myths ought to be analysed in terms of knowledge that is not only culturally

codified to generate meaning but also in the realm of the “absent” that
Derrida notes. Myths are not a body of knowledge whose meaning is
arbitrarily fixed by social institutions; there are meanings, beliefs and signs
that are constructed during individual performances as well as by the power
equations of the society. Chi is one such concept – individually constructed
but also ratified by a whole body of tales that have come down the
generations.

Coming back to the question of chi, Achebe notes in the essay that Igbos do
not believe in the depiction of the absolute truth; no myth is to be considered
the ultimate narrative. He says
the central place in Igbo thought [is] of the notion of duality. Wherever
Something stands, Something else will stand beside it. Nothing is absolute.
(Achebe, 1975:94)

So, chi has a palpable entity in the spirit land; every man on this earth will
have his corresponding chi in the netherworld, which is physically
represented as being underground. Any kind of communication, when
needed between the two worlds, is done through the physical journey of the
chi from the underground to this world through ant holes. Achebe further
notes that the world of spirits in the underworld is an exact replica of this
one – similar soil, similar air and similar skies, and the chi lives there only
to meet his counterpart when one dies. However, the dance of the masked
spirits represents the occasional visit of the chi to this world and the moment
is to be revered as both sacred and fantastical. Chi has such a big influence
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 65

over man’s destiny that, as Achebe notes, there is an Igbo proverb that no
number of gods can actually plot the destruction of man unless and until his
chi gives the nod. In the novel Things Fall Apart, chi is mentioned numerous
times, each time with a different significance. The struggle of Okonkwo and
his rise to power are attributed to the good nature of his chi.
At an early age he had achieved fame as the greatest wrestler in all the land.
That was not luck. At the most one could say that his chi or personal god
was good. But the Ibo people have a proverb that when a man says yes, his
chi says yes also. Okonkwo said yes very strongly; so, his chi agreed. And
not only his chi but his clan too, because it judged a man by the work of his
hands. (TFA, 27)

The most interesting part of the above extract is perhaps the last line. It is
made quite evident that the assessment of the chi and its reward is not
enough; the acceptance of the communal values is also needed. The African
concept of individuality and the role fate plays in it is not like in the
Eurocentric discourse of free will and pre-destination. Man in the Igbo
cosmology is strongly rooted within the social space, he has no identity
beyond it, and certainly not when it comes to following the chi. The chi may
have a personalised imitation in the other world but it must act according to
the dictates of the normative structures of the society. Chi can never act
independently but Okonkwo uses the practice to defend his own position of
not acting during the sacrifice of Ikemefuna, which ultimately leads to his
breakdown.

Ikemefuna becomes Okonkwo's foster son because in him Okonkwo could

find the cult of manliness and heroism that he believed in. The power
relations at work here function in a very complex manner, where instead of
the usual top-bottom power flow, the Ikemefuna-Okonkwo relationship
flows bottom-top, and this happens due to the inversion of the myth and the
sacred cult by Okonkwo. In a highly constricted gendered environment,
where folktales generate a gendered construction of psyche, Ikemefuna
happens to challenge the masculinist notions of heroism of Okonkwo. How
ironic it is that a relationship that started off as inter-tribal conflict and the
subsequent colonisation of Ikemefuna by the tribe of Okonkwo leads to a
situation where Ikemefuna defines the power equation between himself and
Okonkwo rather than the other way round. Okonkwo encourages the boys
to listen to “masculine stories of violence and bloodshed” (TFA, 1956:53)
but that does not stop Nwoye being more attracted to the stories of his
mother, which, according to Okonkwo’s ideals, are feminine constructions
of the mythical past of Igbo lore. Okonkwo would relate to Ikemefuna and
Nwoye how he used to fight the tribal wars with great gusto and how he
66 Chapter Two

claimed his first human head. There is a great deal of psychological warfare
going on, where Okonkwo as a “true” patriarch of his obi, is handing down
his legacy in order to carry forward his cult of manliness and a probable
individuality. Individuality is a myth in the case of Okonkwo because he
misinterprets the whole notion of it. He understands individuality as the
assertion of his will on the tribe whereas individuality in the land of the Igbo
is construed as a validation of the ethos of the tribe. Okonkwo fails precisely
in this aspect, and he goes against the Igbo order, first by participating in
Ikemefuna’s sacrifice, and then remaining strongly against the Church when
others were more bent on finding a political compromise with the White
Man. Okonkwo paints his past in a ritualistic manner in order to construct
himself on par with the heroes and gods of the popular mythical anecdotes
of his tribe. An interesting myth captures Okonkwo's resolve to place
himself above the Igbo rituals, even if it means not protecting Ikemefuna at
the time of crisis to position himself as the ultimate hero for the Igbo cause.
Achebe writes in Things Fall Apart
In this way the moons and the seasons passed. And then the locusts came.
It had not happened for many a long year. The elders said locusts came once
in a generation, reappeared every year for seven years and then disappeared
for another lifetime. They went back to their caves in a distant land, where
they were guarded by a race of stunted men. And then after another lifetime,
these men opened the caves again and the locusts came to Umuofia again.
(TFA, 54)

The locusts form a pantheon of destructive creatures that strike at the root
of the agro-based economy of the Igbo society. There is always the
temptation to refer to other tales in Africa, especially in a model where
comparison can be worth a lot in terms of understanding the psyche of the
people. The myth that we are referring to is from the Gbaya of Cameroun
and is told by Isidore Okpewho in his book Myth in Africa. Wanto, the
spider, is attracted to the snout of the fish Naabareka and offers it to
exchange it with his own. Naabareka denies him by saying that Wanto will
not be able to eat with his snout but, at the insistence of the spider, the fish
gives him his snout. Later, however, the spider cannot eat, not even with the
help of his wife, and finally the wife has to help the male spider return the
snout to the fish (Okpewho, 1983:83). Both these myths carry the message
of sacrilege if there is a deviation of purpose in the created beings on earth.
In the case of the locusts, it seems that the chi of the men who released the
locusts from the caves had not been on the side of the men, which accounts
for the fact that the locusts could actually come down to destroy the crops
and the yams. In the case of the spider, which in the African pantheon is
considered to be the best of the tricksters, he tries to rise above the position
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 67

given to him by the gods and thus suffers. These myths reinstate the
importance of man being a social animal within the African cosmology;
otherwise the chi subverts all the purpose he intends to achieve in his
lifetime. Now the question arises, does the African worldview not allow
room for any kind of individuality? Are the ritualistic patterns of existence
so strict that any attempt made at a personal space is to be reprimanded by
the sacred order? The question is answered by Achebe himself in his essay
‘Africa and her Writers’.
Mbari was performed at the behest of the earth goddess Ala, the most
powerful deity in the Igbo pantheon; for she was not only the owner of the
soil but also controller of morality and of creativity, artistic and biological.
Every so many years Ala would instruct the community through her priest
to prepare a festival of images in her honour… These chosen men and
women then moved into seclusion in a forest-clearing and under the
instruction and guidance of master artists and craftsmen began to build a
house of images. (Achebe, 1975:21-22)

Now this extract becomes important for our discussion of Okonkwo’s

presupposition of the Igbo rituals and myths that often meets with fatal
consequences. The artist in Africa is not an exclusivist or a specialised
entity; rather, he is the product of the society and its sacred order. It is Ala
who chooses her disciples and she may change them at her own behest. No
doubt the artists are given an individual function; that is, they must retire to
the forest to make images of the goddess and stay there as long as they need
for the process of creation. However, the end purpose of art is not to satisfy
the senses of the artist himself, nor is it to create the dynamics of any
abstract ideals of art like, say, aestheticism. Every work of art is part of a
larger cultural production, which has its own politics; in the case of Achebe,
he politicises art by making it a statement on the Igbo rituals and social
ideology. The ritual of mbari is a communal effort to unite the disparate
forces of the Igbo as art belongs to every member of the society and under
no circumstances is art the valuation of any individual. This conception is
important for us in our analysis of whether Okonkwo was right to
marginalise his father Unoka as a rather feminine and useless man,
deserving to be forgotten altogether, or did Unoka deserve a bit more
respect. Was he staying within the limits and was Okonkwo the one crossing
them in his neurotic obsession with power and male heroism? In the first
part of the novel, Achebe describes the artist persona in Unoka in a
ritualistic manner that refashions the way readers can look at the text as a
narrative on the dominant myths and legends of the Igbo tribe. As it is,
Unoka suffered from a bad chi as he dies of a swelling, which is an
abomination of the earth goddess. The abomination is indeed a binary to the
68 Chapter Two

Eurocentric myth about reason and ‘enlightenment’ but within the Igbo
cosmology there is no doubt that an abomination must be treated as a
horrible sacrilege that dooms a man to the margins of his social space.
Unoka is made to die in the Evil Forest; an evil space outside the domains
of this world where the evil spirits take charge of damned spirits. The Evil
Forest is a unique concept in the Igbo religious faith – a space that falls
beyond the spatial control of the human physical body, it is to be feared and
dreaded and is meant only for those who are unwanted or facing the wrath
of the gods, especially that of Chukwu, the god of chi. It may be looked
upon as a creation of the priest class to instil a sense of fear psychosis among
the general populace, but then every work of priests is a divine ordinance
and should not be challenged, nor should it be looked upon with cynicism.
That then will not be a proper critique of the Igbo sacred ties. Unoka was
busy with his ekwe, udu and the ogene and he took delight in the rhythms
of these musical instruments. But as Achebe noted, Unoka had one fatal
flaw – he was a coward (according to pre-set values of ‘masculinity’ in the
Igbo society) and so did not go to war nor did he participate in the end
function of art after being an artist; that is to satisfy the gods with his music
and use it for communal harmony. Chika, the then head priestess of
Umuofia, said that Unoka had never dissatisfied the gods but “You, Unoka,
are known in all the clan for the weakness of your machete and your hoe.
When your neighbours go out with their axe to cut down virgin forests, you
sow your yams on exhausted farms that take no labor to clear. They cross
seven rivers to make their farms; you stay at home and offer sacrifices to a
reluctant soil. Go home and work like a man” (TFA, 1956:18). So, the point
then is that even though there is no problem with Unoka being an artist, he
does not become one according to the expectations of society. The relevance
of myths and legends in the Igbo ties propels the bushmen to believe that
unless one follows the dictates of the priestess, he cannot become a true
member of the tribe. The cultural space attains its stabilising force through
the ethos of the syncretic relationship between man and the ritualistic
patterns, and if Unoka cannot follow the order, then he is justifiably
abominated by the earth goddess, and his chi plays the right part in carrying
him over to the Evil Forests to suffer both in this life and the next.

The biggest crisis that Okonkwo faces in his life is the order relating to
Ikemefuna’s sacrifice by Cheilo. It is a crisis at many levels – traversing the
spaces of personal, communal and religious within the sacred Igbo ties. In
his book Myth, Literature and the African World, Wole Soyinka notes a
very important point while studying the inter-relationship between art and
social ideology.
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 69

When the reigning ideology fails finally to retain its false comprehensive
adequacy, it is discarded. A new set, inviolable mould is fabricated to
contain the current body of literature or to stimulate the next along the
predetermined patterns. (Soyinka, 1976:62)

Okonkwo’s worldview and the way he perceives the Igbo cosmology is

problematized by the fact that he does not accept the cultural norms of his
tribe, which do not satisfy his self-interest of being the leader, and when his
neurotic obsession to be the sole voice of his tribe needs to be addressed, he
uses myths and the legends or the commands of the Hills and the Caves as
a pretext when such a situation could have been averted. Ikemefuna’s
sacrifice is a legacy of the Umuofian cult of purging the human space of evil
spirits, but what it does to Okonkwo is define his tremendous struggle to
rise to the height that he has. Soyinka’s observation that the normative
structures of myth and the ideologies associated with them is discarded as
soon as those sets of norms no longer befit the current ethos of the society
is fictionally constructed by Achebe in a manner that looks to integrate the
voices of dissent with the cult of violence in the Igbo tribe, as well as to
point out that not everything is achieved by a blind and prejudiced rejection
of tradition. The ritualistic order of the killing is on par with the folktale
structure of the oral tradition – there is a dramatization of the event, a certain
sense of suspense is built up in order to captivate the audience (fables about
myths and legends needed the rhetorical oratorship of the bard to hold the
audience together) – but Achebe’s voice as the narrator pervades all through
the sub-text, critiquing and re-interpreting the cult of sacrifice if not
rejecting it as an exposure of the ‘savage’ Africa as per the colonial
Christian metaphors. The language of silence becomes symbolic of the
narrative tension, and not everyone could participate in it. Nature, along
with the gods, seems to await a blood sacrifice that everyone wants to avoid.
The sun rose slowly to the center of the sky, and the dry, sandy footway
began to throw up the heat that lay buried in it. Some birds chirruped in the
forests around. The men trod dried leaves on the sand. All else was silent.
Then from the distance came the faint beating of the ekwe. It rose and faded
with the wind – a peaceful dance from a distant clan. (TFA, 58)

Nature here is not just a witness, it is a participant in this tragedy as the chi
of Ikemefuna seems to be running at last into a state of helplessness. The
sound of the beating drums and the dance is a reminder of the rhythmic
movement of the Cosmos, which is a very important governing principle of
the Igbo worldview. Ikemefuna carries a pot of wine on his head and one
remembers the sacrificial cult and the subsequent sense of dejection in Ogun
in Soyinka’s The Dance of the Forest. Ikemefuna’s act of carrying the wine
70 Chapter Two

pot on his head to satisfy the rituals of his own sacrifice calls to mind the
words of Ogun.
Light filled me then, intruder though
I watched a god’s exorcism; clearly
The blasphemy of my humanity rose accusatory
In my ears; and understanding came
Of a fatal condemnation

And in that moment broke his crust of separation

And the blood-scales of his eyes. (The Dance of the Forest, 79)

Ogun’s journey quite strikingly is made in the company of a wine-girl, who

is given a mythical status by Soyinka by making her the frame of reference
for Ogun’s self-realisation that he has been butchering his own men in the
battlefield and hence needs to make amends. The above passage tells us that
the dramatist has made an acute realisation about the tragedy being faced by
the people of Ire under Ogun and the kind of helplessness that they
experience under their unforgiving destiny. Ikemefuna’s death therefore
comes under similar circumstances; he is the sacrificial lamb in the mythical
presence of the Agbala priestess, without having played any active role in
the whole incident, except perhaps in the construction of his chi. The fable
structure of the incident is heightened by Ikemefuna’s song as he tries to
understand if his mother is still alive. The song ends when he is right-footed,
which tells him that his mother is only ill and not dead. The reference to his
biological mother just before the sacrifice carries the strong hint that very
soon Ikemefuna will be consumed by the earth goddess. Okonkwo remains
a silent spectator of this entire spectacle and he does not intervene because
“he was afraid of being thought weak” (TFA, 61). Could he have stopped
the killing? Could he have gone against the Agbala priestess since he had
such a close proximity to Ikemefuna, thinking that he is the real progenitor
of the Igbo cult of manly violence that Okonkwo propagates so strongly?
The hint perhaps lies in the words of Ogbuefi Ezeudu, who says to Okonkwo
before the murder, “The boy calls you father. Do not bear a hand in his
death” (TFA, 57). There is a provision in the Igbo cultural life to refer
matters of dispute to the council of the elders or avert the rituals through
other forms of sacrifice to the gods as directed by the priests. But Okonkwo
makes no such effort; he watches the death of his foster son silently because
of the one-point agenda of his life – he should never resemble his father by
appearing effeminate or weak. In the process, the world of Umuofia, riddled
with rituals and myths, get the better of him as after Ikemefuna’s death,
Okonkwo paves the way, though unwittingly, for his own annihilation. In
the words of Ogun, the exorcism of Okonkwo has started!
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 71

The world of myth and rituals pervades the domestic space of the women
also, and it is no less powerful. The danger of reading the use of myths from
a gendered perspective in Achebe’s novels, or for that matter in any African
work of art, is the tendency and temptation to impose Western constructs of
feminist discourse on them. This must be avoided as Eurocentric narratives
on the position of women in society find no universal appeal on the African
continent, even when a male voice is speaking in the novel. Gayatri Spivak
adds to the feminist discourse, saying
If in the context of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and
cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow.
(Spivak, 1988:287)

This perspective falls under serious scrutiny when the reader comes to the
world of Achebe’s fiction because the very conception of the subaltern is
altered in the Igbo tribe, and the position of the women is even more
different from their Western counterparts. The time and spatial differences
between the West and the Igbo culture ensure that women are really not
under the perpetual shadow of male dominance, nor do the women find
themselves helpless under the hegemony of the male. In fact, the male-
female dialectics must not be stereotyped as a power relationship between
the sexes where the male rules the roost traditionally. The very tradition,
one must keep in mind, is not that of the Eurocentric ideology but that of
Nigeria. The most interesting gendered perspective on the myths and
legends of the Igbo land is found in the ogbanje myth. In a world where
goddesses like Amadiora and Chukwu rule, the ogbanje is a child with the
prized capacity to negotiate between the world of spirits and physical space.
What is interesting is that most of the ogbanje are of the female sex and they
have influence over the spiritual sway of the community. The ogbanje myth
is found in a slightly altered mode in the Yoruba cosmology as the abiku.
Mary E. Modupe Kolawole identifies the ogbanje myth as a discourse that
“probes the fluidity in the negotiation of identity” (Kolawole, 53), and this
fluidity gives the necessary space for the ogbanje girl child to find her voice
in Umuofia. Ezinma is an ogbanje whom Okonkwo has identified as having
the quality of “masculinity” of the Igbo tribe, more than Nwoye, so she
should have been a boy. This is, however, his personal opinion. It is
noteworthy that Ikemefuna and Ezinma construct the ideology of warfare
and inter-tribal conflicts but the former is an outsider and the latter is a girl
who is not supposed to have any jurisdiction over public politics. Okonkwo
has a soft spot for Ezinma because an ogbanje child should be appeased
because of her dual identity; otherwise, after her death, her reincarnated
being will come to haunt the people of this world. Ezinma is the only person
72 Chapter Two

who has permission to enter the private obi of Okonkwo, and how
interesting it is that not even his boys, not even Ikemefuna, were given that
privilege. Kamene Okonjo, an Igbo sociologist, argues that in pre-colonial
Nigeria, the socio-political reality was such that the men and the women
shared equal roles in the running of society, public and private, a structure
which was later destroyed by the British administration. She writes
Elsewhere men ruled and dominated. Seeing this outwardly patriarchal
framework, many observers concluded that the position of women in these
societies was totally subordinate; as a result of their misconceptions, they
produced a distorted picture of the ‘oppressive’ African man and the
‘deprived’ African woman. (Okonjo, 45)

In other words, the stereotype that the outside public domain is the
hegemony of the male and that domesticated women are perennially
subjugated and lead voiceless existences is a Eurocentric discourse and must
not be confused with the African reality. The position of the eldest wife is
rather important in the household of Okonkwo. In fact, Okonkwo has to pay
a hefty fine and appease the gods with a sacrifice after he committed the
terrible sacrilege of beating one of his wives in the week of peace. Ezinma
becomes subject to the mythical prowess of Cheilo, who orders, under
divine instruction, that she will carry Ezinma to the Agbala caves in the dead
of night for purification purposes. Once again, Okonkwo is faced with the
dilemma of whether to go with the divine dispensation or assert his
individual voice – and if he does the latter, would he be considered
effeminate – the same doubts he faced during Ikemefuna’s case. The
following dialogue between Okonkwo and Obierika may be a case in point.
“The Earth cannot punish me for obeying her messenger”, Okonkwo said.
“A child’s finger is not scalded by a piece of hot yam which its mother puts
into its palm.”

“That is true,” Obierika agreed. “But if the Oracle said that my son should
be killed I would neither dispute it nor be the one to do it. (TFA, 67)

When Ezinma was declared a wicked ogbanje child, her mother Ekwefi took
all the pains she could in order to protect her after her birth, and Okonkwo
had not opposed it. Now that Okonkwo was faced with a similar tragic
situation in the case of Ikemefuna; he responded in a more manly way but
was careful not to distort the Igbo ritual or interfere in the divine grace of
Cheilo, the Agbala priestess who convenes over the normative spirituality
of Igbo belief.
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 73

Ezinma’s ritualistic takeover by Cheilo is a natural phenomenon in the Igbo

cosmology because a child who has a diffused presence, both physical
existence and spiritual, should be taken over by the priestess in order to
appease the gods. But, as we have noted before, Achebe’s fiction works on
a double-frame basis. The core frame is constituted of myths and folklore,
and the outer frame denotes the negotiation of the Igbo people, especially
Okonkwo, with that inner frame. This negotiation happens on many levels
– operating in the paradigm of cultural politics, inter and intra tribal power
equations, gender, individual psychological constraints, and the
eschatological consideration of the human space within the divine order of
things. When Ekwefi and Okonkwo decide to follow Cheilo to her caves,
an alternate gender equation is created. Okonkwo, due to his sheer love for
the girl, decides to challenge the Igbo rites by following the priestess, and
Ekwefi becomes the symbol of the Earth goddess, who wants to protect her
children through blood sacrifice. It is not that the women of Okonkwo’s
household share a liminal space, nor are they voiceless entities. Ekwefi has
a special position in the household and Okonkwo can hardly ignore her in
her quest to demystify the process of sacrifice in the case of Ezinma. The
gendered discourse for the women in the Igbo society is not always under
the patriarchal gaze; women are central figures who direct and execute
domestic chores in order to keep the centre of the culture together. In one of
the fables that Ekwefi tells Ezinma, she gives a picture of the moral
fallibility of the men in the society. She tells the story of a tortoise that goes
to the feast of the birds and covers himself with bright plumage so he can
fly up to the skies. The fable-like structure of the novel is discernible in the
way Achebe constructs his narrative to bridge a gap between myth and
fiction.
After kola nuts had been presented and eaten, the people of the sky set
before their guests the most delectable dishes Tortoise had even seen or
dreamed of. The soup was brought out hot from the fire and in the very pot
in which it had been cooked. It was full of meat and fish. Tortoise began to
sniff aloud. There was pounded yam and also yam pottage cooked with
palm-oil and fresh fish. There were also pots of palm-wine. (TFA, 98)

The modern bard feels the necessity to execute his tale for the contemporary
audience, and even though he uses the traditional myths and fables, they are
brought within the ambit of the modern consciousness by making them
reflect the cultural politics of his text. The yam, fish, meat, palm wine, and
the hot soup create a note of realism for the audience, in this case Ezinma,
because she can immediately connect the fable with her immediate
experience. However, there is a deeper aim to fulfil here – the position of
74 Chapter Two

the tortoise, the mythical one, becomes similar to that of Okonkwo’s. Later,
when the tortoise eats too much, it loses all its artificial plumage and asks
the parrot to ask his wife to fill the courtyard with soft things so that it can
jump straight from the sky. Annoyed with the tortoise for overeating, the
parrot asks the tortoise's wife to cover the courtyard with all things hard.
When the tortoise jumps, its shell breaks on impact. This tale is similar to
Okonkwo's progression as a character in the novel, because from keeping
quiet during Ikemefuna’s death to following the priestess to the caves, he
has gone against the rituals of the Igbo community. In doing so, he has not
learnt any lessons from the mythical fables, which a man in Igbo is supposed
to do, and thereby causes his own downfall. Cheilo is the mythical goddess
of Umuofia, and her ritualistic order calls for dread and fear among one and
all. The silent yet significant role that women play in the Igbo household is
subverted by Cheilo, who instils an emotion of piety and wrath among the
general populace, as myths and oral divinity constitute the basic socio-
cultural being of the community. She warns Okonkwo by saying, “Beware
of exchanging words with Agbala. Does a man speak when a god speaks?
Beware!” (TFA, 101). There is almost a tussle between the various mothers
but in the mythical dimension the earth goddess must take precedence and
claim her earthly victims in order to preserve the hierarchy. Similar is the
case with the egwugwu, the earthly messengers of chi, who command the
same fear and divine justice among the people as Cheilo. When the drum
beats, gome gome gome gome, to the rhythm of the dances, there is almost
a sense that the underworld is pervading the earth through the egwugwu.
The smoke that comes out of their heads and their wrath together create the
ambience of a super-natural world that must be revered for the well-being
of the rural community they represent.

In a criticism of Things Fall Apart, Abdul Jan Mohammed notes

Things Fall Apart documents, among other things, the destruction of oral
culture by a chirographic one. However Achebe uses that very process of
chirographic documentation in order to recreate and preserve a symbolic
version of the destroyed culture; in recording the oral culture’s pre-
occupation with the present, Achebe historicizes its evanescence… Things
Fall Apart depicts the mutual misunderstanding and antagonism of the
colonizing and the colonized worlds, the very process of this depiction, in
its capacity as a written oral narrative, transcends the Manichean relations
by a brilliant synthesis of oral and chirographic cultures. (Jan Mohammed,
36)

A few issues need to be examined here in view of the novel, especially in

relation to its second part where the British begin to colonise the Igbos. If
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 75

the word ‘chirography’ can be etymologically traced as a written document,

then the question really arises as to why Achebe should feel the need to
document history through fiction rather than allow the oral tradition to
flourish. Historicization is not the exclusive domain of the written document
because even in the oral version of history or myth, historicization is a
constant process of cultural documentation along with ideological/moral
constructions. Rather than considering the text as a syncretic amalgamation
of oral and chirographic representation, it is perhaps more appropriate to
read it as the written record of a culture whose ontological being is based
on myths and fables. The moment we call or tag myth or oral fables
“primitive”, that very moment we fall prey to the obvious demon –
European enlightenment – that somehow considered the written words as
meaningful and oral literature as a production of the unenlightened. Surely,
the written documentation of the myths through a fictional form is not a
literary effort to give oral forms a modern expression; rather, it is more of a
transcreation in order to transfer one mode of artistic expression to another.
The problem for Jan Mohammed arises perhaps because of the fact that
when he binarizes between the oral and the written worlds, perhaps he has in
mind Heidegger’s philosophical proposition that being is an anthropological
entity, and the process of knowing gives it the stature of intellectual
existence. However, in the Igbo cosmology, being and knowing are not
separate identities; a person's chi already exists in the spirit land and hence
the physical body of this world already has a past, present and future. In that
case there is no question of growing up to know in terms of acquiring
knowledge. Rather, knowledge is already stored in terms of myths, and as
such, Igbo metaphysics is a “thought-system which recognizes the reality
and independent existence” (Idoniboye, 83-89). It also accepts the
negotiation of the spirits with the physical world, and hence the being is the
repository of all knowledge.

Colonialism is indeed a great motif for myth formation in the Igbo tribe, the
Other being stereotyped as the men from the outside world that lies beyond
the immediate experience and reality of the Igbo people. The centre of the
colonial empire stands at the very margins of the Igbo cosmological space
– the Evil Forest. The white man therefore is a marginalised evil force for
the Igbos in the initial stage, but then the margin becomes the centre and the
myth of the white man grows into a centralised discourse. Okonkwo is
already a displaced man after his shooting of the young man, and it is
perhaps a part of the narrative strategy of Achebe to oust Okonkwo to
Mbanta, which is not only his mother’s place and he takes refuge there but
it is also the place where the English masters arrive with the Bible and the
church. Cheilo declared the converts mad dogs and "excrements of the clan"
76 Chapter Two

(TFA, 143) but the British administration undoubtedly was striking at the
very core of Igbo culture on which its sacred ties rested – the myths and the
popular beliefs. Reinterpretation of myth and history does not happen
overnight surely, and things cannot fall apart in an instant but the white man
struck at the very core of the Igbo belief system in order to diffuse the new
order into the old and then appropriate it.
“If we leave our gods and follow your god,” asked another man [from the
clan], “who will protect us from the anger of our neglected gods and
ancestors?”

“Your gods are not alive and cannot do you any harm,” replied the white
man. “They are pieces of wood and stone.” (TFA, 146)

If the heathen gods are not living enough, then they really become pawns in
the hands of the colonial mission: their culture, their racial prejudice, their
political interest. In all these paradigms, Africa doesn’t fit in as an
autonomous space, nor does the continent figure anywhere in the coloniser’s
imagination. What happens therefore is that the mythical anecdotes become
the site of struggle with the British wanting to prove how primitive are the
thoughts of the Igbos, and how far they are removed from the light of
civilisation, enlightenment and the cult of reason, and how silly and
hopeless is the Igbo culture. The political force of the coloniser must strike
at the myths because myths are the very foundation of the Igbo culture. The
tussle is indeed very expertly dealt with by Achebe in the episode where
Okoli dies after killing a python. A snake is the object of the battle of the
civilisations as it is revered by the Igbos as representative of the Chukwu
world, the most sacred order of the Igbo pantheon, and Christians
considered as the basest of all creatures, going back to the myth of the Fall.
Okoli, after being interpellated in the new religious order, kills a snake
because the Church authorities decide to play the offensive role by
destroying the mythical base of Igbo culture. However, Okoli dies and the
cause of this fatal event is taken as a curse of the gods. However, Jude Chudi
Okpala identifies the point that, unlike the Western ideology, African
metaphysics do not consider causality as a necessary principle to explain
the myth. In fact, the very inexplicability of the myth defines its role of
reverence in the social consciousness, and Okoli’s death confirms the fact
that the Igbo gods are very much still in the battle, ready to define and assert
their space whenever a situation of emergency arises. Okonkwo’s death at
the end of the text is a result of such a battle between the man and the
gods/chi and Okonkwo has no other option but to surrender. It is indeed
pathetic that the very space that Okonkwo had regarded as being feminine,
that very space of conversion, is taken up by his own son Nwoye. Nwoye,
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 77

of course, has the memory of Ikemefuna’s death still in his mind and he just
cannot accept the cult of violence that his father and some of the older
generation of the Igbo tribe believe in. The Christian message of peace and
brotherhood appeals to Nwoye, and to some ogbanjes as well as to the other
outcasts. The Church took into its fold the marginalised as part of the
political strategy to create fissures in the socio-cultural fabric of the
colonised. In a moment of narrative silence and emptiness, Achebe does not
mention whether Okoli was buried. After his sacrilege he does not have the
privilege of finding religious solace after death but in the case of Okonkwo,
his suicide (which ironically is an effeminate act according to the heroic
norms of Igbo) is almost an ostracization because it is such a terrible act
against the gods. To die without being buried is the ultimate moment of
annihilation since it means that there is no chi present during the moment of
death. In the end Okonkwo becomes a figure of absolute disfiguration, and
the myths, at the level of belief, ensure that Okonkwo is silenced and
forgotten because he was not one among the Igbos – a dreadful rejection for
an ambitious man.

After Things Fall Apart in 1956 came its sequel No Longer At Ease in 1960,
which dealt with the ambivalent structures of a postcolonial society where
things have already fallen apart and the protagonist, Obi Okonkwo, the
grandson of the senior Okonkwo in the previous magnum opus, finds it
increasingly difficult to assimilate into himself any cultural spatiality. If the
first novel was about critiquing pre-colonial Nigeria and the various cultural
loopholes that existed in it, then the next work is about the condition of
contemporary Nigeria, which finds itself in a cultural limbo because it does
not really know where it fits in the socio-cultural map. The past is never an
uncritical rendering of glory and achievements for Achebe, nor is it the
product of any biased rendering of history by either the colonial or the
colonised discourse since the past can never be constructed out of one
strand. The politics of constructing the past is a very complex web of multi-
party interpretive system, and Achebe does not fall into the temptation of
nostalgia or render the past as a long history of untainted innocence.

Rather, in a novel like No Longer At Ease, Achebe points out that the shams
of the present are rooted in the actions of the past and in that way
contemporary history becomes a causal effect of the past. In this attempting
to analyse the present, myths and cultural ties in the Igbo world are a crucial
tool for understanding the various beliefs and cultural prejudices at work,
and the tussle at times comes down to the tug-of-war between the so-called
metropolitan consciousness of modernity and its apparent binary – the old
world rituals of the bush.
78 Chapter Two

Per Wӓstberg, in his opening remarks regarding the new literature in the
African Scandinavian Writer’s Conference in 1967, called the literary group
‘bush literature’, pointing out that a pan-African identity is only a fictive
idea because essentialising the Other is a hegemony of the colonial politics.
Taking his cue, it would be wrong to interpret Achebe’s novel as a narrative
based only on critiquing the colonial forces – the novel should be looked at
as a narrative on the various forces of disintegration that caused the ultimate
cultural fragmentation of Lagos, and therefore the whole state of Nigeria.
One must keep in mind that Achebe is not in favour of the Eurocentric
movement of art for art’s sake, that a work of art is an expression of the
artist’s self and that its being has no other life beyond that. Rather, like other
African artists like Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Wole Soyinka and Buchi Emecheta,
among others, Achebe vouches for the social role of works of art in order to
explore the various processes of creation – aesthetic and cultural. Achebe is
against any tendency that seeks to connect Eurocentric critical discourse
with African literature without knowing the cultural context of the native
people, and from that point of view, connecting literature to the culture of
the colonised need not be taken as a Marxist statement.

Education has a very specific meaning in Achebe’s critical oeuvre – teach

the African population to not feel disdain towards their race. As Achebe
says in ‘The Novelist as Teacher’, there is nothing disgraceful in writing
about harmattan or palm trees compared to the European spring or daffodils.
An artist is the “sensitive point” of his society and he must bring cultural
pride back to his race (Achebe, 1975:44-45). But the real problem in the
narrative arises when Obi gets more and more sceptical about the Igbo
myths and rituals in the modern metropolis. They begins to hurt his senses,
which have been coloured by a British education, but at the same time he
does not fail to see the inner contradictions in and the putrefaction of the
Western civilisation; there is a war of time in his mind where neither the
ritualistic past nor the hegemony of the present comes with a solution to the
problems that the society and the culture at large are facing.

In No Longer At Ease, there is a subtle interplay of ideology between the

oral culture of the past and the culture of the Eurocentric modernity that
seeks to base culture on causality and empirical scientific thought processes,
and the two by virtue of their natures become antithetical. "Unlike Islam and
Christianity, traditional African religion has no scriptures," anthropologist
Barbara Srozenski points out. "What does exist is a tradition rich in myth
and folklore – an oral tradition" (Srozenski, web). Srozenski is of the
opinion that Western myths have been recorded in written manuscripts to a
large extent, but the African mythology to date is more oral than written,
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 79

thereby still conforming to the tradition of oral performance. The oral

tradition of the Igbo culture was explored in Things Fall Apart so Achebe
charters new territory in the sequel. In a post-independent neo-colonial
Nigeria, myths and oral traditions are still relevant to the older generation
but the younger lot, represented through Obi, is increasingly sceptical about
them although they cannot reject the dogma of the past. When politics
beckons, however, Obi has to create the jingoism of the glories of the past
to create his own political space.

Obi’s Western education has made him a kind of a nobody in the cultural
map, an interpreter as well as a critic of the Igbo cultural rites while not
being uncritical of the Western paradigm. It is useful perhaps to go to the
end of the novel first, where Obi’s father is reminiscing about his childhood
days in Umuofia and shows a neurotic disgust when his memory captures
the flash of Ikemefuna’s death. He makes it more than clear what he thinks
about that particular incident that happened so many years ago when he
says, “my father killed him [Ikemefuna] with his own hands” (No Longer,
110) and the narrator bridges the two novels on the line of the eternal
struggle that exists in Umuofia between individual aspirations and the world
of myths, legends and curses. Obi’s father relates how he was cursed by
Okonkwo when he stepped out of the defined boundaries of the Agbala
Caves and the Hills in order to become a Christian – a curse he faced
throughout his life. The ritualistic order of the present situation, inside the
microcosmic space of a room in Lagos, is heightened by the chiaroscuric
effect which, in a time-inflected manner, connects the planes of the past and
the present through the coordinate of myths. Achebe constructs his narrative
in such a manner that the present time is given ritualistic significance so
readers are made aware that contemporary subjects like Obi are never far
from the cultural order of the past. Obi “that night felt strangely moved with
pity for his father” when he hears that his father was cursed by his
grandfather, which always bring terrible misfortune, more so when the curse
is laid against the first son. These are the moments the Igbo world of myths
and rituals cross the otherwise realistic narrative of No Longer At Ease, and
this is individual politics on the part of Achebe to renegotiate the past with
the present in terms of tales that do not have any specific time frame. Myths
then become the symbolic assessment of the various time frames involved
in the novel and in a way they are the projection of the bard’s voice, as in
the case of the oral narratives, to designate the ironic tone in the tale. This
novel, unlike its predecessor, is not set in the bush but in contemporary
Lagos, which is entrenched in political infighting, corruption and moral
degeneration and, more significantly perhaps, it is still trapped in the old
world values that it cannot escape though trying to become modern in the
80 Chapter Two

Western sense of the term. A post-colonial society is more of a neo-colonial

society that finds more comfort in the coloniser’s culture and language but
there is the equal drive to hold on to the past voices to assert its identity, or
to find one. Talking about the use of the English language in African novels,
Achebe writes in ‘The African Writer and the English Language’
The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his
message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a
medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning
out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar
experience. (Achebe, 1975:61)

The implication here is that universality is not applicable to experience but

to language, and the actual experience must be peculiar to Africa. So, what
Achebe is anticipating is the trans-literation of the local experience through
the coloniser’s language, which, due to the power structure of the global
reality, has turned out to be a language of international communication. The
pedigree of English is not due to its cultural roots but its communicative
value, and in such a scenario the politics of representation is of paramount
interest. The peculiar experience that Achebe is talking about comes
through the use of myths and folk- based narrative in his novels, which
strives to form a distinctly Igbo identity within the literary paradigm.
English as a language corroborates this thematic concern but never asserts
its position as the coloniser’s language. The language is not the ipso facto
core in Achebe’s narrative; it is the content of the language that helps him
express the cult of his race to a worldwide audience. To digress, let us quote
some lines from Christopher Okigbo’s ‘Limits’.
I hand up my egg-shells
To you of palm grove,
Upon whose bamboo towers hang
Dripping with yesterupwine
A Tiger and nude spear….
Queen of the damp half light
I have had my cleansing
Emigrant with air-bourne nose
The he-goat-on-heat. (Achebe, 1975:60)

This poem is cited by Achebe in ‘The African Writer and the English
Language’, and his point is that Okigbo is writing about the African
experience, his African voice apparent through the poem, but he uses the
international medium of English. English as an international medium of
communication does have hegemony over cultural politics, where there is
an effort made to impose English as the most preferable mode of
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 81

communication, but so long as the world reality stays as it is now, the post-
colonial authors have no other option but to write back in protest in the
coloniser’s language to find their own ideological space within the colonial
paradigm. The myths in Achebe’s fiction provide exactly that kind of
ideological statement.

The post-colonial society of Lagos is so enmeshed in ambivalence and all

sorts of contradictions that Obi cannot quite come to terms with the cultural
divide that lies between the Umuofia of his childhood and the Lagos of his
mature years. Obi returns to Lagos a dreaming idealistic young man with
the hope that his country will provide him with all the necessary amenities
he needs to survive. What he gets instead is a Umuofian society that hardly
can make itself relevant to his Western educated mind-set, and all around
him he can feel the temptation of black money and the newly emerging
capitalist economy that seems to be culturally so very distant from the pre-
colonial society of Nigeria he had heard about. Obi is one of the first-
generation citizens in the post-colonial era, and he feels confused about his
own identity as well as that of his nation. The assertion of individuality in
an unproblematic way is dangerous to the mythic cult of the Igbo culture;
as the narrator notes, Obi’s Western education “made him see himself as an
individual” (No Longer, 84). Now, this is a moment of sacrilege to all the
elders who had funded Obi's British education, but for Obi, who does not
inhabit the world of his grandfather, such cultural narratives are not only
meaningless, they infringe upon his personal or private self. The self was
not outside the community in the case of his grandfather, but a man who has
spent the better part of his life in Britain finds very little justification for
such dogma on the part of Umuofian society. However, is it that Obi wants
to reject his racial identity in favour of a more cosmopolitan one? No, he
doesn’t. In fact, he still writes poems on Nigeria, the Nigeria of his
childhood, which seemed to have a pristine innocence about it, unlike
modern metropolitan Lagos, filled with scum and moral dirt. The irony
about the present situation is that Obi faces a kind of acceptance-rejection
scenario; he is neither appreciated for his assertion of individuality nor is he
accepted into the Umuofian fold. His cultural ambivalence tears him apart
in a city that does not know where to move – to the past or to the future,
caught in an immobile present. The consumerist attitude of the Lagos city
dwellers gives Obi terrible nightmares because such rampant lust for the
material, in the Western sense of the term, was never the cultural ethos of
Umuofia and the larger Igbo land. On one hand, Obi is the victim of the
West’s “growing preoccupation with the self” (Achebe, ‘The Nature of the
Individual and his Fulfilment’, web) and on the other hand he cannot quite
accept the age-old norms of the Igbo myths. He faces an almost absurd trial;
82 Chapter Two

the novel in fact starts off with a Kafkesque kind of trial in a court room;
and society has no answer to it. The sterility of Lagos is juxtaposed with the
growing impatience with the old world order in Obi, and in a relentless
mental struggle, he tries to figure out exactly where he stands. Talking about
the appropriation of the colonised subject by the coloniser, Frantz Fanon
notes
In order to assimilate and to experience the oppressor’s culture, the native
has had to leave certain of his intellectual possessions in pawn. These
pledges include his adoption of the forms of thought of the colonialist
bourgeoisie. (Fanon, 38)

The problem arises when Obi is not entirely appropriated by the intellectual
forces of the colonial country, nor does he accept the mythical base of his
native culture unquestioningly, and this partial acceptance of both the
cultures makes him a hybrid colonial subject. Edward Soja, influenced by
Homi Bhabha's Third Space theory, talks of the deconstruction of the first
space-second space dualism and instead proposes a “trialectics of spatiality”
(Soja, 57) that seeks to represent real and imaginary places through strategic
narrative politics in cultural representation. Soja explains that the colonial
subject does not always participate in entering the third space of cultural
hybridity; he is already a part of a hybrid space that is not dependent on
related concepts like place, location, locality, and environment for its
projection. Rather, the colonial subject is epistemologically a hybrid subject
that constructs its own space within the language of colonial politics. The
court scene, in which Obi is a silent participant and more of a critical
observer, ends with an assimilation of cultures. The presiding judge offers
kola nuts to the spectators and says, “He that brings kola nuts brings life”
and “We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us he
may break his neck” (No Longer, 5). The folk-based narrative and the
assimilation of it within the realistic mode of telling the story is projected
when the kola nuts invade the modern Lagos judicial system, which is a
product of the British administrative and judicial reforms. The kola nuts,
which are the most sacred offerings made to the gods and given to guests,
invade the Western world of justice, and to add to the assimilation, the
spectators join in the prayer, saying ‘Amen’. The Christian world is now
part of the religious sentiments of post-independent Lagos, but the older
gods and the myth of the kola nuts are yet to move out of the cultural oeuvre.

In No Longer At Ease, there is a subtle tension that builds in the text due to
the ideological confrontation between Christianity and the older order of
myths with a pagan background. In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo vociferously
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 83

opposes the circulation of Christian missionaries within the Igbo fold and
their efforts to convert the natives to the new religion, but its sequel shows
a post-independent Lagos where most of the population have been
appropriated by the coloniser’s religion. However, as cultural psychology
would show, it is not always that the new order is included in the old system
through a complete negation of the past. It is more included in the older
order, which means that the subterranean forces of the older order will
remain along with the new ideology and both participate in the society. The
fable structure of the novel is illustrated in the kind of poems that Obi writes
in memory of his childhood. He desires to “leave our earth-bound body”
and escape towards the “music of the spheres” – a typical sentimental
depiction of nostalgia perhaps but this mood of romantic escapism is
embittered by the line “I have tasted putrid flesh in the spoon”, which clearly
designates the loss of the innocence of the folkloric world in the bygone era
(No Longer, 13) . The past is not one strand of idyllic beauty, which Achebe
portrayed more than explicitly in the earlier novel, but the point is that to
those who have not been a part of the bush culture and have only heard about
it through report the past becomes unproblematic – either perfectly too good
or too evil. The Nigerian critic Obiajunwa Wali talks about the frustration
and dislocation of the protagonists in Camara Laye’s The Radiance of the
King, Achebe’s No Longer at Ease and Gabriel Okara’s The Voice.
The greatest challenge for the African novelist then is the question of
character in so far as character lies at the centre of the traditional form of
the novel, and in so far as the African writer, looking for themes and settings
distinctively African, becomes involved in traditional African society.
(Wali, 159)

Wali’s point of view is a bit far-fetched because any novelist, irrespective

of nationality or race, can find ways to portray the world they are looking to
represent in their fiction. Achebe’s challenge is not to delineate Igbo land
but to represent the politics that comes with it. Achebe does not see the
delineation of the Igbo subject as his main challenge; his main challenge is
to make the Western audience accept that Africa is neither a land of savages
nor a continent of infinite possibilities and mystery. Africa, and Nigeria in
particular, is indeed a normal continent, with its own contradictions and
politics, and this is where Achebe’s real challenge lies. The dislocation of
Obi starts at the very point he becomes part of the African diaspora in
Britain, and when he comes back neither his inculcated ideology nor his
constructed notions about his native state comes to his rescue. In a complex
web of age-old myths, prejudices and cultural practices, he gets lost in a
space enmeshed with an anxiety about lost identity. Obi cannot negotiate
84 Chapter Two

with the myths of the past through full rejection or acceptance because he is
a product of a complex psychology that can fully accept neither the Orient
nor the Occident. Obi finds himself in a critical situation because, as a
generation that has grown in a post-independent reality, he finds the urge to
assert his identity as a Nigerian, but when he comes to the country full of
corruption and malpractices, his assertive identity becomes a psychological
burden. In this novel, Achebe points out that the new generation is caught
up in a space of nowhere because the old world values, the Igbo gods and
goddesses and their structural base of myths and legends, the dictates of the
priests, the rituals, and the communal bond – all have been washed away by
the new order of European enlightenment. The problem with all this is
forming an Afrocentric identity since the new culture has been included in
society as part of the hegemony of the coloniser while essentialising the
non-western entities. As a result, the new generation finds it difficult to
understand who they are and what values they stand for, or whether they
should stand for any values because the Nigerian cult is partially erased
from the cultural map of Lagos and the new order is not their culture. This
makes Obi a kind of dislocated misfit who has to negotiate with the myths
of the old world system because of his affair with Clara but, at the same
time, the capitalist endeavour of the new nation pains him when it is infused
with bribery and other forms of corruption.

To come back to the question of the struggle between the new order of
Christianity and the old Umuofian practices, one has to pay attention to the
fact that Obi is culturally rooted to his Igbo consciousness and in his
formative years he had been appropriated by the Eurocentric discourses, or
if not appropriated at least influenced. A cultural face-off happens when Obi
returns from Britain to his native village and the whole community turns out
to celebrate the boy returning from abroad. The ritualistic order of the Igbo
communal ties is still intact as they gather for a feast, which is always
symbolic of communal bonhomie and the ritual-based culture of the tribe.
Obi thought that rain might spoil the occasion, and almost half the people
there wished the same to prove that Christianity has made Obi blind since
“He was the only man who failed to see that on an occasion such as this he
should take palm-wine, a cock and a little money to the chief rain-maker in
Umuofia” (No Longer, 39). So, as it turns out, the son of the soil has indeed
been dislocated to such an extent that he has lost touch with the rituals and
the myths of his native community and sees things from a Christian point of
view. Whereas an old man (representing the voice of Igbo sacred ties) talks
about the impossibility of a man being killed by thunder because Chukwu
would protect him, Obi, on the other hand, talks about Satan and the various
evil manifestations that he uses to tempt the non-Christian earthly mortals.
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 85

Obi shows signs of scepticism of the old order when he questions why a
man was hit by thunder in the first place and then had to create a protection
mechanism; the old man talks about Igbo pride and communal centrality
when he says that he was hit in Mbaino and not at home (No Longer, 39).
This is not a simple altercation between the new and the old order; it depicts
the progression of neo-colonialism in the post- independent era of Nigeria
where the West slowly appropriated the minds of the English-educated
youth and the cultural signifiers of Igbo gradually faded out, leading to a
stasis in identity formation as far as the communal Igbo ties are concerned.
In his essay ‘Africa and Her Writers’, Achebe pleads for such a reorientation
of literary and cultural identity formation through myths when he cites the
example of the poet Okigbo.
In fact, poetry becomes for him an anguished journey back from alienation
to resumption of ritual and priestly functions. His voice becomes the voice
of the sunbird of Igbo mythology, mysterious and ominous. (Achebe,
1975:28)

Here, Achebe might be criticised for following right-wing politics in

maintaining cultural purity. However, even though such criticism is valid to
an extent, one also needs to bear in mind that Africa has been the subject of
colonial politics for centuries, and for centuries it has been projected as the
uncultured continent that has very little to do with human culture and values.
So African authors do need some space in which to assert their identity, and
for that, African history and myth form important tools. Achebe does not go
as far as asserting the cultural purity of Igbos, unlike Leopold Senghor of
the Negritude movement. However, assertion of identity is an essential
policy to Achebe in order to counter ages of Eurocentric racism, and one
can hardly blame him for his position. The above quote illustrates how
Achebe is working towards a refashioning of the ancient myths in the
modern literary practice to inculcate a communal identity, and by going
against it, Obi moves further and further away from any stable identity.
Some of the myths and folk stories narrated in the novel have a deeper
symbolic function in delineating the crisis in Obi. One of the old men says
that according to Igbo mythology, one passes the land of the spirits when
one has passed seven rivers, forests and hills (No Longer, 41).2 Seven is an
ominous number in the Igbo mythical system primarily because its
summation is 3+4, and both the constituent numbers are ominous and have
a ritualistic value. The sub-text of the myth tells us that Obi has already
passed into the world of the spirits and met his chi because the chi haunts
those who disregard its impact in their life. Chukwu already seems to be an
ominous presence in Obi’s life since he is talking in terms of Satan and God
86 Chapter Two

and is considering the rituals related to the kola nuts as “heathen sacrifice”
(No Longer, 41). Obi finds himself constantly at the crossroads of cultural
conflict, which is the result of his British education and his subsequent
rejection of some of the native principles of society. Odogwu reminds Obi
that his decision to disregard the instructions of the Umuofian society is not
acceptable since it is Iguedo, the god of fortune, who decides whether a man
should remain happy or not so Obi’s hope that he can carve out his own
happiness is rather misplaced. Once again, Achebe's politics are problematic
since the narrator is not altogether on the side of the Umufian norms that
intrude into personal space. What is significant is there is a movement
towards a cosmopolitan society in urban Lagos, as opposed to the more rural
native village of Obi, that believes in cultural purity, and this metropolitan
metrosexual consciousness seems to be invading the older normativity of
Igbo society. Odogwu also relates the myth of the Iroko tree that “chooses
where to grow” (No Longer, 43), a warning to Obi that if he oversteps his
mark and devalues his chi, then he will have to face the dire consequences.
The cultural signifiers are at battle here, with Obi caught in between, as his
individuality is challenged by his cultural background but at the same time
he is not altogether able to become British as he returns to Lagos to create
change in his native land. These disparate urges pull Obi in different
directions, and the result is he is caught in an endless web of ambivalence,
confusion and self-evasive manoeuvres. Perhaps the confusion is doubled
in Obi’s mind by the fact that though the whole village clings onto the old
order of beliefs, his father chose to convert in protest against the killing of
Ikemefuna by Okonkwo – an incident the readers have already encountered
in Things Fall Apart. As a result, Obi’s mother stops telling folk stories to
her children as they were supposedly not meant for non-Christians. So Obi's
cultural conditioning started in his childhood and when it was faced with
stiff opposition from the village, confusion reigned in the mind of the young
man as he begins to resist the Igbo rites with vehemence to justify his own
position. Such was the effect of the cultural conditioning that Obi and his
family refuse to eat any heathen food in the neighbourhood, and one day at
school, Obi begins telling a folktale by saying “Oluluofuoge” (roughly
translated as ‘once upon a time there lived people by the river’ according to
the Igbo dictionary of Kay Williamson), but because he was appropriated
by the coloniser’s religion, he cannot carry on, leading to derisive laughter
from his classmates. From a very early age, Obi knows the pain of being
Othered in a society so heavily ritualistic in its cultural practices, and when
he grows up into a young man he uses the new order to get back to his mates
from his community, especially in relation to his marriage with Clara.
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 87

The myth versus individual aspiration, which is coloured by the imagination

of the new order of Western education, dilemma culminates when the
Umuofian society directs Obi not to marry Clara because she is an osu. In
the first place, the very notion of a love-knot being tied without paying the
appropriate bride price is demeaning enough, and then to marry an osu is an
absolute sacrilege that can never be accepted. Now the question arises as to
who an osu is. In order to understand the term and to realise its social
significance, we need to look at the essay by Regina Grace Muscarello, who
gives a graphic account of who an osu is. Muscarello points out that the
meaning of the term osu is outcast, and the outcast was a social practice in
ancient Nigeria that caused many a person to be banished from society.
According to Muscarello, the practise of osu started in the Owerri Okigwi
region of south-eastern Nigeria, a predominantly Igbo-dominated
population. This practice was more a system of slavery, and those within
the system were believed to be dedicated to serving the gods. Often an
individual, a family or a whole village were enslaved under the practice of
being an osu descendant, and it was believed that the persons under the slave
system were cursed. In fact, if a member of a family were to fall sick, then
an osu was dedicated to the gods in the hope that the sins of the suffering
man would be washed away and he would regain his health. Since the osus
became the eternal property of gods, they had no right to mingle socially
with other members of the community, and not only that, their descendants
had to live with the tag. This was indeed a fixed identity. Muscarello further
adds that these osu communities had their own villages, marketplaces and
temples and they were completely marginalised. However, the osus could
not be killed; they were supposed to be protected by their own gods and
hence nobody wanted to bring the wrath of the gods on them by harming an
osu (Muscarello, web).

Even in modern-day Lagos, Umuofian society has not done away with the
ritual of convening a meeting of the elders, the accused is summoned, and
after appropriate deliberations, the punishment is announced. The
communal structure is kept intact even outside the space of the bush, which
itself is a commentary on the simultaneous presence of myths, rituals and
ancient practices in a metropolitan city like Lagos. Obi is expected to attend
such meetings and to strictly adhere to the convenor’s directions, because
after all they had funded Obi's British education, and the communal ethos
of the Igbos taught him to act as a part of the clan and not as an individual
significant enough to make his own decisions. The ritual of taking oaths and
invoking the gods for the well-being of the community is kept intact by the
Umuofian society.
88 Chapter Two

"Umuofia kwenu!" shouted one old man. (Let Umuofians be obedient).

"Ya!" replied everyone in unison.
''Umuofia kwenu!"
"Ya!"
"Ife awolu Ogoliazuan’afia," he said. (He could not build his capital
because he was
not obedient). (No Longer, 62)

This is a climactic moment in Obi’s life and it heightens his tremendous

struggle with his own clan, something that his grandfather had to face in a
different context. The whole community talks in one voice in their
opposition to Clara because she is an osu and perhaps for the first time Obi
understands what it means to live under the pressures of the community,
especially when he is as culturally dislocated as he is, not knowing how to
tackle such propositions from the very people who sent him abroad for an
education to reconstitute the power equations with the British vis-à-vis the
Igbos.

Obi finds himself cornered; he feels as if he has indeed become an outcast

as he is neither an Igbo nor British. In such a scenario, he really has no other
option but to keep his despair to himself when Clara herself declares that
she is an osu. However, the greatest irony lies elsewhere, at the very core of
the belief system that Obi and his friend Joseph have inherited. No doubt
that Joseph is a convert, and so, after being appropriated in the new religious
order, he should denounce everything that is ‘heathen’. But he does not.
Instead, in a neurotic manner, he attacks Obi by saying: “Do you know what
an osu is? But how can you know?” (No Longer, 57). So, he leaves no stone
unturned to make Obi realise that he has become an outsider to the Igbo
community by getting the British education, but how self-contradictory is it
that a Christian convert should speak in terms of a native heathen? So, what
is the ingredient that fixes consciousness to the old order and the belief
systems associated with it in such a deep-rooted manner even though the
person may have converted to another religion? The answer perhaps lies in
the psychology of man that the old system cannot be uprooted in a single
coup and when one converts to another religion, he falls in the grey area of
inhabiting a thought process that lies somewhere between the two systems
of myth formation. In the chapter entitled ‘Colonial War and Mental
Disorders’ in The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon, while talking about the
Algerian patriots, says that in a post-colonial scenario, intellectuals play
“the game of collaboration” as they are expected to discuss matters freely
“with those opposed to his viewpoint…and to convince them” (The
Wretched, 231). The necessity of this game of collaboration is explained by
some psycho-sociologists as they point out that in a society moving towards
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 89

a technical superiority, individuals become like “the cog in the machine”

(ibid), and they have no other option but to enact different roles to suit their
social position. In the case of Joseph, he has to survive in Lagos as part of
the Umuofian society, and since this identity gives him the necessary
security – socio-economic or cultural – he has to support the cause of
formation from the paradigm of old world order. Obi, on the other hand, is
not dependent on the Umuofian society, except for a tie of community-based
identification, and hence he can afford to assert his individual rights, no
matter how sacrilegious they might sound to the elders. In Obi’s mind, the
myth of the osu is just one of those irrelevant and unjustified myths that
rules the social consciousness, and he can think that
It was scandalous that in the middle of the twentieth century, man could be
barred from marrying a girl simply because her great-great-great-great-
grandfather had been dedicated to serve a god, thereby setting himself apart
and turning his descendants into a forbidden caste to the end of Time. (No
Longer, 57)

Apart from Obi's point of view, what is also worth noting is the concept of
time, which is an important ingredient in any myth formation in a given
culture. In the industrially developed Western societies, time is computed
in terms of mathematical precision and division – hours into minutes,
minutes into seconds, etc. However, in the non-Western societies like the
Igbo tribe, time is calculated on the basis on natural phenomena – the time
elapsed between two full moons, or two market weeks, or two yam festivals.
In modern Western society, time has an objective fixity to it – the unit of,
say, one hour is unchangeable; in the Igbo society, time is more flexible
since the unit, say, between two market weeks will vary in different times
of the year. What Obi does not realise is that the twentieth-century paradigm
is essentially a Western one (or, more specifically perhaps, a Christian
conception of time), and the relevance or irrelevance of a particular cult or
myth in the Igbo society is not dependent on the Western time frame. This
is where, like his grandfather, Obi loses touch with the ground reality of the
Igbo community, its belief systems, myths and folklore, and therefore feels
a tremendous amount of loneliness and anxiety and becomes a wandering
soul with no anchor to hold his identity together. He blurts out to the clan
elders, “But don’t you interfere in my affairs again” (No Longer, 66), but
that is not probably enough to give him mental peace.

The ultimate struggle between the Igbo world of myths and lore and the
Christian narrative happens at the end of the novel between Obi and his
father. Like Joseph, Obi’s father cannot himself of his attachment to the
Igbo myths; they actually construct his identity even though he is a
90 Chapter Two

Christian. He still goes back to the ancestral concepts of myth, and in a

moment of irony says that spirits sometimes come back to ask your name
(No Longer, 105). He is referring here especially to the presence of the chi
that haunts the present existence of man, but once again there is a cultural
syncretism at work here where Christianity and a pagan religion
simultaneously shape the identity of the old man. Christianity was Obi’s
father's response to the violence and bloodshed related to Ikemefuna’s
sacrifice, and the Igbo cult and rituals is the question he asks of his son
regarding his marriage to an osu girl. Obi harps at this very point when he
asserts that “We are Christians” and that “our fathers in their darkness and
ignorance called an innocent man osu” (No Longer, 106). The question
really is of spatiality. It must be kept in mind that Okonkwo was never
separated from his native place and so he was not exposed to a foreign
culture. In the case of Obi, the situation is different. He is exposed to British
culture at a young age, and while getting his bachelor’s degree from the
British university he participates in a foreign culture while being shown that
he is racially different to the coloniser. Obi was subjected to the ideological
state apparatus in the very coordinate from where the colonial power was
exercised and controlled. Obi’s father’s situation was somewhat different.
He used Christianity to serve a very personal grudge against his community,
more so against his father, and so it was not related to any complex
ideological purposes. Obi, unlike his father, did not choose Christianity on
his own volition but was given the inheritance of its ‘light’ as a family
religion. In such a situation, when Obi realises the pitfalls of the Western
civilisation as well as that of the state of Nigeria, he develops a kind of
antipathy for both spaces.

Still, when it comes to Clara, who is a part of his private self, Christianity
comes as a saving grace and since the Igbo myth of osu is an antagonist to
his personal space, he naturally chooses Christianity to defend his cause.
The reference to the biblical story of Nathaniel at the end of the novel about
the tortoise that foiled the mother’s funeral but returned to see the palm tree
of the father bearing fruit has a symbolic end, as all myths are supposed to
do. The fruit in the palm tree symbolises a vegetative principle – life goes
on on Earth even after the deaths of mother and Clara. Obi is so devastated
by Clara’s self-seclusion and psychological breakdown that he does not
attend his mother’s funeral and instead locks himself up in his flat. This is
a commentary on how myths can devastate the life of an individual when
they become the governing principle of the community and are antithetical
to the wishes of an individual. However, this is not a rejection on the part of
Achebe of the myths of the Igbo land; rather it problematises the way myths
continue to construct the social psyche of the Igbo land. Myths were the
 'The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings' 91

ruling principle of the Igbo society but the trouble really starts when the
colonial mission begins to appropriate the minds of the young men in Igbo.
It is then that they begin to challenge the old system because the colonial
apparatus has made them believe that on the scale of civilisation, the
Africans are so much inferior. When they go out and get a taste of industrial
society and its consequent money power, they begin to question their own
culture no matter how much they realise the contradictions in the
Eurocentric narrative of politics and culture. Obi realises what it means to
go against his chi, and he realises, much like his grandfather, the destructive
forces of the colonial and neo-colonial powers. In their destruction and near
obliteration, the grandfather and the grandson acquire unity.

In Things Fall Apart, the world of myths and legends was interfered with
first by Okonkwo’s reluctance to act in accordance to the sacred tie that
existed between him and Ikemefuna, and later by the colonial power that
begins to move in the second half of the text. In No Longer at Ease, the
myths and legends are perforated by the cultural appropriation of Obi by the
Christian order, even though he is well aware of the loopholes that exist in
the process of Western domination. In both novels, Achebe tries to delineate
the way things are falling apart, and how in two different time frames and
in two different contexts, the colonial intellect destroys the centre of the
Igbo culture. In both cases the annihilation is near complete, and the
protagonists are ostracised in their own backyard of beliefs and prejudices,
leaving no answer as to how to stop things from falling apart.

Notes
1 TFA stands for Things Fall Apart.
2 No Longer stands for No Longer at Ease.
 CHAPTER THREE

'AND WE WILL KEEP THE DARKER LEGEND'

The third novel Achebe wrote to complete his trilogy on Igbo life, rituals
and social practices after Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease is Arrow
of God. This novel returns to the bush life of the Igbos after taking a brief
sojourn in the metropolis in the second novel. It is not that Achebe tired of
the metropolitan Other; rather he seems to be in quest of a deeper
understanding of the Igbo worldview and their culture – something the
novelist was more interested in in the first novel of the trilogy. What makes
this third novel stand apart is its concern with metaphysics, even more than
in the first, and there seems to be an undertone of a deeper acceptance of
life in the ageing protagonist. Achebe himself seems to be one of the
admirers of the novel, saying in the preface to the second edition of the novel
that among all his other creations, “it is the novel which I am most likely to
be caught sitting down to read again” (Preface, Arrow of God). This is not
to be taken as a loose statement; it seems to be borne out of careful
consideration of the worth of the work. The preface almost reads like a
prayer to the god-like priest Ezeulu, asking for his forgiveness in case of
sins committed by any of the author's race, who are all descendants of the
many Ezeulus across the centuries. At the very outset, there is a definite
movement towards a spiritual recognition of the Igbo faith by Achebe,
which marks a new paradigm in his creative principle. Okonkwo felt a sense
of rebellion, not only against his father but also against his tribe, which
seemed insensitive to Okonkwo because it never really accepted his desire
to become a heroic presence and in the process transgress the norms and
rituals of his own community. As a result, he had a tragic death. However,
Ezeulu is different. He is a titled priest, a maker of the destiny of his tribe,
and his pedigree leads him to become a man at the centre of the sacred ties
of his community, with absolute subservience to the deities. This is where
Achebe takes a literary journey, moving from the realm of doubts, heroism
and questions to a calm acceptance of the Igbo way of life, even amidst the
ravaging presence of British colonialism. Another facet of the novel is that
Achebe dedicates this novel to the memory of his father Isaiah Oka. Taking
the risk of making a grand sweeping statement without the proper support
of facts, one wonders if this has something to do with Achebe’s motive to
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 93

strongly entrench himself in his roots through his fictional narrative. Ezeulu
is the father figure, the guardian priest of the entire Igbo tribe, and
throughout the novel he leads by example, keeping the sacred ties of the
Igbo community intact with a general focus on its metaphysics.

The myth formation in this novel is more rooted to the identity politics of
the Igbo tribe, and the readers get a sense that Achebe is moving towards a
form of fiction that represents its cultural context even more strongly than
before; hence this novel seems more encompassing and mystical in its
intent. There seems to be an apotheosis for Ezeulu when he plays hide and
seek with the new moon, a game that will determine his announcement of
the date of the yam festival. The “third nightfall” (Arrow of God, 1) seems
unlucky, as three projects the mystical dilution in the Igbo cosmology that
can be apprehended only by the chief priest. “His [Ezeulu’s] obi was built
differently from other men’s huts” (Arrow of God, 1), writes Achebe, and
we get an early glimpse of how myth formation is closely related to the
politics of hierarchy and identity in the Igbo society. Jeyifo identifies the
postcolonial authors, writing in an age of America-dominated late
capitalism, as “ex-colonial” (Jeyifo, 56). However, this assertion that
postcolonial authors use textual strategy in order to reassert and rediscover
the colonial cultural norms that are dislocated by the hegemony of the
colonial enterprise seems simplistic. Achebe is not really asserting Igbo
identity; there is no real need for that unless one suffers from an inferiority
complex; rather, Achebe is more interested in reinterpreting the identity and
the normative structures of the Igbo community. In that way, he is not going
back to his roots; he was already rooted.

Rather, he represents a cultural capital in his fictional construct that has

serious implications for mythologizing the tribal ethos, as well as
demythologizing it in terms of ideation by the author who does not hesitate
to go against the norms of his roots. Achebe does not look at the past as a
monolith, as a long unproblematic narrative; he observes in “The Role of
the Writer in a New Nation”
The question is how does a writer recreate the past? Quite clearly there is a
strong temptation to idealize it – to extol its good points and pretend that the
bad never existed. This is where the writer's integrity comes in. Will he be
strong enough to overcome the temptation to select only those facts, which
flatter him? If he succumbs, he will have branded himself an untrustworthy
witness. But it is not only his personal integrity as an artist that is involved.
The credibility of the world he is attempting to recreate will be called into
question and he will defeat his own purpose if he is suspected of glossing
over inconvenient facts. We cannot pretend that our past was one long
94 Chapter Three

technicolour idyll. We have to admit that like other people's past, ours had
its good as well as its bad sides (Achebe, web).

Rather he reinterprets and reanalyses the past through his lens of fiction and
forms his own myth within the historical paradigm of his tribe. Achebe’s
literary exercise is based on this constant endeavour to move back and forth
in time, between a past that continuously refurnishes and reorients the
narrative strategy of the present, and the present that tirelessly strives to be
defined by the frame of reference of the past. However, between the past
and the present lies the spatio-temporal gap that changes the ideation
between the ‘then’ myth and the ‘now’ myth. The ‘then’ myth had a
particular context that produced the text, mostly in the oral form, and the
‘now’ myth has to function in a different society with a different social
obligation, ideological compulsions and power structures. So, the rise of the
moon must be interpreted by Ezeulu according to his political compulsion
to please the British, in particular Captain Winterbottom, something the
priest’s ancestors did not have to take into consideration. Previously, the
Ezeulu happened to be the sole patriarch of the tribe but in colonial Nigeria
the power balance shifts and the head priest has to accommodate the sacred
ritual and myths keeping political compulsions in mind. Laurence Coupe
states, “All myths presuppose a previous narrative, and in turn form the
model for future narratives. Strictly speaking, the pattern of promise and
fulfilment need never end; no sooner has one narrative promise been
fulfilled than the fulfilment becomes in turn the promise of further
mythmaking. Thus, myths remake other myths, and there is no reason why
they should not continue to do so, the mythopoeic urge being infinite”
(Coupe, 2007:108). What Coupe seems to suggest is myth formation from
a deconstructive point of view; with every reformation, myths move further
from the central premise with which the original text was formed.
Mythopoesis is this decentralized narrative structure that constantly reforms
the source text from which it was derived. Achebe engages myths to define
the power structure of the society he deems to represent, but at the same
time those myths are often refashioned to suit the narrative requirements of
his novel. Achebe's fiction does not necessarily always reorient the past.
The past is often used as a historicized character to shed light on the present;
for example, Ezeulu is forced to send his son to the white man’s school
otherwise his position within the clan is under threat by the British. The new
moon that shines over Ezeulu’s obi is described as thin, resembling a boy
who is maltreated by his foster mother. Achebe is able to bring the world of
myth and the world of realism on the same plane. It was common for the
patriarch to have multiple wives, it was symbolic of the tribe's index of
masculinity, and maltreatment by foster mothers was not exactly uncommon.
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 95

The moon and the tribal practice of polygamy therefore form a composite
representation of the sacred ties in Igbo (Arrow of God, 2), even though
there is no effort to critique this practice by Achebe. The social rupture that
occurs due to British imperialism is anticipated by the moon, which is
described by Ugoye as “an evil moon” (Arrow of God, 2). The sighting of
the new moon is crucial for the declaration of the yam festival, and it can be
inferred that the moon becomes part of the fertility cult when Mother Nature
is worshipped as the provider and nurturer of existence in the physical life
form. It follows that if the fertility cult is anticipated as an evil presence, the
residents have enough reason to worry that something dreadful is imminent.
Igbos are yet to be colonized by the agnostic philosophy of the West and
hence the moon, with its awkward appearance, seems to announce a future
that does not seem too promising. And they will be proven right. Obiageli
sings the song of an uncertain future:
The moon kills little boys
The moon kills ant-hill nose
The moon kills little boys… (Arrow of God, 3)

In a significant comment, Achebe says that the Igbo people lay “a great deal
of emphasis on differences, on dualities, on otherness”, as opposed to the
Western intellectual ideation which is “fanatically single-minded in its own
self-centredness” (Ogbaa, ‘Interview’, 65). His comment problematizes his
discourse because the self and the other are in a relationship that is not
mutually exclusive. That is, the self and the other confer meaning to each
other, and without the presence of the other, the self cannot exist. In this
sense, Achebe's argument is open to charges of binarization and his politics
becomes, at times, separatist. What Achebe means is that the Igbo world is
essentially a world of communal presence, where the sacred ties of social
normativity are of paramount importance. The tendency to move towards
an individual response to life is equated to challenging one's ‘chi’, which is
a sacrilege no one can afford, as we saw with Okonkwo. Ezeulu does not
challenge his ‘chi’ to the extent Okonkwo did as the latter was interested in
becoming an authoritarian leader, Ezeulu is not. He has to function within
the opposing social forces of Igbo tradition and British colonial enterprise,
and he tries to balance the two with devastating consequences. What makes
the myth formation in the novel even more significant is Ezeulu's shifting
interpretations of the various rituals of his tribe at different junctures of
history in order to fit the context so he can rationalize them to the foreign
colonialism. In this plurality of interpretations lies the chaos of the text and
the context that produces it; and in this way Achebe opens up the text to an
“infinite range of normative possibilities, diversity of disputing processes…
96 Chapter Three

intricate connections between everyday behaviour and the living law”

(Innes, 72). Normativity is the living principle of Igbo life; however, this
not to be automatically connected with the usual Eurocentric negativity
associated with the concept of being normative. Normativity has been made
to become a set of binarizations systematically projected into a narrative of
negativity in the postmodern conception of ideas. No doubt that Achebe’s
politics grew out of a necessity to protest the normativity of the colonial
project, but the social praxis of the Igbo is more complex than just being
instrumental in the protest against the Eurocentric order. The colonizer is
looked upon as the alien, a ‘creature’ at the very margins of the
consciousness of the Igbo tribe, but within the internal structure of Igbo
society, normativity is the base on which stands the law of social ties. This
may be the case with Western societies too, but whereas contemporary
critics would critique any attempt made to normalize, Achebe points out that
a society without any normativity would collapse under its own
contradictions. Achebe critiques the way Ezeulu becomes so rigid that he
delays the yam festival for the call from Winterbottom but at the same time
Igbo ties cannot be completely dismissed from normative structures; that
would mean the binding force of social structuring would collapse. The
mythical subbase of the society conditions the general psyche to bear
consenting subservience to the head priest and that is how the hierarchy of
the society is preserved. In a moment of divine role-play, Ezeulu thanks the
god Ulu “for making me see another new moon” (Arrow of God, 6). The
power structure works from the top downward and hence the myth of the
new moon becomes a privileged vision for the head priest. If he sees the
new moon, others will follow his instructions for the yam festival; his
absence from the process will lead others to be marginalized in the belief
system. Ezeulu does not simply have the privilege or the responsibility to
declare the yam festival, he is the sole representation of the carrying forward
of the tradition, in him lies the responsibility to protect the ‘chi’ of his tribe.
Since ‘chi’ is the very principle of existence in the Igbo cosmology, Ezeulu
becomes the man on whom the entire tribe must depend to keep the wrath
of the gods at bay. Myth is borne out of a naturalistic philosophy, where
there is a close interconnection between Nature and the lifestyle of the
Igbos; hence Ezeulu’s prayer that they should be protected from the
scorpions and snakes. The fear psychosis in the untameable Nature calls
forth the Eurocentric misrepresentation of looking at the ‘dark continent’
with fear and Othering it as savage and uncivilized. As is the case, the tribe-
based society had learnt not to colonize Nature for an industrial-based urban
society, and the myths reflect the genesis of a society that still looks at
Nature with reverence and the provider of all means to exist on this planet.
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 97

The forest people grapple with inter-tribal conflicts, violence and the fear of
death, and the mythical base of their belief helps them to represent their
inner fears and insecurities in order to unite at a community level.

It is important to analyse the classical distinction that has been made

between history and myth, or, more precisely for our purpose, between
historical and mythical tales. Isidore Okpewho says that mythical tales tend
to be more poetic compared to historical narratives as the historicity of text
forces it to be more faithful to historical characters and is bound by time and
space. Given an African context, Okpewho reminds us that there is always
a battleground drawn between the rational judgement of European
enlightenment and the enlightenment of Africa that has more faith in oral
narratives and the fictive details of myths. Isidore defines, as it were, the
term myth and states that
Myth is not really a particular type of tale as against another, it is neither the
spoken counterpart of an antecedent ritual, nor is it a tale determined
exclusively by a binary scheme of abstract ideas or a sequential order of
elements. It is simply that quality of fancy which informs the creative or
configurative powers of the human mind in varying degrees of intensity.
(Okpewho, 2009:69)

The point that needs to be emphasized here is that in the myth formation of
Achebe, he not only depends on the time-inflected narratives of oral
tradition, he contextualizes them in a specific colonial time and space
which, therefore, is syncretic in intent. History in the African paradigm is
more mythical than analytical if we go by Okpewho’s formulation that
myths are more poetic than history per se. The Eurocentric version of history
is more dependent on a documentation of facts, making it a serious academic
and intellectual exercise, and once the documentation is over, it is treated as
a part of the knowledge capital with no scope for any changes other than
other research materials. However, the tribal structure of Umuofia treats
history as part of an oral tradition constructed of stories that have been
passed down through generations and hence, within that oral narrative,
many deletions and reinterpretations and consequent syncretisms of other
oral cultures have taken place, making it a composite tale of various
narratives. In one of the storytelling sessions in the novel, Ezeulu describes
how an inter-tribal conflict led to the merging of Okperi and Umuaro. This
had serious issues of religious identity associated with it, as the people of
Okperi had said to Ezeulu’s forefathers,
98 Chapter Three

We give you our Udo and our Ogwugwu; but you must call the deity we
give you not Udo but the son of Udo, and not Ogwugwu but the son of
Ogwugwu. (Arrow of God, 15)

From the passage above, we can gauge that history in Africa is not
historicized, nor is it a careful analytical formulation of fact-based thesis –
history itself is mythicized by oral narratives that depend more on memory
as well as the authoritative principle of the head priest, whose word is final
on any matter. However, Achebe creates a world not only of metaphysics
through his myth formation, it also has a time-bound context. The above
quotation was being discussed at a time when Christianity was trying to
usurp the African belief system in order to ideologically colonize the minds
of Africa, especially its young generation. The power politics in the tribal
context gives mythical anecdotes a contextual significance borne out of
history. As Ezeulu points out, Okperi hands over to Umuaro only the sons
of the main gods, thereby clearly defining the margins within which Umuaro
can function vis-à-vis Okperi, since the gods define the role of the tribe in
which he is worshipped. The centre margin conflict therefore is represented
in the mythology through historical narratives which are not time-bound but
define the role of the present in terms of the past.

While talking about the sacred ties in mythology, Eliade notes

The sacred is qualitatively different from the profane, yet it may manifest
itself no matter how or where in the profane world because of its power of
turning any natural object into a paradox by means of a hierophany [i.e.
manifestation of the sacred]. (Eliade, 1958:30)

The term ‘hierophany’ is Eliade's contribution to the world of cultural

anthropology by which he effectively means that objects or concepts exist
in terms of their relationship to the opposite, which takes its cue from the
Hegelian principle of dialectics. That is, without the contrary, the object
cannot exist because everything in the material as well as the intellectual
world is optimized by the consciousness of its binary. It is like saying that
black exists because we know what white is. Eliade constructs the difference
between sacred time, when myth was created, and profane time, when the
mythic world fell to the archaisms of human rituals (Coupe, 58). Locating
Eliade in Achebe could be helpful for finding newer areas of myth criticism.
In the above passage, for example, the transference of the gods to Umuaro
is the sacred time, when the myth of transference of divine power was
created, a time that is not located by specific dimensions. Ezeulu’s warning,
when he instructs his people to follow the myth tradition thereby
constructing a new cult for his people, falls under the category of profane
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 99

time. However, the question still remains as to how sacred the sacred time
is. There is no doubt that the Western concept of time is very different to
that of the African. The Newtonian universe is divided into measurable
quantum states, be they in terms of time, force, speed, distance, and so on.
This mechanical response to the universe is not typical of Africa; Africans
respond to the universe in terms of an infinite existence. That infinity can
be broken down to measurable quantities but they are only for human
comprehension or representation rather than having any tendency to explain
the universe in terms of human behaviour or representation. The Eurocentric
belief that the cosmos can indeed be measured by quantum mechanics is not
shared by the precolonial tribe-based society in Africa and so the gods are
revered as the representation of infinity. Therefore, the sacred time that
Eliade talks about finds relevance in the African world but not totally. Myth
formation is indeed sacred but the rituals that follow are equally sacred and
not profane. The rituals do not suffer a fall in human archaisms; they form
the very part of the belief system of the tribes. The myths and the rituals are
the driving force behind the very existence of the Igbos and the line between
profanity and sacredness is almost obliterated because once the sacred
comes out in the domain of the public in terms of directions from Ezeulu,
the profane is exercised through the rituals deemed sacred by the people.
The concept of time in the Igbo cosmology is a crucial factor in
understanding the mythology produced by the Igbo. In the industrialized
society of the Western world, time is measured objectively, but for the Igbo,
time is measured by the significant events in the day. For example, the time
of the new moon, the time of yam festival, the time to sacrifice to the gods,
and so on, which does vary according to the natural cycle of seasons. Hence,
the quantitative constant does not exist in the Igbo concept of time, and so
is not objective in its intent. Rev. Dr John S. Mbiti, chairman of the
Department of Religion at Makerere University in Uganda, says in African
Religions and Philosophy
When Africans reckon time, it is for a concrete and specific purpose, in
connection with events but not just for the sake of mathematics. Since time
is a composition of events, people cannot and do not reckon it in vacuum….
Instead of numerical calendars there are what one would call phenomenon
calendars, in which the events or phenomena which constitute time are
reckoned or considered in their relation with one another and as they take
place. (in Zaslavsky, 63)

So, myth formation is rooted in this concept of a phenomenological formula

that puts entire emphasis on the particular events that take place, whether
natural or metaphysical. Cultural dislocation in the Igbo cosmology is
brought about by the colonial mission and through that even the concept of
100 Chapter Three

time is reinvented in order to express the fear psychosis that rips across the
Igbo land, from which even Ezeulu cannot escape. When Oduche refuses to
join the church, Ezeulu points out that man learnt to shoot birds with perfect
accuracy and hence the bird Eneke-nti-oba learnt to fly without perching.
Ezeulu says his position is like that of the bird, and “the world is changing…
I do not like it” (Arrow of God, 46). The arrival of the British is a
phenomenon that is included in the calendar of the Igbos, changing the time
scale used in Igbo, which creates the rupture in the tribe at all possible
levels. Time is a very significant factor in this novel as there is a clear
demarcation made between precolonial and colonial life in Umuaro, and the
rupture at the socio-cultural level that is brought about by the British
colonialism creates an unnamed fear psychosis among the Igbo people
because the clash of the two cultures is sacrilegious from their perspective;
in fact, the very presence of the white man in their sacred territory is
abominable. In the first step towards such sacrilege, Ezeulu sends his son
Oduche to church; he is forced to otherwise the power balance would get
disrupted. It is a calculated move by the British, specifically by Captain
Winterbottom, to weaken the Igbos by creating a division between the
different tribes; the best way to achieve this is by pitting Ezeulu against his
rivals, which will, by extension, cause mass participation in civil strife.
Ezeulu thinks that the white man is infinitely more powerful than the Igbos,
and hence the Christian deity must be known for the good of the community.
The rage of the gods can destroy the universe – this has been the common
belief in the tribe since time immemorial – and hence in a colonial-colonized
power structure, the more powerful deity must be revered. Also, Ezeulu
sends Oduche to church as his representative but, as it turned out, the British
used religion as a means to colonize the Igbos even further, using the
unquestionable authority that Ezeulu enjoyed in his tribe as the head priest.
Their mythology is used to strike the Igbos at the very root of their belief
system in order to construct Christianity as a religion of highest order.
Ezeulu understood the deeply sinister politics of the British a little later,
when he had already sacrificed Oduche to the Church, despite opposition
from his village folks and his wife. He was the patriarch of his obi; there
was no reason for him to listen to any opposition. Only later did he realise
that the new religion was trying to appropriate the old order; “allow him a
handshake and he wants to embrace” (Arrow of God, 43).

The devastating influence of the British comes to the forefront initially with
the python episode. The snake, especially the python, is revered by the Igbos
as one of the principle deities of their cosmology but the Christians, of
course, consider it the Original Tempter, the very symbol of anti-Christian
terror. The Church use it as bait to strike at the Igbos' belief for religious
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 101

appropriation, and Oduche is forced to imprison a python in a box. Later,

when the whole episode is discovered, the entire village is shocked to see
an abomination of this extent.
'May the Great Deity forbid', said Anosi.
'An abomination has happened,' said Akueke.
Matefi said: 'If this is medicine, may it lose its potency.' (Arrow of God,
45)

The royal python is not the deity of Umuaro; actually, it belongs to the
village of Ezidemili, whose deity Idemili owns the royal python. As a result
of this incident, there is an implosion in Ezeulu as he begins to realize that
the British have come with deep political intentions and are not just tourists.
As a result, he also understands that his religious pedigree within his own
tribe is fading as everybody knows his role in sending Oduche to the
Church. And as a consequence of the terrible sacrilege, an imminent tussle
is on the cards between Ezidemili and Umuaro. Moses, a convert in the
church, could not accept the authoritarian stance of the British and
challenged Mr Goodcountry’s interpretation of the Bible that it supports the
forcible killings of python. Moses relates a popular fable which tells that
once there was widespread killing in Umuama due to filial rivalry and the
whole village was wiped out. Later they decided that to prevent such a mass
massacre in the future, the six villages in the Igbo land would not kill a
single python (Arrow of God, 48). Moses presents an interesting case of the
colonized subject who is forced to be a subaltern due to sociological
compulsions but is not entirely convinced by the politics of appropriation of
the British. The church authorities use Christianity for exclusivist propositions
and not for syncretism as Ezeulu had hoped. Moses represents the voices of
those who do not want to let go of their myths and rituals completely, and
this gives rise to serious altercations between Ezeulu and the British
authorities. In fact, Moses openly challenges Oduche to kill a python in
Umuaro to prove his heroism, which clearly denotes that within the
converts, the consciousness of their cultural past is yet to die down. It is
ironic that the converts pose a greater threat to the Church than the white
man because in the first-generation converts, there is a growing disquiet
against the effort made by the priests to constantly dismiss the African
culture/religion as ‘savage’, and men like Oduche are caught in a cultural
limbo between the new religion and the older beliefs.

The python episode leaves tremours of cultural shock in Ezeulu’s household,

leading to a near-threat from Ezidemili, who ask the head priest of Umuaro
to purify Ezeulu's home for the abomination committed. Ezeulu reacts with
102 Chapter Three

resistance, dismissing all opposing voices, but he realizes that the mythical
base of the society is gaining momentum to oppose the British, as well as
him as he is responsible for such abominations being committed. The social
praxis seems to have been disturbed, but the disturbing trend is that it is the
head priest who is causing such social and religious rupture. Ezeulu had sent
Oduche as his representative to the Church, perhaps with the idea of keeping
the power balance right, but he realizes gradually that the appropriation of
the colonial master through its agents is far more deep-rooted than he had
anticipated initially.

In an interview with Jeyifo in 1983, Achebe comments, “The moment I

became conscious of the possibilities of representing somebody from a
certain standpoint, from that moment I realised that there must be
misrepresentation, there must be misjudgement, there must be even
straightforward discrimination and distortion” (Jeyifo, 52). Achebe’s fiction
therefore is essentially foregrounded in the humanist principles, where the
ideal and the practical coexist. The ideal world of Igbo myths is tempered
by the real world where myths play the role of anecdotes that forewarn the
tribe of consequences in case of abominations committed. Myths are the
living principles of the tribe and no one is expected to overreach them, not
even the head priest. Achebe’s excerpt from one of his interviews testifies
to the fact that the politics of representation is crucial in his fictional
construct and that he avoids any undue idealization. The various myths that
Achebe uses in this novel are more depictive of the rupture than any unifying
principle, which validates the author’s point that misrepresentations and
misjudgements must be there in order to portray the essential human nature
of his characters. The myths and rituals are evil from the perspective of the
British officers. Winterbottom is petrified with the very night as the
“unspeakable rites” that go on in the forests seem to portray the “heart-beat
of the African darkness” (Arrow of God, 30). Thus, the rituals seem to
construct a clear binary between the spirit of Africa and the spirit of Europe,
the latter being the invader. Significantly, Achebe creates a counter
narrative in his fiction to validate the cultural space of the Igbo community,
which has a demonic identity in the eyes of the colonizer as the Other. So,
the myths and rituals become a kind of political and cultural statement by
the author to represent the African space in the way he thinks authentic, or
very near to it. Hence the world of the Igbos, dominated by myths, is the
world of the true Africa, and Winterbottom’s perspective of it, a continent
which is dark and primitive, savage like, is the distorted vision. Myths and
rituals therefore play a very interesting part of reflecting the ethos of the
Igbo community, which has a distorted and inglorious picture in the mind
of the whites. To Winterbottom, who represents the political oppression of
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 103

the British, Umuaro is still backward because it has not let British modernity
in, whereas Okperi is a welcome breather since it has allowed colonial
progression to enter its space. The Captain then perspectivizes ikenga as a
fetish since it is a sacrificial practice among the Ibos and a symbol of anti-
Christian terror as well as against the enlightenment principles of Europe.
Myths play the role of constructing the insider-outsider dialectics, and the
subsequent change in perspective gives an apt commentary on the way
Africa is seen from the inside and the outside.

Mythmaking in Africa is a product of the oral tradition and hence myths are
narratives that are generated in storytelling sessions involving a spontaneous
performance by the speaker and inclusive of the audience. Myths are
generated as an experience of the entire community, based on their shared
concerns, fears and insecurities, as well as their happiness, festivities and
sense of belonging. In such public performances, the myths that are
generated orally form the collective identity of the tribe and hence myths
form the agents of cultural production. The role of the auditors is of
paramount importance in such sessions as they also contribute to the
creative process by either appreciating the story or changing it wherever it
is deemed necessary, and so myths are quite fluid in their aesthetic
production, getting reinterpreted and reshaped by the audience. As
Herskovits points out, “One usage that is as common to discursive speech
as to narrative is the interpolated explanation from the listener, or listeners”
(Herskovits, 52). Such interpolations are never considered as unnecessary
interventions; rather, they are a necessary ingredient of the collective
experience that such myths are supposed to explore. The last point is crucial
in the novel because in the face of colonial appropriation, reinstating the
faith in the age-old customs becomes necessary to assert the cultural identity
of the marginalized Igbo people. Nwaka goes through such a storytelling
session as he relates his challenge to Ulu, the supreme deity of the godhead.
The myths carry the audience to a time that is beyond the comprehension of
human psychology. However, as Achebe is a myth- maker within the textual
space of the novel, his resource material is carefully sieved to meet the
contextual relevance of the text he is writing. Achebe employs a kind of
double- frame narrative where the outside frame is taken up at a neo-realist
level, involving the story of Ezeulu and Winterbottom and the inner frame
constitutes the myths that locate the text firmly in the oral tradition of the
Igbos. It is the interface between the text and the sub-text that makes the
readers aware of the role of myths in the Igbo cosmology as they are the
abiding metaphysical principles that shape the thought process and the way
of life at the physical level. Hence, the overreaching attitude that Nwaka
showed by venturing into Ulu territory (which is not allowed) without any
104 Chapter Three

kith and kin resulted in immediate reprobation. He meets with three friends
– a wizard, a poisoner and a leper. The unholy trinity almost anticipates the
sacrilege that Oduche commits, and the entire crowd participates in the story
as “The crowd replied, ‘His arm is very strong’. The flute and all the drums
joined in reply” (Arrow of God, 40). The crowd wondered how Nwaka
could defy Ulu and live to boast about it, and it finds the ironic parallel to
Oduche’s abomination when all of Umuaro is shocked to see their beliefs
being thwarted by the son of Ezeulu. However, one has to remember that
since there are so many tribes in Nigeria, their pride in their identity is
confined to their own tribe. The myths and rituals often help to assert pride
in the community, and the identity is constricted locally to the tribe rather
than having any widespread nuances. Nwaka is a resident of Umuaro but
his friendship with Ezidemili makes him a sworn enemy of Ezeulu so
Ezidemili refuses to sit on the ground in his obi, stating, “Idemili belongs to
the sky and that is why I, his priest, cannot sit on bare earth” (Arrow of God,
42). So, mythology is used to rake up issues of racial pride and inter-tribal
conflict, as Ezidemili points out that Ulu belongs to Ezidemili rather than
Ezeulu. He knows why the soul of an Ezeuluor Ezidemili moves out of the
body after death – because Ulu wanted it that way. So Ezidemili claims to
have superior knowledge and enlightenment about the diktats of the gods,
and in that way, he commands a higher position in Umuaro compared to
Ezeulu. Myths then become the representation and the expression of the
power struggle within the tribes in Umuaro. They become the site of inter-
tribal conflicts and struggle for territorial and spiritual supremacy as the
warring parties claim to have a better hold over the gods; the outcome of the
struggles and violence that ensue ensures the domination of a tribe in a given
point of history.

Jan Vansina, in Oral Tradition as History, points out that oral tradition, of
which myths are a part, is constructed and passed down the generations,
leading to numerous interpolations in the tales. Vansina identifies two types
of oral traditions – one where the tales have passed orally but are within the
lifetime of the orator or the narrator who is presenting it, and the other type
where the tale was a cultural production of ages past. Vansina calls the first
“immediate history”, where “the historical consciousness in the
communities involved is still in flux” and the second type consists of what
he terms “memorized messages” (Vansina, 1985:13). In Achebe, the oral
history is more a product of fiction, but at the level of narrative both Vansina
and Achebe construct an oral culture that is both time-bound and timeless.
The oral narratives are passed down generations, form part of the social and
religious normativity that governs the way a tribe believes in various ethos,
and in turn influence the way the tribe lives. At the same time, the immediate
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 105

history is also equally important as Ezeulu must interpret the current events
in terms of the past oral strictures, and hence the flux is always working and
reworking itself through the interpretive politics of the head priest.
However, in Achebe, the oral tradition is individualized and subjectivized.
No doubt, oral narratives are indeed a collective production of the spatio-
temporality of the Igbos but the head priest has the right to judge and
interpret them according to his own will. This causes the rupture in the
novels of Achebe because, on more occasions than one, Ezeulu twists the
dos and the don’ts to accommodate British instructions in order to maintain
his power equation with the colonial masters as he needs to buy peace to
conserve the Igbo ethos. However, when the British pressure mounts,
Ezeulu orders the opening of the Festival of the First Pumpkin Leaves on
the Nwoko market day. The sacred order of the festival is declared based on
a time calculated by the lapse that happens between two market days rather
than on any mechanized format of time, as in the Western world – this is
how the myths are formed in the Igbo narrative. This is the mythic time that
Okpewho talks of – a time computed by the occurrence of a natural event
or cosmological phenomena because this is a society overtly dependent on
the oral beliefs and myths to function. The women gather in their finest
clothes and wear ornate jewellery as the whole festival is associated with
the fertility cult of bounteous Nature. The Igbos are yet to colonize Nature
for human progress and the reproductive cycle of Nature is both revered and
celebrated as it is the only source of sustenance to the tribal population. The
oral tradition gets special attention during such festivals as Ezeulu’s role in
the tribe is magnified as he stands tall, the representative of the gods with
the power to ward off any evil that may mar the future. The left side is the
side of negative powers in Igbo cosmology so the left side of Ezeulu’s body
is painted in white chalk. In his right hand he carries the Nneofo, a staff that
represents the ultimate authority of Ezeulu in Umuaro. Once again, the
ritualistic mode of the myths delineates the power structure of the Igbo
community, with the presupposition that every member of the community
is expected to strictly follow traditional norms (Arrow of God, 71-72).

The process of myth construction is a process of historicization. Jan Vansina

notes that myths are narrations that belong to a “timeless past”, “justify the
bases of existing society and correspond to Malinowski’s myth as social
charter” (Oral Tradition, 23). In a way, therefore, myths form a part of the
historical consciousness of a given society and help construct the identity of
that society. As it is, Umuaro struggles with British imperial rule, and
historical consciousness is indeed necessary to make the people aware of
the history of the tribe that may be negated by the colonial masters. Ezeulu
identifies with the mythical time of a timeless past – an immemorial past
106 Chapter Three

that he was a part of but that common people are not privileged enough to
participate in.
At that time, when lizards were still in ones and twos, the whole people
assembled and chose me to carry their new deity. I said to them:
‘Who am I to carry this fire on my bare head? A man who knows that his
anus is small does not swallow an udala seed.’
They said to me:
'Fear not. The man who sends a child to catch a shrew will also give him
water to wash his hand.’
I said: ‘So be it’ (Arrow of God, 71) (Italicized in the text).

This section delineates how power structures are made through the
historicized narrative of myths. Lizards are part of the cosmology of Igbo
beliefs and hence the reverence they command is transferred onto the head
priest, who seems to have a direct communion with the gods. The significant
fact is that the gods represent time immemorial and it is beyond the human
intellect to comprehend them. Myth as a narrative is associated with such a
time, even though it must be remembered that the narrativization itself is
part of human aesthetics and imagination, and hence is very much a part of
our time. This may be stating the obvious but it must be mentioned here
because oral literature in non-literate societies is a literary exercise that
happens across many years, even centuries. Tales are made, told and then
evolve by getting syncretized with other tales as they move across that scale
of time and space. So, the tale that Ezeulu relates is a part of human
aesthetics but then it represents a cosmic consciousness. Myths in their own
way bridge the gap between the temporal time and the cosmic representation
that they claim to project. Ezeulu is a man who is rooted to his own culture
and time but the cosmic time to which he claims access to makes him a class
apart and helps to construct the sacred ties of the Igbo community. This is
necessary for the social institution of Igbo to function because it is firmly
embedded in the patriarchal norms headed by Ezeulu. The myth of the
sacred ties positions Ezeulu as the one who wards off evil and is the
progenitor of life on earth, at least in Umuaro. Such is the cosmic power of
Ezeulu that he defeated forces like Eke, Oye and Afo in order to restore order
on earth. In the ritual of drawing circles in the marketplace, one finds the
symbol defining the roles of the various classes of people in Umuaro. In
fact, the line is drawn by the head priest while in a spiritual daze, which
signifies the fact that he has the right to define the boundaries of the society
within which it should function. The women invite him to cleanse the village
of its sins and Ezeulu takes up the role of the saviour who can save the Igbo
community from the wrath of the gods. The chief priest runs towards the
shrine and the people are relieved to find him safe in his haven, “triumphant
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 107

over the sins of Umuaro which he was now burying deep into the earth”
(Arrow, 73). The people stamp their feet on the ground to admonish the
darker sources on the day of the festival but it is Ezeulu who leads the
charge, and within the religious praxis the power structure is clearly
delineated as working from a top downward direction – the chief priest is
the only one who has the right to interpret the rituals and direct people
towards, what is believed to be, the right way of performing them.

To come back to the question of historicization, it must be remembered that

the past should be held captive in the present in order to continue the
relevance of the mythical base of the society. One way of arresting the past
is to create the sanctity of the tales by associating with it with religion, which
in most cases works through fear psychosis – the fear of abomination that
may ultimately lead to social and metaphysical isolation. Ezeulu’s actions
in the new pumpkin leaf festival denotes the point that the past is always
constructed as something that needs to be revered even though the tales and
myths may have been interpolated many times across many centuries. The
past is deemed to be a monolith, no matter if it has many layers in the
historicization process of the myths. Vansina in fact coins the term “floating
gap” (Vansina, 24) because everything that is deemed to be the past is
thrown back to the time of origin without any layers of chronology. This
means that the narratives that are passed down the generations need not be
always considered in terms of chronology because the tales coalesce with
each other. The chronicity of time in the tales cannot be identified and so
the origin of the tales cannot be located in a particular time. Hence, as in the
case of Ezeulu, the phrase “at that time” becomes emblematic of a past that
lies on the origin coordinate and then, straight after that, in the cycle of time,
comes the present moment in which he is addressing the audience. Thus,
Ezeulu becomes a party to the myth of origin along with the deities and he
therefore commands tremendous respect and reverence from the entire tribe.
He is the undisputed political and spiritual leader because he has access to
the memory of a time immemorial, which lies outside the purview of basic
human comprehension. Hence, myths help to create his personality as well
as his identity of chief priest by placing knowledge of history on the high
altar of privileged enlightenment, which is Ezeulu's sole spiritual and
intellectual property.

The identity formation of a tribe is an important motive in the Igbo

cosmology since ohaka is such an important reality, meaning that
community is supreme. However, in the process of maintaining the rule of
the community, sometimes the subterranean force of fear grips people's
consciousness since the very fear of rupture causes dread. The Okpasalebo
108 Chapter Three

tree (Arrow, 79) is considered a troublesome object since it is a tree that has
the power to create enmity between brothers after a session of drinking the
wine extracted from it. Edogo and his wife spend sleepless nights fearing
their son’s future because his skin drastically changed to the colour of a
cocoyam and he stopped sucking his mother’s milk (Arrow, 91). In another
instance, guns are shot in the forest to ward off evil since Ogbuefi Amalu is
very sick. Akuebue states that, by the look of things, the sickness recurred
during Eke, and it is aru-mmo (Arrow, 112)1. So, coming back to the concept
of ohaka, the basic construct of the community is deemed to remain intact
at any cost. The tribal system of society functions in such a manner that the
unity of the tribe is maintained with gusto, even with force if needed. To be
more specific, it is the social fabric that is protected with the help of the
belief systems in place so that there is no rupture at the level of society.
Community activities are given such prominence in the Igbo culture since
through these activities a shared identity is built. Myths help in the process
of creating the formation of a communal identity so necessary to protect the
shared values of the people. Benedict Anderson, in Imagined Communities
(1991), envisions communities in terms of a floating ideology that cannot
be fitted into any Universalist tendency of normativity. The Igbo community
has its own belief system in place in terms of its folk culture comprising of
myths, tales, music, dances, musical instruments, mathematical conceptions,
calculating time in terms of cosmic phenomena, storytelling sessions, a huge
pantheon of gods, and so on. It is expected that effort will be made to
maintain the beliefs so that no implosion endangers the very identity of the
tribe. One of the ways in which the identity is preserved is through the
storytelling sessions in the Igbo world, and through them myths are given a
socio-historical context by bridging the gap between mythical time and the
present so that the people realize the need to follow myths. In such
storytelling sessions, performance becomes a key ingredient because
without it, the audience cannot be captivated by the tale. Harold Scheub
observes that among the Xhosa in South Africa performance becomes a key
element in making the audience participate in the collective experience of
imagination. He states,
No proscenium arch exists, there is no safety in distance and darkness.
Everyone is known: the artist emerges from the audience and, her narrative
completed, is again swallowed up by the audience. The separate emotions
and experience of individual members of audience are woven into the
narrative being evoked. The artistic experience is a complex one. The
members of the audience know the images; they have experienced them
scores of times. They know the performer intimately and she knows them.
The artist seeks in a variety of ways to involve the audience wholly in her
production. (in Okpewho, 77)
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 109

The engagement of the audience is of paramount importance; without it the

very social fabric of the tribes falls flat. The knowability factor of the
audience is an interesting facet in the performance because that knowledge
tells the audience about the significance of the myths through its repetitive
style. In the Igbo cosmology, the fabric of myth is known to all. However,
the performance factor brings in the fear factor because the performance by
the storyteller not only reinstates the faith of the people in the myths but
also warns them about the consequences that might follow in the case of
abomination. The power structure in place makes sure that the status quo is
maintained so that the prevalent social or political praxis is not threatened
by any forces that may be deemed to destabilize the existing power relations.
That is why the priest, or any other head figure in the village, is rated so
highly; rather, they position themselves as the progenitors of whatever that
happens in the village so that the people are appropriated into the system.
However, autocracy should not be confused with such political or religious
absolutism because the general will of the people is such that they accept
such a structure without questioning the legitimacy of those in power. The
social fabric is set in such a way that the general will of the people is directed
towards the acceptance of the social ties of the Igbo community, headed by
the priest, who is the mediator between the earthly existence and the world
of the gods, and there seems to be no dissatisfaction in the people following
such a hegemony, at least there is no such hint in the text. The metaphysical
traits that are found in the tribe is the result of an age-old mythical belief
that constructs Ezeulu as the final embodiment of people’s collective fate
and the will of the people is submerged in the thought that it is indeed an
eternal time-tested narrative, and challenging it would be an abomination.
The postmodern concept of grand narratives would perhaps challenge such
social ideologue but the Eurocentric idea does not accommodate the reality
of a community where individual is given very little space, especially in the
post-War era. Even in the concept of destiny, the ‘chi’, one finds that it is
not individualism in the way Europeans would regard the semantic range of
that word. ‘Chi’ no doubt is the individual fate of a person that is affixed to
him by the gods, but then that individuality is not an assertion of the self as
much as it is an assertion of the role of the gods in an individual’s life. That
is, for every person there is a different ‘chi’ at work but that does not mean
an individual is allowed to move beyond the realms of the sacred ties and
construct his own space within the community. Igbo philosophy situates
every human being on an individual platform in the larger cosmic time scale
but nobody is given the freedom to decide their course of life. Rather, they
are expected to abide by the rules of the gods, with the knowledge that the
110 Chapter Three

gods have predestined their fate. They must work within the matrix of the
Igbo society and do so willingly.

African literature is a body of creative and critical exercise that deems to

project social norms much more than express individual modes of
representation like human aspiration or psychology. Achebe as a writer is
aware of the fact that he has an ideological responsibility to project Nigeria
to a global audience so the world does not stereotype Africans as ‘savages’
or ‘niggers’. Literature then becomes a part of the socio-cultural statement
and hence society itself becomes a character in Achebe’s novels rather than
humans isolated from the collective destiny of the society. Wole Soyinka
notes
The writer is far more preoccupied with visionary projection of society…
this is because, in reality, the umbilical cord between experience and form
has never been severed. (Soyinka, 64)

Soyinka uses the word ‘visionary’ not in the sense of being mystical or
removed from everyday reality but in the sense that contemporary African
writers need to envision society and its architectonics as a qualitative
approach to literature or other forms of art. In that way an African writer
becomes socially committed and ideologically expressive of a particular
way of writing literature – that is, to compose it by binding the forces of
humans, Nature and society and trying to understand the relationships
between all these factors. Myths become one of the tools authors use to
represent this social commitment; not only do they counter the racial slur
against the blacks but they also construct an alternative mode of literature
to the European ones. Nature becomes a source of subsistence as well as an
expression of a way of life, and this is not surprising is a non-industrialized
society that seeks to unite Nature with the very presence of the human
beings in Nature. Okeke Onenyi points out that the knowledge of herbs and
anwansi is “inscribed in the lines of a man’s palm” (Arrow, 147). There is
a blood tie between Nature and the human race, which explains why the
myths are so preoccupied with explaining the relationship between the gods
and human beings or the trees and plants. The hierarchy in the cosmic scale
is internalized within the consciousness and nothing is to be done that
disturbs the order of Nature. Colonialism as a political phenomenon is
explained through fables and myths because the unfamiliar terrain is so
distant from the people’s common experience that they need common
models of representation to understand it. Myths are used to counter the
British politics of hegemony and aggression. It could be said, however, that
those myths create a counter paradigm of their own hegemony, trying to
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 111

alienate the British as people from a different experience. However, one

needs to bear in mind that it was the British on the colonial mission and not
the Africans, and so myths operate as a narrative of counter-hegemony (at
times). When Captain Winterbottom sends his men to arrest Ezeulu, because
he deemed it rather undignified for the head priest to meet somebody on the
outside, Winterbottom immediately gets a bout of fever. Everyone believes
that Ezeulu must have put a charm on him and the white man got his due.
Myths then become a mode of functionality, operating in the people’s minds
as tools to counter the threat of appropriation. Even Mr Clarke's steward
warns his master that anyone who annoys the priest is a bad juju man (a
reprobate) and it is best avoided.

Even the Christian-converted Igbos are more inclined to believe their native
customs and traditions, which speaks about the deep-rooted effect of myths
in the social consciousness of the Igbos. Achebe wrote a fable called How
the Leopard Got His Claws (1972) in which he discusses the role of myths
in society through creative literature. The leopard in the jungle is a very kind
and generous king but one day, the deer cries out
O leopard our noble king
Where are you?
Spotted king of the forest,
Where are you?
Even if you are far away
Come, hurry home:
The worst has happened to us
The worst has happened to us…
The house the animals built
The cruel dogs keep us from it,
The common shelter we built
The cruel dogs keep us from it,
The worst has happened to us
The worst has happened to us… (Achebe, 1972:18)

However, since the leopard was out of the jungle he couldn’t come on time,
and when he eventually did, he had no teeth or nails. Seeing his powerless
situation, the animals admonish him, angering the leopard. He then turns to
terror and eats some of the animals to force the rest of them into submission,
and the fable ends with the hope that someday peace will return to the
jungle. The parallels between Achebe's fable and novel are obvious, but the
real point is that the myths and fables reflect the power structure in place
and in a way become narratives that project the power institutions in place
and how they work. Ezeulu, who loses his position of power while being
112 Chapter Three

away from his ‘obi’, might be compared to the leopard. His absence causes
a state of confusion in Igbo society because the sacred ties have not prepared
them for such an unforeseen circumstance. The significant anecdote here is
that when the leopard fails to live up to its image and the expectations of
being the king, he is promptly rejected and substituted by another animal.
Ezeulu perhaps fears the same kind of backlash from the people of his
community when he tries to move closer to the power centre. However,
there is self-doubt in Ezeulu and he never completely engages in the colonial
mission, and that creates trouble on the political as well as the personal front.

Ezeulu suffers from psychological conflict because he cannot quite justify

his act of moving towards Winterbottom to himself. In one of his dreams,
he sees that when his grandfather stands up to speak, the entire audience
revolts and shouts out, “He shall not speak; we will not listen to him”. They
even propose to drive the British out forcefully and some of them spit at
Ezeulu in the dream, saying he is the “priest of a dead god” (Arrow, 160).
The anxiety is not only of annihilation but also of not following the sacred
ties of the Igbo. He has this dream when he is imprisoned by the British for
daring to stay at home when they called for him, and after eighteen years of
priesthood, he is almost relieved that for a small time, he does not have to
carry the burden of his identity. The compulsive identity of being the priest
creates a rupture in his mind and he is never quite sure whether he should
follow the Igbo ethos or encourage the people to please the whites and their
alien religion. The dream is a kind of a vision, and in that moment of
transformation, Ezeulu realizes that his position as the oracle of the sacred
ties is slipping out from under his feet. Ezeulu, no doubt, tries to keep his
status, pronouncing that he will not be subservient to anyone except Ulu,
but the reader gets the notion that he is fast losing his position.

There is a spatial quality to how myths work, and once the space is
interchanged, their area of influence becomes less functional. Ezeulu’s obi
was the seat of oracle, the very fortress of all Igbo cultural practices and
preserved through tradition, but in the white man’s domain, that condition
of influence does not have the same power. Okpewho identifies the area of
struggle in the Igbo community where individualism happens to be the “first
principle” (Okpewho, 232) even though that individualism must function
within the praxis of social ties. Myths reflect this unique proposition in Igbo
life, where Ezeulu finds it difficult to balance between the Igbo rituals and
the life that he is forced to lead in imprisonment. To give an apt cross
reference, Babalola gives us a collection of ijala chants, which are mostly
praise poems. Here is one such chant.
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 113

Let not the civet-cat trespass on the cane rat’s track.

Let the cane rat avoid trespassing on the civet-cat’s path.
Let each animal follow the smooth stretch of its own road. (Babaloba, 62)

There is a definitive stance on the part of the traditional myth maker to

hegemonize the role of man in society through the fable of the civet-cat, and
this is exactly where Ezeulu finds the going getting tough. The ‘chi’ has
fixed a particular space for every priest to operate in and going beyond that
assigned scope of functioning is to commit sacrilege. Ezeulu finds himself
trapped in his own net, his desire to get closer to the British proves to be
counter-productive and he has no words to justify his act to his tribesmen
once he is jailed. The only fortress that Ezeulu can still hang on to is the
world of the myths. John Nwodika explains that the British have committed
an unpardonable offence by imprisoning the head priest during the market
days, and now Ezeulu can hold his ofo against the white man without anyone
blaming him for doing so. The question then really is what happens if the
civet-cat does not keep to its ‘own smooth road’. ‘Chi’ is unique for every
man in the Igbo cosmology and its working is problematized in the case of
Ezeulu. While he is returning to his village after his long imprisonment, it
starts to rain. It seems like a metaphysical intervention as Ezeulu finds he is
very lonely and there are no houses in the vicinity to take shelter in. His
marginalization is not only because of the political hegemony of the British
but also because of his actions within his tribe. Nobody questioned his
authority to interpret the Igbo myths and rituals while the social and the
religious orders were intact, but the moment abominations were initiated by
Oduche under the surveillance of the Christian priests, the Igbo people
began to question Ezeulu’s decision to send his son to the white man.
Ironically, the peace that Ezeulu hoped to broker with the British turns on
its head and creates a rupture within Igbo ties. Ezeulu can now see that he
has been caught up by his own arguments and the real threat is from within
his own community. Jan Vansina calls people who preserve tradition as
‘encyclopaedic informants or men of memory’ while discussing the
performance-based motive of myth formation (Vansina, 55).2 Performance
in oral literature can take various forms, ranging from rituals and dramatic
representations during festivals to religious rites, but none of the processes
is static. The representations change due to temporal or cultural flux,
without the acute awareness on the part of the audience that something has
indeed changed. The audience cannot be aware of an original version of the
performance because of its fluid character. No myth has a particular point
of time of creation, and no one among the audience knows how or when
interpolations were made in the performance; hence they take the present
version as the most trusted one. Performers are therefore the living carriers
114 Chapter Three

of tradition, according to Vansina, even though they cannot be called oral

historians per se because they are not documenting or analysing history –
they are creative artists trying to carry forward the constructions of oral
performances. Ezeulu can be identified as one of these ‘men of memory’
responsible for upholding the oral base of the tribe. The problem with
Ezeulu is the conflict between the past and the present. Mythical time can
be essentialized as immemorial, over which only he has the right to
interpret. However, his present actions do not conform to the dictates of the
mythical past and this contradiction is enough to raise serious doubts in the
tribal men’s minds. The python episode and sending Oduche to the Church
do not go down well with the people, not even with Matefi, Ezeulu's eldest
wife. The present conflicts with the past because in the sacred ties of Igbo
the past is the constant frame of reference against which the present actions
are weighed. The mythical base of ideology forms a strong narrative in the
collective conscious of the Igbo population and twisting the present towards
a fluid interpretation is not always easy, not even for the head priest.

The concept of time is indeed a significant component of mythmaking in

the Igbo community. Time, as has been discussed earlier, is not a
mechanically commodified entity in the Igbo cosmology; it is calculated
more on cosmic phenomena or natural happenings. The yam festival is an
extremely important ritual in the cycle of seasons as it symbolizes the
bountiful blessings of Nature as the giver and the agent of sustenance of the
human race. It is the duty of the head priest to declare the date of the yam
festival based on the position of the moon in the sky. Achebe’s novels erupt
with rifts within the social system due to the effects of colonization; even in
the case of the yam festival, this implosion is made evident. Ezeulu is
imprisoned by the British when he refuses to be a pawn in the hands of
Captain Winterbottom, to be the agent of indirect rule policy of the
colonizer’s administration. While he is imprisoned, two new moons appear
and disappear but the yam festival was not be announced. The festival is
supposed to define the cyclical nature of human activities – to harvest crops,
feed the animals and plan for the next harvest – so everything becomes
disordered by Ezeulu’s inability to announce the yam festival. One half of
Ezeulu is his humanum genus but the other half is the mmo – his “spirit
side” (Arrow, 192) – which dictates what he should do as the priest. When
he misses the time of the yam festival, questions begin to rise in the village.
The whole of Umuaro sinks into a phase of uneasy peace and tension,
quietly placating Oso Nwanadi in order to appease the dead souls of the
forefathers (Arrow, 194). However, the mythical base of the belief of the
Igbo people tells them that until Ezeulu comes back to his obi, the gods
cannot be appeased to the fullest extent. The discourse to appeasing Nature
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 115

seems to be the natural reaction of a community that depends so much on

agriculture for survival. Harold Scheub, while discussing Xhosa narrative
imagery, states,
The connection between the oral work of art and nature is achieved by
certain laws that operate to bring the images in a closed artistic system into
meaningful relationships with the external world. (in Okpewho, 134)

In the Igbo world, the big udala tree serves as a concrete image of Nature
that serves as the bridging catalyst between the abstraction of the ancestral
spirit and material existence. Scheub calls this "closed"’ because there is no
scope for using it for other symbolic purposes in the sense that the udala tree
symbolizes the ancestral spirits and nothing else in the Igbo cosmology. So,
Umuaro keeps busy with all these cultural and spiritual rites because it is
eagerly waiting for Ezeulu’s return and his announcement of the yam
festival. When he does return, however, he cannot announce the festival
immediately because the moon is not in the proper position and hence he
has to delay the festival dates even though the yams are yellowing in the
fields. Here again we note the closed system of symbols Scheub talks about
– the moon has to be in a particular position in the sky for Ezeulu to declare
the yam festival. In the meantime, the festival to impersonate the ancestral
spirit commences, where the inhabitants of six villages find their way to the
ground, wearing masks to represent their dead ones. The mask is the artefact
that presents a connection between the world of the spirits and that of the
human beings, but this particular festival comes at a very crucial juncture in
the history of Umuaro. Ezeulu has just returned from his imprisonment and
the yam festival cannot be declared due to the inappropriate time of his
return. Hence the people feel the need to appease the ancestral spirits even
more for the abominations that are being committed. The masks become the
symbol of an intermediary world and are to be worn once the ilo has
sounded. The ilo, the drums and the masks create an ambience of fear as the
women and the children feel that the dead have indeed risen – such is the
power of mimesis in the oral cultures. The mask therefore is a potent symbol
that defines the spatial difference between the human world and the world
of the spirits, and the man who commands the unique capability to negotiate
with both worlds is Ezeulu. The post of priesthood is divinely ordained and
one needs to be initiated into it before taking up the responsibility. The
villagers had asked Ezeulu’s ancestors to “carry this deity for us” (Arrow,
188; italics used in original text) and then Ezeulu was frightened, bent his
knees, carried the deity on his head, and was transformed into a spirit. So
Ezeulu commands the unique position of being able to traverse both the
material world and the spiritual world and this gives him the highest position
116 Chapter Three

in the power hierarchy. Okpewho defines the mythical as poetic,

representing the "larger, timeless, abstract ideals" (Okpewho, 69) and hence
the tales project the story of origin of the tribe, and any tale or myth will
have a strong element of the fanciful as opposed to the experiential quality
of historical narratives that are more apparently based on rational
judgements. Ezeulu’s priest identity gives him the freedom to directly
negotiate with the gods and pronounce their will to the common folks. The
Igbo system of belief constructs the clear divide between the world of the
spirits and this world, like the Evil Forest in Things Fall Apart, and a strict
rule is imposed that no one should ever venture into the world of the spirits;
the abomination would result not only in the destruction of the individual
but also in the total annihilation of the society, following the notion of
‘ohaka’. However, Achebe’s novels are not only the documentation of Igbo
reality in times of peace but also in times of struggle, and this struggle takes
a political form as the colonizers are there to appropriate the Other through
Christianity, among other means. Ezeulu is right in the middle of this strife,
a bit confused as how to protect Igbo ties when the Church is invading every
possible stratum of Igbo belief. He talks about the sensitivity of the snail’s
horns but he is always calculating how to reconcile and “narrow(ing) down
the area of conflict” (Arrow, 190). The problem really lies in people's deep-
rooted belief in the mythical base of the society and that they are a part of
the collective spirit; it is not easy to reorient the people’s minds to an alien
culture and its anecdotes. Christianity comes with its own baggage of
historical and cultural development and even the slightest attempt to
syncretize it with Igbo ideation is sure to create fierce agitation. Ezeulu was
already trembling because of the python episode and the possibility of an
ensuing fight with Idemili, but he gets a reprieve from Ulu himself.
‘Ta! Nwanu!’ barked Ulu in his ear… ‘Who told you that this was your own
fight?
…You want to save your friends who brought you palm wine he-he-he-he-
he… Go home and sleep and leave me to settle my quarrel with Idemili,
whose envy seeks to destroy me that his python may again come to power.’
(Arrow, 191)

It becomes clear that it is not simply the case of a struggle between two
religions that are culturally poles apart; it is also a struggle between two
tribes fighting over their gods under the pretext of Christian religion. Here
again the infamous British divide and rule policy comes to the forefront.
Winterbottom knows very well that the various sub-tribes within the Igbo
community have a fierce rivalry between them, based on their beliefs, and
that rivalry often turns into battles or the gaining of territorial supremacy.
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 117

And herein lies the chance of the white man. What Winterbottom does
successfully is hit at the very core of the mythical base of one tribe by
making another tribe do something that is considered a horrible
abomination, thereby creating mistrust and violence in the Igbo community.
In the meantime, the British can enjoy the rupture and help deepen the
fissure, thereby establishing themselves as the undisputed rulers of Africa.
Here, a fight ensues between Ulu and Idemili, and Achebe points out how
myths and tales are used by the external aggressor to dent the colonized
space culturally, religiously and, ultimately, politically.

The end of the novel describes a heightening of strife on multiple levels –

between Christianity and Igbo ties, Ezeulu and Oduche, Ezeulu with
himself, and the villagers with Ezeulu, thereby making the text
multidimensional and vibrant. Ezeulu finally declares the new yam festival
after four new moons. The festival marks the beginning of the new year and
asserts the cultural identity of the Igbos as this is their greatest festival. It is
also when people reverentially thank Ulu for protecting them against all
dangers and the hierarchy of the gods is defined, where Ulu is the towering
presence in the villages, surrounded by the lesser gods who are brought out
only during this time. So Ezeulu’s spiritual proximity to Ulu is
understandable; it is a kind of summit between two representatives who are
most powerful in their own domains and others do not have the right to
invade their private space. Ezeulu, however, has to face the protests for his
delay in announcing the new yam festival and he vehemently asserts that
“no Ezeulu can lose count… go back to your villages now and wait for my
message” (Arrow, 204). Ezeulu is well aware of the dangers and he can feel
the rupture coming. Myth is suddenly brought down from its high pedestal
and now the villagers ask Ezeulu to deal with a situation that has never
happened before as “never before has the white man taken away the chief
priest” (Arrow, 208). At the same time, the new yams are yellowing in the
field and Ezeulu still has three yams to eat before he can announce the
festival. Such is the situation that Ezeulu has to order the village elders to
go and eat the remaining yams, which is abnormal, but he leaves the rest to
the dictates of Ulu. The strong belief of the people is suddenly shaken and
Ezeulu has to justify Ulu’s acts as a kind of test. One of the village elders
proposes offering a sacrifice to Ulu in the form of cowries, which would
cleanse the abomination. Cowries are essential motif in understanding the
god’s dictates, as Zaslavsky notes
The Igbo occultist’s equipment includes four cowries. He rolls out the shells
and examines their positions. If all four land with the openings down, the
omens are most favourable. (Zaslavsky, 54)
118 Chapter Three

Ezeulu finds himself cornered and threatened, the village elders are beginning
to question him and Ulu himself has instructed him to stay away from the
tussle with Idemili. Ezeulu goes through an existential crisis. On the
spiritual front he no longer commands the trust of the great Ulu, and when
he is not at the side of spirit, the village folks question his authority and how
long he will continue to function as the Ezeulu. In a desperate attempt to
regain his position, he goes to the mound representing Ulu, and in a moment
of great symbolism he can hear the church bells ringing (Arrow, 210). It is
Achebe’s comment on the nemesis that Ezeulu will have to face, and the
entire Igbo community for that matter, for it seems that Ulu is losing out to
Christ. Ezeulu almost becomes a ‘public enemy’ overnight (Arrow, 211)
and the slippage seems irreversible. This is the moment the Church was
waiting for and in this time of crisis, they propose an alternate mode of
ideation. Moses Unachukwu spread the idea that since Christ is a ‘living
god’ and has power over Ulu’s anger, therefore people who did not wish to
wait for the new yam festival could offer the yams to Christ and begin
harvesting the crops since Christ has no qualms about getting more than one
yam (Ulu was supposed to get the last yam) since He is the Loving Father
of the cosmos, much greater in strength than Ulu (Arrow, 216). To become
a Christian would equate to becoming a colonized subject, and this is the
political manipulation by the British to gain ground in Igbo land.

Ezeulu’s decision to postpone the new yam festival begins to wreak havoc
in the village as the family of Ogbuefi Amalu is wiped out in famine. To die
during ugani is the most horrific experience, and one must wait until the
new yams appear. Before death, Amalu orders the sacrifice of one bull and
it becomes clear that Igbo land is quickly disintegrating. Achebe writes that
with every passing day “Umuaro became more and more an alien silence”
(Arrow, 219), which bears enough testimony to the fact that Umuaro is
sinking towards a total social collapse. The land which was filled with the
music of flutes, the beats of the drums and the chanting of the priest is now
silent – an epistemological nothingness seems to grip the whole clan and the
myths of annihilation begin to gain ground. If myth is a reflection of the
collective ideology of the people, then at the end of the text, the tussle is
between this plural force and the individual loneliness of Ezeulu. Ezeulu is
in anguish but he is even more depressed by his helplessness as he cannot
announce the new yam festival until four new moons pass as the stipulated
time for the festival had already gone by. Ezeulu, in the capacity of being
the head priest and the fact that half of him belongs to Ulu, cannot disobey
the sacred cult of the festival and be arbitrary, even when people in the clan
are dying. He remembers the time when lizards walked in ones or twos and
chose his ancestors to bear the deity, but the mythical past which constructs
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 119

the core identity of the Igbos is now on the brink of total collapse. The
mythical order of the tribe is facing implosion and the pain of the head priest
lies in the fact that he cannot protect the tradition of the unified sensibility
of his ancestors represented by the mythical base of the society. At this
crucial juncture, when Ezeulu is facing a personal and a collective crisis, his
son Oduche fails to give him any comfort. Ezeulu had sent Oduche to be his
representative in the colonial power structure but unfortunately Oduche has
allowed himself to be appropriated by the Christian fathers, and his silence
in front of his father relates to the larger silence of Igbo land. Oduche is no
longer willing to come back to the Igbo way of life – an ironic inversion of
the inside-outside dialectics. Oduche, being an erstwhile insider of the Igbo
tribe, now finds the power promised in the colonial energy more luring and
hence he becomes an ‘insider’ in the Church and gets involved in their
narrative, even though Ezeulu wanted his son to be an objective observer of
the politics of the Church. In a mode of role reversal, Oduche becomes more
of a Church man than a spy from the Igbo side. This changing of position
by Oduche kills Ezeulu from the inside. Ezeulu’s eventual declaration of the
new yam festival is ironically juxtaposed with a horrific dream – a dream of
absolution, of extinction. He sees that a new path has been built at the back
of his obi and when he runs into Matefi’s hut, he sees a long-dead fire,
symbolizing perhaps his own pyre, for his sacrifice to the gods. He hears
the voice of a solitary singer, who identifies himself as “a child of Idemili”
before he says cynically that he must “scuttle away in haste” since a
“Christian is on the way” (Arrow, 223). The derisive laughter that Ezeulu
hears in this dream parallels the mocking laughter of Ulu that he had heard
in a previous dream, and both dream sequences prove the mental
disturbance the priest is going through. The python episode still haunts him,
and the dream not only reflects his troubled state but it is also a metaphysical
intervention that points out to him his inadequacies and failures to protect
the sacred order. The struggle now is within Ezeulu – he can neither ignore
the ritualistic base of his own culture nor fully adhere to it because of the
intervention of the British with their ‘alien’ religion, and this tussle makes
him tired. The clan still holds on to its primitive rituals (not in the derogatory
sense of the term) as an assertion of its age-old identity and the ekwe-
ogbazulobodo still beats kome kome kokome kome kokome (Arrow, 225) but
there is an uneasy silence. The rituals seem to have become mere routines
rather than spontaneous celebrations. The rituals were the very way of life
in Igbo land, and now it seems to be bereft of life. Obika’s final chant at
Amalu’s funeral reminds the audience about the total annihilation that is
coming, something that was anticipated by the myth maker, and ancient
120 Chapter Three

intelligence seems to now assert its identity. In a moment of anticipation,

Obika chants
The fly that struts around on a mound of excrement wastes his time; the
mound will always be greater than the fly… Darkness is so great it gives
horns to a dog.” (Arrow, 226. Italicized in the text)

Obika’s words seem to reverberate across the contours of the village as he

adds that the sleep that lasts from one market day to another results in death.
Ezeulu has indeed taken his clan towards death, and the first abomination
that he committed was to send Oduche to Winterbottom, which spirals into
greater trouble for him and his clan. Obika uses one image after the other
from the Igbo mythology, ranging from the Mother Rat which tries to
protect its young ones and the little bird that lands on the ant-hill and may
not know that it is still on the ground to a dog unable to smell its excrement
before its death (Arrow, 227). All these oral narratives are reflective of the
condition of the Igbo land – nobody is ready to accept that the end is near.
Nobody quite knows how and when it will happen but they know it is near.
The stories point out that an object’s lack of knowledge about a particular
incident or state does not alter reality – reality is, after all, a fixed entity and
nothing can alter it; that is what the Igbo conception is about, the fixity of
the ‘chi’ in relation to the present. Annihilation is an objective absolute
principle and not much can be done to alter it – Ulu’s world will invade at
an appropriate time and lack of knowledge will not alter the ultimate result.
As a prelude to the end, Obika dies. His performance during Amalu’s
funeral seems to have been an anticipation of his own death and Ezeulu can
only cry out to Ulu, but the overpowering fate is all too potent a force for
any argument. Ezeulu searches for an answer for one last time – he ponders
why he faced so much trouble when he was following the sacred order while
delaying the new yam festival. Why was Ulu so unkind to him? The chief
priest has no answer to his questions except that he was trapped by fate in a
helpless situation. The epitaph that Achebe writes for his protagonist may
be a fitting judgement of Ezeulu though it is not the only story on him.
Their god had taken sides with them against his headstrong and ambitious
priest and thus upheld the wisdom of their ancestors – that no man however
great was greater than his people; that no one ever won judgement against
his clan. (Arrow, 230)

The final outcome shows that even though Ezeulu was following the rituals
of the sacred order, somewhere down the line he lacked the practical
wisdom expected from a ruler. Maybe, by strictly adhering to the rules, the
myths, his sub-conscious pride was expressed as he wanted to show that no
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 121

man in Igbo land was more devoted to the cause of preserving the traditions.
However, like the poet who becomes spontaneous in his recital of oral
literature, freely changing it at his own will to meet the demands of the
audience, Ezeulu may have shown some flexibility to reorient the myths in
accordance to the situation. He failed in this regard, leading Igbos to spiral
towards collapse, and like the lizard that destroyed his mother’s funeral with
his own hands (Arrow, 230), Ezeulu was responsible for his destruction as
well as that of his tribe.

After a gap of almost twenty years, Achebe wrote Anthills of the Savannah
in 1987. By then his art of writing had changed, and this novel concentrates
more on the contemporary issues of urban Nigeria than his previous literary
ventures, which focus on the Igbo land in the rural tribal areas of south-west
Nigeria. Anthills of the Savannah as a novel does not disregard the questions
of identity formation through the myth narratives, nor does it shy away from
the question of looking at history/myth through the critical lens of
postcolonial discourse, but the form and the setting changes. This novel is
closer to novels like No Longer at Ease and The Man of the People in its
depiction of the Nigerian socio-political condition after independence, and
these novels are not set in the Igbo bush but in the metropolis of Lagos,
which is seen as the site of moral and spiritual corruption of modern-day
Nigeria. Myth formation takes a new dimension in Anthills of the Savannah
as the focus shifts to Christian mythology and the resulting formation of
shifting identities due to the characters’ negotiation with themselves. The
novel is a commentary on history and how history can be looked at. History
is itself a myth insofar as it is a subject of representational politics, and just
as myths reorient the readers to a bigger range of semantics, history also can
be refashioned to look at reality from multiple perspectives. The complexity
of looking at history is more evident in the context of post colonialism,
where the colonialist past becomes an entity of narrative strife among
authors. A postcolonial author, who is trying to assert the ‘original’ identity
of the nation, is at times at war with his own ideology. This is because some
authors tend to create a narrative void when it comes to the effects of
colonial rule, and there is an uncritical assessment about the precolonial past
as a perfect state of paradisal beauty. Achebe does not blank out the effects
of colonialism as entirely evil, nor does he construct it as something that is
to be neglected. As Benita Parry says, the age after colonialism is indeed an
age of maturity, not in terms of the fact that the colonizers had tutored the
colonized about their ‘superior’ cultural subject position but because the
colonized perhaps came to know their weak spots clearly. Parry points out
that to disregard colonial history is to enact “a regressive search for an
aboriginal and intact condition/tradition from which a proper sense of
122 Chapter Three

history is occluded” (Parry 1996: 85). Anthills4 as a novel is not about public
history. It does not concentrate on the issues at the macro level of society;
rather its narrative focuses on the micro, involving the stories of the people
who constitute the idea of nation. Achebe’s myth formation is different in
form in this novel. The myth formation takes a sabbatical from the
traditional tales and folklores and moves towards a more contemporary
negotiation with the modern angst, and the feeling of being lost and how
this condition plays with Christian mythology. In his earlier novels, Achebe
used myths as part of his narrative strategy to assert the sociological and
ideological identities of the Igbos in the heart of Igbo land, and the use of
myths formed the central ingredient of the narrative politics. In Anthills,
myths are more used as a sub-text so the characters do not negotiate with
the myths directly; they are more a subterranean force that comments on the
ideological positions of the characters in the novel. The reason is quite
obvious. The Igbos in Igbo land were the recipients of an age-old tradition
of using myth as the very governing principle of their existence, their
ontological selves. Once they are out of that space and in the big metropolis,
life becomes more pluralistic, syncretic (because of the usual cosmopolitan
nature of cities and their exposure to Western ideologies through
mainstream media) and complex, thereby erasing the mythical base from
the thought processes of the characters. This does not mean, however, that
Achebe has lost his faith in the old world values; it is simply that he has to
negotiate his art with a different reality in Anthills, especially when he is
talking of an autocratic military regime in Nigeria in the postcolonial era
and the subsequent loss of freedom of speech and expression. History then
is a crucial factor in the novel, and myths enhance the mythical character of
history as an ideological construct. Talking of representation of history
through language, Niall Lucy states in the essay ‘The Death of History’
For language to have meaning, culture has to have value and history has to
matter. If the real truth, however, is that history is the lie by which culture
disguises the fact of its naturally savage interests and practices in the name
of human progress and welfare, then it cannot be possible to have faith in
the power of plain language to convey plain truth. (Lucy, 49)

Hence ‘plain language’ is problematized by Achebe by sub-textually using

Christian mythology to use language as a tool to express the anguish of the
next generation of Nigerians. Interestingly, Achebe uses Christian rather
than Igbo mythology here because in the postcolonial era, Christianity
dominates the traditional religions or beliefs, and hence the relevance.

Kangan is the fictitious space used in the novel as the site of struggle
between the military regime and the intellectuals like Chris and Ikem.
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 123

Within that space is Chris, who is the ‘accused’ in the court presided over
by His Excellency, the military dictator whose relationship with Chris
started during the military coup and is steadily growing sour. Let us look at
the description of the dictator’s room, and the sycophants surrounding him.
He gets up abruptly. So abruptly that the noise we make scrambling to our
feet would have befitted a knee-sore congregation rising rowdily from the
prayers of a garrulous priest. (Anthills, 7)

Christian tradition in its non-Hebraic form is the point of attack here, and
the ‘knee-sore’ congregation seems to be a shadow of the Puritan fathers
who once ventured into Africa to ‘spread’ enlightenment and civilisation.
The room seems to be a mockery of a fake paradise that His Excellency has
constructed and would like the others to believe in, and the undertone of
satire is all too evident in the description of Professor Okong, one of the
members of the Cabinet of His Excellency, who has a “deep pulpit voice”
and talks about the ‘theological’ difference between the Commissioner of
Works and the Commissioner for Words, but is faced by an immediate
rebuttal from the Commissioner for Education as he asks Okong to not to
spoil the party (Anthills, 8). Christianity as a worldview is not the issue;
rather it is the people who misuse religious property through coup de état
and patriarchal dictatorships who are attacked by Achebe. Hence, the use of
biblical references as a sub-text is used as a strategy to comment on the
political autocracy that runs Kangan and create moments of humour and
satire that help the author criticize the problematization of history caused by
dictatorial rule. Christianity is not the result of the confluence of the two
testaments in Anthills but more of a cultural signifier in the novel, and where
the faith in one’s belief meets the proud declamations of the other and
between the space of hope and utter despair lie the epistemological
compromise of a new dawn for the people in Abazon. The constant
mechanical hum of the air conditioners is a grim reminder of the hell-like
ambience in His Excellency’s domain as it comments on the disordered
ambit of politics in Kangan. Such is the level of autocracy that His
Excellency does not allow any news of the peasant rebellion to leak into the
media – he does not want the empowerment of the common people through
information. What he really wants is absolute power, and hence His
Excellency admonishes Okong because he warns that Chris and Ikem can
cause trouble in the designed paradise of His Excellency. The dictator does
not entertain him because he wants to preserve the illusion that he is in
complete control and does not want his commissioner to hob nob with rebel
intellectuals. Okong feels disgraced by the treatment and blurts out, “I am
124 Chapter Three

in disgrace… God, I am in disgrace. What did I do wrong?” (Anthills, 20).

One cannot but help to draw a parallel to Psalm 34:17-20.

When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all
their troubles. The Lord is near to the broken-hearted and saves the crushed
in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him
out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.

This extract creates the mood of despair that is the dominant emotion in the
text; the Lord needs to arrive in order to ‘crush’ the sins being committed in
the legacy of His Excellency, who not only seems politically unmovable but
also a permanent member of the Nigerian power hierarchy, presiding over
every corruption and lust for power. The self-interrogation of Okong is a
mockery of the situation – His Excellency is the pseudo-god who rules over
his domain without taking care to first tend to the despair of the ‘righteous’,
as the Psalmist promises. The pseudo-god causes despair and hence the man
who began his career as an American evangelist and had attracted the
attention of the American Baptist missionaries from Ohio faces political
repression in Kangan because he had “no sense of political morality”
(Anthills, 10). Morality seems to have taken an altogether new meaning
under His Excellency, very different from the traditional morality a Baptist
like Okong believes in.

The very concept of destiny has been paraphrased under the autocratic
regime of His Excellency, where he himself becomes the progenitor of
destiny. It is a way of ruling, as the Attorney-General finds out when he
learns that he must address the ruler as “Man of Destiny”– not only does the
nation’s destiny rest on the whims of His Excellency but also the personal
history of the Attorney-General. The dictator wants to project himself as the
champion of self-made philosophy in order to win the support of the
common people, and this has a socialist pitch because it is wrought with an
ideology (if at all) of political absolutism. Hence, the Attorney-General’s
devotion finds a concocted parallel, with himself as Jesus and His
Excellency as the Lord, facing the “same trouble” from the people. His
Excellency was born in a goat-shed and as leader, he is directing the
Kanganians to the ‘promised land’ (Arrow, 23). Achebe’s sub-textual
narrative of Christian mythology is wrought with humour, sarcasm and
attacks on the military regimes in Nigeria through the 1960s. Simon Gikandi
observes that the novel represents the “political and cultural crisis that
marks the transition from the colonial system to a postcolonial situation”
(Gikandi, 1991:18). The issue then is why Achebe uses the sub-text of
Christian mythology at all. As we have already seen, the use of sub-textual
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 125

references gives the author a potent weapon by camouflaging his

controversial opinions in the more direct references or statements he makes.
After the Biafran war, Achebe became a political refugee to escape
execution by the military regimes of Nigeria. Speaking in 1968, Achebe
comments, “I find the Nigerian situation untenable. If I had been a Nigerian,
I think I would have been in the same situation as Wole Soyinka is – in
prison” (quoted in Ezenwa-Ohaeto, p.137). Achebe may have taken
recourse to the sub-textual use of mythology to camouflage his critique of
the autocratic military regime in order to escape political censorship. From
an aesthetic point of view, the use of Christian mythology in the novel
illustrates the change of worldview and reality from the earlier novels like
Arrow of God. Igbo myths are no longer the governing principles of the
society, for that matter no myths are. Now they are a narrative tool used to
comment on the ideological apparatus of the novel rather than a potent
reality for the characters. In such a situation, the ritualistic order of
Christianity is not the narrative focus that Achebe is looking for; rather, he
is keener to delineate the postmodern condition of a faithless society
grappling with political instability and social paranoia. The syncretic culture
of the postmodern Kangan is brought to the forefront when Elewa’s uncle
performs the ritual of breaking the kola-nut during the naming ceremony of
Ikem’s daughter. Achebe writes that once the nut is broken, Elewa’s uncle
shows his sacrifice to the Almighty. This intermixing of cultures happened
in the postcolonial postmodern era of Kangan, where various cultures meet
at a single point. Christian ritualism is intertwined with the Igbo cultural
rites, giving rise to a cross-cultural phenomenon and the mythical base of
the bushland is substituted by a mixed system of faith. Christianity therefore
is not a dogma in contemporary Kangan nor is it a historicized version of
any strict codification; rather, it is a secularized form of religion that takes
recourse to various cultural formations in order to direct society in a more
tolerant direction. Unlike in Arrow of God, where the myths and the rituals
formed the very basis of the tribe’s ideology and their day-to-day existence,
here Christianity is more a discourse that lies outside the domains of
normativity and comments on the syncretic principles of the society. Hence,
Beatrice shows no qualms in saying that the followers of Allah and the
Christian priests can indeed shake their legs together (Arrow, 208) in a
moment of frenzied dance.

Benita Parry shows how Homi Bhabha’s debate on the hybridity of culture
in postcolonial identity “foregrounds the determinate constraints of
ideological construction, and those paradigms privileging the conscious
actor; it is also distinct from that other famous story of how history is made
by human subjects, but not under conditions of their own choosing” (Parry,
126 Chapter Three

9). Myths, by extension, are also products of historical development under

a specific temporal continuum and hence no human imagination can
essentialize the formative process in a unilinear mode of production. That
is, myths are not outside time or human knowledge nor are they
chronological as a mode of production, and so imagination cannot freely
interpolate myths as narratives that lie outside human comprehension. So,
the Igbo myths constantly fuse and coalesce with the text of Christian
mythology in order to represent the postcolonial condition of the colonized
imagination being appropriated by the ideology of the erstwhile colonizer.
When Chris goes to his native village, he notes the rather strange tendency
on the part of His Excellency to paint religious scriptures on the back of
buses. In one case, Chris sees the sign writer copying the Lord’s Prayer in a
flourish of adoration for the divine: For thine is the kingdom, the power and
the glory, for ever and ever, Amen! (Anthills, 201). It is a sarcastic comment
on His Excellency’s lust for power. He commands absolute control over
Abazon, as if he is the divine lord leading the people to a promised land
after the long struggle for independence. The rulers change, the power
structure remains intact. Chris notes the curious mix of the Christian with
the traditional scriptures in modern-day Abazon, where on one bus is written
in English All Saints Bus and Angel of Mercy, and at the same time in
indigenous Bassa, Ifeonyemetalu, which translates, according to Chris, as
“What a man commits” (Anthills, 202). An intellectual, Chris begins to
ponder the full implications of ifeonyemetalu. What really happens if a man
commits a nuisance? Does he return from the land of the dead? Or do others
take a revenge on him in the afterlife? Chris dismisses the “cryptic
scripture” as a “full-blooded heathen antiphony” that has no relevance in the
Christian domain, and suffering has an altogether different dimension in
Kangan (Anthills, 203). Christian indoctrination cannot explain the torture
of Chris, Ikem and Beatrice under His Excellency if they are on the right
side of morality, and nor is the Bassa scripture able to comment on the
modern plight of these people. So, from a cynic’s point of view, the
postmodern culture offers no solace in the religious or mythical narratives
of the traditional world as society lapses more and more into moral
confusion. As Benita Parry observes in the above section, history and, by
extension, myth formation are indeed products of human endeavour, but in
the postmodern experience, the experience of rituals is itself outside history.
The postcolonial experience is neither only a historical continuation of the
colonial ‘past’ nor is it only a part of the precolonial time – it is a negotiation
of both the temporal continuums, and, as a result, myth formation or
historical consciousness (it can also be designated as awareness of tradition
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 127

and the maintenance of it through the balance of the power relations) stands
in history as a process that is constantly narrativized.

Beatrice is also the recipient of the sub-textual reference to Christian

mythology. She is supposedly the genesis of Idemili, the ‘Pillar of Water’
and performs the ‘ritual of the woman’. It seems that there is an interesting
linking of Igbo myths and Christian ideology, and this becomes evident
when Chris and Ikem are discussing the various modalities of cross textual
experiences. Woman as a genetic product is always the recipient of some
kind of abomination that has caused the eternal plight of humankind and
Ikem mentions this gendered role that has been assigned to Woman in
mythical texts. In the Book of Genesis, “She caused Man to fall”. And in the
local Igbo myths, the myth maker states that once upon a time, Sky was very
close to Earth, but the woman cut a piece of Sky and put it in the soup, or in
a moment of indiscretion, she “wiped her kitchen’s hand on the Sky’s face”
(Anthills, 97). This angered Sky, causing it to move up along with the gods.
Ikem is extremely critical of such gendered construction of myth and states
that the New Testament, in a very refined manner, caused the agent of Man’s
eternal torment to be turned into the Mother of God, so that high up on the
pristine pedestal she can be kept away from the “practical decisions of
running the world” (Anthills, 98). Here, Ikem’s reading of mythology is
from a gendered perspective, even though one cannot be quite sure whether
the reading is validated by the traditional Igbo way of life. We are not
focusing on the Western way of life because that is not the cultural or
aesthetic concern of Achebe. But whatever representation of the bush life
we get from Achebe’s earlier novels, it is clear that within a dominant
patriarchal mode of functioning, society does give important space to
women; it is not designed exclusively for women but is a space where both
males and females form an important structure in taking important decisions
about the tribe and its actions. Ezinma in Things Fall Apart and Matefi in
Arrow of God are strong personalities and they command the action of the
novels, as well as the thought processes of the male protagonist, as we have
already discussed. Ikem perhaps reflects the typical neo-colonial mindset of
the urban youth who reads local reality in terms of Western texts and tries
to impose a foreign reading onto local issues, thinking that it is a modern
way of looking at things. Gayatri Spivak identifies this positionality of the
postcolonial subject as a tendency to “change something that one is obliged
to inhabit” (Spivak, 72). So, if Idemili is the exemplary goddess, then
Beatrice is “to bear witness” – in this case – “to the moral nature of authority
by wrapping around Power's rude waist a loincloth of peace and modesty”
(Anthills, 102). In any case, Beatrice is the symbol of divine purity and
idealism, as in Dante, and she functions as the saviour in a war-torn country.
128 Chapter Three

Beatrice is the descendant of the Idemili tradition, the goddess who came
down in the resplendent Pillar of Water, but is subject to the male gaze, as
is evident in the phallic imagery of the pillar of water rising “majestically
from the bowl the dark lake pushing itself upward and erect like the bole of
the father of iroko trees” (Anthills, 102). Idemili gets a shrine in the form of
the lake but the phallic image suggests that she must function within the
defined coordinates of the male world. The iroko tree is the tree of the
ancestors, and as far as ancestors are concerned, the patrilineal line is the
only focus of attention, and the metaphor reinstates the phallic domination
in the Igbo belief system. If Beatrice is the priestess, then she must preside
over her rituals within the intellectual domination of Chris and Ikem, but
she carves out her own space at the end of the novel. Beatrice is also the
recipient of the cult of Nature worship as a feminine principle, as the great
river Orimili had caused fertility to return to the desert lands. Nature in the
power hierarchy is at the topmost level which provides for the creative
principles, which in turn keep the power structure intact and hence the
reproductive function of the ‘feminine’ Nature becomes a crucial ipso facto
functionary of it. However, the duty must be functioned under constant male
surveillance and hence the dry stick rises from the centre of the lake amidst
the numerous shrine-houses around the lake of Idemili. A man who wishes
to preserve the powerful hierarchy of ozo must wait for Idemili’s blessings
as she will make him wait along with the daughter of the Almighty.
Interestingly, Achebe used the word Almighty for the first time in this novel,
and Michael J. C. Echeruo identifies the fact that it is related to the Igbo
godheads of Chukwu and Chineke. Chukwu is the supreme commander of
one’s chi and Chineke is translated as the ‘Chi who creates’, thus linking
him to the God of Genesis (Echeruo, 6). However, Idemili works as Chineke
here, as if she finds her devotee (who is a male) unworthy of carrying the
hierarchy of ozo, so “she simply sends death to smite him and save her
sacred hierarchy from contamination and scandal” (Anthills, 104). Beatrice
is the Idemili figure in the novel and it is to her that Chris and Ikem look up
to in order to protect the powerful hierarchy of their struggle for a free
Kangan. She protects her shrine through her impeccable acts of protecting
people at times of war, even though she loses Chris at a crucial juncture.

Beatrice’s witnessing act tells the audience about the appropriation of the
Africans by the British under the garb of Christianity. When she reminisces
about her story of the past, as a colonized subject, she recalls her school,
“the world of the Anglican Church compound”, the parsonages and the
catechist’s house (Arrow, 84). This explains the narrative strategy on the
part of Achebe to use Christian rather than Igbo mythology because the
“state apparatus”3 has appropriated the new generation to a new order of
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 129

reality and so Christian ritualism is much closer to Beatrice She is perhaps

not completely aware of Igbo ritualism because of her temporal and spatial
distance from the heartland of Igbo reality. The childish consciousness in
Beatrice is relived through her remembrance of a world cocooned in its own
space of innocence as she remembers her childhood games of playing with
sound and its capacity to replicate itself infinitely. She is the private
historian, a kind of modern prophetess who syncretizes the role of retelling
her visions of the past, which is one way to preserve myths – through
recording memory in written language. But this private myth recalls
Beatrice’s role working for a free and democratic Kangan, perhaps as a
binary to the “world inside a world inside a world” (Arrow, 85) formula of
her school premises. Beatrice’s quiet rectitude is a product of the fact that
she was a victim of gender marginalization from her childhood. Her mother
had desperately prayed for a boy, and when she gave birth to a girl, within
the domestic and the larger macrocosmic politics, she was subjected to
violence and dismissal because she was not good enough to give birth to a
male lineage; sometimes they “flogged our poor mother”, recalls Beatrice
(Arrow, 86). Myth had its own charm in the child’s mind, the world of
folktales often takes the form of an escapist reality in a young mind, and so
Beatrice wanted to be a sorceress so that she could curse her father to death.
What she disliked is her Christian name, given to her during her baptism;
what she resents more is her native name of Nwanyibuife, which means “a
female is also something” (Arrow of God, 87). Helene Cixous, confronting
the issue of gender stereotypification, observes
The distinction between masculine cultural behaviour and feminine cultural
behaviour [is important]… These questions are important clichés of our
time and hold everyone prisoner. Culturally the people whose
apprenticeship to bereavement has created a relationship to it which is open
and will allow for progress are women. This is because, culturally, women
have been taught how to lose, they’ve been sent to the school of losing.
(Cixous, 229)

Men are also subject to such cultural binaries – as we see, Obi and Ezeulu
were taught to not be fearful or vulnerable as it compromises the idea of
‘maleness’. Mythology and history are gendered in their perspective and so
Idemili, who is the powerful goddess of the Pillar of Water and the
progenitor of the initiation of a male lineage, is herself subjected to the
domination of the male, her father going to the extent of teaching her to sit
like a female. Beatrice was the chosen one according to Ikem, and she is no
match for “Agwu, the capricious god of diviners and artists” (Arrow of God,
105). Chris could also find the “quiet demure damsel” (ibid, 105) in her as
she is projected as the new hope in a torn country. It is through Beatrice that
130 Chapter Three

Chris arrives at an understanding of the power paradigm in Kangan, which

is not as simplistic as it appears. His Excellency is not the only threat to the
nation; the internal mindsets are as well. Unless Idemili meets the Woman,
the vision that is encapsulated in the expression of Ikem, the true vocation
of Kangan will not eventuate. Ikem points out the image of the Woman,
taking his cue from the New Testament, where Woman is the Mother of
Mankind. At the same time, the Woman must be integrated within the male
space for Kangan to get rid of the “political inactivity or apathy” (Arrow,
100) that Ikem and Chris discuss. Agwu is not the divinity that Beatrice is
looking for; she wants to be the Pillar of Water in the Idemilian space where
the Second Coming is matched with the promise of the Lord’s return every
time the Pillar of Water collapses. Idemili is the Woman of visionary
quality; she is the principle of reproduction and the Lord may help her in
her journey of spiritual sustenance. Beatrice is the new avatar in the Book
of Exiles as she remembers how the old man at the hotel recounted passages
that are inversions of the Book of Revelation. The old man at the Harmony
Hotel pronounces the ultimate reality of a struggle that tries and recounts
the past in terms of the balance sheet of what was intended and what was
achieved: “Struggling. Perhaps to no purpose except that those who come
after us will be able to say: True, our fathers were defeated but they tried”
(Anthills, 118). Idemili tries to regenerate a new sense of hope among the
Kanganians as His Excellency seems to have won the battle with Chris’s
and Ikem’s death. Free press is unthought of; independence from the
military regime seems an improbable luxury. After recovering from her loss
of Chris and Ikem, Beatrice takes up the responsibility to name Ikem’s child.
Esheruo believes that Beatrice’s immediate reference is the Book of Isaiah
In that day the remnant of Israel,
the survivors of the house of Jacob,
will no longer rely on him
that struck them down
but will truly rely on the Lord,
the Holy One of Israel.
A remnant will return, a remnant of Jacob
will return to the Mighty God. (Isa. 10: 20-21) (Esheruo, 11).

Beatrice actually names the child Amachaena, which means ‘may the path
never close’ and as the Old Man puts it, a new generation has finally arrived
that can bring a new spirit to the nation. It can be the progenitor of the
nation’s history, not in terms of recalling the past as a time forlorn nor as a
stereotyped notion of the past as a cultural signifier to assert identity. Rather
it is the generation that will bring a cognitive force into the consciousness
of history, of mythology and syncretize them to an awareness of a future
 'And we will keep the darker legend' 131

that is strongly grounded in the real action of the present. Revelation finally
arrives for Beatrice – she is the new-age Idemili.

Notes
1While talking about the origin of Eke, Oguibe argued (1997): “If the Eke is another
deity on par with Chi, what about the three deities after which Igbo days are named:
Orie, Afo, Nkwo? It is generally accepted that Eke is the day of creation.
Interestingly, ‘eke’ means ‘to create.’” Oguibe points out that Eke is a god in a sub-
ethnic Igbo tribe, and aru-mmo is a fatal disease that is the result of Eke’s wrath.
This is what Akuebue informs Ezeulu regarding the sickness of Ogbuefi Amalu.
Source:
<http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.kwenu.com/
afamefune/chukwu_names.htm&gws_rd=cr&ei=9WZDV4CZH4eo0ASxmbr4BQ
>. 15 May 2016.
2Jan Vansina cites this from P. Cender-Cudlip, Encyclopaedic Informants and Early
Inter-Lacustrine History. M.I. Finley in Myth, Memory and History says that oral
historians lack a sense of chronology in the construction of history. Ezeulu’s
construction of the past is also dependent on oral tales and traditions that do not
maintain any chronicity.
3 Lois Althusser in “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” uses the term
‘ideological state apparatus’ to designate how ideologies in capitalist societies are
propagated through the various institutions of the State, especially the education
system, and operate and create what is known as ‘ideology’, thereby creating
‘subjects’ of the power structures operational at the behest of the State.
4 Anthills stands for Anthills of Savannah.
 CHAPTER FOUR

'TYGER TYGER, BURNING BRIGHT'

Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide is one of the most significant examples
of a postmodern literary text that constructs myth as a cultural signifier and
dispenses with rigid identity formation, thereby creating a space of
dispersed cultural contours. The text is “Indian” in its inception of the local,
but the local is placed within the diasporic aspirations that are both within
India and outside it. Kanai comes to Sundarban from Delhi and Piya comes
to the southern delta region from the US as part of her research on Indo-
Gangetic dolphins. In a way, Ghosh deconstructs the myth of “returning to
your roots” and almost rejects it at the end since “roots” are something he
has a very problematic attitude to, like many other postmodern cultural
writers. Sundarban is one of the most marginalized spaces in the state of
West Bengal, being very low in the indices of education, health and general
civic infrastructures. According to the census report of 2011, the district of
South 24 Parganas has an average literacy rate of 77.51%. However, the
Sundarban region, at the southernmost tip of the district, is a group of islands
formed by the deposition of silt of the Ganga tributary system on the Indian
side and the Padma tributary system on the Bangladeshi side. The entire
group of islands is not uniformly stable; the islands closer to the mainland
are more ecologically stable and bigger whereas the islands on the
southernmost tip are smaller and face the wrath of the turbulent sea, cyclonic
storms and de-silting. This means that some of the southernmost islands,
like Garjontola, Sajnekhali and Satjelia, have unstable coastlines, being
constantly silted and de-silted by the number of tributaries that criss-cross
the islands. Sundarban therefore has a unique topographical location being
cocooned between the Bay of Bengal and the main landmass of West
Bengal. The tropical mangrove forests are inhabited by the Royal Bengal
Tiger and much of the region is protected under the Tiger Reserve, also
ratified by the UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The tiger cult in the
region is a socio-cultural product of the topographical and environmental
realities of the place since the people struggle with tigers for coexistence.
The myth of Bon Bibi, the ruling narrative in the region, tries to explain the
“spirit” of tigers in terms of human comprehension, and while reading the
myth as part of cultural politics, issues like class, gender and identity politics
 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright' 133

become evident. Amitav Ghosh’s narrative of the Bon Bibi myth is placed
in the larger context of diaspora, history and trauma in The Hungry Tide,
and as a postmodern author, Ghosh does not construct any essentialized
binary, which is often the case with many postcolonial writers. In that way,
Ghosh is a postmodern post-colonialist who looks at history not from the
perspective of any grand narrative but from the point of view of the
individual experiences of the characters. Ghosh interweaves multiple
strands in his narrative of the Sundarban region, which include the Bon Bibi
myth, the history of Morichjhapi, which has links with the Bon Bibi myth,
and Pia’s experiences of the ‘space’ of Sundarban with Fokir. Ghosh
experiments on the time-space continuum, thereby situating the myth in a
time unknown – Morichjhapi in the recent past, which is related to the
readers through Nirmal’s diary (which problematizes the very concept of
‘reading’ history, and in the way history borders on myth) and Pia’s
experiences of the ‘present’ placated in the time ‘past’.

The novel starts at the point where Pia, a part of the Indian Diaspora, or
specifically, Bengali Diaspora in America, comes to Sundarban to research
the Gangetic dolphins. Kanai, on the other hand, travels to Sundarban to
meet his aunt, who has asked him to come since his uncle Nirmal’s last wish
before his death was that his diary be handed over to Kanai. Pia and Kanai
have a chance meeting in Canning, and this meeting of two people from two
different cultures gives rise to the subsequent narratives of history, myth
and ethnicity. In the first chapter, Ghosh gives an account of Sundarban, or
the Bhatir Desh, in a format that seems distant and almost mythicized. The
act of reading becomes a political and cultural activism in the text since it
is the reading that reveals the meaning of Sundarban to Kanai, though the
process is significantly different for Pia. Kanai is the observer who
interprets Sundarban at the level of connotation rather than denotation as
Roland Barthes puts it.
Denotation is not the first meaning, but pretends to be so; under this illusion,
it is ultimately no more than the last of the connotations (the one which
seems both to establish and close the reading), the superior myth by which
the text pretends to return to the nature of language, to language as nature.
(Barthes, 1974: 09)

Language, being a political site, is semiological in its intent. By implication,

this means that language is discursive in its plane of action as well as in the
discerning of the socio-political context of linguistics. For Kanai,
Sundarban is a text that is discernible through the diary of his uncle Nirmal,
and the political history of Morichjhapi is textualized through the narrative
perspective of Kanai. History is deeply contested in the postmodern age,
134 Chapter Four

and we will come back to this point later. But Ghosh gives a mythical
account of Sundarban in the very first chapter of the novel. He reads an
account which states
In our legends it is said that Goddess Ganga’s descent from the heavens
would have split the earth had Lord Shiva not tamed her torrent by tying it
into his ash-smeared locks… there is a point at which the braid comes
undone; where Lord Shiva’s matted hair is washed apart into a vast, knotted
tangle. Once past that point the river throws off its bindings and separates
into hundreds, maybe thousands, of tangled strands. Until you behold it for
yourself, it is almost impossible to believe that here, interposed between the
sea and the plains of Bengal, lies an immense archipelago of islands. (The
Hungry Tide, 6)

Sundarban as a space is mythicized in this narrative description. The

description starts with the legend of Lord Shiva, thereby locating the text in
the oral narrative of Hindu Puranas. The structural patterns of a
folklore/legend are maintained through phrases like “it is said” and “until
you behold it” but the stylistics of a folklore narrative are problematized by
the presence of the here and now; that is, the “immense archipelago of
islands”, the Sundarban. In the novel there is a conglomeration of the time-
space continuum, where the ‘distant’ and the ‘now’, ‘myth’ and ‘history’,
and the ‘communal’ and the ‘individual’ meet. Ghosh does not tell us what
Kanai’s reading material is but it might be worth noting that some of the
oral literature, related to Hindu gods, goddesses and legends, were a part of
the Bottola literature of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Bengal. Historian
Gautam Bhadra notes in his book Nara Bottolay Jay Kobar? (How many
times does the shaved head visit a tree? – a deconstruction of a famous
Bengali proverb “Nera beltolay jay kobar?”, implying that mistakes are
unlikely to be committed twice) that the Bengali Bottola press was not a
press in the modern sense of the word. No literary production was carried
out in an organized way; nor does it imply any particular area. Bottola press
was a coming together of a vast number of presses in the regions of Chitpur,
Goranhata, Ahiritola, and Dorjipara – the quintessential northern part of the
city that was marked as a “black town” by the British administrators in
erstwhile Calcutta. Bottola gained prominence in the eighteenth century
when there was a syncretism of the Hindu legends, Muslim devotional texts,
popular culture, and ‘serious’ academic researchers and scholars. Gautam
Bhadra observes that Munshi Premchand Karim was a proponent of Bottola
culture but “colonized” intellectuals like Rajendralal Mitra found this market-
oriented intellectual exercise nothing short of crass and academically illicit.
Gautam Bhadra states:
 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright' 135

Unish shotoker dwitiyo ordhye, pal-parboner kāle, grāmer melay nityo

proyojoniyo drobyer kenabechā o dekhāsonar obhyaser modhye bottolar
chāpā boi bole ponyer ekta jayga chilo, ei byaboharik tothyei Jogeshchandra
biboronti nishtho, ruchi bichārer protorko tar onishto noy. Tār bibrititē
bottolar boi konokichur upomā noy, tulonā noy, nijei bishoy, upomeyo
hobār jogyo. (Bhadra, 204)

In the second half of the nineteenth century, village haat (weekly fairs) were
held where articles of daily use were sold. According to Jogeshchandra Ray,
books printed by the Bottola press were also on sale at the fairs and they had
a high saleability factor. Such books needed no comparison, they were a
group on their own and commanded an independent market in the
bookselling world (translated by the author).

The myth that Ghosh uses in his textual narrative, that is of Bon Bibi, is a
production of the Bottola press since the narrative is not an engagement with
any elite academic pursuit but a part of the local legend of South 24
Parganas; more specifically, Sundarban. The background to the press helps
us to realise that Sundarban was a site of popular culture, a place of
engagement with the masses. The neo-Enlightenment philosophy in
colonized Calcutta encouraged the intellectuals to treat knowledge as
“sacred”, thereby confining it within the elite classes, and any cultural
production involving the masses was not considered culture at all. The Bon
Bibi narrative was a part of a Hindu-Muslim syncretism of oral narrative,
thereby making the goddess and her opponent, Dakkhin Ray, sacred to both
the communities since without the blessing of the mother, no one can
venture out into the forest and fight the tigers. The Bon Bibi myth, along
with several other legendary tales like Satyapir, Manasā Mangal and
Lokkhir Pānchāli, was a cultural production of the Bottola press, thereby
reflecting the socio-economic base from which these literary productions
were constructed.

Before attempting a critical analysis of the text of The Hungry Tide and how
it interpellates myths in its narrative, it is necessary to know the tale of the
myth albeit it has different versions in different oral traditions, as is often
the case with oral literature. The text of the myth is found in Bottola books
like Roymangal and Bon Bibir Johuranama (Ghosh mentions this name in
his novel) though there are other small publications on the text of the myth.
Chandi Mangal, a very prominent medieval Bengali text, covers the
incidents too though the narrative focus is more on Dakkhin Ray since he is
a Hindu landlord. Later, poets like Krishnaram Das eulogized the heroic
endeavours of Dakkhin Ray, though he was chastised in Bon Bibir
Johuranama as a fierce antagonist of the mother goddess. The Roymangal
136 Chapter Four

Kabya says that in Baradaha lived Puspa Dutta, a trader who sent Ratan
Baulya to trade in cities beyond the seas. Ratan unknowingly cuts down a
tree in which Dakkhin Ray lived; he became furious and ordered his tigers
to kill everyone except Ratan and his son. By divine intervention, Ratan
sacrifices his son to please the god and gets everyone’s life back in return.
Next, Puspa Dutta himself travels upstream and hears a story from one of
the boatmen that the Bhati region, or Sundarban, was being contested by
two deities of two different faiths, Dakkhin Ray of the Hindus and Barkhan
Gaji of the Muslims. Ray was a native federal lord and Gaji was a Muslim
crusader. However, their fight risked the lives of millions and finally god
had to intervene – a dual personality of half Krishna and half Prophet (a
notable point to be analysed later) – who said that Gaji would control the
inlands whereas the Sundarban would remain with Ray. This is one part of
the narrative in short.

The other version of the tale is presented in Bon Bibir Johuranama, which
is the source material for Amitav Ghosh in the novel as far as the myth of
Bon Bibi is concerned. As in many other tales in different cultures,
Banabibi’s birth is a result of divine dispensation as a Fakir in Mecca,
Rahim, consulted the arch angel Gabriel to know why he had no offspring
and is informed that he cannot have any children with his present wife
Phulbibi and he has to choose Gulalbibi if he is to produce a male heir. By
divine instructions, Bon Bibi and her brother Shahjangali are born from the
womb of Gulalbibi. Phulbibi now returns to the scene, demanding that her
shotin or the co-wife must be driven out. Rahim takes Gulalbibi to a forest
and when she falls asleep, Rahim leaves, with a feeling of guilt. Gulalbibi
understands the trick, feels that it is impossible for her to rear two babies
simultaneously, and so leaves Bon Bibi behind and takes Shahjangali with
her. Meanwhile, Rahim returns to the forest, finds Gulalbibi, and asks her
to follow him, and in the process, they meet Bon Bibi. Bon Bibi asks
Shahjangali not to follow their parents since it is a divine instruction for the
two of them to go to athara Bhatir Desh, or the land of eighteen tides,
Sundarban, and assert their control over the land. She is warned by Bhangar
Shah that Dakkhin Ray is the ruling prince but still she encroaches on his
territory. Bon Bibi now invites the wrath of Dakkhin Ray but since she is a
“mere female”, therefore Ray’s mother, Narayani comes to fight her and is
defeated. The first part of the tale ends with Bon Bibi asserting her territorial
supremacy over Dakkhin Ray in Sundarban.

In the second part of Bon Bibir Johuranama, the scene of action transfers to
the here and now, with Dhona, a greedy merchant, going into the forest
without performing the necessary rituals to appease Dakkhin Ray, thereby
 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright' 137

his mission to acquire wealth fails. Soon he dreams of Dakkhin Ray, stating
that the god wants Dhona’s nephew, Dukhe, as a human sacrifice. Dhona
tricks Dukhe by sending him into the forest to fetch wood; in the meantime,
the party leaves, leaving Dukhe alone on the island. Bon Bibi appears and
restores life to the boy and orders Shahjangali to thrash Dakkhin Ray. He
follows the order and soon Gaji Saheb appears to effect a truce between the
warring parties. Gaji Saheb relates the story about the conflict between
Narayani and Bon Bibi, and soon Dakkhin Ray accepts the supremacy of
Bon Bibi and asks for forgiveness. So, the myth is finally established that
without the blessings of Bon Bibi, nobody is safe in the jungles as she is the
ultimate protective mother against the tigers of Dakkhin Ray.1

Ghosh entitles a chapter in the novel “The Glory of Bon Bibi”. In this
chapter, the writer narrates the legend of Bon Bibi not simply as a tale but
through the technique of visual representation. Kusum tells Kanai that a
troupe is arriving to stage the legend of Bon Bibi. What Kusum is referring
to is the folk theatre of Bengal, known as jatra. Jatra is typically a form of
theatre that borders on melodrama (however it is not regarded as overtly
loud, something that the word connotes in western culture, especially post-
Enlightenment) and commonly has legends and mythical tales as its subject
matter, often taken from the epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana, or, as
is the case here, from the local legends and tales. Jatra is a form of folk
culture that engages the rural masses in its production and its success
depends on the acclaim of the rural public. Balwant Gargi in Folk Theatre
of India observes
By the close of the eighteenth century, Bengal was completely under the
East India Company. The last ruler of Bengal, Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula, was
defeated in 1757. The British introduced permanent land settlements and a
new system of government. The rising gentry was prosperous. Riches
flowed, and with the new wealth came the desire for entertainment. The
gentry of Bengal invited the Jatra troupes for such festive occasions as the
Ratha Puja and Durga Puja celebrations… In the nineteenth century, the
Jatra repertoire swelled with love themes, erotic stories, mythological
heroes, historical romances, tales of legendary robbers, saints, social
reformers and champions of truth and justice, diluting its religious colour.
The Jatra became secular and more contemporary in character. As political
consciousness grew, Jatra writers gave political colouring to their palas.
Mythological stories, fights between Good and Evil, symbolized the Indian
masses and the British. The Devil was dressed in the tight trousers and black
jacket of the nineteenth century, and the Noble Prince wore the Indian dhoti.
(Gargi, web)
138 Chapter Four

What is important in Gargi’s critique is the fact that jatra pala, as it is

popularly known even today, is not only a folk culture that engages the
masses in participation with the stage space but it also changed its setting,
from the urban elite in the early nineteenth century to the rural folks in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With the rise of the urban elite
in nineteenth-century Bengal and a greater appropriation of European
Enlightenment and its urban centrism, jatras fell out of favour in Calcutta
and began to become popular among rural audiences, who saw it as a kind
of literary activism, plays that catered to their tastes without being
apologetic about their content or form. That is why when young Kanai had
visited his uncle Nirmal’s house in Lusibari in the past, his queries about
Bon Bibi’s myth had invited an immediate rejection from his uncle, who
claimed to be a self-professed communist. Nirmal had rejected such stories
as “false consciousness”, “imaginary miracles of gods and goddesses” and
“usual stuff” of tales that border on superstitions (THT, 101-102). Ironically,
Nirmal knows about the tales but he dismisses them as being “too long” and
asks Kanai to watch the performance instead. The question of how a
socialist dismisses arts that engage the masses remains, but what is more
significant is to critically examine the audience response of the jatra on Bon
Bibir Keramoti (the marvels of Bon Bibi); this defines the way culture
functions in the text, especially in relation to Fokir, who Pia sees in a parallel
narrative to that of Kanai’s. Kanai sees that the stage is rather simple, with
some bamboo sticks and a rather humble stage – a typical setting in rural
Bengal for a jatra performance. As a receiver of the text, Kanai has certain
conditioned responses to mythological tales but he is quite surprised to see
that instead of the usual setting of the heavens, the tale of the tiger goddess
starts in Arabia and certain Persian architectural designs were noted in the
stage backdrop. Ghosh uses the text of Bon Bibir Johuranama as the source
for depicting the plot of the play that Kanai watches. However, the point of
critique is that the entire text that Ghosh depicts has a syncretic value of
Hindu-Muslim cultural/religious confluence, which is significant in a
country where the two communities have often engaged in riots and hate
speech post partition. To understand this cultural milieu, one needs to
understand that Islam was introduced in Lower Bengal as a major force from
the thirteenth century onwards in the sense that the common masses began
to engage with the Islamic narrative from that time onwards. Eaton argues
that in Sundarban, Sufi saints were mainly regarded as charmers and
magicians that could cast a spell on the tigers and control them, and the
present-day Gunins (tiger charmers) use Arabic incantations to perhaps
reflect on their ancestral connections with Persia (Eaton, 1993: 209). In fact,
Eaton goes on to argue that on the cultural frontier, Indo- Turkish fault lines
 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright' 139

were created by the invasion of the Sufi saints as they proceeded with wet
rice cultivation, and with the spread of the agrarian community, many
people converted to Islam. Identity politics plays a major role in the rise of
the agrarian community in Lower Bengal, and with the rise of Islam from
the thirteenth century onwards, the cultural milieu of the 24 Parganas also
began to be influenced by Sufism. Annu Jalais observes
Many islanders maintain that, to be in accordance with the ‘ways of the
forest’, one has to respect certain basic ‘Islamic’ rules because the forest is
ultimately the realm of Islam. The forest is a domain of Islam because Bon
Bibi reclaimed it from the Hindu Brahmin and Zamindar Dokkhin Rai….
(Jalais, 152)

The symbolic association between the forest and Islam is represented in

Ghosh’s text through the character of Fokir. Before the start of the
performance, Kusum is aghast that Kanai has no idea about Bon Bibi and
asks: “Then whom do you call on when you’re afraid?” (THT, 101). Fear
therefore is apparently the ruling principle of the narrative of myth since by
the force of fear, people are brought to subservience. However, it would be
wrong to be presumptuous because, as Ghosh narrates in the case of Fokir
and Pia, the insider/outsider dialectic commands more prominence than
simply saying that the myth is nothing but a narrative of “superstitious” and
“unenlightened” people. A closer look at Ghosh’s text would reveal that the
apparent Hindu-Muslim divide implied in Bon Bibir Johuranama is
incorrect. The audience of the jatra consists of members from both
communities, and the Hindus do not object to Bon Bibi’s triumph over a
Hindu landlord since the narrative construction is such that it demonizes
Dakkhin Ray as bloodthirsty. However, what is more important to point out
is that the local people have to fight tigers on a daily basis; not only people
who go into the forest for their livelihood (especially the beehive collectors,
who need to go deep into the forest) but also the inhabitants who share their
territory with the tigers, and their topographical and ecological reality
prevents them from showing any sympathy for Dakkhin Ray even though
he may be a member of the Hindu community. It is noteworthy that the myth
functions on the plane of here and now, and the audience can participate in
the geographical locale of the play. The play mentions that Dukhe was left
behind on Kedokhali Island, which is indeed an island that is part of the
Tiger Reserve. Many deaths have been reported in the area since beehive
collectors often venture in under the cover of darkness to evade the forest
guards and thus fall prey to tigers. The cultural milieu of the performance
engages the topographical reality of the places so the audience can connect
140 Chapter Four

the action on stage with theirs, thereby creating a text of conjugation

between the mythical space and the temporal one.

The Hindu-Islam syncretism in the narrative of Bon Bibi is crucial to

understanding the way culture functions in Sundarban. Fokir emblematizes
its cultural psyche and being in the boat with Pia means that his cultural
representation works at the level of silence. Neither he nor Pia can
understand each other and, in the silence, both function as interpreters of the
other. This engagement with cultural syncretism also occurs with Kanai
when he reads Nirmal’s diary and finds that the strain of intermixing
religious narratives runs quite deep. Horen, who is Nirmal’s trusted aide,
recites, while they are coming back from Garjontola
Bismillah boliya mukhey dhorinu kalam/ paida korilo jinni tamam alam/
baro meherban uni Bandar upore/ tar chhani keba ache duniyar upore
[which Ghosh translates as “In Allah’s name, I begin to pronounce the Word/
Of the whole universe, He is the begetter, the Lord to all His disciples/ He
is full of mercy/ Above the created world, who is there but He”]. (THT, 246)

Nirmal writes that he did not expect Horen to come up with Arab
incantations since he is a Hindu and is expected to recite from Hindu
religious texts. Also, the incantations sound like those recited in Hindu
rituals, and when Nirmal opens the book, he finds that it is Bon Bibir
Keramoti, orthat Bon Bibir Johuranama (The marvels of Bon Bibi, or the
narrative of her glory) and the letters read from right to left, as in Persian or
Urdu script, though the language is Bengali and the rhythm is dwipodi
poyar, a popular medieval Bengali verse rhythm. The verse contains rhymed
couplets and the lines are divided into twelve lines with a caesura in the
middle. The reader can relate this to the theatrical performance Kanai sees
many years later, and what is striking are the oral content and the
performative variation of the same oral tradition, leading to diachronism.
Myths can be studied diachronically along with rituals on the synchronic
plane, and they can together construct the paradigm of a religious system.
Myths therefore need to be studied with the historical evolution of their
narratives in mind but rituals can be studied by locating them at a particular
point and how they are being performed in a society or community. Rituals
are the performative complement to myths, the latter being more
represented in textual forms. Myths are given a prominence in society
through the ritualistic base, and it is the performance of them that validates
myths in society. As the Marxist critic Antonio Gramsci states in Prison
Notebooks, the State constructs certain machinery that coerces the citizens
into a collective acceptance of ‘culture’, culture as defined by the State, and
imposes mechanics to generate consent among the ‘subjects’ in order to
 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright' 141

create cultural hegemony. Organic intellectuals generate meaning in the

larger intellect of the society and work to penetrate the hegemony of the
bourgeoisie to work for the working classes (Gramsci, web). Horen’s Arabic
incantations is a case in point for the organic intellectual because he recites
the prayer for the well-being of the labourers who go into the forest with
him not out of overt class activism but still political in intent as he seeks the
protection of the labouring class so they stay alive and are able to resist the
more powerful of the political class. Horen says later that fear is the ruling
principle of the forest and it is not wise to dismiss it as superstition or crass
unintellectual activity since, deep in the forest, the human subject is at the
complete mercy of larger objective forces that cannot be curbed by any
intellectual exercise. Ghosh’s construction of putting the objective over the
subjective is often problematic because by mystifying nature, he often falls
prey to the politics of stereotypification. Nirmal writes an account of the all-
pervading fear psychosis in his diary.
“Tell me, Saar, bhoi ta ter paisen? Do you feel the fear?”
“The fear?” I said. “What do you mean, Horen? Why should I be afraid?
Aren’t you with me?”
“Because it’s the fear that protects you, Saar; it’s what keeps you alive.
Without it the danger doubles.” (The Hungry Tide, 244)

What Ghosh engages is an ethical question, arising out of humanistic

principles: why should humanity penetrate spaces that are not theirs? This
is a problematic ethical question to pose because it creates spaces for ethical
hegemony and, in turn, subverts the geographical space into clearly defined
domains where every ‘being’ will have its own territory. Horen’s reply that
“it’s the fear that protects you” somewhat challenges the whole quest for
modernity, not in the ordinary urban/rural binary but in terms of myth
becoming a dominant narrative to construct human behaviour and
movement. The fear that Horen refers to is a historicized version of the tiger
cult where everyone is forced to admit that fear protects the people from
tigers, encouraging the human subject to denounce the objectivity of
knowledge. However, the other side of the argument is that fear is prudent
here since unprotected entry into the forest is dangerous and hence fear
cannot be read as dismissive of rationality. The discourse of the Bon Bibi
myth therefore raises the vital ethical question: Are human beings so weak
as to bow down to metaphysical entities? Interventionist ethical behaviour
succeeds, according to Said, only when there is an “anxious witnessing”
(Said, 2000: 11), which results in a hermeneutic relation between society
and the political subject, and failing in financial mobilization results in
melancholia and political exile. Terry Tomsky observes “this [Sundarban]
142 Chapter Four

subaltern space reveals that to be an ethically engaged cosmopolitan, one

must be sensitive to particularities and local conditions” (Tomsky, 55).
However, if this is true of Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, which in most
probability it is, then it can be argued that Ghosh is constructing a binary –
between the local and the global, between the subaltern and the
cosmopolitan – and thereby endangering his postmodern politics. There is
a danger in constructing such ethically binarized spaces; it often leads to
cultural bifurcation. However, as far as the mythical space is concerned,
Ghosh does point out that there is a problem with interpretation since the
cosmopolitans like Pia and Kanai, coming from their urbanized ethics, fail
to grasp the real implication of the Bon Bibi myth, something even Nirmal,
with his Leninist leanings, failed to do. Nirmal, however, tries to construct
a historicized reading of the text of Bon Bibi when he asks about the date of
composition of Bon Bibir Keramoti, and as is the usual belief, Horen replies
by stating it is “very, very old”. Mythical narratives are constructed in such
a manner that the temporal plane is often rendered irrelevant and the popular
cult is that it must have been created in a pre-historic era or in some glorious
past. This politics of representation ensures the aura associated with the
narrative of myth, and an atemporal presentation ensures that the mythical
narrative is declared a sacred text as opposed to the “profane” temporal
space. Yet, Nirmal considers himself a part of the rational school of
philosophy (classical Marxism celebrates intellect over oral narratives) and
points out that the first two lines of the myth read
There are those who travel with an atlas in hand while others use carriages
to wander the land. (THT, 247)

Nirmal writes that he suspects the legend must have been written around the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when the “new settlers” (ibid) were
moving into the tide country. These new settlers that Nirmal talks about are
the settler community that came as part of Hamilton’s project to upgrade the
area. To go into the history of Marichjhapi requires an analysis of the history
of settlement/resettlement in the Sundarban region, and it is necessary
because it influences the way myths are received and interpreted by the
locals. The three islands of Gosaba, Satjelia and Rangabelia were bought by
Daniel Hamilton between 1911 and 1915, and many people from Orissa,
Andhra Pradesh and the eastern part of Bengal (now Bangladesh) came and
settled in Sundarban when Hamilton leased out land to landless labourers
with the condition that they would not be able to re-sell their property.
However, Hamilton’s project is a case of development since he built public
properties like water tanks, schools, water distillation plants, dispensaries
and granaries, and through this a whole class of Indians that aspired to an
 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright' 143

empowered position was created. Hamilton established an administrative

set up that was both socialist and humanitarian in its ideal, a model of
cooperative society, and is one of the first experiments of its kind in India.
Annu Jalais notes that this gives a sense of history to the locals, especially
so because it is based on the lofty idealism of social equality and justice
(ibid, 42-43). However, social instability set in during the Partition of India,
when millions of Hindu refugees were dislocated and had to come to the
newly formed India. This influx of refugees continued until 1971 when
Bangladesh was created. There was still some space in Sundarban available
for relocating the refugees, and this is where trouble starts. The then
opposition party of Bengal, CPI(M), promised that if they defeated the
Congress government, they would relocate the refugees to a small island
called Marichjhapi (ibid). However, when CPI(M) did come to power after
the 1977 elections, the Left Front government made a U-turn and decided
that the settlers from Marichjhapi needed to be forcefully evacuated on the
grounds of ecological imbalance (under the Forest Acts), a population
spiralling out of control and the forceful acquisition of government
property. On January 1979, after three days of economic blockade, the
government began a cleansing operation, ordering the police to fire at the
villagers. The official death toll is 2 but private records suggest a death toll
that might be anywhere between 50 to 1000. Hence, the entire incident has
entered into a part of local folklore and there seems to be an aporia – a
deliberate forgetting of trauma that gives rise to a mythical representation
of the entire event.

The Hungry Tide looks at the Marichjhapi massacre from the prism of
history that is not entirely dependent on the State-validated documents or
on the anti-state propaganda but on the humanist vision that ultimately the
sufferers are the common people who get caught up between narratives and
counter-narratives of land rehabilitation. Before going into the details of
textual and inter-textual readings of Marichjhapi, one needs to look at the
myth–history continuum critically. On this continuum there is an
overlapping of narratives not only in content but also in structure. If myth
is a narrative that is difficult to locate on the temporal scale of ideas, then
the question arises of why history is located where it is when history itself
is a narrative of “atemporality”. On the temporal scale, there is an
association of dates with events, and events come with a subjective
narrativization. Niall Lucy, in his essay “The Death of History”, notes
For language to have meaning, culture has to have value and history has to
matter. If the real truth, however, is if history is the lie by which culture
disguises the fact of its naturally savage interests and practises in the name
144 Chapter Four

of human progress and welfare, then it cannot be possible to have faith in

the power of plain language to convey plain truth. (Lucy, 49)

The myth–history continuum functions on the plane of language, and if

language itself becomes a contested site, then multiple discourses meet and
generate meaning, resulting in a linguistic dissemination of reality. The
‘pastness’ of the Marichjhapi massacre opens the debate about how history
should be conceived at the level of perception and popular imagination. The
Marichjhapi massacre is part of a popular tale in the Sundarban region;
every family seems to have someone affected by the ‘history’. However,
this is not to suggest that the massacre did not happen or that the scale of
brutality was not as great as the people claim. We are only trying to suggest
that purely at the representative space, an event gets a mythic dimension
when facts are blended with fiction to form a complex arrangement,
resulting in the difficulty of untying fact from fiction. When this researcher
visited Sundarban in late 2012, he came across many locals in the Pakhiralay
area who were pained by the Marichjhapi massacre. In 2011, the All India
Trinamool Congress-led government took over the reins of West Bengal
after 34 years of uninterrupted Left Front rule. This seems to have removed
the fear of the Left Front, and many locals now talk about the top politicians
in 1977 and 1978 involved in the massacre, thereby making history a ‘tale’
of popular narrative. In fact, the Marichjhapi massacre was the climax of a
century of social unrest and mobilization. The East Bengal Namasudra
movement, which voiced the protest of the subalterns and wanted the
integration of the lower caste Hindus within the social mainstream and
political narrative, originated in the early twentieth century. However, post
partition, the Namasudras lost their political weight as they had become
minorities to the Hindu upper castes, and they began to stream down to
Sundarban from other parts of Bengal and Dandakaranya (the places marked
for them to settle) as a settler community, only to face forceful eviction,
leading to coercion, deaths and large-scale devastation. Nirmal, in his diary
entry, describes the Marichjhapi massacre to his audience, but in the
process, he also questions the legitimacy of the narrative of history
unfolding before his eyes. Nirmal notes in his diary that while Marichjhapi
was under siege, a number of intellectuals visited the place, like the novelist
Sunil Gangopadhyaya and the journalist Jyotirmay Datta. This is where, in
the postmodern sphere, Ghosh blends fiction with facts. However, even
‘facts’ need to be held up to public scrutiny since Ghosh does not specify
through Nirmal what the stance of the Calcutta-based intelligentsia is as
they are presented as a mere presence in the larger tale of Marichjhapi. This
is where the myth–history continuum merges into a common narrative of
shared experience. In the diary, Nirmal seems to express all his anguish in
 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright' 145

an emotive manner as he asks Fokir to “imagine” the first settlers in the

island creating the “foundations of the bãdh” and, on one fateful night,
everything being washed away by a storm surge (THT, 203). Behind the
lyrical appeal of the imagery, the reader is made aware of the tensions in the
settler community in Marichjhapi – the past becomes a mythical space
where history is depicted as the narrative of the “could have been”, which
is an essential component of tales.

Talking about language as a contested site of ideologies, Jacques Derrida

writes in Of Grammatology
Language itself is menaced in its very life, helpless, adrift in the threat of
limit- lessness, brought back to its own finitude at the very moment when
its limits seem to disappear, when it ceases to be self-assured, contained,
and guaranteed by the infinite signified which seemed to exceed it. (Derrida,
1976: 06)

Derrida therefore is of the opinion that the generation of meaning is

achieved by the convention or ‘nomos’ of language rather than the nature
or ‘physis’ of language. If this is the case, then meaning (in the case of the
receiver) becomes arbitrary and the relationship between signifier and
signified ‘floats’. In other words, there is a possibility of numerous
‘signifieds’ for a given signifier. In the post-structuralist view, meaning is
not only filled with slippages and discontinuities, it is also arbitrary. Amitav
Ghosh is a proponent of such a view of language in this novel. The
Marichjhapi massacre is looked at from different planes in the text because
even though the whole narrative of the incident is given through Nirmal’s
perspective, the act of reading problematizes the fact-based fabric of
traditional history. Nirmal’s diary is first read by Kanai, and through him
readers discern a history that is mythicized through legends, conflicting
reports of the history itself and local perceptions of that history. Nirmal
gives a mythical dimension not only to the Marichjhapi massacre. Even the
‘histories’ that led up to it are often described in an admixture of popular
belief and historical data. Paul Ricoeur, in Memory, History and Forgetting,
mentions that memory is not a passive entity, receiving and recording
images. Memory is a process of selection too and can be used selectively to
represent or suppress certain facts from the past, especially if trauma is
associated with those facts, leading to aporia. This selectivity of
remembering, we propose, gives rise to the mythical context of a certain
past. Ricoeur notes
Regardless of this genuinely formidable difficulty, it is more important for
our purpose to look to collective memory and to discover there the
146 Chapter Four

equivalent of the pathological situations with which psychoanalysis is

concerned. It is the bipolar constitution of personal and community identity
that, ultimately, justifies extending the Freudian analysis of mourning to the
traumatism of collective identity. We can speak not only in an analogical
sense but in terms of a direct analysis of collective traumatisms, of wounds
to collective memory. The notion of the lost object finds a direct application
in the “losses” that affect the power, territory, and population that constitute
the substance of a state. Mourning behaviours, from the expression of
affliction to complete reconciliation with the lost object, are directly
illustrated by the great funeral celebrations around which an entire people
are assembled. In this way we can say that such mourning behaviours
constitute a privileged example of the intersecting relations between private
and public expression. (Ricoeur, 78)

In the same section Nirmal conjectures about the origin of the Sundarban
settlement, he tells Horen that a huge tidal wave of twelve metres
(apparently caused by a cyclone) struck the area in 1970 (which is recent
past, since the Marichjhapi killings happened in 1977–1978), and there were
“people in Calcutta, Englishmen, who took measurements and recorded all
the details” (ibid). The wave is described by Nirmal as “monstrous”, so
much so that Nirmal says there are accounts that suggest the wave was about
to hit Calcutta when an earthquake hit the city and prevented the wave from
travelling upstream (though the city suffered major losses due to the quake).
Nirmal says there are few instances in the world of geology on the relationship
between earthquakes and tidal storms, and this was one of them. Nirmal also
adds certain fantastical tales, like a French ship that was blown ashore by
the storm with all the cargo intact while the English ships were smashed to
pieces, and a crocodile eating three men as it has been forced upstream by
the storm. At the end, Nirmal claims that that this is “a true story” and is
“recorded in documents stored in the British Museum, the very place where
Marx wrote Das Kapital” (ibid). Nirmal’s politics here is not to theorize on
the truth of the tales but to establish the cultural contours of the region
through them. Tales that form a part of the local narrative have often been
rejected as located outside the scope of reality, a legacy of Eurocentric
enlightenment to put written language over the spoken form of
communication.

Nirmal is trying to gauge the local contours through disseminating these

tales and find out what effect this has on Horen and Fokir. Though a self-
professed socialist, Nirmal often criticizes the urban-centric political
activity of the Leftists, who come from Kolkata to understand what
Marichjhapi is all about but go back without any concrete realization of the
political tussle because they do not have an understanding of the local lingo
 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright' 147

or cultural practises that ultimately define the spatiality of Marichjhapi. It is

Nirmal who teaches Fokir to internalize the silence of the Sundarban area –
a silence that is both epistemological and existential. Nirmal continuously
problematizes the binary between ‘home’ and ‘away’, as he makes clear in
his own poem
already know by instinct
we’re not comfortable at home
in our translated world. (THT, 206)

The settler community had already been silenced by the dominant political
forces of Calcutta, and with Marichjhapi the extermination of the pariah is
complete. Nilima, Nirmal’s wife, dismisses the revolutionary aspects of her
husband as “a dream world - a haze of poetry and fuzzy ideas” (THT, 214),
but this haziness heightens the mythical aspect of the political struggle.
Nirmal does not situate his struggle on any concrete political ideology,
despite being a left-leaning intellectual. He dismisses the idea of getting
bracketed into any particular system of thinking because he has the knack
of trying to understand Sundarban through its ‘language’. He dismisses the
Bon Bibi myth as superstitious but he does not disregard the social and
cultural ramifications that the myth has over the psyche of the local
population. Nilima has an important role to play in this whole
interconnection between myth, history and local legends. She is engaged in
a welfare scheme, involved in the running of a hospital in the locality, but
her ‘welfare’ attitude seems to block when it comes to the question of
Marichjhapi. She feels that her welfare work is something concrete and
Marichjhapi is nothing but political fanaticism that Nirmal works on every
day, hence Nilima’s repeated warning that he should stay away from
politics. Nilima, as a citizen of Sundarban, wants to construct herself as a
‘de-politicized’ subject. She needs money from the influential classes for
her hospital; she even travels to New Delhi to meet one of the ministers of
the Morarji Desai government. She wants to purge herself of any political
involvement and tries to stop Nirmal from getting involved in an anti-
government agitation, but the political narratives are so charged in the
moment that she cannot stop Nirmal from becoming a political subject in
the situation. Talking about a socialist intellectual generating meaning in
contemporary history, F. A Hayek observes
The "climate of opinion" of any period is thus essentially a set of very
general preconceptions by which the intellectual judges the importance of
new facts and opinions. These preconceptions are mainly applications to
what seem to him the most significant aspects of scientific achievements, a
148 Chapter Four

transfer to other fields of what has particularly impressed him in the work
of the specialists. (Hayek, web)

Hayek is quoted here to understand the general perception of the local

population regarding Marichjhapi as delineated in the novel. We have
already seen in the earlier chapters on Achebe that myths and legends work
on the plane of perceptions which are often pre-conceived or structured
around the dialectical opposition between the physical and the metaphysical.
That is, myths often work within the politics of trying to relate what is
conceivable as empirical to what is understood as non-physical. The
Marichjhapi massacre is one such instance where the history is understood
in terms of the local mythical tales, especially pertaining to that of Bon Bibi.
This interjection of political affairs and religion is expressed through the
dilemma of Nirmal, who is requested by Horen to visit Garjontola for the
Bon Bibi Puja (THT, 222). The ritualistic order is interjected with political
undertones since Garjontola is not only where the forest deity resides but
also the epicentre of anti-government sentiment. Nirmal, however, presents
a unique case for being an atheist – he has lost faith not because he is a
staunch socialist or believes in anti-ritual ideologies but because he
experienced the trauma of Partition and so decided to not engage with any
religious narrative: “the horrors that religion had visited upon us at the time
of Partition” (ibid). Nirmal becomes a subject of interventionist politics as
partition trauma gets related to the narrative of religious intolerance and
henceforth the association becomes a case of personal aversion for an
intellectual like him. To Ghosh, lived experiences are of far more
consequence than textual analyses of a particular incident, though one may
argue that through the novels, he is indeed engaging in intellectual activism.
To quote Hayden White’s distinction between “a discourse that narrates”
and a “discourse that narrativizes”, Ghosh’s narrative politics can be
regarded as “a discourse that openly adopts a perspective that looks out on
the world and reports it”, as well as (though White puts the two in
opposition) “a discourse that feigns to make the world speak itself as a
story” (White, 1987: 2). The novel interrogates the traditional association of
history with facts and fiction with imagination. This is where myth
intervenes as a possible discourse that constructs history as part of its
narrative ideology. Amitav Ghosh’s training as an anthropologist tempers
his narrative politics with a sense of ethnographic reality that heightens the
mythical dimensions of his novel. However, to increase the ambit of the
argument, White’s binarization between two types of discourses seems to
encourage hegemony in the world of intellectual exercise since narration
and narrativization can work simultaneously, which can be discerned in this
novel. The mythical tales that Ghosh uses in his text do “feign” to be
 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright' 149

discourses that are self-referential and stylized, to use White. At the same
time, the Marichjhapi part of the novel is indeed a perspectivization of that
discourse through the narrative standpoint of Nirmal.

What comes out of this discussion is that in Ghosh there is a fusion of

perspectives and self-referentiality that helps the author look at history from
different angles – of tales, official documentations, local legends, and the
popular sentiments of the local population (in this regard, Ghosh’s research
in Sundarban as an anthropologist would have helped). Ghosh’s politics
look neither overtly self-stylized nor delve into overt commentary on
creating the illusion that ‘this should have happened’. Therefore, when
Nirmal associates the trauma of partition with his atheism, it becomes a
personal statement of trauma. At the same time, when he associates that
with his dilemma of whether to go to Garjontola or not for the Bon Bibi
festival, the ritual itself becomes a critical point on which the memory of
partition is associated. However, Nirmal soon reconsiders his decision since
he feels that as he is no longer a headmaster, he does not have the
responsibility to adhere to any belief system. This, of course, is a case of
self-denial as, being a “citizen”, Nirmal is always a political subject; it does
not matter whether he is a headmaster or not, he remains within the ambit
of ideological constructions. One therefore is perhaps led to the reading that
Nirmal’s disassociation from religion is entirely personal and his aversion
has more to do with his lived experiences of the partition than any other
ideological considerations. This is where Ghosh, as a postmodern
postcolonial writer, gives immense importance to the human subject rather
than resorting to political and ideological clichés. As an idealist in his
younger years, Nirmal had thought that “the tide country’s jungle was an
emptiness, a place where time stood still”, but his engagement with the
Marichjhapi movement has made him realise that “the wheel of time was
spinning too fast to be seen” (THT, 224). Time becomes a crucial factor in
the analysis of the myth–history continuum. The there-and-then or the here-
and-now formulaic disposition of “factual” history is problematized by
Ghosh in this text as the Marichjhapi massacre was rather hushed up, with
nobody knowing exactly what was happening. As a result, myth intervenes
in the political stratum, as Bon Bibi, who once defended Dukhe from the
attack of the tiger god Dakkhin Ray, is now seen as the defender against
human encroachers on Marichjhapi. The myth–history continuum therefore
works on both the temporal plane and the plane of timelessness in the sense
that the origin of events of the myth is unknown.

Another strain of narrative in the novel is that involving Piya and Fokir.
There is a very subtle reference to an attraction between the two, which may
150 Chapter Four

range from the erotic to the platonic, but Piya and Fokir represent the
coming together of two cultures. They do not understand each other’s
language but their communication works on the plane of gestures. Non-
linguistic communication is a part of the signifier-signified relationship
between two individuals who construct the signified according to their
cultural constructs, and the other perceives it from their cultural subjectivity,
thereby constructing another plane of signified. Piya, being a cetologist,
thinks that she understands the ecology of the region much better, but the
tide begins to turn when she finds herself alone with Fokir and she realises
that there is so much more to decipher in the cultural contour of a space than
just the ecological appreciation of that place. The gradient of understanding
cultures meanders along “lived experiences” that hugely differ from
theoretical assumptions of that place and this is what Piya understands in
her time in Sundarban. Piya is constantly exposed to a translated culture
because whatever communication that happens with Fokir is purely non-
verbal and she has her own language to understand the space of Sundarban,
which is often outside the accepted norms of deciphering the Other.
Nirmal’s “translated world” (ibid) finds its meaning in Piya’s reception of
Sundarban’s culture. Piya seems to be staunchly American in her cultural
moorings. She confesses that she almost expected to see forests from the
station itself, but she is not a fanciful colonial subject in trying to represent
everything of the Other as ‘savage’. The figure of Fokir adds a mythical
dimension to the novel, and this can be analysed by some understanding of
local cultural legends. Annu Jalais notes that the local enchanters of tigers,
the Fakirs and the Gunins, are paid reverential respect because the people
feel that they can actually control the domain of tigers. The fakir cult seems
to be the overriding religious force deemed by the lesser mortals to be the
answer to the overpowering divine forces of Dakkhin Ray, and they believe
that the fakirs can actually call upon Bon Bibi whenever catastrophe strikes.
Jalais quotes John Marshall, an Englishman who recorded the alliance
between Muslim holy men of the region and the tigers on 14 February 1670,
said,
Tis reported that every Thursday at night a Tiger comes out and salams to a
Fuckeers [faqirs] Tomb… (Jalais, 154)

Fokir’s characterization in the novel is done on the non-verbal scale, which

is the post-structuralist view on a decentred narrative of language. Fokir is
the representative of the cult of holy men deemed to be the mediators
between the metaphysical and the temporal world. Piya does not necessarily
consider him divine, nor does the reader, but the reader is made party to the
narrative of Fokir’s deep understanding of the mythico-cultural space of
 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright' 151

Sundarban that is non-verbal but more communicative than Kanai’s act of

reinventing history through Nirmal’s diary. Gumperz notes
Language should not be considered in terms of a reified structure. It should
be considered in terms of a series of intersubjective and reflexive processes,
actions, and strategies deployed by speakers and hearers. Interlocutors are
always involved in a negotiation wherein the assessment of one another’s
communications is at stake. (1982: 153)

Interlocution defines the politics of interpretation in the plane of the

receiver’s ‘language’. Piya interprets the cultural milieu of Sundarban
through the gestures and body language of Fokir, and the mystifying
understanding she gets of the space enlarges the scope of the mythical
dimensions of the novel. Fokir is the receiver of the tales that have come
down from the tide country as a generational asset, and he does not like
Piya’s intrusion into that cultural space as a cynic. The literary context is
provided by Piya’s overnight stay in Fokir’s boat. She wants to spend her
time in the open but Fokir asks her to move into a closed part of the boat,
pointing out the dangers that lurk in the darkness on the shores. Piya
considers it a “cumulative absurdity” because, being an outsider, she cannot
possibly conceive of any danger that might reach the middle of the river,
not even from the predatory carnivore so dreaded in the Bhatir Desh so “she
made her hands into claws, as if to mime a tiger” (THT, 98). There might be
a tendency to denounce the cultural and the ideological base of local
population as superstitious when one reads this piece. However, one needs
to recognise the topographical hazards when one lives in the midst of the
forest. As Sundarban is a large delta system, a large part of it is frequently
flooded by the daily high tides so places that apparently seem dry in one
part of the day are flooded by the rising waters due to the change of sea
currents. As a result, the tigers have adapted, and there are reports of tigers
have swimming all the way downstream to attack villages and kill people.
Fokir is well aware of these realities and he strongly protests against Piya’s
“sacrilege”, which amounts to challenging the absolute authority of Bon
Bibi in the region. Fokir “clamped his hands on her wrists, vehemently
shaking his head, as if to forbid her from making any reference to the
subject” (ibid). Fokir exercises his authorial custody over Piya by making
sure that the Bon Bibi myth is revered in order to protect the accepted
codifications of that myth. However, the ecological reality is such that it
produces a conducive environment for the politics of the tale to take over,
as is the case with most other myths, even in cross-cultural contexts. The
myth–ritual continuum is also significant in this context since the diachronic
structure of myths is often accompanied by the synchronic structure of
152 Chapter Four

rituals. Myths and rituals differ in their representation – whereas myths are
often literary (oral or written), rituals are external manifestations of the
textuality of myths. The ritual order helps to create the reverence that
surrounds oral chants, the stories of sin that were meted out to fictional
figures when they refused to comply with the rituals or the special status
given to persons deemed as mediators between mortals and the
metaphysical – in this case, the Fakirs and the Gunins. Fokir is the “subject”
or “recipient” of such tales, and as a “subject” he is part of the belief system
prevalent in the region. However, Piya is an outsider; though it cannot be
said that she is not a part of any belief system at all, she is not part of the
particular myth system people like Horen, Kusum and Fokir are a part of.
Hence, she does not appropriate the socio-cultural ethos of the place
instantly. Her prolonged stay in the boat with Fokir gradually leads to her
becoming a “subject” of the discourse of Bon Bibi and she eventually
becomes a part of the narrative. The entire duration of Piya’s stay in
Sundarban is a process of her being appropriated within the discursive
elements of the Bon Bibi myth.

The chapter titled “Garjontola” reflects on how a ritual works with respect
to a particular myth or tale. From the diary entries of Nirmal, the readers
already know that Garjontola was one of the settler colonies of refugees
coming in from East Pakistan and Dandakaranya. Again, the myth–history
continuum is constructed by Ghosh to reflect on the mythicization of the
past. Piya is informed by Fokir that the name of the place is indeed
Garjontola; a place replete with a history of settlement, State oppression and
the final evacuation, though Piya is not aware of this history. The reader
knows, however, and this gap gives rise to the irony of ‘silenced history’,
thereby increasing the scope of local tales dominating in the rendition of
that ‘history’ no one seems to have much idea about. This is made evident
by Piya’s conjecture that “this was the name of whatever settlement had
once stood there” (THT, 149). This idea of “whatever settlement” gathers
momentum to produce a remapping of the cultural cartography of
Sundarban in Piya through the translated/silenced version of Fokir’s culture.
Ghosh often uses poetic descriptions to underline the politics of the myth–
history continuum. The prosaic details of Marichjhapi are often interspersed
with Nirmal’s poetic philosophical interjections. Here also Nature is used
as a mystical embodiment of the mythical strata of the space as Piya looks
at the forests as a “distant silhouette”, and such is the predominance of the
green hue that “it seemed to trick the human gaze” (THT, 150). As Bo Stråth
notes, “Myth and memory are history in ceaseless transformation and
reconstruction” (Stråth, 2000:19), and Piya reconstructs history through the
mythical anecdotes that she gets from Fokir through body gestures and some
 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright' 153

rituals which have pre-fixed ‘meaning’ in her mind. Piya, brought up in the
so-called “liberal” ambience of the West, does not realise that cultural
mapping is multi-layered and multi-dimensional and cannot be simply
understood in terms of a prejudiced viewpoint. She, however, slowly
assimilates into Fokir’s mode of perception because she does not show
much rigidity as far as understanding foreign culture is concerned. Piya also
gathers information regarding the local space through Fokir’s prayer-like
gestures. Negotiating culture can be as difficult as negotiating the local
topography, and as Piya almost trips over in the wet mud, she perhaps
realises that the codifications of the foreign space need to be decoded with
the paradigm of the local culture in the frame context. For the first time in
the Garjontola chapter, Fokir takes Piya to the shores and she finds herself
in front of a puja-table. It is worth noting that the entire island of Garjontola
is empty; there is no human habitation in the vicinity after the Marichjhapi
massacre. Yet, in such “unmapped” spaces, one finds the relics of an old
oral tradition that define the cultural contours even in the “mapped” spaces.
Henri Lefebvre, in his text The Production of Space (1972), talks about the
duality between the theoretical “conceived space” and the non-theoretical
“perceived space”, where the cultural space is constructed by the mixture of
popular action and the perceived imagination of that culture. Yet Lefebvre
goes into a critique of a binary system of thought and theorizes about a third
space (cultural and not epistemological as in the case of Homi Bhabha),
which he calls the “lived space”. This lived space is often figured by the
conjunction of arts and literature as practitioners of the socio-cultural
denominator. It is the third space that creates an epistemological
compromise between the theoretical and non-theoretical aspects of culture
(Lefebvre, web). Piya, who is an “alien” to the cultural narratives of
Sundarban, discerns the local aspects of culture through the Lefebvrian
“lived space” – her intimacy with the region helps her read into the local
culture in her own way.

This is where Amitav Ghosh becomes postcolonial and postmodern. Very

often, a postcolonial artist has the political agenda of authorizing the identity
of nativity. Without going into the politics of decolonizing the mind, one
can assert that in Ghosh, there is a clear narrative impulse to stay away from
the politics of locating culture at one particular point. The historical aspects
are not used as determinants, nor is the Bon Bibi myth used as a ploy to
glorify the local culture. He does not indulge in hegemony or the counter of
it. He rather shows culture in its multi-dimensional functionality. Culture in
Ghosh is ever transient and fluid; no one seems to have the last word on it
and no one attempts to define the exact parameters of cultural paradigms.
Piya comes closer to her lived experiences when she encounters Fokir
154 Chapter Four

chanting a prayer, perhaps to Bon Bibi, which she does not understand due
to the language barrier, but on a lonely island she realises the paramount
importance Bon Bibi commands in the Bhatir Desh, the tide country. Piya
cannot recognise the figures of Bon Bibi and Dakkhin Ray but it is through
the pre-conceived constructions of ritualistic practises that she can associate
Fokir and Tultul’s action with some sort of worship. Rituals are born out of
the text of myths; it is the narrative of the myth that determines the ritual
practises. Often, popular books on the sacredness of gods or goddesses
contain directions on how to please them, what flowers or foods to offer and
on what day the puja must be performed. One aspect of such directive texts
is to define the ambit of the god’s influence and who are allowed to be a
part of that core area of “sacredness” because the narratives of rituals
heavily depend on a strict binarization of the population to define who are
“good” and who are the “reprobates”. In the case of Bon Bibi, the syncretism
of the two largest sects – Hinduism and Islam – is very prominent. So, rituals
which are a part of Hindu cult and those of the Islamic cult are often
included. Tushar K. Niyogi observes in his field work that Bon Bibi (who
is predominantly a Muslim deity) and Narayani (a predominantly Hindu
deity) are kept side by side, on the same platform of worship.
The Hindus take sincere interest in the hajat of Banabibi, etc. and the
Muslims do not show any apathy with respect to the puja of Narayani, etc.
Members of both these religious communities are mutually dependent.
(ibid, 24)

The syncretism, however, is not forced since the local population is

comprised of equal members from both the communities. According to the
2001 census report, 33.24% of the population in the South 24 Parganas is
Muslim. The syncretism is not the result of any concerted social effort but
more of a cultural coexistence. However, in the case of Fokir, the religious
order hardly matters since his existence is outside the socio-cultural praxis
of mainland. Fokir is hardly seen within the mainstream social narrative in
the text. He is projected as almost an ideal figure, whose subject position is
defined not by the usual social norms but by spaces that are yet to be mapped
by society. Fokir emblematizes the problematic ritualism associated with
the worship of Bon Bibi when Piya can hear him chanting the word Allah,
but a Muslim is not expected to worship an idol and that also from the
“mother cult”. In that way he is a Hindu, but it seems he is neither of the
two if religious normativity is kept in mind while analysing the rituals of
both religious orders. Piya takes it as a “strange little ritual” (THT, 152)
since her thought process is conditioned by the normative binaries that she
has learnt about the communities from outside. Piya’s American sensibilities
 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright' 155

do not allow her to perceive the local dialect of the Bon Bibi myth which
syncretizes the narrative of both Hindus and Muslims since the forest offers
no such binarization in reality. In any community, narratives are bound to
flow and mix in the course of history, especially when communities begin
to interact at various levels of culture and economic activities, but what is
critical is to understand how syncretism works keeping in mind the politics
of power relations. Since in the Sundarban region a settler community was
evicted, the power hierarchy is tilted towards that part of the community
which was not evicted or escaped eviction. Fokir is a part of this population
and through his silence, he almost narrates the “silenced history” of the
Marichjhapi massacre. His rituals represent a population that has no other
option but accept the modes of living in the region. However, the other side
of the story is that in a hostile environment like the forest, rituals become a
projection of a reality marked by a sense of fear and inevitability. These are
problematic words to use since they construct a space of the sacred as
opposed to the profane, the fear that exists for the sacrilegious people who
fail to observe the purity of divinity. However, in the specific case of the
Sundarbans, the fear is more ontologically based on the topography. The
fear of the tiger is real but the ritual of Bon Bibi does, to a certain extent,
create the cult of the sacred by constructing the ambit of her influence, and
thereby making the tiger into a cult figure that is to be dreaded and revered.
The social and ecological relationships suggest a hierarchized notion of the
man-tiger relationship in the forests since the tiger seems to rule the psyche
of the people, including Fokir, and that fear is translated into cult figures,
ritual worship and certain prohibitions on words like “tiger” and non-verbal
actions like mimicking a tiger to preserve the sanctity surrounding the
animal.

The fabric of the myth that Ghosh uses is more contextual than formalist in
approach. Formalist approaches to myth criticism often try and discern
certain “patterns” that emerge out of a group of myths and then analyse them
in terms of structural similarities or otherwise. The problem with such
formalist notions of criticism is that whereas language can operate at an a
priori set of oppositions, myths are part of a language associated with social
narratives and not just with sounds or verbal qualities. Ghosh’s approach is
therefore to find out the contexts within which a myth function. However,
it might so happen that at times the context becomes a metaphor for the tale
itself, working as a justification behind the presence of such tales, and in
such circumstances, there may be traces of essentialization in that
justification. When Piya is told that she should never mimic the actions of a
tiger let alone mention one, there seems to be a touch of cultural arrogance
in the narrative, where Fokir is highlighted as the cultural signifier of the
156 Chapter Four

space with Piya as the “outsider”, but this arrogance is productive in terms
of protecting Piya from the tiger. At the same time, Ghosh does not go on
to castigate Piya for her lack of understanding of local rituals; it is only
natural that rituals are unchartered spaces for her. Yet, Piya’s induction into
the larger episteme of Sundarban at the end of the text seems to relegate the
importance of the presence of multiple narratives on various social strata.
The history of displacement is largely kept hidden from Piya. The readers
are made aware of it through Kanai and Nirmal’s interaction through the
diary but Piya is not aware of the history that Fokir is part of – her images
of the place are more or less constructed by her silent communication with
Fokir.

An interesting example related to the interface between fact and fiction is in

Nirmal’s diary entry of a particular day where he connects the remoteness
of myths and geology. He finds the mythical heroes/gods “immense” and
geology measuring the “titanic stirrings” of the earth “both equally
otherworldly, equally remote from us” (THT, 180). Nirmal’s vision of
history and myth is often recorded through the signifiers of politics of
constructing the past as a body of knowledge inducted within the culture of
association. Culture of association means a particular narrative strategy by
which the various segments of myth, history and other narrative forms are
brought together so that the myth forms part of the novelist’s vision of
reality being projected in the novel. Often, myths can be denigrated as
elements used to portray the lack of “culture” in a civilisation, as is found
in the various Eurocentric travelogues describing the Other.2 However, in
the novel, Amitav Ghosh disassociates himself from any debate on whether
there is any rational justification behind the tales, or whether the tales are
relevant entirely on the thesis that they are cultural signifiers. What Ghosh
is more interested in is scanning the perspective of each of the characters on
the myth. When Nirmal associates himself with the myth narratives, he does
so as a political subject of the state who is already fighting against
repression. To him, myths become a tool to assert the political independence
of the citizens as a strategy of countering the dominant discourses on
history. An accidental visit to Morichjhapi (a storm forced Horen to anchor
on the island) changes Nirmal’s political perspective. Nirmal was always a
Left sympathiser but he had never thought that the history of the locality is
much more important than global conflicts since a citizen’s political
subjectivity is constructed by the narratives of history prevalent in the
locality. Frank Kermode wrote in the mid-sixties that “Somebody should
write the history of the word ‘modern’” which implies “a serious
relationship with the past… that requires criticism and radical re-imagining”
(Kermode, 27). Nirmal, being a political subject of the State, constantly re-
 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright' 157

interprets history not in the Marxist sense of the word by looking at history
from below but by remapping the contours of history through a fertile
imagination of associations. In the Kermodian fashion, he critiques the past
as a re-alignment of discourses so that the discursive parts are refashioned
in a new form. Myths to him are not simple cultural signifiers, nor are they
just passing remarks. Nirmal uses myths as a political strategy to remap a
new future for the proletariat in Morichjhapi, which is not, strictly speaking,
Marxist. He is able to extricate himself from the tyranny of any
historical/ideological narrative but he does not live long enough for the
readers to see whether he himself proposes the tyranny of a “counter-
narrative”. He imagines in his diary that he would be teaching his students
in Morichjhapi (thereby refashioning the ideological state apparatuses.
Lenin had talked of the need to restructure the education system to challenge
the bourgeois ideological state apparatuses. The term ideological state
apparatus, or ISA, was, of course, coined by Louis Althusser) 3 and would
ask them the question: “What do our old myths have in common with
geology?” (ibid). We have talked of the culture of association; this question
is a case in point for our discussion. Geology and myth are apparently
completely antithetical but in Nirmal’s vision of society, these two bodies
of knowledge are complementary because both work on massive scales of
time. In myths, there are always yugas, which is a Sanskrit word for epochs,
and in geology the time scale is also huge – the past is way beyond the
human computation of time. So, Nirmal hints at the story of the river Ganges
being the mythical incarnation of Saraswati, which is supposed to be an
underground river , and if that is added to the total length of Ganga, then it
becomes a river to rival Nile or Yangtse Kiang. In geology there is also a
mention of a hidden riverbed. Hamilton established a cooperative society in
the tide country without falling prey to colonial sensibilities; Bon Bibi
brought the domain of the forest under her control from the dictates of
Dakkhin Ray, the ruling landlord. Similarly, Nirmal dreams of making a
society that will be free of oppression without using a communist agenda or
any other ideological/praxial model. Nirmal invokes the mythical time when
India was a landmass attached to Australia and was completely frozen, and
then it collided with the Asian landmass at some point of geological history
and became what it is today. Political fraternity might exercise oppression
today but Nirmal hopes to change the political history from the perspective
of a local man. His political affiliations and ambitions are very local, not
that he is unaware of the global politics but Morichjhapi taught him that
without an appreciation of local culture and topography, any dream of
radical change is bound to remain utopian and divorced from the political
subjectivity of the local citizens. Myths help to understand the predominant
158 Chapter Four

mode of thinking in Sundarban and that helps him to appreciate the local
aspirations. Myth making then becomes a process of constructing the
political identity of the citizen vis-à-vis the State.

There is a narrative connection made between Fokir’s puja to Bon Bibi and
the history of the shrine that was being put up by Kusum’s father. Amitav
Ghosh’s is a non-interventionist politics as far as stating the cultural
contours of Sundarban is concerned. He does not summarily dismiss the
myth as “raw”, as opposed to “cooked”,4 but nor does he uncritically accept
it as an unquestionable narrative for mapping the cultural space. In Nirmal’s
diary, an incident is related when Kusum, Horen and Nirmal are going to
Marichjhapi to pay their respects to Bon Bibi. Nirmal is, of course, the
sceptic in the party, but through his gaze the narrator tries to discern the
problematic relationship that society often has with such tales. Kusum
acknowledges the academic gap that exists between her and Nirmal, the
latter being the representative of the so-called urban metropolitan elite, who
is expected to laugh at the tales of the tiger goddess. Kusum relates how her
father was in danger after encountering the “unnameable one” (THT, 233),
but after falling unconscious with terror has a vision of Bon Bibi. The
“divine” words that she says are worth looking at. In Kusum’s version of
the tale, the tiger goddess says:
Fool! Don’t be afraid; believe in me. This place you’ve come to, I value it
as my own; if you’re good at heart, here you’ll never be alone. (THT, 234)

In every story of faith, the necessity of being an unquestioning subject of

divine authority seems to be a necessary precondition to the extent these
tales make an impact on the target audience. “Believe in me” is the claim
for absolute subjugation, and “this place” points to the spatial quality of
influence of the deity in question. The “if” of the argument lies in being
“good at heart”, which validates the presence of the deity only if the subject
allows himself or herself to become a part of the practice of faith. Kusum
believes in the text of the myth; she agrees that the messengers of Bon Bibi
(in this case the low tide, mangroves and deltas) saved her father, and hence
it was her father’s “sacred duty” to build a shrine in dedication to the
goddess (works as an ideological state apparatus to carry forward the
narrative of faith and hence maintain the status quo in society and its
structure). Nirmal calls himself an “unbelieving secularist” (ibid) and asks
whether he will be granted the “privilege” of seeing the messengers of Bon
Bibi, pointing out the obvious essentialist elements in the mythical tale of
Bon Bibi, which puts a precondition that unbelievers are not allowed to
intrude into her sacred space. However, Amitav Ghosh is not a
 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright' 159

unidimensional narrator of myths; he is more nuanced than many other

postcolonial or cultural readers of texts. Kusum tells Nirmal that a self-
professed atheist like him can also see the messengers of the goddess if he
is on the lookout. Suddenly, Nirmal hears a strange noise, as if someone is
blowing his nose, and sees a “little patch of black skin” (ibid) disappearing
into the water. Nirmal is astonished because he has never seen an aquatic
animal of this form in the region; it is not the usual “susuk” but a dolphin.
Kusum calls it “Bon Bibi’s messengers” and Nirmal accedes victory to her.
It is not as that Nirmal really believes in Kusum’s claim (though she is
convinced of the goddess's glory), but what he really understands is the
validity of myths in shaping the cultural mindset of the people in which the
myth functions. The “gaze” is to be relocated when one tries to discern the
real reason behind the validation of such tales in society. Kusum and Nirmal
represent the two extreme perspectives at the beginning of this chapter. At
the end of it, Nirmal has a more multi-layered realization of myths. Myths
need not be taken as the space of “believers” and excluded from the “non-
believers”, nor are they the simple narratives of culture; but, more
complexly, they denote the episteme of logic. Nirmal knows that the animal
is a dolphin, but in that particular temporal space, logic says that it is a
strange thing he has witnessed. Theoretical assumptions are not invalid but
in the real space of experience, myths often function on the basis of the
unknowable quality of a particular object (empirical or otherwise) at that
moment. Ghosh may be accused of practising narrative melodrama in giving
myths the significance of unknowability at a particular point of time, but in
a space like Sundarban where marginalization is not only cultural, social
and topographical but also psycho-cultural, psycho-social and psycho-
topographical, myths often do get created in a moment of ‘absence’ and this
is what makes his texts an exercise of pushing the limits of human belief –
much beyond the clichéd debate between the rational and the ‘savage’.

The myth–history continuum is furthered by the interests of Nirmal, which

both Piya and Kanai find odd. Throughout Nirmal’s diary, which is written
in Bengali and the narrator translates it for us through Kanai’s reading of it,
we see the inclusion of the poetry of the German poet Rilke, whose poems
are not quite based on Marxist philosophy. It is expected that a radical like
Nirmal should only read Marxist literature, but on the contrary, Nirmal
seems to be, in the words of Kanai, “possessed more by words than by
politics” (THT, 282). Words are not apolitical, language is an act of political
discourse, but what Kanai hints at is the fact that the philosophy in Rilke is
not entirely materialistic, at least whatever he gets to know of Rilke from
his uncle’s translation. Piya does find a binary opposition between
“Marxism and poetry” (ibid), which is a rather stereotyped assumption
160 Chapter Four

regarding Marxist aesthetics, especially social realism. Kanai also seems to

agree with her observation by stating that such contradictions were
prevalent among the left-wing activists of the time. Such stereotypification
is also a part of myth making; the politics of Othering often crosses cultural
boundaries, as is the case here. Piya’s American sensibilities, which are
founded on certain notions surrounding communism, constructs her idea
about the oddness of associating poetry with left-wing ideology. Francis
Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man in 1992 is worth a
mention here, especially the rebuttal of it by Derrida. According to
Fukuyama, western liberal democracy has won, especially since in 1990 the
USSR broke into pieces and Communism seemed to have reached a dead
end.5 However, Derrida rebuts this by saying
Instead of singing the advent of the ideal of liberal democracy and the
capitalist market in the euphoria of end of history, instead of celebrating the
‘end of all ideologies’ and the end of the great emancipatory discourses, let
us never neglect this obvious macroscopic fact, made up of innumerable
singular sites of suffering: no degree of progress allows one to ignore that
never before, in absolute figures, never have so many men, women, and
children been subjugated, starved, or exterminated on the Earth. (Derrida,
1994: 53)

Derrida’s rebuttal has certain problematic areas though. His use of the
phrase “emancipatory discourses” seems to be sentimental, even if one
stretches their imagination to the extent of believing that Marxists look for
“emancipating masses” from the clutches of the bourgeois. One can critique
Derrida by asking if the suffering he talks of is the end result of anything
and everything to do with capitalism. He seems to be sceptical of the models
of “progress” of the Enlightenment which often lead to capitalist
constructions, but otherwise his argument on rebutting the claim that
communism has no place in a dominant America-driven capitalism is valid.
The ideas surrounding left-wing ideologies seem to be part of Piya’s
intellectual upbringing as well, which is why she finds that Marxists should
always politicize aesthetics based on materialist assumptions. Ghosh’s
narrative, as we have seen before, does not quite support the politics of
essentialization, and here again, the act of subversion is evident in the
narrator’s undertone of critique at Piya’s words. We have brought Derrida
at this juncture because his concern with human suffering is echoed in the
novel as regards the Marichjhapi massacre. Kanai feels that Nirmal is a man
whose passion for a revolution is more expressed through poetry, the poems
that he reads of Rilke. Even while accepting that Nirmal suffered from
contradictions – the contradictions that are apparently there between poetry
and Marxism – Kanai does admit that understanding Nirmal is difficult
 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright' 161

because his ideology is based on multiple subversions at the level of the

political and the aesthetic. Nirmal’s world is based on myths of revolution
that may have trickled down as stories from the USSR, Cuba and other parts
of Latin America, but at the same time he projects his own vision of
revolution, keeping in mind the social reality of Sundarban. Bon Bibi’s
myth fails to make any impact, other than arousing derision and dismissal,
on Nirmal, but when he understands that myth functions not only at the level
of faith but also on the scale of social determinants, he realises that myths
can be used to mobilize political forces too – both ideologically and through
coercive politics. Revolutions cannot happen unless one understands the
social determinants of a particular space. The Bon Bibi myth is the social
determinant that forces Nirmal to come to terms with the local constructs of
culture. Being an intellectual, Nirmal is the subject of different ideologies
that frame his thought process, but the very act of “receiving” is problematic
since he is more prone to receive narratives that are part of activism that
takes place in urban centres, or in the mainstream dominant sections of
society. The irony is that Nirmal is working for the release of the
marginalized, the marginalized settler community in Marichjhapi, but his
ideological construct is influenced by the “centre” politics of ideology
making. The dreamy world of Rilke, which is full of translated worlds and
the city of Pain, finds a mythical echo in Bon Bibi’s texts that similarly talk
of pain transformed through the mystical powers of the tiger goddess, the
only difference being that the narration of faith differs.

The problem really arises when the myth experiences an interface with the
everyday reality of society. The tiger cult is so much of a practise in the
region that when a tiger really appears on the scene, there is widespread fear
not only of an attack by a carnivore, but also of an attack by Dakkhin Ray,
which seems to challenge the superiority of Bon Bibi every time such a
dreadful event occurs. The intrusion of a tiger in human space is a terrible
omen that needs to be dealt with through a physical counterattack as well as
through rituals to please the tiger goddess. Kanai and Piya visit a locality
where a tiger has entered and Piya can feel the atmosphere of dread and
insecurity among the people. While one can understand the obvious fear,
Piya can also understand the ritualistic dread (the fear is not only relegated
to the potential danger of a tiger attack but also as a result of the tiger cult
that shapes the collective mind space of the people there) that grips the
villagers, even after the tiger is trapped and blinded by a bamboo pole.
She was still absorbing this [the ambience of utter dread] when the tiger
gave voice, for the first time. Instantly, the people around the pen dropped
their staves and scattered, shielding their faces as if from the force of a
162 Chapter Four

detonation; the sound was so powerful that Piya could feel it through the
soles of her bare foot, as it echoed through the ground. (THT, 293)

The question of the insider-outsider dialectics crops up when the villagers

begin to torch the animal. Kanai tries to pull Piya away, saying that, after
all, the animal has been present in that place for a long time and they are
“outsiders” and should not participate in the cult ritual. Piya’s defiance,
saying “you can’t take revenge on an animal” (THT, 294), opens up a critical
debate as to who should have the last word on the “validity” of rituals/myths
– the insiders, living with the topographical and other realities, or the
outsider, who is an objective watcher of the social practises. Piya’s retort to
Kanai, calling him a “coward” and her subsequent stubbornness to “put a
stop to this”, is met with disdain from Kanai. The interesting facet here is
that both Kanai and Piya are “outsiders” to the narrative/practice of the tiger
cult ritual but their perspectives as “outsiders” are different. Kanai has seen
the transformation of his uncle in his diary so he knows it is better to trust
the “lived experiences” of the locals rather than go for any bravado, which
may be directed by narratives that may be irrelevant in the given cultural
coordinate. Piya does retort; she goes to the crowd, snatches one of the
spears and breaks it into two. She is almost overpowered by the anger of the
crowd until she is rescued by Fokir, and as she is pulled back, she can hear
the bloodlust of the crowd, shouting, “Maar! Maar! Kill! Kill!”

This whole incident is crucial to understanding how rituals work within the
narrative of this novel. The insider/outsider dialectic is present, which is an
obviation of any debate on cultural and social practises, but what is also
present is the expectations of the different characters as to how others should
react in the given circumstances. Kanai expects Piya to be more rational,
Piya expects Kanai, an urban, educated middle-class man, to show some
bravado, and she also expects that Fokir should not participate in the ritual
of bloodlust. This last expectation is perhaps driven by the fact that she may
be half in love with Fokir, or one should perhaps say, the idea of Fokir that
she has conjured up in her mind. Piya’s awareness of Fokir’s body during
her stay on his boat shows that she is sexually attracted to him, but, more
significantly, she perhaps constructs her own image of him, which is not the
Fokir that the others know. Her idealized construction of him is based on
her own cultural premises, and this leads her to believe that Fokir will not
participate in the ritual of killing the predator, which has no rational basis
when throughout the story he has shown that he is very much a participant
in the mythical narrative of Bon Bibi. The fact remains that in the Sundarban
region, more than being an animal, the meaning of a tiger is culturally
produced, and it is up to human cognition to understand and decipher the
 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright' 163

codes of meaning that underline the social narrative. Annu Jalais notes how
she was told that tigers have become more “arrogant” after the Morichjhapi
massacre and now see themselves as evicted beings, and hence they attack
the villages frequently (Jalais, 171). The tiger cult therefore ranges from
such mythicization of the past to anthropological observations that tigers
love the “sweet blood” of the humans. Such narratives are not backed by
proper historical or scientific research and hence take the form of myths,
thereby justifying the presence of the cult in the first place. Adrian Franklin
says that the “animal world” is a “historically constituted and morally
loaded field of meanings that derives from the human habit of extending
social logics, complexities and conflicts onto the natural world” (Franklin,
quoted in Jalais, 197). The cognitive field of meaning is therefore
transported from the human society to the imaginary society of the animal
world, and that gives a pattern of meaning to myths associated with animals.
Piya associates with the rituals actions that she feels are not “part” of human
society, but going by the questions of the self and the other, what she
perhaps fail to gauge is that being the other, she tries to import certain
meanings to the culture of the self when she is not the self at all. However,
there is also the possibility that Amitav Ghosh is trying to essentialize the
notion of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ too. Is the narrative pointing out a non-
conjunction of cultures by stating that Piya should not engage in narratives
that she does not fully understand the meanings of? Perhaps not, because at
the end of the text, Piya integrates herself within the other – she decides to
stay in Sundarban, partly because of her untold romantic feelings for Fokir
but also due to an epistemological compromise with the ‘language’ of
cognition. Kanai angrily says that more tigers live in a captive state in
America than in India, and one has to kill a tiger if it begins to kill humans.
Piya’s counter argument is both ecological and anthropological – in a
universe bereft of life, can we afford to kill the life on our planet? She is of
course referring to the ecological narrative of the “natural” struggle between
the hunter and the hunted, but both of them miss the cultural point. The tiger
cult is a human conception, the rituals associated with it are a product of
social narrative, and hence what happened the night before is neither
entirely an ecological disaster nor anthropological murder – it is more of a
ritualistic order that was expressed through the cognitive action of killing
the predator. The killing of animals is not prudent, especially when the tiger
has been declared an endangered species, but the ritualistic cult expresses
itself through such killings since humans are competing with the tigers for
territorial supremacy.

The last portions of The Hungry Tide achieve mythical dimensions through
the interface of Fokir and Kanai, which seems to represent the idea of
164 Chapter Four

Sundarban. The subalternity of Fokir has been a matter of concern for Kanai
since from Kanai’s metropolitan outlook, Fokir is the subaltern whose social
position is defined by his profession of boatman. As a spectral presence,
Nirmal’s diary awakens memories of repressed histories and narratives of
oppression that Kanai never knew about. Yet, one must bear in mind that
Nirmal himself was part of an internationalist socialism that practises
liberatory politics through urban-centric discourses. When Kanai reads the
diary, he understands the world of idealism, poetry and left-wing revolution
at work but his realization of the real mythical space of Sundarban comes
when he embarks on a journey to a lonely island with Fokir. The spatial
binary between the ‘real’ and the ‘imaginary’ or ‘mythical’ collapses on that
island, where the territory is unchartered by human history. In the diary
Nirmal noted how Horen had asked him about the spirit of fear that invades
every part of the tide country, and now Fokir asks Kanai, “Can you feel the
fear?” Fear seems to stem from unchartered territories where the tiger can
prey upon hapless human beings, and the tiger cult surrounding Bon Bibi
and Dakkhin Ray adds to the narrative of fear. The mangrove forest can put
a psychic pressure on the human subject to believe in the tiger cult since
unchartered space causes people to lose their grip on the narratives of
society, especially for someone like Kanai, who is an urban intellectual. The
question then is, is Ghosh stereotyping the Other? Is the Other a metonymic
version of the Dionysiac in Ghosh? Perhaps not. Fokir relates how Kusum,
his mother, told him many years back, “This was a place where you had to
learn not to be afraid” because in Garjontola, “Bon Bibi would show you
whatever you wanted to know” (THT, 323). So, in the unchartered human
space, myth becomes the agent of deciphering modes of cognition, and so
fear becomes an agent of knowledge since it leads to submission and then
to subsequent revelation. However, the submission that Ghosh talks of is
not entirely to faith or the topographical surroundings; it is also to the self.
When Horen and Fokir refer to the fear, they are not talking of the fear of
the unknown or ‘evil’; they are talking about the fear of uncharted spaces
and the danger of entering Dakkhin Ray’s territory without the blessings of
Bon Bibi. To Kanai, the forest is unmapped territory, though this is not the
case with Fokir, of course. When Fokir points out the fresh claw marks in
the mud, Kanai is afraid. Carissa Kelvens defines fear and anxiety from a
neuro-biological perspective.
According to the biological perspective, there are three basic conditions
which elicit anxiety: overstimulation, cognitive incongruity, and response
unavailability. Overstimulation refers to when a person is flooded with
information. Cognitive incongruity is when a person has difficulty
 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright' 165

reconciling with some event... Response unavailability refers to when a

person does not know how to handle a difficult situation. (Kelvens, web)

Kanai seems to be suffering from the third type, which is “response

unavailability”, because to be left alone on an island, which is outside the
normativity of accepted social ethos, with a person much “lower” than him
according to social and intellectual markers dislocates his self from the
centre of his consciousness. The inversion of social expectations and norms
drives Kanai out of his mind; he falls flat on his face in the mud only to get
up and hurl abuse at Fokir. He perhaps realises how deep his class snobbery
is but the world of myth and rituals catches up as soon as he forces Fokir to
leave the island in his boat. His “pride of caste; the townsman’s mistrust of
the rustic, the city’s antagonism to the village” (THT, 326) vanishes when
he is made to confront the Other all alone. The haunting image of the tiger
comes back. He almost hallucinates that the beast is just around the corner;
he almost creeps to the mangrove forests for cover, and he is made to stare
at the efficacy and helplessness of his position. In a moment of examination,
Kanai soliloquizes that Fokir has brought him to the place not to kill him
“but because he wanted him to be judged” (ibid). Judgement is a value-
ridden ethic that Ghosh wants the readers to register while going through
the novel. The judgement is not about the cerebral attention to postcolonial
politics or the issues of subjectivity, normativity, society, class, or mythical
narratives. The judgement is about the people, the human subject that is the
“receiver” of all kinds of narratives. From the Marichjhapi massacre to the
myth of Bon Bibi, the narratives are received as tales and then it is for the
human mind to decipher the tales in their contexts and narrativizations.
Kanai conjectures about the ways in which death invades the lives of the
locals – the tiger kills people instantly and the settlers are wiped out by the
narrative of eviction. The “translated world” of Rilke finds a cultural echo
in the death of “human conditioning” in spaces completely unfigured in
social and ideological narratives, like Nirmal’s socialist vision and the
Kanai’s contemporary consumerist narratives in a “globalised world”. The
Other is not there to instil fear but to judge the human self in conditions
where the subversions have become the norm. Kanai almost feels that he
has been “emptied of language” because all discourses he thought were the
natural norm are made redundant in this empty space and this redundancy
leads to the creation of a new self, a new subjectivity that tries and discerns
the newer modalities of cognitive responses to spatial realities.

At the end of the novel, Kanai writes a letter to Piya before he leaves for
New Delhi, the metropolitan centre, in which he confesses that he had
prided himself on being an elite intellectual who had deciphered the
166 Chapter Four

meaning of almost all possible human experiences. He knows six languages,

but now, after the Garjontola experience, his outlook on life has completely
changed. The experience has taught him “how little I know of myself and
of the world” (THT, 353). What Kanai does is write the entire legend of Bon
Bibi by translating it from the Bon Bibir Keramoti (the legends of Bon Bibi).
He relates to a particular situation from Nirmal’s diary when Fokir was just
five and he could actually recite five cantos from the poems on Bon Bibi.
This points to a syncretic relationship between Fokir and the myth of the
tiger goddess and, by extension, the ‘place’. To Fokir, Sundarban is not just
a topographical reality, nor is it simply a narrative of culture – it is the
essence of his very being. The Bon Bibi myth gives identity to Sundarban,
an identity which is both local and global in its appeal, and Fokir derives
identity from the space of Sundarban. The entire myth of Bon Bibi that
Kanai narrates for Piya is a text in translation, and the translated world of
Rilke mixes with the text of the myth to challenge the urban-centric norms
of the bourgeois. The “faith” that Bon Bibi demands is actually a faith in
the metaphysical realm of Sundarban. The rationality behind this is the
rationality of the human mind trying to understand spaces that are beyond
the scope of language to structure meaning. Rilke’s sub-text in Kanai’s diary
helps to discern the factors that go into making myths. Kanai talks of the
collective history of Sundarban that is contained in the tales of the tiger
goddess, and he quotes Rilke in the context of narratives that are “cradled
inside us like ruins of mountains” (THT, 260). Perhaps the final
mythicization of the narrative takes place when Piya and Kanai must spend
a night out in the open due to a massive tidal storm, which results in the
death of Fokir. The cult of the tiger narrative in the delta region meets the
language of expression when Piya can actually see a tiger taking shelter in
the mangroves. The sanctity of the cult seems justified to Piya at the very
end, the very cult that she vehemently opposed by mimicking tiger gestures
or protesting against torching a tiger because it had been on a killing spree.
There was a moment of tense silence, and now silence constructs the
language of the tale. Piya almost believes that if she could touch the coat of
the tiger, “she would have been able to feel the pounding of its heart” (THT,
389). In this ambience of silent recognition of what the tale really means in
the given place, Piya experiences a metaphysical union with Fokir.
Their bodies were so close, so finely merged that she could feel the impact
of everything hitting him… she could feel the bones of his cheeks as if they
had been superimposed upon her own; it was as if the storm had given them
what life could not; it had fused them together and made them one. (THT,
390)
 'Tyger Tyger, burning bright' 167

The psycho-sexual arousal is transformed into a moment of sacredness;

there is almost a marriage of nature and nurture between Fokir and Piya.
Their relationship stays platonic but their union is mythicized by the fact
that it is located outside the conventional boundaries of society, marriage
and family. It is the sub-text that carries the formation of myth in this
section. When Amitav Ghosh describes the two as being fused into one
outside the domain of social norms, there is an undertone of the Radha
Krishna myth found in the Bhakti cult and literature starting from seventh-
century Tamil literature and then moving northwards with writers like
Tulsidas, Meerabai, Kabir, and Chaitanya. The basic tenet of the
Vaishnavite sect of the Bhakti cult was that Radha and Krishna were fused
into a single entity without any kāmā or sexual desire. In the case of Piya,
there is a sexual urge and therein lies Ghosh’s departure from the traditional
myth, but the undertone is that of a Krishna Radha-like union though the
representation can be problematic since Fokir is a practising Muslim and
whether he is appropriated into the Hindu fold through such a mythicization
is a matter of debate. Their relationship stays at the level of communicated
silences, a text of sacredness and untold histories that mythicizes their union
as an idealized form of the man-woman union. This is where Ghosh refuses
to abide by conventional postcolonial narratives where ideological
closeness often forms the basis in relationships, especially in romantic ones.
Ghosh narrativizes the often precarious and abstentious relationship that
man has with the narration of power that often leads to a problematic
connection with the discourses of knowledge. But as the myth of Bon Bibi
shows that power narratives are not necessarily a binary between the
powerful and the powerless, it might also be a tale of gaining power through
ethical considerations. The ethics of power and State may balance out the
suppressed histories, as in the case of Marichjhapi, where State power
blatantly flouts all expected codes of State ethics. Piya’s decision to stay in
Sundarban after the death of Fokir shows that the narrative of silenced
history lives on within her, passed on from Fokir. Symbolically, she loses
all data but she retains the GPS map, etched out with Fokir’s help, tracing
the path of the dolphins. Beyond the comfort zone of the “realism” that we
know of lies the territory of the frontier where the self and the Other merge
to form a more complex understanding of what the self or the Other mean.
The myth and the mythicization in the novel charters these territories of
oppressed histories and unchartered narratives that subvert not only the
notions of ethics but the very basis on which narrative politics is built.
168 Chapter Four

Notes
1 Datacollected from the field research of Tushar K. Niyogi from his Tiger Cult of
the Sundarvans, Kolkata: Director, Anthropological Survey of India, 1996. Print.
2 In this regard, one may look at the narratives of Joseph Conrad that positions the

political Other as the psychic Other, which represents a regressive mind.

3 Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatuses talk of ideologies in place that control

the “subject” of the citizen through ideological control. He quotes Lenin in the essay
to show how the bourgeois appropriate society through narratives in the education
system that control the way dominant state ideology is constructed, leading to
repressive execution. For more, see www. Marxists.org/ideology.htm.
4 The terms are taken from Levi Strauss’s The Raw and the Cooked, where the “raw”
stands for the “savage mind” and its binary is the “cooked” or the production of
Enlightenment through Eurocentric discourses. In Mythologiques. London: Plon,
1964.
5 In 1990, many states were formed out of the breakdown of the USSR, including

the present Russia. Capitalists often look at this incident as a strong case for a
complete failure of the socialist model in politics, economics, international affairs,
and social structure at large.
 CHAPTER FIVE

'AS THOUGH OF HEMLOCK I HAD DRUNK'

Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011), and Flood
of Fire (2015) can be looked at from the perspective of modern myth
making, where historiography is used to construct the past in terms of
storytelling. All the novels deal with the opium trade between colonial India
and China as Ghosh embarks on a journey to dissociate the past from
colonial or postcolonial narratives and associate it with a fictional reality of
his own that is neither a tale of essentialized history nor a fiction that offers
the reader an interpretation of history deemed to be “the” narrative. Ghosh
is aware of the pitfalls associated with the construction of history and
historiography of a colonial India already over-burdened with the fervour of
nationalism (from the colonized perspective) or anti-nationalism discourses
(from the colonizer’s point of view), the former constructing the nation as a
glorified space in terms of history and culture and the latter stereotyping the
colonized Other as an "uncultured" space. As an author who diminishes
authoritarian narratives, Ghosh does not easily fall into the trappings of
binarization and his fiction does not seek to assume theoretical propositions
about the political identity of characters as delineated by past narratives;
rather, he tries to look at them through the lens of a contemporary vision
that attempts to do away with past stereotypification in culture. However,
this is not to imply that the author here is trying to binarize between theory
and praxis; the point is that Amitav Ghosh does not follow the grand
narrative of historical theoretical assumptions which are often biased on the
basis of political ideologies, race, nation, and gender. In the process of myth
making, Amitav Ghosh tries very hard to not binarize ideologically or
culturally, even though there is no justification offered for the oppression of
the ruling class, both colonial and indigenous, and herein lies Ghosh’s
humanistic angle in the indoctrination of history. Before moving into a
textual analysis, we need to look closely at two terms – historiography and
mythography – because that will determine our line of argument. Talking
about the “artificiality” of fiction as pronounced by the school of objectivist
historicism, Hayden White observes
170 Chapter Five

Stories are not lived; there is no such thing as a real story. Stories are told
or written, not found. And as for the notion of a true story, this is virtually
a contradiction in terms. All stories are fictions. Which means, of course,
that they can be true only in a metaphorical sense… (White, 2010: xxv)

White’s observation here is later developed into what he calls the “figural
realism” or “figural truth” in historical narratives. Behind the apparent
simplicity of White’s argument lies the real question – are history and
fiction totally separated as genres, are they interrelated, or are they
absolutely the same? White opposes the fact-fiction binary although he
accepts that there is a structural difference between the two. Essentially
what he means is that the moment a fact is interpreted, it ceases to become
a fact and the process of “fictionalization” has started. History as narration
involves the politics of perspectivization, and perspectivization depends on
the frame of ideology through which the narrator chooses to interpret the
“facts”. In his work Metahistory, White coins the term “emplotment’ to
explain the process by which the historian turns a chronicle into a story by
reconfiguring his materials into an aesthetic process of locating his text in a
given culture (White, 2010: xxiv). Now, going back to our question of
whether fiction and history are binaries or absolutely the same, it is perhaps
prudent to say that they form a continuum. However, it is also true that to
identify a work as “history” or “fiction” may be tenuous, especially if the
reader chooses to believe what the author has designated his work as. Hence,
the term historicity can be used to understand this continuum consisting of
history at one end and fiction at the other. Historicity involves the
continuum of specific historical contexts to literary artefacts, and in between
lie the general levels of the entire literary public and the literary artefacts in
a given culture. On this continuum can be traced the presence of facts and
history because literary artefacts determine the way “facts” will be
interpreted and represented and culture binds that representation to a frame
narrative of ideology or even morality.

Myth formation is a process by which earlier narratives of myth are

reconfigured into a new textual space, and this textual space becomes the
new normal in trying to understand the myth being represented in that text.
This is not to mean that myth formation is the same as historicity because
in historicity, the time continuum is based on a definitive cognition of the
‘there’ and ‘then’ whereas mythopoesis involves a time constructed out of
a sense of “timelessness”, a cognition that it occurred before the human
comprehension of the ‘real’ made its way into the cultural psyche. We have
already analysed this aspect of myth formation in the previous chapters. So,
if the time-space continuum is taken into consideration, then myth
 'As though of hemlock I had drunk' 171

formation becomes a slightly different ideological practice compared to

historicity. Hayden White observes in his essay "Storytelling"
There is nothing natural about storytelling; it is a highly complex art…and
its use is especially complex when it is a matter of representing real rather
than imaginary events. This is because, whereas the writer of fictions can
“invent” events to conform to the exigencies of storytelling, the writer of a
history enjoys no such inventive freedom. (White, 2010: 288)

If we reconfigure the term ‘storytelling’ as myth formation for the sake of

our argument, then it will become relatively clear that myth formation and
historicity involve a slight structural difference in the way they construct
‘stories’. However, in the arena of postmodern thought, myth and history
are often intertwined in terms of the textual space they occupy. Derek
Walcott says in "Writers in the ‘New World’" that intellectuals should
“reject the idea of history as time…for its original concept as myth… history
is fiction, subject to a fitful muse, memory” (Walcott, 1974: 64). Since
memory is an interpretive assimilation of ideas, Walcott links memory,
myth, and history as a selective collection of ‘facts’ to form a ‘story’. One
needs to examine what is being assimilated, however. The ‘how’ of
assimilation can be generalized under the idea of a construction of ideology,
but what is being assimilated would determine whether there is absolutely
no difference between historiography and mythography. In that regard,
White is perhaps more critical in his treatment of mythopoesis as
structurally (or even intentionally) different from historical constructions
than Walcott, who seems to have an unproblematic gaze at the question of
the act of narration. Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies questions the act of
narration in the process of myth formation as the narrative not only moves
back and forth in time and “timelessness” but also tries and locates it within
a historical time narrative. The novel becomes a narrative on the mythical
reconstruction of “contemporary” (in terms of the textual space) events that
seeks to define the present in terms of the past, as is often the case with myth
narratives. But Ghosh does not allow the idealization of the past, nor does
he instigate a sense of rejection but allows the narrative of history to seep
into his text that serves as the ideological framework of his novel.

In Sea of Poppies, Ghosh introduces an extensive gallery of characters,

drawn from different nationalities, races, and ethnic backgrounds, in order
to create his version of a modern myth on the opium trade in the nineteenth
century between colonial India and China. In the novel, Neel is from the
zamindar (landlord) class of Bengal, Paulette is a displaced French lady
settled in Calcutta, Zachary is of a 'problematic' race, being part of the
American society, Deeti and Kalua come from the rural hinterlands of
172 Chapter Five

Bihar, and Babu Nob Kissin is a Bengali accountant to the British, in charge
of overseeing the finances of the Raskhali estate, which is owned by Neel’s
family. Two characters are of prime importance to us, Deeti and Babu Nob
Kissin, for through them, the author constructs his ideological framework
of myth formation by using history as a personalized narrative of the past.
Deeti comes across as a rather stoic woman who, in her own way, resists the
patriarchal domination of her rural society. She is married to Hukam Singh
(the name Hukam means authority, so the power relation is defined by
patriarchal norms), an opium addict who works in an opium factory that
rolls out the narcotic drug to be sold to China. The novel starts in a visionary
manner, where Deeti has a vision of a large ship that she could have never
seen in the Ganges since ships of that size only sail on the high seas.
The vision of a tall-masted ship, at sail on the ocean, came to Deeti on an
otherwise ordinary day, but she knew instantly that the apparition was a sign
of destiny for she had never seen such a vessel before, nor even in a dream:
for how could she have, living as she did in northern Bihar, four hundred
miles from the coast? Her village was so far inland that the sea seemed as
distant as the netherworld: it was the chasm of darkness where the holy
Ganga disappeared into the Kala-Pani, ‘the Black Water’. (Ghosh, 2008: 3)

The passage, when read carefully, will reveal that there are two sets of
binaries used by the author – ‘vision’ and ‘ordinary’, and ‘inland’ and
‘distant’. At the very outset, Ghosh reveals his literary politics in a rather
complex way; he prefers to define myth formation by these binaries in
imagery. To Ghosh, myth is a vision, located in the distant time and space,
but at the same time, that distance does not try and create a sacred text, as
opposed to the profanity of “ordinary” texts. It is therefore symbolic that
Deeti sees the apparition of Ibis (the ship that she will eventually take to
Mauritius) while in physical proximity of her village, still strongly rooted
in her native cultural space. This means that for Ghosh, myths are distant
apparitions narratively passed down from generation to generation as
essentialized tales of “cultural purity”. They can also be part of the personal
space used not only for resistance but also to redefine the relationship
between the self and the society, between the past (as conceived by the
individual and not always as a collective socio-cultural memory) and the
present. Deeti, therefore, is made aware of her future by the visionary
presence of Ibis, and this is done through certain beliefs that have become
mythical through sustained practice along a long time scale.

Deeti is construed as a woman of humble economic and social background

but in the mythical space of the text, she is the visionary character who
oversees the narrative in time and outside it. She maintains a ‘shrine’, a
 'As though of hemlock I had drunk' 173

collection of paintings she paints herself of the people and events in her life.
It is an encryption of her vision of the future since she draws pictures from
her imagination, thereby trying to locate herself in a future time. Perhaps
her shrine is her resistance against the social oppression she faces as a
woman and as a member of the lower caste of Hindu society. When she gave
birth to Kabutri, a girl, she was stigmatized as a chudaliya (witch) and
dainia (sorcerer, practitioner of black magic), but later she discovers that on
her wedding night, she was drugged with opium and raped by her brother-
in-law since her husband, Hukam Singh, was too weak and impotent to have
sex. She also discovers that her body was held in place during the act by her
husband’s uncle, Bhyron Singh, who is later on the passenger list of the Ibis.
This is no doubt a blatant transgression against her, but Deeti resists the
social oppression by maintaining a stoic distance from her brother-in-law.
Her shrine is a social statement to redefine her power relation with her in-
laws. However, it is ironic that Deeti continues to follow the social rituals
as a “sacred” narrative, the same rituals that oppress her. She still takes a
dip in the Holy Ganges, chanting “Jai Ganga Mayya ki…” (Ghosh, 2008:
7), meaning ‘Hail to you, Mother Ganga’ and allows herself to be a part of
the social narrative on rituals and the myth of cleansing one’s body and spirit
of all sins by taking a dip in the holy river. Alison Convery observes
Victimhood is a role, a ‘mantle’ that is consciously taken on, a cult whose
followers assume an undifferentiated perspective that legitimises and breeds
passivity, and denies the possibility of any agency that might transcend
victim status on the one hand, or be construed as a mitigating the moral
capital of innocent helplessness on the other. (Convery, 3)

It is difficult to put Deeti in the role of the victim for she never takes refuge
in sentimentality after being abused sexually by her brother-in-law so she
can produce a male heir for the family, which she does not. She follows the
socially constructed rituals, perhaps as a gesture of remembering a
collective cultural memory to follow the narrative of being a “subject” of
the law. She worships the Hindu pantheon with a space-clearing attitude, by
which she carves out her own niche spatially. Patriarchy constructs the
domestic space for her but she uses that same domestic space to claim her
visionary qualities, and later comes out of that space to take charge of her
destiny by boarding the Ibis. It can be argued that Deeti has been “assigned”
the domestic space in order to confirm her powerless status, but it must be
remembered that Deeti later takes on the role of the dominant person when
she helps construct a “community” on the Ibis of displaced ‘lascars’ and
coolies, going across the dreaded Kaala Pani. However, it is her shrine that
gives her a mystical connection between the past, present, and future. One
174 Chapter Five

of the features of ancient myth making is the capacity of the characters to

travel across time and space to construe their being within the larger
mythical cosmos. By anticipating what she is about to face in the near future,
Deeti traverses to the mythical domain, where she gets visionary knowledge
that is denied to the characters around her. Arthur Schopenhauer observes
It [myths in the Hindu spiritual scriptures like Vedas and Upanishad] is
expressed in various ways, but especially by the fact that all beings of the
world, living and lifeless, are led past in succession in the presence of the
novice, and that over each of them is pronounced the word which has
become a formula, and as such has been called the Mahakavya [epic]…
(Schopenhauer, 362)

Thus, in ancient formulations of myths, the past is often an unproblematic

essentialization, portrayed in terms of glory that is lost to contemporary
civilization. This portrayal of the past-present binary seems to be ratified by
Schopenhauer but Ghosh does not fall into the trap of such easy binarization
of history. Deeti’s vision of the future is located in her unconsummated
marriage and social marginalization, but when the future does arrive, it
becomes clear to her that the vision she had of the Ibis is neither as romantic
nor as idealistic as she would have liked to believe. Deeti is sexually
marginalized because her husband has been rendered impotent by his
constant consumption of opium, so the vision of the Ibis promises a journey
beyond her mundane existence. When the vision transforms into reality,
however, the romantic aspect is lost due to the oppression she and others
have to face as coolies, working under the British masters. Hence, for Deeti,
even though the “vision was not materially present in front of her”, she
would not be able to escape the full significance of it since the “ship existed
somewhere” and was “heading in her direction” (Ghosh, 2008: 8). The ship
enters Deeti’s narrative when she has absolutely no idea about the opium
trade, what it is like to travel on the ocean, and how the outside world looks.
Her existence and identity have been shaped by her native village in Bihar,
and the language of her being has been constructed by the parameters of her
social and geographical confinement. In fact, later on, when she is taken to
Calcutta as a coolie, she visits the then “second city” of the Empire for the
first time. Therefore, her vision of the Ibis while in the middle of her native
village makes her character “mythical”. She is able to transgress her
claustrophobic entity and travel across time and space to envision a future
that holds true for her, as also for her second husband, Kalua. Ghosh’s myth
making politics is not a simple glorification of the past because, in the case
of Deeti, the past is a narrative void for her. She is not mythicizing her
identity by locating her consciousness in past tales of glory but constructing
 'As though of hemlock I had drunk' 175

it by trying to understand her future according to the vision she has while
bathing in the Ganges. It is this quality in Deeti – to look forward in time –
that gives a mythical touch to her character. Myth formation takes place
through Deeti's glimpse into her future, and then expressing that through
painting, since such a dimension of knowledge is absent from 'normal'
human beings. If the Ganges can purge the human soul of all its sins, or so
the myth goes, then Deeti’s soul locates itself in the praxis of the future that
she glimpses while rooted in the ‘present’.

Deeti helps Ghosh focus on the community versus individualism debate

within the larger question of identity formation. Deeti is not delineated as a
social rebel in terms of asserting her individual space through coercion but
she does carve out her own way of retaliating against social and gender
prejudices. She not only resists the sexual overtures of her brother-in-law
but also serves opium to her mother-in-law to render her immobile since she
is one of the strongest agents of patriarchy oppressing her. Yet Deeti
emblematizes the collective social memory, by which any myth functions,
since she swears by the ritualistic order of myths. The narrator comments
Her prospects had always been bedevilled by her stars, her fate being ruled
by Saturn – Shani – a planet that exercised great power on those born under
its influence, often bringing discord, unhappiness and disharmony. (Ghosh,
2008:30)

So, Deeti blames her stars for her social and marital failings, but at the same
time does not lose the vision of the tall-masted ship that she believes will
change her fortunes one day. Deeti is located both within and without the
social narrative of myths, which defines her as being constantly in a state of
flux. True to Indian practice, she travels to her in-laws, accompanied by the
madrigal songs, full of sexual innuendos.
Sakhiya-ho, saiya more pise masala
Sakhiya-ho, bara mitha lage masala

Oh friends, my love’s a-grinding

Oh friends, how sweet is this spice. (Ghosh, 2008: 32)

A ritualistic order tries and dislocates women’s subjectivity by often

referring to bodily pleasures as a gratification of the senses to justify
dislocation as a necessary move towards giving her a “home”. Deeti is
married off to an opium addict, but as the practice goes, in a “home”, a
woman is always the subjugated work force, voicelessly existing as the
subaltern and going on with the household chores as her “prescribed duty”.
176 Chapter Five

Another madrigal song sung by Deeti’s friends shows the objectification of

women in the ritualistic order of marriage.
Ag mora lagal ba
Are sagaro badaniya
Tas-mas choli karai
Barhala jobanawa

I’m on fire
My body burns...
My choli strains
Against my waking breasts. (Ghosh, 2008: 32)

The sexual objectification of Deeti is delineated through these madrigal

songs, which are part of the ritual of marriage, and the women participate in
the patriarchal energy of using the woman’s body as the means for a male’s
pleasure. However, there is also the implication of a woman's desire
expressed through the madrigal songs. If we look at the songs from the
perspective of the woman's body being initiated into a space of desire, then
it can be argued that the ritual songs play a subversive role in defining the
gender relation in society. Patriarchy does not allow women to represent
their desires, but if the songs can be looked at as an expression of desire of
the female body, then they are subversive in their politics as they challenge
the patriarchal stereotypes and go on to declare the sexual desires of a
female body. Patriarchy ensures that assent is reached before any
representation of the female body is made through any artistic medium, and
this assent essentially means the female body is forced to accept any form
of representation decided by patriarchal modes. However, these ritual songs
can be interpreted as breaking that code of assent and representing the
female body as autonomous, thereby resisting patriarchy's role in defining
the female body from its perspective. R.W. Connell, in her book
Masculinities, points out that “hegemonic masculinity” is produced by
patriarchal assumptions of gender roles and social normativity. The social
reproduction of patriarchy leads to a patriarchal society and that leads to the
production of hegemonic masculinity, further leading to the power
inequality in society not only in terms of gender but also sexuality and
sexual orientations. Since in The Sea of Poppies, gender binarizations are
often challenged, we can interpret the text in terms of the masculine
hegemony that Deeti must confront. When Deeti reaches her in-laws’ house,
she is devastated to see that her husband is not only an opium addict but also
sexually impotent, too weak to perform sexual acts since he is totally
engulfed by the killer smoke. On the very night of her marriage, Deeti is
raped. Later, through various stages, Deeti learns that she was opium-
 'As though of hemlock I had drunk' 177

induced by her husband, raped by her brother-in-law, and that this brutal act
was overseen by her mother-in-law, all to get a male heir to carry forward
the legacy of the family. Such is the brutality of this incident that Deeti is
physically bruised after that night but is given non-committal replies by her
mother-in-law regarding what really transpired. Deeti, however, gets
enough hints that her daughter Kabutri was indeed fathered by Hukam
Singh, her brother-in-law because as her pregnancy advances, he shows less
interest in her. She becomes sexually inert at this time. The social myth of
a family becoming complete only when a male heir is produced is delineated
by Ghosh in this particular section of the novel, but Deeti, instead of falling
into the expected social platitudes of sentimentality and resignation as the
victimised woman, stands up for her rights, albeit silently. She shows the
courage to move beyond the “assigned” space for a woman and falls in love
with Kalua, a man socially inferior to her, thereby creating resistance at both
the familial and class levels, which opens the scope for a bigger resistance
against social myths and rituals in the near future. Deeti comes across Kalua
lying naked in the fields one night after being beaten up after unexpectedly
losing a wrestling match, and, as there is nobody around, she inches closer
to his private parts. Her moment of sexual desire does not last for long since
her conscious mind reminds her of the social narrative of sexual morality,
but this moment marks the beginning of Deeti and Kalua’s joint resistance
against social rituals.

The inevitable happens a few months later when Deeti’s husband dies of
consumption. As was the practice in 19th-century India, all arrangements
are made to make Deeti a Sati, that is, a sacrificial goddess who “gives up”
her life in the funeral pyre of her husband as part of her lifelong oath of
sexual celibacy outside the domain of her husband. Of course, this was
forced. The practise of Sati itself has a problematic mention in the ancient
Hindu texts of Vedas or Upanishads, and it is believed that the practice was
prevalent from as early as the 9th century B.C. In the nineteenth century,
various British records and archives narrate incidents of forcibly burning
Hindu widows, though passed off by the Brahmins as an act of volition. The
following excerpt is from Calcutta Review.
In 1822, the Salt agent at Barripore, 16 miles south of Calcutta, went out of
his way to report a case which he had witnessed, in which the woman was
forcibly held down by a great bamboo by two men so as to preclude all
chance of escape. In Cuttack, a woman dropt herself into a burning pit, and
rose up again as if to escape, when a washerman gave her a push with a
bamboo, which sent her back into the hottest part of the fire. (Calcutta
Review, 256)
178 Chapter Five

It is worth scanning a passage of the ancient Hindu text of Rig Veda, which
commentators believe to be the earliest of the Vedas in the oral tradition of
ancient Indian Sanskrit poetry.
Let these women, whose husbands are worthy and are living, enter the house
with ghee as collyrium. Let these wives first step into the house, tearless
without any affliction and well adorned. (Rig Veda, 10. 18. 7)

However, this passage does not speak of women as widows, and what
exactly is meant by the term “house” can be debated. In passages of other
Vedas, there is no justification of the practice of Sati. It is only in the later
period of the Indo-Aryan age that Sati becomes an important part of
constructing the myth around the “purity” and the “chastity” of a woman.
In Vishnu Smriti (dated from 700 to 1000 C.E), it is stated
Now the duties of a woman [are]... after the death of her husband, to
preserve her chastity, or to ascend the pile after him. (web)

Even in Parasara Smriti (roughly at the same time of Vishnu Smriti) it is

promised that a woman who torches her body with her dead husband shall
“dwell in heaven” (The Dharmásastric Debate on widow-burning, 203-
222). So, it can be arguably observed that Sati as a “sacred” practise for
women became prevalent around 700-900 A.D. perhaps in concordance of
the rise of the Brahmin class and Hindu orthodoxy. In Deeti’s case, Sati is
more of an oral cult because neither she nor her co-villagers, all totally or
nearly illiterate, would have any access to the ancient “sacred” Hindu texts.
Deeti is induced by opium and taken to the funeral pyre to be immolated.
The interest of her in-laws lies in the subsequent myth of the Sati goddess;
that is, once Deeti becomes a Sati, she will be revered by the villagers as a
goddess and a temple will be built in her memory. Generous donations will
flow in, in both cash and kind, and all of that will become the property of
Hukam Singh. This is how myth, rituals and economics meet to create a
bridge between the sacred and the material. Everything would have gone to
plan but for Kalua. Kalua offers himself as the agent of resistance as he
already shares an understanding with Deeti, even though he has hardly
interacted with her since she has never allowed herself to come close to a
man who is socially “inferior” to her.

It is significant that Deeti is made to undergo Sati just when she was striking
back against the social injustices she faces by drugging her mother-in-law
so that she does not trouble Deeti with her ranting and becomes immobile
so as not to be able to physically torture Deeti. The resistance is countered
through the forceful attempt to murder Deeti, taking the cloak of
 'As though of hemlock I had drunk' 179

religion/ritual to justify the means to an end. She is draped in a white saree,

as is the “custom” with the widows, and dragged to the funeral pyre for self-
immolation. However, before she can be put on the pyre, Kalua darts out
and takes her away, his brute physical force coming to the rescue as no one
dared challenge his physical domination. It is ironic therefore that one form
of ritual serves as the occasion for another ritual to be resisted. Sati serves
as the occasion for Kalua to resist the myth of class binaries and take away
a woman of “higher class”. Yet, in her moment of distress, Deeti does not
forget the myths associated with tales of after-death situations as she realises
that social ostracization comes with a price. She practised resistance by
countering her mother-in-law through opium but, at the same time, she is
aware of the isolation that results from resisting social rituals. When Deeti
wakes up from her slumber, still in an opium-induced drowsiness, she
almost believes that she is dead and her soul is being carried over the
Baitarani River (the sacred river in Hindu religion that one needs to cross
before the soul can enter the ‘other world’) and the boatman is Charak, the
boatman of the dead. Her anxiety stems from the fear of not only isolation
but also of separation from her daughter, Kabutri. Deeti will not only have
to construct her own identity as a girmitiya, or a sea-lascar, on Ibis, but will
also have to learn to stay away from her daughter. Ghosh’s humanistic angle
becomes apparent here as he makes his principal female protagonist
encounter not only social isolation but also personal loss in the form of
having to construct a new definition of ‘family’ in which her daughter will
be absent – indeed an emotionally challenging thing for any individual.

Amitav Ghosh introduces another character in the novel, Babu Nob Kissin,
as he is called by his British superiors, who has a problematic gender
identity and is closely interwoven with the Hindu myth of Radha, the divine
consort of Krishna. “Babu” refers to a title awarded to Indians who chose to
work in the British administration and therefore became custodians of the
empire from the colonized space. However, the public identity of Nob
Kissin is not as important as his private one, which is related to the myth of
Radha and Krishna. In Chapter VII of the novel, Ghosh goes into narrative
flashback mode in which the narrator relates that Nob Kissin spent his
childhood in Nabadwip, the town of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu – “saint, mystic
and devotee of Sri Krishna” (Ghosh, 2008: 160). Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu
was born on February 4th, 1486, in Nabadwip, and the Hindu narratives on
faith, especially belonging to the Vaishnavite sect, believe him to be the
incarnation of Sri Krishna, one of the twelve avatars of Lord Vishnu. Nob
Kissin’s paternal family is believed to be the earliest disciples of the
Mahaprabhu (the Godhead) himself and, therefore, as a result of social
conditioning, Nob Kissin was groomed under this culture of faith. When he
180 Chapter Five

was fourteen, his uncle fell ill and instructed Nob Kissin to fulfil his last
wish, which was to accompany his young wife Taramony to the holy city of
Vrindavan where she would pass her remaining days in celibacy and faith.
In this narrative of faith lies Ghosh’s critique of stereotyping women in roles
that fit the patriarchal assumptions of women being absolutes – either one
of the fallen or a chaste goddess. Talking of faith and the stereotypification
of women, a contemporary man of faith, Sri Paramahansa Yogananda,
observes
I learned to regard woman, not as an instrument created for the entrapment
and moral destruction of man, but as a representative of the Divine Mother
of the Universe. (Yogananda, 11)

The narrative of faith, at least in this context, functions on extremes, on the

model of either-or binarizations, feeding on the patriarchal assumption of
women being goddesses. It is ironic that Nob Kissin’s uncle married
Taramony to “beget an heir” (Ghosh, 2008: 161) but expects that she should
be a celibate, practising sexual morality – this is how patriarchy works at
the level of praxis. However, when Nob Kissin journeys to Vrindavan with
his aunt, he experiences spiritual accomplishment. His rigorous Hindu
Vedic education taught him to be a brahmachari, a lifelong celibate, where
“so much stress was laid on the retention of semen” (ibid), and now his
sexual energy flows towards a reconfigured notion about his gender. Nob
Kissin experiences moments of psycho-sexual fantasy with his aunt, which
leave him “trembling” and “drenched in shame” (ibid), but he soon realises
that the energy is flowing towards a recognition of his self as a devotee of
Lord Krishna, just like Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. The following excerpt from
the text will help to decipher how Nob Kissin slowly comes to terms with
his sexual urges and how he goes beyond the set binaries of gender roles
and sees himself as a “woman”.
I can never leave your side, he told her. I cannot abandon you in Brindavan.
I would rather die. She laughed and told him he was a foolish, vain fellow;
Krishna was her only man, she said, the only lover she would ever have. No
matter, he said, You will be my Krishna and I will be your Radha. (ibid, 162)

Babu Nob Kissin is ready to practise gender subversion and challenge the
male-female dialectic, thereby preparing to accept his transgender identity
under the mythical domain of spirituality, faith, and religion.

Babu Nob Kissin sees himself as a sakhi, going back to the myth of
Rashleela, where it is said Lord Krishna danced to a frenzy with his
gopinees (the women of Brindavan, who are said to have eternal faith and
 'As though of hemlock I had drunk' 181

love in the divine dispensation of their Lord), which resulted in the Being
of the women merging with the ultimate divine energy of the Cosmos.
Myths about Krishna’s divine love for Radha are poeticized in ancient
Bengali literature, especially in an anthology called Baishnab Padabali by
Bidyapati. Babu Nob Kissin sees himself as the faithful devotee of
Taramony, whom he addresses as Ma Taramony (the concept of Holy
Mother, ‘Ma’ in Bengali referring to mother) and feels that this
metaphysical love equates to that between Radha and Krishna. However,
the gender problematization is in the fact that he sees himself as Radha.
Judith Butler observes
If it is possible to speak of a ‘man’ with a masculine attribute and to
understand that attribute as a happy but accidental feature of that man, then
it is also possible to speak of a ‘man’ with a feminine attribute, whatever
that is, but still to maintain the integrity of the gender. But once we dispense
with the priority of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ as abiding substances, then it is no
longer possible to subordinate dissonant gendered features as ontology that
is fundamentally intact. (Butler, 33)

Babu Nob Kissin is Amitav Ghosh’s way of disagreeing with the

ontological “stability” of gender binarizations. However, there is another
aspect to this narrative. There is often a cultural clash between Nob Kissin’s
beliefs and the way they are received by his British superior, Mr Burnham.
Burnham rebukes him for his “weird” ways since he cannot accept the
dislocation of a “man” from the centre of his “masculinity”. Burnham calls
him a “baboon”, which is an obvious racial term against the colonized, but
Nob Kissin doesn’t seem to mind since a baboon is close to a monkey, and
for a “faithful” Hindu like Nob Kissin, a monkey represents Lord Hanuman,
the closest ally of Lord Ram in his battle for Lanka. So, Ghosh, as a
postmodern writer, does not see myth as an unproblematic representation of
an unnamed glory of the past, nor is he unidimensional in his reception of
characters who challenge social binaries. In Nob Kissin’s case, he
challenges the gendered prejudices of society under the garb of myth but at
the same time remains blind to the racial slurs being hurled against him,
taking those same myths as his point of justification. As a political subject,
Nob Kissin exposes himself to scrutiny as a character who is ready to be
decentred on one aspect but centres himself on other accounts. Babu Nob
Kissin continues to treat his relationship with Taramony as one of devotion
and in the non-sexual domain. He hopes for “divine love” and asks her,
“When will you set me free from this worldly life?” (Ghosh, 2008: 164,
165). The issue of transgender identity is suffused through the myth of
rebirth. Hinduism believes in the cyclical nature of Creation, much like the
African concept of time, so Taramony tells Nob Kissin that his job in the
182 Chapter Five

material plane of existence is not over yet and he should prepare himself for
the ultimate revelation of divinity in his consciousness “for your body will
be the vessel of my return” (ibid). So, Taramony subscribes to the Hindu
concept of rebirth but she adds that she will be reborn within the body of
Nob Kissin. This is somewhat close to the Western philosophy of the
transmigration of souls, but an added aspect of gender problematization is
proposed. However, the myth of a woman’s soul being born in a man’s body
is not new to the Indian, or more specifically to the Indo-Aryan world. In
fact, the myths surrounding Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s divinity are based
on a story that Radha was reborn in Kali Yuga (Yuga means an epoch,
according to Hinduism, and Kali is the last of the four epochs) in
Mahaprabhu’s body. Ruth Vanita writes in Same-Sex Love in India
Medieval mystics figure God simultaneously as spouse, friend and child.
Poets such as Surdas, Tulsi and Meera see no contradiction in taking the
attitude of a lover, a friend and a parent in songs to their chosen deity. At
one level, this represents a sophisticated understanding of intimacy... at
another level, it also moves the idea of intimacy beyond the confines of the
patriarchal family where roles are much more rigidly circumscribed by
gender and age. (Vanita, 73)

Ruth Vanita then goes gives an explanation of fluidity in the gender roles
practised in the Vaishnavite sect and the poets of the tradition. Vanita calls
this the trope of "bridal mysticism".
In such poems [of Vaishnavite sect] a male mystic typically uses feminine
verbs for himself, even though his name, used in the poem's signature line,
is male. He addresses the male god as lover or husband and identifies
himself with the bride or the female lover Radha waiting for the male lover
Krishna... in Vaishnava tradition, all devotees tend to identify with the
female who desires union with the male deity. (ibid, 74-75)

The visionary element in the mythography of the text is found even in the
Taramony-Nob Kissin relationship, as was the case with Deeti. Taramony
instructs Nob Kissin to be aware of signs that she has revealed her soul in
his body and asks him to be prepared even to cross the sea if the signs lead
to that direction. She problematizes the gender binaries even further when
she says that they will be united by “Krishna’s love” and then “you [Nob
Kissin] will become Taramony” (ibid). “Becoming” assumes a process of
transformation, and it seems that Babu Nob Kissin is being prepared to come
to terms with his gender identity through the narrative of myth formation.
When he remembers all of this while making preparations to board the Ibis,
he observes to himself that it is the flux of time that proves the presence of
“divine illusion, of Sree Krishna’s leela” (ibid, 166). The journey on the Ibis
 'As though of hemlock I had drunk' 183

is a metaphor with multi-layered meanings, and one of the layers is the

process by which Nob Kissin gets his identity. As in every mythical tale,
there is a quest motive in Nob Kissin; he journeys across the sea to build a
temple of his dreams in order to commensurate the eternal memory of
Taramony in the form of faith. Ghosh’s narrative technique becomes
complex here because he uses certain words and phrases that are used in the
narratives of faith. In a moment of narcissistic love, Nob Kissin looks into
a mirror and finds that there is a certain “glow” in his body that perhaps
signifies the gradual revelation of Taramony in his consciousness. Whereas
the presence of a glow is a very common image in texts of faith, Ghosh uses
the image to decipher the complex process of Nob Kissin’s discovery of his
‘self’. Nob Kissin suffers from the disorientation of what Kristeva calls the
“semiotic self” in Revolution in Poetic Language (Kristeva, 45). Kristeva
observes that the subject “I” invests its signification with other objects, like
the mother (Taramony in this case), colleagues, etc. These identifications
give the subject an imaginary notion of the self and then it begins to “speak”
coherently. The act of speech then prerequisites the self to identify its
signification with an external object. In the case of Nob Kissin, his semiotic
self gets its ‘speech’ only after he identifies himself with the ‘body’ of
Taramony. He keeps his hair long like Taramony (and hence like a
“woman”) and even wears a saree. His cross-dressing, as it were, gives his
subject the speech of his identity of being transgender, but everything is
done under the framework of mythical discourse. The myth of Krishna’s
leela acts as the second-order signified that provides the first act of speech
for Nob Kissin against heteronormative society. In fact, the myth acts as a
point of historical validation or even divine assent (keeping to the language
of faith) for Nob Kissin to assert his identity in the repressive society of
19th-century Bengal, which was intolerant of transgender behaviour.
However, transgender behaviour under the garb of myth and religion is
acceptable, and this allows Nob Kissin’s subject to gain a foothold within
the narrative of the colonial society since the Hindu colonized would accept
it as “natural”. The main signified is Nob Kissin’s acceptance of his self and
identity, and this becomes slightly easier once identity is transformed with
the cultural assent of myths. From his heteronormative social position,
Burnham sneers at the “womanish” appearance of Nob Kissin since God
created a man and a woman and “anything in between” is improbable, but
Nob Kissin makes it clear that “underneath all is same-same” (Ghosh, 2008:
212, 213). Nob Kissin produces a culture of fluidity in gender discourse in
a colonial space that makes him a subject of double displacement, but he
balances it with his administrative and political connections with the British.
184 Chapter Five

Nob Kissin’s search for his identity begins to reach its culmination onboard
the Ibis. He is seen dancing away to ecstasy, fashioning his self as one of
the sakhis of Krishna, and thereby attributing “femininity” to his ‘male’
gender. Later, Nob Kissin considers Zachary as his Krishna as he feels
attracted to his demeanour, even advising him to hide his ‘flute’ since that
might excite the women on board towards a divine rapture. Nob Kissin’s
attraction to Zachary is resistance against the bias of society against
transgender and homosexual relationships, but he is only met with derision
and rejection as no one accepts the way he “femininizes” his body. Judith
Butler says that the body is a “text” of culture (ibid), interpreted in terms of
social discourses as the body gets defined, for example, by the
heteronormative gaze of the society. Nob Kissin feels that as a subject he is
a conjunction of Taramony’s maternal instincts and Radha’s divine
yearning for Krishna, with which he hopes to transcend the material
entrapments of this world. In this section of his myth narration, Ghosh
provides a confluence of material aspects of culture and a narration on the
metaphysical dimensions of myth, the latter being a product of the material
consumption of culture itself. When the sea lascars talk about the sexual
organs of a woman to gratify their sexual urges (again an example of the
male gaze ‘defining’ a woman), Nob Kissin feels that his body is being
scrutinized and he covers himself further. There is a deep-rooted anxiety in
Nob Kissin about being a dislocated subject in a deeply gendered society,
and no matter how much he tries to integrate his identity through the
narratives of myth, he remains anxious about being lonely. It must be
remembered as well that Nob Kissin is dictated by the prohibition of
Taramony's body. She defines her relationship with Nob Kissin as that
between a mother and a son and hence renders her body inaccessible to him.
This inaccessibility is patriarchal insofar as the body is subjected to social
narratives and hence constructs the hegemony of 'normal'. The question
really is what is 'normal'. Deconstructing the body as a problematic text can
be, as Bryan Turner argues, “a fleshy discourse within which the power
relations in society can be both interpreted and sustained” (Turner, 1996:
27). Nob Kissin finds it more “natural” to be a “mother” and helps Neel and
Ah Fatt escape their convict’s cell on the Ibis and take a boat to Canton in
China. Before Neel leaves, Nob Kissin asks, “Do you see her now? In my
eyes? Is she here? Within me?” to which Neel answers, “I see her – a mother
incarnate; her time has come...” (Ghosh, 2008: 503). Neel’s revelation may
simply be a tactic to please the gomusta (chief administrator) but it might
also be genuine affection for the person helping him to be free of the torture
of being a convict, having fallen from his earlier position of a zamindar
(titled, landed gentry) in Rashkhali. But Nob Kissin's taking the role of the
 'As though of hemlock I had drunk' 185

mother is also rooted in the patriarchal constructions of identity formation.

As the novel draws to a close, Nob Kissin can hear the “flute” from
Zachary’s room and becomes engulfed in ananda, a trance-like state of
heightened spiritual consciousness.

Amitav Ghosh precludes any possibility of being accused of producing a

biased overview of narratives. Hence he delineates the character of Neel,
the young zamindar of Rashkhali, as a neo-colonialist who looks at rituals
from the perspective of European “enlightenment”, which denigrates myths
as representations of “irrational” non-Europeans, and whose own status is
dependent on the mercy, or lack of it, of the British administration. In the
beginning, Neel the zamindar was not much into the observation of rituals
since he was in a comfortable social and political praxis. However, when he
gets entangled in forgery (which is a trick played by Burnham and Zachary
and masterminded by Babu Nob Kissin), the observation of rituals becomes
cultural politics for him. However, the narrator’s voice provides an ironic
contrast since no respite comes for Neel despite following the rituals with
utmost faith. The rain that comes down on the day of court hearing is
considered auspicious and the astrologer predicts that the date is perfect
according to numerology, but the court orders Neel be imprisoned and later
deported to Mauritius. The irony in the narrator’s voice becomes even more
cynical when Neel’s wife, Rani Malati, visits the Bhukailash temple and
serves one hundred Brahmin priests. Apart from the obvious satire against
the class division of society based on birth, the narrator also ironically points
out that the husband Malati is praying so hard for through strict observance
of rituals had been spending his time with his consort Elokeshi in the estate’s
outhouse. The gendered nature of ritual practices is made evident here as
the wife is expected to “protect” her husband through rituals but the husband
can be sexually immoral, and social conditioning deems that as “natural”, a
representation of the “aggressive male”. Rituals then take a resistive
metaphor when Parimal, Neel’s trusted lieutenant, brings fragrant oils,
flower-scented attars (perfumes), and two priests from the Brahmin class to
sanctify the court trial. As a postmodernist novelist, Ghosh does not
unproblematically use these myths and rituals as representations of cultural
signifiers. They are, but the undertone of critique is also apparent.
Everything seems to be class-biased and based on the conditioning of
unquestioning faith towards the ruler since that determines the fate of the
ruled and the State at large – a classical political conditioning of
hierarchizing the ruler as the “natural” leader, and the rituals offer a visual
representation through which pro-establishment feelings can be nurtured.
Neel, therefore, dresses up in the finest of attires to represent himself as the
raja, or the king. However, it must be remembered that as far as the forgery
186 Chapter Five

is concerned, Neel is not at fault since he was tricked by the British after
signing some blank papers, as he had done in the past. As an administrator
he may be deemed callous but morally he is not at fault, and so, as much as
the rituals help marginalize voices of dissent through their sheer power or
representation, in this case, they do contribute towards the desired end for a
just cause. In this case, the rituals contribute to the consumption of Neel's
identity formation in the face of the British treachery, and so it can be argued
that rituals contribute to creating a space where the British are resisted
through cultural constructions.

Amitav Ghosh employs another set of rituals and myths to portray the
identity of the deported coolies and how they reinstate their cultural
practices in a dislocated space like the Ibis. The journey across the seas has
mythical disapproval since the dominant thinking at the time was that
crossing the seas would snatch the caste away from the person, and that
would lead to eternal torture in hell. An anecdote can be cited here from a
letter written by Babu Trailokya Nath Biswas in the Bangabasi newspaper
in 1897. Soon after Swami Vivekananda returned from a world conference
on religion in Chicago on March 21, 1897, he was stopped from entering
the temple of Dakshineswar, where his guru, Sri Ramakrishna, had spent his
life, because he had travelled abroad and so was polluted by foreign cultures
and influences. Trailakyo Nath writes
In an indirect way, Swami and his followers were driven away from the
temple... I never ordered anyone to welcome Swami and the raja, nor did I
myself do it. I thought that I should not have any, the least, intercourse with
a man who went to a foreign country and yet calls him Hindu. (web)

The letter portrays the deep prejudice the Hindu society had against travel
abroad, and this myth percolates down to characters from the “lower
classes” in Sea of Poppies. Rumours spread that all the coolies will be killed
and their flesh used as fish bait, or the oil that comes out of the brain
(obvious non-understanding of human anatomy) will be used for fuel. These
rumours play on the fear that every coolie has about getting dislocated from
their socio-cultural centre, and this anxiety leads them to believe even more
in these tales. As a mode of resistance, the coolies observe religious rituals
more faithfully, perhaps to find their space within the space they have
inhabited all this time.
To counter the rumours and ill auguries, the migrants spoke often of the
devotions they would perform the day before their departure: they talked of
pujas and namazes, of recitations of the Qur’an and the Ramcharitmanas
 'As though of hemlock I had drunk' 187

and the Alha-Khand... this was only because of the dread inspired by the
prospect of departure... (Ghosh, 2008: 340)

The coolies chant Jai Hanumán gyán gun ságar (Hail to thee, Lord
Hanuman, the eternal sea of knowledge) in order to locate themselves in the
shared cultural past that seems to be receding, giving way to anxiety about
the new spatial location of their selves in a different culture. The fear of
losing caste among the dislocated people from Bihar and upper Gangetic
plains is so deep-rooted that the only way to reinstate their faith is to go
back to the rituals which provide a shared communal history and memory
in which to locate their identity. Cultural resistance, however, is muted in
this case. Everyone knows there is no other option available to them once
they have embarked on the journey as the British would not tolerate a loss
in the headcount because that would mean fewer people to work in the sugar
cane farms in Mauritius. Yet, even muted resistance gets loud at times and
the coolies get whipped for their ‘daring’.

What happens on board the Ibis can be regarded as the construction of a

parallel concept of community since the new parameter of defining a
community is based on the fact that all of them are ‘jahaj-bhais’, or
companions on board a ship, and the predetermined parameters of caste,
class and communal identity are erased by that one reality – they are all
colonized subjects embarking on a sea journey, and the frame of reference
by which their erstwhile identity was constructed has changed. The women
collectively observe
On a boat of pilgrims, no one can lose caste and everyone is the same: it’s
like taking a boat to the temple of Jagannath, in Puri. From now on, and
forever afterwards, we will all be ship-siblings – jahaz-bhais and jahaz-
bahens – to each other. There’ll be no differences between us. (Amitav
Ghosh, 2008: 356)

This is reminiscent of Benedict Anderson’s theory of “imagined

communities”, where he defines a community as autonomous in its function
and imagined because the members of the community don’t know how the
fellow members “meet them” and “hear them out”, and yet in their minds,
they carry the “image of their communion” (Anderson, web). However,
contrary to Anderson’s definition of a community, the community on the
Ibis is formed out of praxis and necessity, the myth of an “imagined
community” is substituted by a community in close approximation. This
community now functions on the basis of mutual dependence rather than on
any macrocosmic notion of a nation. What it also does is break the class
barriers and the ritualistic separation that goes along with them. Neel, the
188 Chapter Five

aristocratic Brahmin, shares space with Ah Fatt, a Chinese man, whose

father is a Parsee (revealed in The River of Smoke); the Bihari low-caste
munias have to share space with Bengali coolies, and their common master
is the British. The Ibis forms its own community, but there is a cultural
tension as everyone tries to relocate their dislocated selves. Hence, they
practise the rituals as strictly as possible in the middle of the high seas,
knowing that that may not be enough to redeem their ‘sin’. Amitav Ghosh
never loses sight of his critical introspection on socio-cultural behaviour and
psyche, and often uses an irony almost bordering on black humour to depict
the hypocrisies that arise from the hegemony of the ritualistic dictum of
binarizing the ‘us’ as true and ‘them’ as false. During a storm, the Ibis nearly
capsizes. The human psyche, in this situation, goes back to the narratives of
faith almost as in instinctive reaction due to cultural appropriation. As the
Ibis faces its crisis, the British officers, including the Captain, chants, “Ave
Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum... Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is
with thee” (ibid, 371). The coolies do the same, only their language of faith
is different.
Májha dhára mé hai bera merá
Kripá kará ásrai hai tera

My raft’s adrift in the current

Your mercy is my only refuge. (ibid, 374)

Ironically, even though the two cultures are carrying out the same ritualistic
function, that is, chanting prayers in the time of crisis, the Captain rebukes
the chants of the coolies: “Damned coolies, bloody Doomsday couldn’t put
a stop to their caterwauling” (ibid). So, Ave Maria is true in its inception but
the ritualistic chants of the coolies become caterwauling. This hegemonic
belief in a unidimensional praxis of culture is a point of satire in Ghosh as
he points out the dangers inherent in such dogmatism. The coolies treat the
rituals not only as part of their identity but also as a kind of reality that lies
above the realms of everyday existence. The voyage on the Ibis provides
them with the opportunity to assimilate their memory, shaped by fiction,
with the empirical reality. This becomes apparent when the ship reaches
Jambudvipa, where Ganga meets the Bay of Bengal. To the coolies, “it was
a place they had visited and revisited time and again, through the epics and
Puranas, through myth, song and legend” (ibid, 396 & 397). The myths and
legends have provided the material to enable the memory to have a
preconceived notion about a place, thereby creating an imaginary cultural
space that comes replete with preconceived notions. When this shared
communal memory meets the empirical reality, the coolies can’t stop
 'As though of hemlock I had drunk' 189

themselves from paying respect to the land since it represents for them a
sense of hallowed belief. The memory is politicized for the sake of building
a ‘community’, and this community learns to cope with a reality that has
been predefined through myth narratives.

Deeti remembers Kabutri, her daughter, as she takes the plunge in an

unknown future. She remembers the rituals of women singing songs of
separation when a groom is married off, and other women join her. All of
them share a similar cultural past, and at this moment of crisis they go back
to that past to find some solace before catastrophe strikes. The pain of exile,
both in marriage and in a sea voyage, merges as the women sing
Kaise katé ab
Birahá ki ratiyā?

How will it pass

This night of parting? (ibid, 398)

The fear and anxiety of exile is both psychological and cultural since the
dislocated self finds it difficult to relocate its identity in a set of completely
different parameters. Deeti’s song is appreciated by Neel in essence because
he is a Bengali and has little knowledge about Bhojpuri, but also because
the “language” of communication strikes him with a sense of familiarity,
especially when all the convicts and coolies are attached in a collective
common fate. Since Amitav Ghosh is more postmodern compared to
Achebe, we can look into the issue of ‘text’ and how Derrida defines the
text as a space of unending semiotic recontextualizations, and that can be
used to discern the way myth narratives are recontextualised by Ghosh,
which leads to the formation of a new text, and by extension new narratives
on myth. This is what Derrida has to say about a ‘text’.
A ‘text’ is henceforth no longer a finished corpus of writing, some contents
enclosed in a book or its margins, but a differential network, a fabric of
traces referring endlessly to something other than itself, to other differential
traces. (Derrida, 64)

Hence, the meaning of a text is not bound by the orator/writer’s

interventionist textual politics but rather is also dependent on the endless
recontextualizations as the text moves from one auditor/reader to another.
In this case, Neel is the auditor of many of the ritualistic songs that Deeti
sings, and the way he receives the ‘text’ is contextually different from the
way the Bhojpuri-speaking audience receives it, but that does not stop Neel
from deriving meaning out of it and participating in the process of
interpretation. When a new community is formed on the ship, purely based
190 Chapter Five

on the shared predicament and memory of the coolies and the convicts,
myths also enter a new domain, getting interpreted and represented in
endlessly different ways in order to construct a new text of community.
Towards the end of the novel, Heeru, one of the coolies, chooses her man
and all the exiled coolies arrange the rituals of the marriage. The marriage
ceremony itself takes the shape of a myth since in the relocated space, the
girmitiyas (coolies) arrange to make a cultural space reminiscent of their
native place. However, the reminiscence is not dogmatic in its approach; it
is more of a cultural nostalgia that the coolies bask in, in order to try and
find the centre of their dislocated and colonized selves. One must remember
that Deeti and Kalua had not gone through a “social marriage”, with rituals
being observed in the presence of social establishment; they just exchanged
garlands on the night of their escape, thereby constructing a new social and
ritualistic paradigm, moving towards individualism. In classical Hindu
texts, such a marriage was mentioned as a Gandharva Vivah, but the society
that Ghosh portrays had never accepted a marriage where there is no social
and familial consent, and hence a new ritualistic order is created on the Ibis.
The same happens in the case of Heeru and her bride, even though the
nuptial ties are solemnized by a close observance of rituals, as far as
practicable in the middle of the China Sea. The Ahir singers sing the usual
madrigal songs, objectifying women with sexual innuendos:
uthlé há chháti ke jobanwá
piyá ké khélawna ré hoi

her budding breasts are ready

to be her lover’s toys... (ibid, 460)

There is the customary first meal of the day, the tilak ceremony involving
the reddening of the foreheads, the sprinkling of turmeric on everyone, and
the final chanting of hymns. Deeti feels that a part of Bihar has been
recreated on the lower deck of the ship. Rituals, therefore, create a bridge
between the microcosmos of the Ibis and the past macrocosmos of Bihar.
The shared cultural memory and the pain of exile and colonisation is
momentarily forgotten in the mood of celebration as the rituals are almost a
consolation on the part of the coolies for the torture and dehumanising
treatment they get from their colonial masters. The rituals on the Ibis
strengthen the feeling of community among the coolies, and they use this to
their advantage when crisis strikes the ship. Deeti is recognised by her
brother-in-law, Hukam Singh, who also boarded the ship as the manager of
the coolies, employed by the British. When he tries to rape Deeti once again,
he is killed by Kalua. The community of coolies revolt as they have already
 'As though of hemlock I had drunk' 191

identified Deeti as their keeper of honour, and the resultant confusion helps
Babu Nob Kissin free Neel, Ah Fatt and Kalua, who take to the ocean in a
life boat towards a totally unknown destiny.

Ghosh’s second book on the Ibis trilogy River of Smoke starts with the
coolies reaching Mauritius. However, the novel does not concentrate as
much on them or Deeti as it does on Neel and Ah Fatt, along with Paulette
and a Bombay-based Parsi businessman, Bahram, who deals in opium.
Their narratives are brought together when the narrator gives their
perspective of incidents they have in common. The novel starts on a
mythical note, with Deeti establishing her “shrine” and becoming a
“goddess”, passing on her “legacy” to the generations coming after her.
“Deeti’s shrine” had been a narrative anticipation in Sea of Poppies
although Ghosh does not reach a narrative conclusion about it in the trilogy.
Deeti and the others were working in the sugarcane plantations as
girmitiyas, and one night a severe thunderstorm hits. Lost in the darkness,
Deeti enters a space she realises had been inhabited but was probably
abandoned. She could see piles of firewood, flints and cracked calabash
scattered around the cave. The description is reminiscent of the popular
imagination that depicts humanity as having risen from the caves. The
implication is that of a prelinguistic, prediscursive space that existed before
humankind became “civilised”. If language defines one of the aspects of the
“birth of civilisation”, then it becomes the marker of human identity post-
verbal (as opposed to non-verbal) communication. However, in Ghosh,
there is a movement back to the phase of non-verbal communication. Deeti,
as the dislocated entity, tries to define and establish her new identity through
the shrine, but, ironically, since the space is not blank, she has to build on
the identity already established by the earlier occupants of the cave. Levi
Strauss observes
In the case of myth... it is a consequence of the irrational relation between
the circumstances of the creation of the myth, which are collective, and the
particular manner in which it is experienced by the individual. Myths are
anonymous: from the moment they are seen as myths, and whatever their
real origins, they only exist as elements embodied in a tradition. (Strauss:
1983, 18)

This point of view seems to belong to the Eurocentric Enlightenment that

seeks to binarize “rationality” and “myth”, the ‘cooked’ and the ‘raw’. The
observation that myths are anonymous is problematic because then myths
stand outside the narrative politics of culture formation through
representation. To decontextualize Derrida, nothing is outside culture, and
hence myths cannot be outside the periphery of epistemology. Amitav
192 Chapter Five

Ghosh’s representation of myths are not, as Strauss notes, only as

“embodied in tradition” but also how myths constantly reconfigure their
narratives according to texts constructed by the receiver, and the process is
endless since the act of narration winds towards innumerable narrative
conjectures. In that way, Ghosh is closer to the poststructuralist tradition
than the structuralist. When Deeti enters the cave and finds that it is already
a space of language, she decides to add to the generation of meaning,
thereby using communication as a floating signifier. Ghosh writes that
“Deeti’s shrine was hidden in a cliff, in a far corner of Mauritius... Later
Deeti would insist that it wasn’t chance but destiny that led her to it”
(Ghosh: 2011, 3). Ghosh mainly deals with non-metropolitan myths. Urban
myths are not a part of Ghosh’s narrative politics in the three novels under
our consideration although he deals with them in an earlier novel called The
Calcutta Chromosome. Even though River of Smoke is set in the bustling
port city of Canton, it cannot be said that the novelist is focusing on the
metropolitan consciousness of the city since its native dwellers, the Chinese,
do not form a part of Ghosh’s Canton. Instead, he focuses on the British
colonisers and the Indians who enter the city only for material gain. They
participate in the economic consumption and leave – they are not interested
in being a part of Canton’s local culture. Deeti is only given the first few
pages in this novel, but in that small narrative space, Ghosh depicts the way
she brings her indigenous culture through the myths and rituals of her native
land of Bihar, but her “shrine” is located not in Canton but outside the
mainstream urban population. Deeti practices the rituals, making one “puja-
room” (shrine) in the cave so that her culture is preserved. The
representation of the sacred forms an important part of Deeti’s strategy to
make sure that, as far as possible, the native language of the rituals is kept
intact. She worships Marut, Hanuman, the Hindu god of wind, and even
chants the customary prayers. In Deeti’s case it is more a case of
establishing the identity of the community in the new land as well as a tacit
cultural resistance, but as the settlement of the coolies is outside the
mainstream society of Mauritius, there is not much to resist as far as they
are concerned. The epistemological blank is filled by the shrine, a symbol
to establish a new settlement, perpetrated by the rituals to define the
parameters by which the settler community will function. However, the plot
in this novel does not develop this aspect; maybe the yet-to-be-established
third instalment of the trilogy will develop it further. There is a narrative
hint that the shrine gets washed away in a storm surge later on. Memory
becomes the only mode of communication and the only agent of
representation for Deeti’s goddess-like status; “the children would begin to
drift back to the shrine’s outer chamber, to stare in wonder at the painted
 'As though of hemlock I had drunk' 193

walls of the cavern that was known as Deetiji’s ‘Memory-Temple’ – Deetiji-

ka-smriti mandir” (ibid, 8). It is the proximity of the profane to the sacred
that immortalises the mortal, thereby contributing to the myth making
process. Deeti’s shrine is decorated with Madhubani paintings, a distinct
folk painting style of Western Bihar, and the people who paint Deeti’s shrine
with Madhubani paintings are expert in “depicting the ordinary mortals who
frolicked around the feet of the devas, devis and demons” (ibid, 9). In
representation, space depicts the way a parameter is fixed to define identity.
The ways mortals are painted in close approximation to the gods reflect the
way human subjects are elevated to metaphysical entities. The narrator
observes, though, that “repetition is the method through which the
miraculous becomes a part of everyday life” (ibid, 14), citing that with the
usual collective gaze on Deeti’s shrine, it becomes a part of commonplace
ritual. Ghosh seems to hint at the fact that rituals and myths are part of a
collective memory that constructs the narrative as ‘fantastical’ only by its
temporal proximity to the tale, but once the proximity leads to an everyday
repetition of the same ritualistic observance, then the fantastical becomes a
common event.

Northrop Frye observes in his hypothesis on myth, culture and religion that
myths embody the desire for freedom from religious orthodoxy since they
resist the tendency of religion to remain the status quo.
Culture’s essential service to a religion is to destroy intellectual idolatory,
the recurrent tendency in religion to replace the object of its worship with
its present understanding and forms of approach to that object... no religious
or political myth is either valuable or valid unless it assumes the autonomy
of culture, which may be provisionally defined as the total body of
imaginative hypothesis in a society and its tradition. (Frye, 1971: 127)

Frye’s position as a critic is that of a Christian interpreter of history, but he

resists the tradition of creating an intellectual status quo out of sacred
narratives. Frye's position seems to echo the concept of tradition in T.S.
Eliot as he points out the constant revisionism that myths go through in the
spatio-temporal space of culture, with the dialectic between the sacred and
the profane continually being redefined. Deeti herself experiences this
struggle between the world of the profane and the sacred when she decorates
her shrine with paintings, realising that the storm must get the maximum
representative importance since stars and planets “travelled on predictable
orbits” but the wind “was the power of change, of transformation” (Ghosh,
2011: 19). The cultural autonomy that Frye refers to is partially evident in
Deeti, who replaces her older beliefs with newer ones as she considers that
it is the wind that has been the progenitor of her destiny and has flown her
194 Chapter Five

to Mauritius, based on her Karma. Deeti becomes a subject of scrutiny in

whom the opposing viewpoints of religious dogmatism and religious
liberalism work; the latter being different from the former in degree and not
necessarily of kind.

Dislocation of the subject is a recurrent literary motif in the novels of Ghosh,

and with it comes the problematic discourse of the insider/outsider dialectic
of looking at culture from different perspectives. Bahram, a character in this
novel, is swept away by the same storm that rocked the Ibis, and his ship,
Anahita, also comes to the shores of Mauritius, later to take the course
upstream to Singapore and finally to the port city of Canton – the hub of the
opium trade in 19th-century China. Bahram comes from the Parsi
community in Bombay, a minority community in India, and later it is
revealed that Ah Fatt is his illegitimate son, born to Bahram’s Chinese
mistress. Bahram has a wife back home, Shireenbai, and these two
characters reflect the writer’s attitude towards social rituals, which is
ambivalent. The assimilative power of myths is explored in the novels but,
at the same time, Ghosh delineates the ostracising capabilities of rituals as
well as seeks to marginalise a subject based on myths. Shireenbai is
childless but she wants a son, owing to patriarchal pressures of proprietal
and familial lineage, and for that reason, she visits magical wells, touches
the miraculous rocks, and ties innumerable threads that are believed to bring
good luck. The obviously gendered narrative in the rituals need not be
overstated, but what is interesting is the fact that she does all of this
believing in the sexual morality of her husband when Bahram already has a
son in Canton. It is a problematic standpoint on the part of the writer since
sexual morality presupposes a patriarchal intervention in the body of a
subject, but Ghosh seems to justify this by portraying Shireenbai in the light
of a victim. The patriarchy that uses her body as a biological entity to give
birth to a boy is the same system that expects her to remain celibate while
her husband is away. This point seems somewhat strategically hidden in
Ghosh’s narrative, and hence there is a danger of stereotypification,
perpetrated by patriarchal norms. Myth formation is not always the
construction of a narrative based on the atemporality of time. Myth
formation also gets constructed by the intervention of socio-political
contexts as well as the personal politics of subject formation. Bahram is
constructed by myths as a subject of failed fatherhood, but the sadhu, or the
hermit, uses myth to construct the subject in order to corner Bahram for
having a bastard son, something that he cannot declare in front of the world
when his manhood is questioned. “The masculine energies of Bahram’s
body fluids had become depleted”, says the sadhu, but he knows that that is
not the case (ibid, 110). Patriarchy intervenes to construct family as a
 'As though of hemlock I had drunk' 195

heteronormative sacred space that cannot be polluted by sexual

overreaching. Bahram is made to understand that his wife can take recourse
to ritual practices to solve the problem, but Bahram cannot come out of the
garb of ritualism to declare that he has a “family” outside the established
order of a “family”. In order to deny his self as well as his sexual/emotional
overstepping, Bahram has to concede to certain magical treatments that the
sadhu prescribes for him, which give him the much-needed shield behind
which to hide his secret from Shireenbai. The failure of the ‘treatment’ gives
Shireenbai enough proof that her dreams of getting a foothold in the
patriarchal family will never be realised and “her belief in signs and omens
had grown even more fervent than before” (ibid). Shireenbai as the subaltern
subject is appropriated into silence; she does not have the power relations
within the patriarchal normativity to resist whatever has been prescribed by
the society – in fact, she becomes a part of the narrative. Hence, whenever
Bahram plans for a journey to Canton, Shireenbai goes through an elaborate
ceremony of rituals so the powers above will protect her husband from
drowning in the sea, but she does not know that her husband does not
exercise the sexual morality that she has been trained to believe in. She has
been appropriated to the belief system that as a subject of society, she does
not have any identity outside her husband or her family and so she arranges
for the rituals in order to perhaps protect her identity. Simone de Beauvoir’s
famous articulation in The Second Sex that “One is not born a woman, but
becomes one”, followed by the comment that women are “the incidental,
the inessential, as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the
Absolute – she is the Other” (Beauvoir, web), shows Beauvoir’s insistence
that women are the silenced subject in social discourses. Classical feminism
does tend to essentialise the binary between a man and a woman, something
that was criticised by Judith Butler in the 1990s, but what Beauvoir and Kate
Millet point out is that women are not only subjugated in terms of gender
but also in terms of how they function as the Other to men. To contextualise
this within the discourse of myth formation in River of Smoke, what
becomes apparent is that it is Shireenbai who contributes to the culture of
ritualistic practices before Bahram takes to sea, whereas as the male, he
shows no signs of participating in the construction of the family narrative
that Shireenbai so desperately wants to protect as a sacred citadel. The
preservation of her identity and her subject depends on it. Shireenbai only
receives the signifiers of the culture; being the female, she is entitled only
to receive.

Within the narrative of the myth lies the politics of marginalising women as
the second sex. The omniscient narrator notes that Shireenbai had
“apprehensions” regarding Bahram’s behaviour’ perhaps she realises that
196 Chapter Five

there is more to his desperation to visit Canton so regularly than just trade
and commerce. Yet, her faith in the belief systems is so strong that she takes
recourse to rituals to stop Bahram from leaving. In fact, it is a case of social
appropriation, where Shireenbai has been made to believe in the powers
above in order to constrict her subject within the periphery of expected
social norms and behaviours. In this novel, Ghosh includes astrology in the
domain of mythology. While the two are different in scope, there is a
nuanced interconnection between the two bodies of knowledge. As in
mythology, a religious narrative is also used in astrology to construct a
narrative. If we talk of the mythologist forming myths through his
narratives, we may also observe that astrologers construct their own body
of narrative through their representation of the knowledge system. Myth and
astrology form a continuum of knowledge of religious narratives, and both
function through the dialectic of the sacred and the profane. Shireenbai is
constricted by the panoptikon1 of the male gaze, and that gaze directs her to
exercise rituals as a sacred narrative that defines the social behaviour of a
woman. Shireenbai is informed by her astrologer that the stars are aligned
in an ominous way, and he predicts that there will be war and unrest in
China. The last prediction is interesting in the context of the novel since a
war does break out later between the Chinese authorities and the British
administration over profit share of the opium trade. Ghosh does not intend
to rationalise myths and rituals by validating them on historical data or facts,
but the idea of the mythical supposes that there will be elements that will
not be in tandem with the empirical reality. The alternative reality is not
based on mysticism but on some calculated knowledge- based information
that is expressed through mythical foretelling or ritualistic practices. Unrest
was already brewing between the Chinese monarchy and the British
officials, and the astrologer might well have used it to his advantage, giving
it a mythical dimension through his ritualistic pattern of behaviour. It is the
identity of the astrologer that makes his foretelling mythical even though
empirical realities are embedded in the narrative. Shireenbai is an example
of a subject who understands the real cause of her husband’s desperation to
reach Canton but does not let go of rituals and superstitions out of fear of
losing the social centrality and getting ostracised. Objects of daily use are
given ritualistic meaning and significance; they are already assigned a
sacred space by the social narratives, which are often established as
hegemony. The night before Bahram’s departure, Shireenbai’s red bangles
break, Bahram’s turban is found on the floor, and an owl is heard shrieking
at daybreak. All of these are social signs of ominous events. The red bangle
signifies the married status of a Hindu woman; what it essentially implies is
the sexual, familial and social boundaries a woman is expected to stay
 'As though of hemlock I had drunk' 197

within. Patriarchy designates the space within which a woman is supposed

to exist. If she dares to cross the line, she is ostracised as the fallen woman.
The red bangle is an object ritualised to define the designated space of a
woman within the family/society. Ritual as a social praxis defines the
identity of a woman in terms of the male gaze since it is a “strategic arena
for the embodiment of power relations” which also involves “the
objectification and legitimation of an ordering of power” (Bell, 170). So,
Shireenbai’s observance of rituals and believing in the traditional narratives
of myth and faith are part of the gender relations in society, where the
powerless are made to practice rituals that appropriate them to the belief that
they are indeed powerless. On the other hand, Bahram’s turban signifies
power as only the males are allowed to wear the turbans. There is gender
stereotypification here too as males are coerced to believe that they are
powerful, and there is no scope for subversion since patriarchy functions on
binaries. Despite Shireenbai’s pleas, Bahram leaves for Canton since his
mistress Chi-mei is waiting for him, and he also needs to catch up with the
trade. Hence, no amount of ritualistic belief or myths of omens stops
Bahram from making his way to trade and commerce and his relationship
outside the family.

Levi Strauss notes

History is tied neither to man nor to any particular object. It consists wholly
in its method, which experience proves indispensable for cataloguing the
elements of any structure whatever, human or non-human in its entirety.
Rather it is history that serves as the point of departure in any quest for
intelligibility. (Strauss, 1966: 262)

Levi Strauss, from his structuralist point of view, looks at historical

narratives from a Methodist perspective, where history becomes a locus for
other narratives to establish a structural relationship between themselves in
terms of signifier and signified. Amitav Ghosh, however, does not fall into
a category that easily, and so what he does is look at the same event from
different perspectives in order to both establish and de-establish the
structural and non-structural relationships between narratives. The opium
trade is the locus, and Bahram, Neel and Jodu have their way of looking at
it from their colonised subject position, and the English look at it from their
coloniser’s gaze. But Ghosh does not stop at this. If he was only looking at
history from different perspectives, he would have been constructing
historicity. What he does is provide a non-temporal fictional scale by which
history is seen as a voice depicts it. Levi Strauss rejected Sartre’s idea that
history is a form of myth on the charge that historical consciousness always
seeks to close a gap in the continuing narrative of history in time so the
198 Chapter Five

narrative flow remains uninterrupted, whereas myth has no such compulsion

(ibid). However, Ghosh’s mythopoeic narrative does try and fill the gap in
opium trade history by perspectivizing it, following voices that are not the
established voices in the canon of history. Hence, Ghosh is not only
interpreting history, as in historicity, but also giving it an imaginative tone
by constructing an illusion that ‘this must have happened’ by employing
characters ‘present’ in the space where the history is unfolding. He does not
pose as the objective interpreter but rather as a subjective storyteller. Once
the narrative is given the texture of storytelling, the author makes it clear
that instead of treating his narrative as an interpretation, it should be treated
as an act of representation in the aesthetic sense of the term. And once this
is established, the novel ceases to become a grand narrative and becomes
mythopoeic in its intent. So, even though the illusion is created on one level
– that since the characters are present in the scene, their story must be true
– on the other level, it is also implied that in an act of representation,
everything is a fact since whatever the characters deem to be ‘true’ is ‘true’
in their gaze. At the same time, they are also ‘untrue’ since there is no
attempt made to either validate or cancel their story. Storytelling then
becomes an act of the aesthetic representation of an event in the arena of
mythopoeic narratives. However, what is different in Ghosh, as opposed to
anonymous folktales or ritual narratives, is that in the latter, there is an effort
made to locate the text outside time and space in order to give it a flavour
of the sacred, which, in turn, helps to preserve the text as a manifesto of
social, cultural and religious behaviour that cannot be tampered with. This,
of course, is done to maintain the status quo in power relations. In Amitav
Ghosh, mythopoesis is not given a sacred value because, as a postmodern
storyteller, he does not want to impose any hegemony of narrative, and
hence all the versions of his story are to be taken as representations of
aesthetics and perspectivisations of an event that should not be interpreted
as true or authentic or otherwise.

Jodu’s letters are a case in point for the myth-history continuum that Ghosh
seeks to represent in this novel. Addressing Paulette as “Puggly dear” (Pagli
is a Bengali address for a madwoman, albeit sometimes endearingly), he
tells her that he has been reading a book called View of Toledo by El Greco.
Jodu becomes the second-order signifier by whom the city of Canton and
its cultural past are represented after the representation in El Greco’s book.
The receiver is Paulette, and through her, the readers. Jodu’s representation
of the city is also echoed by one of his companions, Zadig Bey, who was
with him as a lascar on the Ibis. Jodu weaves his own mythopoesis around
what history and myth tell about the origin of Canton and how he looks at
it. In the letter, Jodu writes that Bey informed him that Canton’s city limits
 'As though of hemlock I had drunk' 199

were established at the same time as Rome. Whether there is any historical
validation to this information is not the point here. What is significant is that
since Rome is associated with classical European enlightenment, any
association with it gives Canton a mythical status in terms of art, culture,
trade, and commerce. Jodu writes that during the establishment of the city,
“five Devas [Gods] are said to have descended from the heavens to mark a
spot on the bank of the river” (Ghosh, 2011: 376) on which the Thirteen
Factories were apparently set, as the gods had blessed the Cantonites that
“may hunger never visit your market” (ibid). The economic prosperity that
Canton witnessed in the nineteenth century was purely because of the opium
trade so the opium factories, referred to as the Thirteen Factories, set up by
different European countries, earned cult status. Establishing a connection
between the sacred and business helps to justify economic activity as the
sole duty of the citizens, whether business is done with fair means or not –
this in turn is an effort to strengthen the power relations to keep the
economic activity going and preserve the supply-consumption chain.

The question of identity becomes paramount in such cases where the city
becomes an imposing presence for those who partake in its massive
economic activities but remain outsiders to the cultural and religious space.
According to Jodu, the “strange tale... made me conscious of my Alien-ness,
of the distance between myself and this city” (ibid). Jodu feels the perennial
outsider in the city not only because he is racially/culturally/nationally
different but also because he has not participated in the construction of the
myth narratives surrounding the city, and hence, as a subject, he does not
feel part of the intrinsic myths that constructed Canton. This is not to say
that myths regarding the establishment of Canton are entirely Chinese, but
even if they were contributed by the British and the other European settlers,
Jodu had no part in any of it and so feels left out. Hence, myths can integrate
the cultural self of subjects; they can disintegrate in the same manner as
well. As we have discussed, Ghosh’s politics focus on the micro-narrative;
Jodu’s outsider status is essentially a mythopoesis of his interpretation of
his position in Canton and not necessarily of the entire community of
Indians who work there. Bahram, for example, always feel integrated in the
city space, though one of the reasons for this is his economic success. Still,
Jodu does not feel the same as Bahram does regarding his presence in
Canton. Anne Holden Renning observes
Memory is a collective myth shared by a group...these memories are not
personal, but inherited through storytelling... memory and history are
constructions of the past, though the factual elements of the mythological
memory are often difficult to identify. (Renning, 149)
200 Chapter Five

Jodu, as a subject of Canton, has not inherited myths through storytelling

from the previous generations and hence he is not located in the time and
space of Canton. Mythical narratives help to integrate the individual subject
within a certain identity of a community, but this has not happened for Jodu
either in Calcutta or Canton since in both cities, he did not belong to any
established community and, as a result, has never been allowed to
participate in the narrative of myth formation vis-a-vis community
formation. He finds interest in the myth that the tutelary deity of Canton is
a goddess called Kuan-yin, but, actually, she is said to have come from India
because she refused to become a Boddhisatva (the enlightened Buddha).
When Jodu scans the various places of faith in the city, whether a Chinese
Pagoda, a temple or a Dargah, he fails to identify his self in the community
to which those faiths belong. Symbolically, he scans the buildings through
binoculars, thereby remaining the outsider, peeking into the places from a
distance. Another myth that Jodu mentions is how the name Pearl Island
came to be associated with Canton. The myth goes that a jewel merchant
from abroad dropped his best pearl in the sea near Canton and then “it lay
at the bottom, glowing like a lantern and slowly growing larger until it grew
into an island” (ibid, 378). This myth can be associated with the earlier one,
where the gods descended and blessed the local people that business will
never run dry in Canton. Both myths associate Canton with material wealth.
Myths in almost all the cases reflect the local realities in terms of culture, as
is the case here. Jodu identifies with the cultural dislocation of the merchant
who dropped the pearl since it is not known whether he was an Arab,
Armenian or Hindusthani. Myths can also be located in time and space, and
their significance changes with the changing realities of the times. Zadig
Bey relates that at one point of time in history (Bey does not locate the exact
time, hence the mythical quality of the narrative, located ‘somewhere’ in the
‘then’), there was hunger and unrest in the city. The locals blamed the
outside settlers for their plight, and, one night, a group of rebel soldiers
killed the foreigners. For many years no one came to the city, but they did
come back eventually for the opium trade. What this narrative does is
corroborate the city space of Canton, which is strictly divided between the
walled city and outside the walls, the walled portion inhabited by the
Chinese officials and members of the royal family and the foreigners strictly
prohibited. So, Canton has a strict community division where the cultural,
social and political spaces are constructed differently for the settlers and the
local people. This actually leads to the opium war in the last pages of the
novel, where the Chinese and the British fight over trade rights and profit
share.
 'As though of hemlock I had drunk' 201

It is necessary at this juncture to look at the difference between certain

terms/concepts like mythology, mythography, and mythopoesis and their
relation to history. As a starting reference, mythology can be depicted as
mythical stories circulating in a given culture, and the specific modes of
representation of those myths in art forms may be defined as mythography.
So, mythology is more related to the cultural energy of circulation and
mythography relates to the methods of representation in art forms. On the
other hand, mythopoesis is a more nuanced category of thought that seeks
to indulge in myth making through art forms. It implies a certain way of
aesthetic production that appropriates the already circulating myths at the
oral level or those in earlier forms of literature, and then transfigures them
into another mode of representation, thereby participating in myth making.
Alastair McIntosh observes
Reality is “mythopoesis" – an interesting word, combining the prefix
“myth" and the Greek origin of the word poetry — poesis — which literally
means “the making". Mythopoesis is therefore about the construction of
reality from story. (McIntosh, 45)

Now, the question that arises is what relation can be cognitively deduced
between mythology, mythopoesis and history. A narrative of mythology has
a certain backdrop of the sacred since without the sacred, a given mythology
does not circulate as social energy. This sacred must be construed in terms
of power relations and control. It is this temper of control that makes
mythology perform its role as an explanation of the superiority of
supernatural elements. However, the question that arises is what relation
history has with mythology. In this context, the very scope of word history
needs to be examined. After the postcolonial contexts being drawn in the
world of academia, history is no longer what is documented by the official
recorders of events. In most cases, they are considered to be the narratives
of power. Lucien Febvre and E. P. Thompson 2 popularised the concept of
history from below, thereby calling for looking at history from the
perspective of the marginalised, the voiceless and the subalterns. Hence,
history as a written document with proper source material is no longer the
required definition of something being historical. Folk history, oral history,
myths, legends or aesthetic productions like songs, theatre, and creative
literature are also very legitimate sources of history. They give voice to
those sections of society that suffered from aporia in the dominant written
records of events. So, mythology and history are not the same in terms of
what they are but are similar in what they intend to do. The cognitive
relation between the two cannot be judged simply in terms of what their
basic identities are but must be construed in terms of what they finally
202 Chapter Five

achieve. In this sense, mythicization is a dynamic process that happens

through history as well. And that depends on the timeline on which myth
formation is being looked at. Every narrative that looks at mythical sources
as potential sources of finding the voice of a certain class and section of
people makes those sources historical as well as mythical. It is also true that
what is not so mythical today can transform itself into mythical in the future,
given the fissure and circumstances of time and context and the politics of
representation.

The concluding portion of the novel is dedicated to the opium war, where
the myth-history continuum is narrativized, and fact and fiction merge to
construct a narrative of mythopoesis. The opium war was fought between
the British traders/colonisers and the Chinese officials over the issue of
trade licenses and profit-sharing. There were two opium wars, the First
Opium War was fought between 1839 and 1842, and the Second Opium
War was fought between 1856 and 1860. In 1839, Lin Zexu, the official
scholar of the Canton Province wrote to Queen Victoria
Your Majesty has not before been thus officially notified, and you may
plead ignorance of the severity of the laws, but I now give my assurance
that we mean to cut this harmful drug forever. (Zexu, web)

In the same letter, it is warned that foreigners who ventured into the walled
city would be decapitated. This history is fictionalised by Ghosh, but his
focus is more on the individual responses to the crisis, thereby forming his
own mythopoesis of the “events”. Bahram is under siege since his boats full
of opium were captured by the Chinese police, and even though he escapes
the raid, he sees that many of his chain suppliers have been publicly hanged
in the central square. The way Ghosh concentrates on the micro-level
representation of history causes his narrative to move from history to fiction
to a mythopoeic vision of the ‘past’. Bahram is so disturbed by the turn of
events that in the thick fog he feels as if someone is following him. He
cannot help but get intoxicated by opium to escape his consciousness of
fear. The novel ends with the burning down of the Thirteen Factories by the
Chinese officials. This event is not described by an omniscient third person
narrator but through the gaze of Jodu. Jodu describes to Paulette
From the top I looked down and saw a line of flames leaping from the river;
the factories were on fire and they burned through the night. In the morning
when the sun rose, I saw the Fanqui-town had been reduced to ashes; it was
gone... (ibid, 551)
 'As though of hemlock I had drunk' 203

The description almost marks the ‘end of history’ for Canton, at least as far
as the mythopoeic space of the novel is concerned. The entire narrative of
the novel seems to be a construction of memory, shared by the different
characters that were present at the spot. However, the time and space of
history are deconstructed to the level of individual representation of the
voices. Amitav Ghosh does not construct a grand narrative on the opium
war as the only valid narrative on the history. The mythopoeic vision of
Ghosh constructs the narrative as a representation of the individual voices.
After a lapse of many years, when Deeti and Neel meet in Deeti’s shrine,
Neel gives her a painting of the opium factories burning. The painter is said
to be Paulette’s friend E. Chinnery, and the painting is dated July 1839.
Significantly, the burning of the Thirteen Factories did not happen until
1856, so the painting seems to be a visionary anticipation of the event,
thereby becoming a myth in itself. When Deeti asks “So the place doesn’t
exist anymore?”, Neel answers, “No. It was burnt to the ground”. Neel adds
that “if it were not for those paintings, no one would believe that such a
place had ever existed” (ibid, 552 & 553). The painting, therefore, becomes
a concluding statement on the mythopoeic construction of Ghosh’s
narrative. The painting becomes a repository of memory by which Canton’s
history in the period of the opium wars is constructed in retrospect. The text
of River of Smoke then becomes a second-order signified in this process of
myth formation, where the aesthetic representation is used as a voice that
tells about the past of Canton, but that is not a grand narrative. The
reader/audience of the novel/painting is free to look at the history from the
gaze they choose. Canton is now a memory on the myth-history continuum,
where the narrative of the novel contributes by representing the ‘past’ of the
opium war.

The last book of the Ibis trilogy, Flood of Fire, does not employ many myths
or rituals in its narrative politics, but there are some uses of them that need
to be looked at briefly. We will look at a couple of sporadic instances where
Ghosh uses myth to construct a sub-narrative of myth formation through his
novel. The first instance is a continuation from the previous novel River of
Smoke, where Ghosh depicted the mythical confluence of Krishna and
Baboo Nob Kissin in the latter's purported internalisation of the myth of
treating his body as female, as a sakhi or divine consort of Lord Krishna.
The sub-narrative of myth formation is constructed through the depiction of
Baboo Nob Kissin going through a process of gender reorientation as his
gender identity becomes more and more fluid, challenging the heteronormative
binarization of the male from the female. Ghosh writes that Nob Kissin
considers Zachary Reid as his Lord Krishna: "That day, walking aft, towards
the officers' cabin, Baboo Nob Kissin had heard the piping of a flute, the
204 Chapter Five

instrument of the divine flautist of Vrindavan, god of love as well as war"

(Ghosh: 2015, 255). We have already concluded that the appropriation of
'motherhood' is a patriarchal assumption of the female body in a certain
gender role, but what is added in the narrative here is the debate on
sacredness and profanity in myths. Nob Kissin's division between his
"profane existence as a cunning and ruthless practitioner of the worldly arts"
(ibid, 256) and his spiritual goal to achieve femininity reflect a certain
hierarchical stereotypification of the spiritual over the material. Karen
Armstrong suggests
We have seen that a myth could never be approached in a purely profane
setting. It was only comprehensible in a liturgical context that set it apart
from everyday life; it must be experienced as part of a process of personal
transformation. (Armstrong, 147)

In Nob Kissin's context, Armstrong's observation seems relevant. Nob

Kissin is able to create the difference between the sacred and the profane,
no matter how patriarchal it may sound, in order to get into the space of
mythical orientation.

While talking about myth formation in the opening chapter, we mentioned

that mythical narratives involve the production of certain types of symbols
that can conform to the construction of a myth narrative. Through tradition,
a certain expectation is built around the politics of interpretation as far as
symbols are concerned. It is through such an expectation that a reader
response model is constructed in relation to a system of meaning generation
through symbols. In Flood of Fire, Ghosh makes use of the uncanny to
mythicise the presence of the supernatural, which is deliberately left outside
the space of rational thinking to construct the texture of the supernatural.
The incident relates to Bahram's bastard son Lee getting signals, which he
believes are from his dead father, to clear up the doubt around the
mysterious death of Bahram. Freud observes while theorising on his
representation of the 'uncanny'
In the first place, if psychoanalytic theory is correct in maintaining that
every emotional affect, whatever its quality, is transformed by repression
into morbid anxiety, then among such cases of anxiety there must be a class
in which the anxiety can be shown to come from something repressed which
recurs. This class of morbid anxiety would then be no other than what is
uncanny, irrespective of whether it originally aroused dread or some other
affect. (Freud, 13)

Freud's conception of the uncanny helps us decipher myth or the mythical

as the Othering of the "known". We talked about Freud's thesis in Totem
 'As though of hemlock I had drunk' 205

and Taboo that rituals are an expression of repressed desires, and here he
looks at the uncanny as a possible expression of the unconscious, which he
calls "morbid anxiety". Freud's thesis can be extended to the area of myth
criticism for the sake of understanding the politics behind the representation
of myths. There is a fissure between the noun and the adjective – that is,
between myth and the mythical – and this fault line is crucial in expanding
the scope of myth criticism. In the section that we are focusing on now, the
mythical becomes a more dominant mode of representation than myth itself.
A myth is already a circulating narrative in a given society in whatever form
– oral, written, visual arts, or music. However, the mythical need not always
be constricted to the domain of mythology. The mythical can be constructed
through defamiliarization. Myth is associative of form, and the mythical of
idea. The ideation involved in the mythical is achieved through distancing
the familiar from the usual cognition of reality. Ghosh in Flood of Fire
includes this mode of the mythical by portraying an uncanny communication
between Lee and the dead Bahram Modi.

If Freud's definition of the uncanny is brought into consideration here, then

it might be possible to say that Lee's interaction with his dead father might
be an expression of his repressed unconscious desire for the same. While
Lee is trying to find out what transpired on that fateful night when Bahram
drowned in the river under mysterious circumstances, he comes across
Paulette, who could see the harbour from her farm atop the hill. Paulette
mentions other insignificant details but forgets to mention that a ladder was
hanging down from Bahram's ship, the Anahita, which Lee mentions to her
even though he was not present at that time.
“Miss Paulette, one thing I would like to ask you. That morning, lah, did you
see a ladder, hanging from my father's ship?”

With a start Paulette realized that she had omitted this important detail – the
dangling rope-ladder that had drawn her eye to the Anahita that morning.
The sight had puzzled her: why would a ladder be left dangling above the
water? Who could have used it and for what?

“Yes, there was a ladder”, she said. “I saw it hanging from the stern of Mr.
Moddie's ship. How did you know?”

“I see it too sometimes,” he said. “In my dreams, lah.” (Ghosh: 2015, 366)

The uncanny Ghosh represents in this section is part of his politics to

construct the mythical. As we are proposing, the mythical is the ideation
that does not necessarily contribute to the development of the form proper
but forwards the extended meaning of the intent behind the form. The intent
206 Chapter Five

of mythology is to propagate an aesthetic agenda for the supernatural forces,

which are deemed to have greater powers than human beings and are mostly
unknown or mysterious, thereby constructing the figures of gods in various
manifestations. Mythical may not necessarily contribute to this form of
generating the identity of gods of super-human creatures (often from the
naturalistic world) but propagates the presence of the unknown. The
mystifying politics of Ghosh gives his narrative a mythical quality that puts
the rational world under scrutiny, though his intent is not entirely to create
an agenda for the supernatural. It is perhaps not credible enough to say that
Ghosh uses the mythical to construct any identity in terms of anti-
coloniality. Ghosh is not a postcolonial author who asserts the nationalistic
agenda of his native state, and so his use of the mythical has more to do with
finding a literary discourse that goes beyond realism. Rushdie uses a lot of
magic realism in his texts, and authors like Devdutt Pattnaik, Amish and
Anand Neelkantan use anti-myths to construct narratives that reinterpret and
refashion myths from different perspectives. Ghosh does not use anti-myths
but concentrates here more on the mythical to create an ideology that will
exist somewhere between realism and fantasy. The ladder that Lee refers to
is envisioned by Mrs Modi as well, thereby constructing an undefined space
of the mythical. Ghosh’s fictional narrative functions in this domain of
counterculture that questions not only realistic modes of representations but
also resists the temptation to explain the uncanny in terms of rational or
psychological paradigms. However, at the same time, he shows no
conscious attempt to construct the genre of magic realism but leaves the
uncanny in the realm of the mythical.

Notes
1 The word panopticon is derived from the name of a giant in Greek mythology, who

had 100 eyes. The theory of the panopticon was developed by Jeremy Bentham in
the 18th century to describe the structure of English prisons, where a central tower
was built so guards could keep watch over the convicts. This serves as a metaphor
for the authoritarian gaze of the State on individuals, curtailing their identity to what
the State/society conceives for them. This metaphor was used later by Gramsci for
his theory on hegemony.
2 E.P. Thompson talked about it in the Times Literary Supplement of 1966.
 CHAPTER SIX

A BRIEF COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

OF MYTH FORMATION IN THE FICTION
OF CHINUA ACHEBE AND AMITAV GHOSH

Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh as writers are located in two different
cultural and social milieus, and the way they look at myth is different
according to the spatial and temporal distance they share in their literary
productions. Achebe’s literary politics are, as expected, different to that of
Amitav Ghosh, and this determines the difference in the way they use myth
in their narratives. From the perspective of culture, Ghosh looks at history
from the point of view of analysing the narrative of “voices” that have not
found a place in the dominant discourse of history. Achebe, on the other
hand, has a more structured political purpose in mind. He is a more assertive
postcolonial author in the sense that he wants to use history as a political
tool to create the identity of “Afrocentrism”. Myth formation, which is a
part of identity formation too, therefore gets constructed in different ways
by the two authors. Achebe is reacting to the process of ‘Othering’ that
Africans have been subjected to during centuries of colonialism, but at the
same time, he is aware of the pitfalls that are inherent within his own Igbo
culture. However, when the two cultural studies are placed side by side,
there is a tendency to tacitly glorify the indigenous culture without
demonizing the European “centre”. In the case of Ghosh, however, he looks
at his culture from the point of view of an outsider as well as an insider in
The Hungry Tide. Piya is the proverbial ‘Other’, the diasporic Bengali
woman who comes from America to try and understand the behaviour of
the dolphins of the Ganges, but in the process is made to enquire about the
socio-political and “mythical” past of the Sunderban region from the gaze
of an “outsider”. Nirmal, the uncle of Kanai, however, looks at history and
the formation of myth from the perspective of an “insider”, though the
question of the “insider” is also questioned by Ghosh. Nirmal is a
Communist who believes in the “rational” construction of history and
denounces the myth of Bon Bibi as the “irrational” manifestation of
“unenlightened” rural population. There is an obvious elitist perspective in
Nirmal because he comes from the urban centre and does not consider the
208 Chapter Six

rural space as his intellectual equal. Still, Ghosh does not unproblematically
glorify the non-urban space either, showing the inherent dichotomies of a
culture that depends on local myths for its survival, and which often do not
come to their rescue in times of trouble, as when Fakir has to die at the end
in the storm surge. In Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke, Ghosh’s outlining
of myth is taken from religious and historical narratives, and as the critical
observer of those records, Ghosh questions and refashions the way culture
looks at those myths. This insider-outsider dialectic is not as pronounced in
the fiction of Chinua Achebe when he looks at myths as important in
determining the social and political behaviour of the characters. In the
trilogy Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, and Arrow of God, Achebe
employs characters who are “outsiders” but they do not become critical
observers of culture – they either denigrate the Igbos or, worse, feel no need
to understand the tenets of the Igbo culture and the myths functioning within
that culture. Characters like Piya and Neel are made to encounter an “alien”
culture and therefore made to look at myth formation from the perspective
of subjects who are ready to imbibe the ‘Other’ within the praxis of cultural
expression. In the case of Achebe, myth formation remains at the level of
social practices considered sacred by those who swear by the myths to
maintain the status quo in power relations and are rejected to a large extent
by those who do not consider the myths as necessary to define their Igbo
identity. Characters like Obi Okonkwo in No Longer at Ease return from
England with an “enlightened” academic culture and find the myths
“primitive” and a hindrance to their freedom, but, unlike Piya and Neel, Obi
does not attempt to epistemologically find a compromise between the
perspective of the “natives” and his ideology, which is shaped by Western
ideals of enlightenment and individuality. In a way, Achebe becomes a more
staunch practitioner of nativism, often spurred by the modernist assertion of
identity, and Ghosh a relatively postmodern practitioner of art and culture,
trying to find a “compromise” between the different strands of identities that
ultimately construct the sociological, cultural and political aspects of a
given society.

It should be remembered that a “postcolonial” subject is not a homogenous

entity, and inherent in the various postcolonial entities, there are multiple
pluralities. This is crucial to understanding the difference in approach
between Ghosh and Achebe in their representation of myth in fiction. It is
obvious that Achebe’s and Ghosh’s content of myths will be different,
keeping in mind the comparative polarity in the cultures they represent in
their fiction. This chapter does not seek to merely point out the difference
in the content of the myths in the two writers because that is all too obvious.
What this chapter aims to do is to try and analyse the representational
 A Brief Comparative Analysis of Myth Formation in the Fiction 209
of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

difference in the two writers. It can be seen that in Achebe’s representation

of myth lies an inherent tendency to talk about a “mythical past”1 that is not
unchallenged but in which society agrees to operate. What Achebe points
out is that this general agreement is more of a power relationship, entered
by the village priest and the commoners, which is defined by the village
priest’s uncontested position of determining how to interpret the myths and
how should they be refashioned if needed. Now, the question arises as to
whether the politics of myth formation is exclusively within the domain of
the fictional narrative or whether the readers have their own politics in mind
when interpreting the way Achebe interprets the myths for them. Ania
Loomba in Colonialism/Postcolonialism notes
Stereotyping involves a reduction of images and ideas to a simple and
manageable form; rather than simple ignorance or lack of ‘real’ knowledge,
it is a method of processing information. The function of stereotypes is to
perpetuate an artificial sense of difference between ‘self’ and ‘other’.
(Loomba, 55)

Readers of Achebe must be aware of the pitfalls associated with the notion
of a postcolonial subject always being the “victim”. Achebe has a
problematic relationship with the “mythical past” he showcases. He does
not glorify it but, at the same time, he does not denounce it either. While
Amitav Ghosh does the same, his literary politics work in a different
direction. Ghosh uses myth as a textual discursive agent that goes beyond
the cultural praxis and enters the world of textuality. He appropriate myths
within a different medium; that is, from orality to a written form, and hence
the textual practise changes representational value. Therefore, Achebe
closes in on the interpretive part of the myths and the readers are not allowed
to form subtexts out of the myths. In this regard, Amitav Ghosh is more of
a postmodern postcolonial and Achebe is a modernist postcolonial. As Ania
Loomba’s extract shows, stereotyping involves processing knowledge so
the filtration can cause a difference in knowledge through a ‘lack’. Achebe
tries to avoid the processes of cultural and racial stereotypification but at
times creates a binary between the Afrocentric viewpoint of myth and the
way it is “denigrated” by the colonial masters. His representation of myths
is as much a political tool to assert the “validity” of African culture in face
of the colonial onslaught to “de-validate” it as to critique of the internal
contradictions in that culture. He ultimately justifies those contradictions in
terms of attacking colonial violence as the main reason for the “natives” to
assert their cultural practices, even if that leads to more violence and the
marginalization of certain classes and genders within the Igbo society.
210 Chapter Six

In Things Fall Apart, myth formation happens from the perspective of

Okonkwo’s formulation of a “masculine” culture. Achebe points out that
there is a difference between the communal construction of myths and how
Okonkwo interprets them, often keeping his interests in mind. Achebe’s
politics are to be understood in the way he looks at the relationship between
myths and narrative representation. In the essay “Africa and her Writers”,
Achebe points out a particular social practise called mbari, which, according
to Achebe, is “a profound affirmation of the people’s belief in the
indivisibility of art and society”. Achebe says this is because, during the
festival, the chief priest would go to the houses the earth-goddess Ala had
chosen and inform them about their prized role. These people would then
move to a clearing in the forest to build a house of images and dedicate it to
the goddess. Achebe points out that myths can mobilize people to produce
art and produce a community that will consume that aesthetic production.
While myths producing art through social mobilization may be a universal
phenomenon, Achebe’s argument goes a bit further. It states that ultimately
this produces a community based on the identity and social force of art
production. He argues
For when the festival is over, the villagers return to their normal lives again,
and the master artists to their work and contemplation. But they can never
after this experience, this creative communal exercise, become strangers
again to one another. (Achebe, 1975: 21 and 22)

For Achebe, art is not simply a production brought about by a community’s

urge to produce it. It actually goes on to form a society based on the
production-consumption formula. If myth is considered one of those
productions, then it produces a community. It must be stated here that
Achebe is not talking about the myth proper producing a community (which
is a common factor in social identity creation) but a community produced
on the basis of art, which in turn is produced as mythical representation.
However, the point of contention is to what extent this community is valid
in terms of a liberal viewpoint of art, and to what extent the social fabric is
consigned to ideological rigidity. On these points, we will describe Amitav
Ghosh’s point of view on myth producing art that creates a community, and
to what extent that community is different from Achebe’s.

As in Achebe, The Hungry Tide represents myth as a principle of orality.

The oral narration of myths leads to a certain fluidity and dexterity in the
way they are represented within a culture. This oral quality therefore leads
to a loose structuring of the tale. When we come to the question of art
producing a community, a problem arises. A community, by the very virtue
 A Brief Comparative Analysis of Myth Formation in the Fiction 211
of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

of being a shared or borrowed space of living, requires a certain structure.

This structure does produce hegemony in terms of ideology, social
practices, beliefs, and representations, but it cannot be assumed that a
community can exist without any structured formulation. Since community
formation is based on a certain structure, it is valid to look at how an oral
form of art, like the myths Achebe and Ghosh portray, which has a loose
structure, can produce a community. Myth, as with other forms of aesthetic
production, is rooted in the way language operates as a mode of
communication. Oral language can have vastly different modalities of
communication, and hence it cannot produce a community with clearly
discernible singular or multiple structures. Levi Strauss notes

Language is a social phenomenon; and, of all social phenomena, it is the

one which manifests to the greatest degree two fundamental characteristics
which make it susceptible to scientific study. In the first place, much of
linguistic behaviour lies on the level of unconscious thought. When we
speak, we are not conscious of the syntactic and morphological laws of the
language... language, as a matter of fact, lives and develops only as a
collective construct. (Strauss, 1963: 56 & 57)

Herein lies Achebe’s and Ghosh’s problem. They are aware that the
language employed in myths is often the result of a “collective construct”
because of their oral nature. The language Strauss talks about is confined to
day-to-day communication. However, we can further the scope of language
as a tool of communication through the medium of art. Any art production
will devise its own language to communicate its purpose. Myth also does
that, but because it has an oral value, its narrative may not be structured in
the form of a dead end. That is, on the signifier scale, myth has an infinite
number of possibilities that are structured and restructured in every session
by the oral storyteller. This is what differentiates an oral form of art from its
written counterpart – having infinite possibilities from the end of the
signifier-subject since the storyteller can change the version of a myth in
individual sessions of storytelling. Furthermore, different storytellers can
induce different structures in the tale. The receipt of the signified can be
structured differently but that is true of all forms of art. Now, coming back
to the question of community formation, both Achebe and Ghosh depict
communities being formed on the basis of myth narration and beliefs.
Umuofia is a socio-cultural space based on the cultural practices sanctioned
by myths. The Sunderbans has been portrayed as a space “governed” by the
ritualistic practices related to the myth of Bon Bibi and Dakkhin Ray. The
community formation here should be studied carefully because the loose
structure of the myths may not produce a community that is true to the
212 Chapter Six

traditional idea of a community. In Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God,

community is a far more restricted concept than in The Hungry Tide. Yet,
in the novels, society becomes a collective expression of myths. The point
that needs to be ascertained here is the very nature of fiction writing and its
relationship vis-a-vis the artist and the society that it seeks to represent.
Achebe notes in “Africa and her Writers”
There is no rigid barrier between makers of culture and its consumers. Art
belongs to all, and it is a ‘function’ of society. (1975: 22)

Later in the essay, Achebe describes the Igbo society as “our traditional
societies” (ibid), which the critics might take objection to. Is he implying
that tradition is the forte of Africa, specifically Black Africa? Such obvious
cultural hegemony is bound to be questioned as parochial but, as we have
seen, Achebe does not see Europe as a negative binary to Africa, nor is he
reluctant to represent the fissures and contradictions within his own Igbo
culture. However, when he uses statements like the one above, his parochial
attitude does come to the fore, though it would be unidimensional and a
gross overstatement to make that hegemony the only aspect of his art. So, if
the makers and consumers of culture are not separate entities, then it can be
said that Achebe is almost following a reader-response kind of a model in
his delineation of cultural representations. However, the German reader-
response theory is based on a written form of literature, and when Achebe
talks about the epistemological interpellation of the maker and consumers
of culture, he is referring to the tradition of orality, where the receiver of an
oral form of art can become a maker by further interpellating the text in their
own version of narration. However, in both Achebe and Ghosh, myths and
oral cultures are represented through the prism of fiction so, when we read
their novels and receive the text of the myths, we receive them as ‘second-
order signified’2. There is a further problem. An oral narrator knows that the
text will be refashioned many times, almost in a series of infinite
possibilities, but when Achebe and Ghosh present the readers with those
myths, they are aware as artists that the readers don’t have the freedom to
restructure and reconstruct the text in the same way a receiver of an oral
performance can. It should not be assumed that the texts by Achebe and
Ghosh are ‘closed’ in the modernist sense of the term, but the point is that
compared to an oral performance, a written text is ‘closed’ to the extent that
the maker and consumers do not share the same space in the act of narration.
Jan Vansina writes
As Cohen3 has shown for Busoga (Uganda), haphazard information through
the daily channels of communication contains a vast amount of lore about
the recent past of perhaps two generations ago. Much older tradition, now
 A Brief Comparative Analysis of Myth Formation in the Fiction 213
of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

formalised, once went through such channels... such speculations often

become tradition in their own right as comment fuses with original message
or ‘It could have been’ becomes ‘It was’. (Vansina, 96)

Vansina’s comment traces the movement from the oral form of art to its
written form. He calls the process formalization, a representative journey
from a collective form of representation to an authoritative form. However,
there is a difference in how Vansina treats the issue and the way Achebe
and Ghosh treat it. Achebe does not authoritatively claim that the myths he
is representing are his creation and they are to be “closed” in the textual
space. The same goes for Ghosh, but the two differ in the way they look to
delineate the relationship between their texts and the society that receives
them.

Since the title of this book proposes a process of “myth formation” in the
fictions of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh, a discussion of how myth
formation differs in the two authors needs to take place. As we have seen,
the myths Achebe and Ghosh depict are not their formations, and myths
cannot be formed, as it were, in the continuum of here and now since, to be
called myths, they need to have a certain historical time-space continuum.
If they do not, they cannot function as popular oral narratives in a
collectivist, synergistic model. So, when we talk about the “formation” of
myth in Achebe and Ghosh, we are referring to the literary accommodation
of already established myths in fiction to create a space where “tradition” is
both questioned and given space. From our discussion in the first chapter,
we know that finding a point of origination in any given myth is a fantasy
because there is no point of origin. Each narrative is preceded by another,
and they spiral towards an infinite notion of origin, leading to multiple texts.
Hence, any contributor to that maze of narrative is a myth maker. Every
work of fiction has the agenda of questioning the self and its image projected
in terms of the author and the characters/society, based on paranoia and the
disintegration of ideology. In the novels of Achebe and Ghosh, there is a
tension created between the self and the image it tries to project, and this
untenable struggle questions the very mastery that the characters claim to
have over reality. In the case of Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, myth
formation becomes a problematic affair because the powers within and
without are made to confront the European model of “modernity”
challenging the very way a colonized’s discourse functions. Ezeulu is
supposed to be the totalitarian priest, the unquestionable spiritual head of
Umuofia, yet he has to reconcile himself to the way colonialist discourse is
reshaping the way his community receives myths as the binding authority
of social identity. Ezeulu says to his son
214 Chapter Six

The world is changing, I do not like it. But I am like the bird Eneke-nti-oba.
When his friends asked him why he was always on the wing, he replied:
‘Men of today have learnt to shoot without missing and so I have learnt to
fly without perching.’ (Achebe, 1974: 46)

Achebe’s narration of myths starts at a point of power and authority and

traces the disruption of that structure. In this way, perhaps, his narrative
projects colonialism as a major negative force that helps disrupt ‘native’
cultural iconographies. The counterpoint may also be made that not
everything coming out of Europe should be demonized, but no one can
disregard the British project of cultural appropriation to create its “image”
on the colonized. The hierarchy created out of this cultural narrative was
predominantly dominated by the colonizer, and resistance to it was not
always politically beneficial, especially in a society like Umuofia, where
internal strife and division define the way society functions.

The Hungry Tide as a representation of a time continuum is very different

from that in Arrow of God and Things Fall Apart. Achebe is decidedly
“postcolonial” or even “colonial” in the location of his fictional narrative,
but Ghosh’s novel does not talk about a colonial space. However, we will
come to his other two novels, Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke, a bit later,
which are located in the colonial space. The difference in the space-time
continuum ensures a difference in the way the characters approach myths.
In The Hungry Tide, Piya and Kanai are the two primary receivers of the
popular local legend of Bon Bibi, associated with the tiger cult of the region.
Whereas characters like Ezeulu, Matefi, and Okonkwo are part of the culture
that produces myths, Kanai and Piya are “outsiders”, coming from the
metropolitan centres of New Delhi and the US, respectively, so they have a
certain sense of distance from the myths operating as oral stories in society.
The only character who inhabits the same cultural space that produces the
myths is Fakir, but he is represented as a silenced character because he does
not know English. He cannot converse with Piya at all in their time in the
boat during Piya’s research on the Gangetic dolphins. As a ‘maker’ of myth,
Fokir is totally different from the likes of Okonkwo and Ezeulu because of
his non-verbal attachment to and expression of the Bon Bibi myth. Fokir as
a non-verbal entity is a deliberate ploy by Ghosh to accentuate the space of
myths prevalent as a non-epistemological entity where the non-verbal mode
of language is used as a mode of communication. Fokir represents the
silenced history of the region, the Marichjhapi massacre that left hundreds
orphaned, but he also represents the subject who appropriates the cultural
norms without confronting them. The non-verbal communication between
Piya and Fokir traverses into a mode of communication that depends on
 A Brief Comparative Analysis of Myth Formation in the Fiction 215
of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

ecological reality much more than words. The Bon Bibi myth is
communicated to the readers through Kanai’s reading of his uncle Nirmal’s
diary, where Nirmal vehemently discards it as a non-rational, almost
deranged kind of a narrative as he sees it from the perspective of Leftist
secular ideology. However, there is much more to be perceived of the myth
than just its oral or written narrative. This is where Ghosh is different from
Achebe. Whereas Achebe’s approach is to represent myths only at the level
of oral or written discourse, Ghosh looks at them as a non-verbal medium
to subvert notions about how myths work in a given power milieu. While
traversing a forest, Nirmal accepts that not everything deemed to be
irrational is indeed irrational since binaries are not always tenable. Binaries
get constructed under a certain system of hegemony, which leads to an
autocratic definition of the argument. Achebe does not portray myths as
irrational or rational but looks at them primarily from the Igbo point of view.
As we have seen in our earlier discussions, Achebe does not shy away from
pointing out the fissures and contradictions within the Igbo community in
their view of myths, but at the same time, he does not allow an “outsider’s”
gaze to look at the cultural norms and constructions. Even when he does
occasionally, through characters like Captain Winterbottom, the inevitable
happens – they are summarily rejected as “negro’s madness” from the
perspective of the White European coloniser, hence reiterating the
hegemonic structure of binarization. Amitav Ghosh allows the Other voice
to intrude upon the myth narratives, not as a commentator but more as an
observer, before commenting on them. Nirmal’s remains the voice that
rejects Bon Bibi as nothing but a manifestation of superstitions, but even he
realises, as he notes in his diary, that he was looking at the myth-rituals
through the eyes of a metropolitan subject and his Leftist ideology, based
on a “scientific consciousness” that may not always be “scientific”.
All through the time our boat was at that spot, the creatures [tigers] kept
breaking the water around us. What kept them there? What made them
linger? I could not imagine. Then there came a moment when one of them
broke the surface with its head and looked right at me. Now I saw why
Kusum finds it so easy to believe that these animals were something other
than they are. For where she had seen a sign of Bon Bibi, I saw instead, the
gaze of the Poet. It was as if he were saying to me: ‘some mute animal
raising its calm eyes and seeing through us and through us. This is destiny...’
(THT, 235).

The ironic part is that Nirmal finds the word of the poet (presumably
Rabindranath Tagore) more rational than the artisan who constructed the
lore of Bon Bibi, even though both are poets and both participate in the
process of ‘making’ culture in order that it may be consumed by the
216 Chapter Six

receivers of it. What makes the poet more rational than the unnamed
folklorist is something that Nirmal does not explain, and, in fact, the
question perhaps never crosses his mind. He is the subject of paradox – a
contradiction in Leftist secular ideology – because he has appropriated the
notion of being urbane and hence intellectually superior to the locals of the
Sunderbans. He does not think that folklore is a subject fit for consumption,
which is contrary to the Leftist stance of looking at history from below.

The Other voices that participate in the myth-ritual continuum are those of
Piya and Kanai. There is a subtle difference in that Kanai receives the myths
through the diary of his uncle, and hence gets a text that is interpreted and
intermediated through a written form, whereas Piya is cut off from such
narratives when she is alone on the boat with Fakir since the two cannot
communicate verbally and hence she is the lone receiver of Fakir’s
ritualistic premises on the goddess Bon Bibi. This has a significant
connotation – Ghosh can use Piya’s apparent neutrality to construct a text
that stands outside the locus of interpreters between the receiver of the text
and the generator of it. In Achebe, since the myths are already interpreted
through social discourses and practices, the characters are already ‘born’
into a system of interpreted text, and in such a situation, they can either
conform to it or resist it. In the case of Piya, and to a certain extent Kanai,
the social praxis is out of the equation since they are “outsiders” to the
Sunderbans and to the narratives that work to construct the myth of Bon
Bibi, and hence they can receive the text of the myth with a certain sense of
fluidity and openness. It can be construed therefore that Piya becomes a
‘myth maker’ to the extent that she receives the text of Fakir’s rituals
without having any class or racial prejudice in mind. She is a myth maker
because her constant consumption of knowledge about the rituals and cults
of the Sunderbans gives rise to a new knowledge capital – her interpretation
of those myths from the perspective of an outsider who seeks to imitate the
already circulating myths and transcreate them into a narrative of her own.
Unlike Winterbottom, she does not reject myths as unqualified sources of
literary fancy but tries to look into the structures and the reasons behind the
construction of such myths. Early into her trip to the delta, Piya tries to
convey to Fakir that she intends to not be afraid of tigers at night, and while
conveying this through body talk, myth gets in the way.
There was a cumulative absurdity about these propositions [to put the boat
off-shore and therefore beyond the reach of tigers] that made her smile. To
include him in the joke, she made her hands into claws, as if to mime a tiger.
But before she could complete the gesture, he clamped his hands on her
 A Brief Comparative Analysis of Myth Formation in the Fiction 217
of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

wrists, vehemently shaking his head, as if to forbid her from making any
reference to the subject. (THT, 98)

Piya does not know that the locals do not make fun of the tigers, the
predators are a very real threat to them, and they try and ward it off by taking
recourse to myth. But Piya does not dismiss such thinking. She calmly
settles herself in the middle of the boat and wonders “whether it was she
who was naive” (ibid, 99). As a subject who receives the myth of Bon Bibi,
Piya considers herself vulnerable and allows herself to be open to questions,
both for and against the proposition, and also to raise new questions that
will change the very architectonics of the argument.

In Achebe, the definition of the “outsider” is different and hence the literary
perspective changes in terms of looking at myths. The basic reason for this
difference is the time scale that the novelists are delineating in their work.
Since Achebe is writing about a transitional phase in the history of Nigeria,
when the country is moving from the pre-colonial to the colonial era, his
delineation of the “outsider” is different to Amitav Ghosh’s outsider since
he is looking at an India that has almost over the “postcolonial” phase and
is now part of the diasporic Global South. In Arrow of God, Achebe uses
myth as a statement of socio-cultural normativity, although characters like
Ezeulu and Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart are not entirely blind to the
possibility of implosion if normativity is allowed to reach a point of extreme
stress. Achebe also uses myths but a tool to expose the hegemony of the
colonisers, who create fissures in the Igbo community by driving a wedge
between the different sections of the Igbo tribe to divide and rule.

Mr. Goodcountry told the converts of Umuaro about the early Christians of
the Niger delta who fought the bad customs of their people, destroyed
shrines and killed the sacred iguana. He told them of Joshua Hart, his
kinsman, who suffered martyrdom in Bonny.
‘If we are Christians, we must be ready to die for the faith’, he said, ‘You
must be ready to kill the python as the people of the rivers killed the iguana.
You address the python as Father. It is nothing but a snake, the snake that
deceived our first mother, Eve. If you are afraid to kill it, do not count
yourself a Christian.’ (Achebe, 1974: 46)

From the above extract, it seems that Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh
looking at myths from different aspects. As a postcolonial author, Achebe
is much more attached to the cultural politics of the nation. Achebe seems
to be suffering from the artist’s burden to construct a national discourse that
will help in the process of nation-building in the postcolonial era. Homi
218 Chapter Six

Bhabha points out that colonial identities are always oscillating, moving
across the time-space continuum as subjects of altering realities. He says
that such an entity is
A doubling, dissembling image of being in at least two places at once.... It
is not the Colonialist Self or the Colonised Other, but the disturbing distance
in between that constitutes the figure of colonial otherness – the White
man’s artifice inscribed on Black man’s body. It is in relation to this
impossible object that there emerges the liminal problem of colonial identity
and its vicissitudes. (Bhabha, 117)

Bhabha’s conception of a double self applies to Achebe’s perception of

colonial politics and how it has appropriated the native space of culture-
making, even though he does not deny the role of the British in other aspects
of nation-building. In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo is, ironically, the
internal resistor to rituals borne out of myths, as in the case of the Agbala
priestess wanting to sacrifice Okonkwo’s daughter Ezinma to the goddesses.
The section that describes Ekwefi and Okonkwo following the Agbala
priestess to her caves is deliberately constructed in an ambience of fear.
She [Ekwefi] thought of all the terrors of the night. She remembered that
night, long ago, when she had seen Ogbu-agali-odu, one of those evil
essences loosed upon the world by the potent ‘medicines’ which the tribe
had made in the distant past against its enemies but now had forgotten how
to control. Ekwefi had been returning from the stream with her mother on a
dark night like this when they saw its glow as it flew in their direction.
(Achebe, 2010: 104)

There are two ways of looking at this extract. One is the deliberate Othering
of women, the Agbala priestess being portrayed as the dreaded Cheilo who
curses everyone who dares to resist her goddess ways. Therefore, she is the
Other, already predefined in her role by the patriarchy, as are Ekwefi and
Ezinma, who are directed to follow Cheilo’s directions. The other aspect to
the passage is the way Achebe uses myths to assert the cultural practices of
Igbo, even though he suffers a split self there, agreeing with some of the
norms and critiquing others. The above extract is an example of how Achebe
wants to project Igbo as a land governed by a mythical wisdom that may not
always be acceptable to the author himself. A close look at the passage
reveals that Achebe does not try and “rationalise” myths by calling them
tales that essentially reflect the content of power in a given society and
nothing else. He chooses to create a sense of belief in the myth by noting
that Ekwefi had indeed “seen” the “evil spirit” Ogbu-agali-odu while
returning from the river. He does this because he has a certain ideological
standpoint. He sees himself as a postcolonial author entrusted with the
 A Brief Comparative Analysis of Myth Formation in the Fiction 219
of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

responsibility of constructing a literary and philosophical tradition that will

help Nigeria project itself as a “civilized” culture and society to the world
after the colonial period. Once an author becomes part of an ideology that
is driven by nationalistic politics, his representation in art begins to reflect
that urge. In an essay titled “Thoughts on the African People”, Achebe says
that to insist that an African novel has to be about Africa is a severe
restriction since Africa “is not only a geographical expression; it is also a
metaphysical landscape – it is in fact a view of the world and of the whole
cosmos perceived from a particular position” (Achebe, 1975: 50). What he
intends to highlight is the multi-cultural dimensions of Africa and the
stereotypification it has suffered under the hegemonic colonial regime.
However, the phrase “metaphysical landscape” is problematic since Achebe
vehemently opposes Conrad’s portrayal of Africa in Heart of Darkness
because of the way the European traveller perceives Africa as the eternal
atavistic and tempting force that forces the Freudian id to surface and
destabilize the self. Isn’t Achebe doing the same from the exact opposite
direction when he calls Africa the “metaphysical landscape”, which puts
Africa as something beyond human comprehension in its beauty? To put
something beyond human cognition runs the risk of objectifying the
signified as something beyond a lateral representation of “wording” that
representation, and Achebe does that to an extent in his novels. Achebe
repeatedly makes the point that he does not want to demonize the European
Other, but in the process of glorifying his own culture (which he has every
right to do), he sometimes falls into the trap of creating a binary. However,
this is not a uniform literary feature in Achebe as through his representation
of the myths and how they operate at the socio-cultural level, Achebe
delineates the internal forces of power and hierarchy that ultimately lead to
oligarchy and myths being interpreted by that oligarchic structure of power.

Amitav Ghosh’s literary politics are different, and so his representation of

myths does not bear the stamp of an author who is out to justify some of the
cultural facets of his land. In a way, Ghosh is more of a postmodern
postcolonial whereas Achebe positions himself as a modernist postcolonial.
Ghosh’s representation of the myth of Bon Bibi is at the praxial level as
Kanai understands its significance. When left alone in the mangroves for a
few minutes, he goes into a state of delusion that he is about to be attacked
by a tiger, which almost destroys his sense of rationality. Myth is structured
as non-temporal anxiety in the collective unconscious. Ghosh wants to
reveal that anxiety, not through symbolic social rituals as in Achebe but
through an experiential quantification of reality. He writes
220 Chapter Six

‘And what about you?’ he [Kanai] said. ‘Can you feel the fear?’ These
words triggered a response in Kanai that was just as reflexive as the
goosebumps on Fokir’s neck. The surroundings – the mangrove forest, the
water, the boat – were suddenly blotted from his consciousness; he forgot
where he was... At that moment nothing existed for him but language, the
pure structure of sound that had formed Fokir’s question. (THT, 322)

A little later Fokir warns Kanai that a tiger might have walked past the very
trees they are watching, and “it might be watching you even now” (ibid,
324). What Fokir is hinting at is the gaze of the unknown at the experiential
axis that validates the presence of a myth in a given context. Fokir is a myth
maker from the perspective of the ecological-ritual continuum, and hence
more traditional in the role. He understands that the validity of myths
depends on the ecological resources of the place in which the myths are
generated, and so he constructs his text of myths through his insistence to
the outsiders that rituals will indeed protect them from being attacked by a
tiger. He is not simply a myth communicator but a maker since his language
of myths is communicated to Piya, who feels her ignorance of the subject.
For her, Fokir is the primary source at a place where no other sources, oral
or written, are available. While Achebe’s mythical dimensions are
essentially communal, often going into the realm of a community versus an
individual struggle, in The Hungry Tide, the perception of myth becomes an
individual experience. In Ghosh’s novel, The Shadow Lines, a character
called Tridib constantly harps on about the importance of lived experiences
to understand history free from the clutter of technical jargon and the
versions of others. In this novel, the myth-history continuum is frequently
refashioned to highlight the importance of that lived experience in
understanding why a myth originates and why it operates across dimensions
of power and hierarchy. The narrator observes that “Fokir had brought him
here not because he wanted him to die, but because he wanted him to be
judged” (ibid, 327). In a moment of panic, Kanai’s consciousness “emptied
itself of language” (ibid, 329). He lost any perception of time, space and
being because he was petrified of being left alone on an island infested with
dreaded carnivores. In Achebe, myths are represented and interpreted
through characters in communities so we never get the chance to see how
myths function when individuals are alone. Even when Obi leaves for
England in No Longer at Ease, he does not leave his communal or racial
identity behind. Even though he loathes the myths that govern his tribe, he
can only resist them as a binary to his Western education, he cannot perceive
their essence beyond a binarized predefined conception. In The Hungry
Tide, characters “judge” myths as the governing principles of their
conscience, no matter how much they have been appropriated by social
 A Brief Comparative Analysis of Myth Formation in the Fiction 221
of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

narratives and norms to either believe in them or not. Kanai is not expected
to have the reverence for Bon Bibi that Fokir has since Fokir is a product of
the culture that consumes the myth. However, Ghosh’s representation does
not stop at that simple level of a binary. He problematizes the context by
showing that when left alone, Kanai becomes disoriented and loses his
notion of time and location since he finds himself as the Other in the very
space that he considered to be the Other. It is not that simple to ‘other’ the
Other, as Kanai finds out through his lived experience, since the Other may
at times define the self in times of psychic fear – fear that is not determined
by society but by experiential praxis.

Fear is the ruling principle with which myths function in the axis of power.
The fear in The Hungry Tide is created by experiential parameters, but in
Achebe it is produced by the danger of ostracization if myths are not
followed according to communal norms. Most of the myths that Achebe
presents function on the principle of negation; that is, what will happen if
rituals are not observed. This is done through the power structure that seeks
to dominate the discourse of interpretation. In The Hungry Tide, even
though the generation of the Bon Bibi myth is institutionalized through
legends, tales, and stories passed off as history (implying a sort of validated
fact through time), the literary manifestation of it is non-institutionalized as
Fokir is not part of mainstream society. His offerings to the goddess in
Garjontola are made in private and hence lack the purpose or definition of
communal ratification, although he has been appropriated by social
normativity to perform the rites. Even when Kanai reads Nirmal’s diary,
what comes across is Horen’s definition of fear when he is with Nirmal and
Fokir in a boat, away from the presence of society. It is not that the Bon Bibi
myth has no social manifestation; Nirmal writes how the locals perform
plays, pujas, and rituals to ward off the tiger. However, the literary
manifestation of the myth-fear association takes place when the subject is
almost de-historicized and de-spatialized, thereby giving a new dimension
to myth functioning. In Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, the literary
manifestation of the myths is achieved through the communal consensus of
how they are to be ritualized or observed and therefore they do not exist
outside the social praxis. In relation to Arrow of God, Simon Gikandi
observes
While it is true that Ezeulu understands the dynamics of power and
knowledge in Umuaro, he still believes that his position as a priest and a
father sanctions the power of his utterances. In particular, he believes that
so long as he utters the truth, people will come around to his point of view
sooner or later. (Gikandi, 1991:70)
222 Chapter Six

Neither Okonkwo and Ezeulu have unrestrained power, nor are they
sanctioned to exercise absolutism over fixing the details of social rituals.
Having said that, they do enjoy the status of quid pro quo, determining
ritualistic practices and their timing, often with the intention of personal
gain. Okonkwo refuses to interfere when Cheilo calls for the sacrifice of
Ezinma and Ezeulu postpones the yam festival in the hope of a political
settlement with the British, even though it is a new moon. There is a struggle
between social expectations and the individual push for power in the two
novels, which ultimately brings about the tragic end of Okonkwo and
Ezeulu.

Another perspectival difference that can be discerned in the approach of the

two authors is the question of textuality. In Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God
and The Hungry Tide, myths dominate the act of narration and the way the
novels are epistemologically structured. The “text” of the myths offered by
the two authors deflect in somewhat different directions as far as
interpretation, closure or non-closure, and representation are concerned. In
the postmodern poststructuralist domain, a text is always “open”, ready to
be “sub-texted” by the reader or the receiver of that text. Steven Connor, in
the essay “Postmodernism and Literature”, states that “Modernism is a
curious mixture of abstraction and excess”, where the principle of
abstraction is to be seen “in modernism’s various eschewals and denials”
and excess is seen in the modernist quest for defamiliarization, especially in
the movements of Post-Impressionism and Dadaism. He adds that a
modernist text is “epistemological” and a postmodern text “ontological” in
the sense that the former is concerned with “knowledge and understanding”
and the latter focuses on the “creation and interrelation of worlds of being”
(Connor, 65, 66, & 68). This positioning of modernism as a movement
towards establishing certain norms and codes of knowledge is seen in the
novels of Achebe under consideration here. The myths that Ezeulu and
Okonkwo receive are put forward as “tradition”, as texts that are “closed”
in time and space, and there is a sense of “purity of culture” ingrained in
them. The texts in question are indeed oral or aural, and there is certainly a
quality of fluidity as far as their construction is concerned. However, that
fluidity must not be confused with the interpretive part of the text since the
interpretation is not allowed to go beyond the boundaries set by social
normativity. In other words, even though the structural patterns of the texts
can be freely refashioned by the oral artist, he cannot impurify that text from
the point of view of culture. The problem arises when Ezeulu and Okonkwo
begin to function from their respective positions of power. A close associate
of Ezeulu, Ofoka, says,
 A Brief Comparative Analysis of Myth Formation in the Fiction 223
of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

We are confused. We are like the puppy in the proverb which attempted to
answer two calls at once and broke its jaw. First, you, Ezeulu, told us five
years ago that it was foolish to defy the white man. We did not listen to you.
We went out against him he took our gun from us and broke it across his
knee. So we know you were right. But just as we were beginning to learn
our lesson, you turn around and tell us to go and challenge the same white
man. What did you expect us to do? (Achebe, 1974:188)

The problem, therefore, arises when Ezeulu uses myth to consolidate his
position of power within his clan and with the British. He uses myth as a
tool to validate his position as the head priest but, by going beyond the level
of optimum social tolerance, he loses his grip over the clan since, as Ofoka
says, the power of an Ezeulu does not include the right to totally negate the
purity embedded in myths. The problem lies at the level of the reception of
the text of myths. The various power centres at work struggle to find who
has the ultimate right to dictate the text of the myths – Ezeulu or the other
village elders. This struggle is a typical feature of modernism, which gives
the artist’s license to interpret “reality” and qualify it as the real one. As
Connor puts it, modernism is concerned about “knowledge and understanding”,
and hence the question arises who will determine what that knowledge is.
The struggle then arises as to who will carry out the act of interpretation of
the myths since, in a project of grand-narrative formation, there can only be
one interpretation and not a multiplicity. Ezeulu first denounced white men
as perennial outsiders, threats to the native culture, but others went to them
to gain more power. When they came back disillusioned, Ezeulu wanted to
establish a new power corridor with the British to consolidate his position
within the tribe. This upset his relationship with the other village elders
since their positions of power would be even more compromised if Ezeulu
joined hands with the British.

Coming back to Steve Connor’s conceptualization of modernism and

postmodernism, the ontological aspect of the text is important in discerning
its postmodern features. At least, this is Connor’s point of view, and this
cannot be disregarded when studying The Hungry Tide. Connor enphasizes
the interrelation of texts, which is a crucial aspect in the functioning of
textuality. In The Hungry Tide, this very important aspect differentiates the
myth representation from that in Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God. Even
though the Bon Bibi myth is predominantly an oral form of poetry that has
been composed and re-composed through the generations, Ghosh’s source
text is mainly Bon Bibir Johuranama, a short book on the tale, and he uses
that for his literary representation. The difference that this creates in the
narration is that although Achebe depends totally on oral and aural inputs
for his source material, Ghosh reverts to a written piece and so his source is
224 Chapter Six

not as flexible as Achebe’s. Since we argue that myth transmission is also

myth formation because a new text is constructed, the difference in the
source material of the two authors determines the myth they finally come
up with. This is not to hierarchize the written over the oral but simply to
look at the difference in the two authors’ approach. In The Hungry Tide,
there is another level of textuality at work. Kanai comes to know of the
various aspects of the Bon Bibi myth from Nirmal’s diary. The narrative of
the myth is intermediated through Nirmal’s written text. It must be
remembered that any form of art is filtered through representational politics
and that filtration depends on the ideological standpoint from which that
representation is constructed. In Achebe’s two novels considered so far,
there is no such narrative mediation in the form of written narration. This is
significant to the extent that what Nirmal gets is in the form of a secondary
source, but what Ezeulu or Okonkwo get is in the form of a primary source
since they are born into the system of myth narration and receive the myths
directly from the myth makers. Kanai writes a letter to Piya when she is
away with Fokir, doing her research on the dolphins, in which he says he
wishes to communicate to her the details of the Bon Bibi myth and declares
the source of his epistolary narration as
From the epic of the tide country, as told by Abdur-Rahim: Bon Bibir
Karamoti orthat Bon Bibi Johuranama – ‘The Miracles of Bon Bibi or the
Narrative of Her Glory’. (THT, 354)

The book Kanai is referring to here is the source text of the myth, but he
does not read the text. Rather, he remembers what he calls a “legend”, a part
of it as told to him by his uncle Nirmal. Kanai adds to his memory the songs
he has heard Fokir sing. Piya had asked Kanai to translate those songs for
her, which he could not do, so he takes refuge in the written words to
translate the oral experience of the myth. Kanai also relays what Nirmal had
believed about the myth.
My uncle was amazed by this feat, because then, as now, Fokir knew neither
how to read or write. But Nirmal recognised also that for this boy those
words were much more than a part of a legend: this was the story that gave
this land its life. (ibid)

A close reading would reveal that this entire sequence happens in the space
of the ‘second- order signified’. Fokir can be described as the “subject” who
inherits the tradition of orality in relation to the tiger cult but Kanai, from
whom the readers get the narration of the myth, is not a recipient of the oral
culture. Kanai depends on his memory to discern the narrative, having no
primary source material to work with, and hence his narration is expected
 A Brief Comparative Analysis of Myth Formation in the Fiction 225
of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

to have gaps, which is part of the tradition of the oral structuring of the myth.
This gap is perhaps not present in the characters that Achebe portrays in his
novels since their primary source material is the oral poetry they hear from
various sources. Even though those sources are essentially fluid in their
content, since oral poetry will have infinite variations and interpolations,
they are still treated as “primary” sources as they are part of the larger
process of myth making. Kanai is not a myth maker in that sense. He does
not contribute to the production and consumption of the oral tradition; he
only translates that oral culture into a written text through his letter to Piya.
Jan Vansina notes
The problem [of translation from oral to written form] is their powerful
resonance in the minds of the performers and their public. Every mention
recalls a portion of the semantic field to which they apply and gives a
particular emotional coloration to them... It takes a true knowledge of a
whole culture or society to be able to find or rather to feel exactly what the
meaning will be in such and such a case. (Vansina, 85)

Vansina’s observation is problematic in some areas. First, why does he

equate “emotional coloration” with semantics? Semantics is a structural
analytical process of understanding, and emotion can destabilize that
process since, in culture, emotion can be a conditioned form of expression.
Also, the phrase “true knowledge” might encourage the concept of ‘cultural
purity’, which is nothing but a hegemonic appropriation of cultural
narratives. However, we do agree with Vansina on the way he states the
problem of translating oral narratives into written ones. Orality, by its very
quality, depends on the receptive quotient of the members of the audience
since there is a direct interaction between the performer(s) and the audience,
much like in the theatre. So, when Kanai attempts such a translation, he is
aware that he may not be able to capture the process of myth making,
especially related to the semantic field of audience reception. On the other
hand, when Okonkwo or Ezeulu ‘translate’ the myths for the ‘receptive
subject’, they are taking part in the process of myth making. As we argued
in the first chapter, an oral form of art cannot be traced back to one point of
origin, so when Ezeulu interprets myths for his audience, he is participating
in a new generation of meaning, and, based on that interpretation, each time
a new text of the myth is formed. However, therein lies the coercive
diplomacy in Achebe’s characters. They work out of an overt consciousness
of power. Both Ezeulu and Okonkwo feel that their class superiority is
enough to make them valid as commanders of social narratives. Yams, for
example, stand for the ‘productive forces’ of society, which in turn are
related to the culture of masculinity in the Igbo space. Yams “stood for
226 Chapter Six

manliness” (Achebe, 2010:23) since yams are the primary food consumed
by the Igbo society, which believes that the more yams a man can grow, the
better equipped he is to fulfil his role and provide for his family. The
colonial appropriation of socio-religious narratives is strategically placed by
Achebe since these colonial discourses challenge and resists the ‘traditional’
(effectively ‘native’) values on hierarchy and power. Ezeulu and Okonkwo,
from their positions of power, think these hierarchies are fixed in their
representational and praxial qualities, but Ross Chambers states “meaning
is not inherent in discourse and its structures, but contextual, a function of
the pragmatic situation in which the discourse occurs” (Chambers, 3). The
symbolic structures of power that represent values and hierarchy gain an
ideological status once those symbolic structures begin to repress the
contradictions and inner conflicts. Okonkwo and Ezeulu become tragic
characters because they repress the very ideologies they seek to represent.
Ezeulu is criticized at the end for overstepping his limits of power, thereby
stripping him of his belief that he is the ultimate myth maker. He is not. He
interprets myths in accordance with his conditioning of ‘power’, and that
leads to transgressions and violations.
Ulu had chosen a dangerous time to uphold that truth for in destroying his
priest he had also brought disaster on himself, like the lizard in the fable
who ruined his mother’s funeral by his own hand. (Achebe, 1974: 230)

Okonkwo also appropriates the myth narratives to his subjective semantic

of power, which leads to his ultimate destruction. Like Ezeulu, he is a
symbol of cultural contradiction. He tries to uphold the very structures of
narratives he despises, and which ultimately become an object of ethnic
cleansing as the British District Commissioner decides to write a history of
Igbo based purely on the events of colonization. Achebe, the African author,
seeks to liberate the history of his race by giving a story to Okonkwo, but
not without the fissures and inner fault lines of Okonkwo’s interpretations
of culture that open up the Igbo space to colonial invasion.

Since the question of colonial narrative does not arise directly in The
Hungry Tide, the association of myth with power is delineated differently.
Even though Achebe discerns the forces of power and hierarchy responsible
for the implosion of the Igbo space, he does at times glorify the native social
space, thereby subtly constructing the coloniser-colonised binary. Amitav
Ghosh does not look at the narrative of myth in The Hungry Tide as a
dialectical coercion between the insider and the outsider. In Achebe, myth
making becomes a site of struggle, a site for ideological warfare to be
carried out, both between the British and natives and between the
 A Brief Comparative Analysis of Myth Formation in the Fiction 227
of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

established forces of the native hierarchy. In The Hungry Tide, myth making
is not a site of struggle. It is rather a site for interpellation4. Piya and Kanai
interpellate the text of myth, making it a part of their individual myth
interpretive politics. Since they come from ‘outside’, they do not have to
function as a part of any established social institution or praxis, and hence
their power is not produced through established codifications. Their power
is exercised through the fact that they are not ready to binarize myths in
terms of the local and the global. Piya and Kanai allow themselves to be
brought into the systemic narration of the myth, which they consider a
‘language’ of culture, a codification of local ideological struggles and
ecological realities, rather than consuming it as a narrative of power only.
Perhaps that is why, at the end of the novel, Fokir dies and Piya settles down
in the Sunderbans and carries on with her research. Piya settles down in the
tide country not only because of her research on the Gangetic dolphins but
also because she wants to appropriate the language of the myths and legends
she has heard in all these months. It might be argued that from the standpoint
of ignorance, Piya acts as a colonial agent who seeks to construct the
narrative of myths she was unaware of when she first arrived in the tide
country, and now she wants to appropriate that knowledge through the
optics of an Indian-American. The ideological appropriation Piya looks for
can be considered a neo-coloniser's attempt to construct a language that fits
into the narrative of the 'local', and yet that local is perceived through the
prism of the outsider's gaze. Okonkwo’s and Ezeulu’s end take place within
language – the language of coercion and transgression they had exercised
through their exercise of power through the narration of myths. Fokir’s end
takes place outside the language of power – he is neither coerced into a
space of deliberate struggle nor pushed into a narrative of trying to put the
self at the centre. He simply passes as a progenitor of a myth language that
operated in silence and continues to be part of Piya’s perceptive language
of the tide country, even long after the death of Fokir in the storm surge.

When we come to novels like No Longer at Ease and Anthills of the

Savannah of Achebe, and Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies and River of
Smoke, myth making turns out to be a comparatively more complex
ideological and literary exercise because of the contextual paradigm of the
texts. In Achebe, there is a paradigm shift from a representation of the Igbo
space to characters either moving out to the colonial space for education,
like Obi, or struggling with self-declared autocrats within the postcolonial
phase of Nigerian history, thereby changing the equation between the myth
maker and the audience being catered to. On the other hand, Amitav Ghosh
spatio-temporally shifts from the postcolonial, almost postmodern, space of
The Hungry Tide to the colonial past of Bengal and beyond during the opium
228 Chapter Six

trade in the nineteenth century. These shifts are crucial in the way the
representational aspect of myths differs from the novels already discussed
above. When Obi moves to England for higher studies, it becomes a journey
from the margin to the centre. He is a typical “subject” of a postcolonial
condition; that is, split between his cultural upbringing in the Igbo ethos in
his formative years and in the latter appropriation by the “coloniser’s
language” in England, and the subsequent tension between the two selves
gives rise to a clash in his belief system. In Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies, Neel
finds himself in a peculiar situation where he is “Western” in the sense that
he is educated in English and all Western texts, and at the same time he
cannot get rid of the traditional value system of a ‘high-class’ Hindu
Brahmin man in Bengal since that creates his identity as the landlord (Raja,
or the king to the locals) of Rashkhali. In Obi, there is a physical movement
that triggers the struggle in the process of myth making and his resistance
to that process; in Neel, there is no physical movement in the first half of
the novel and he needs to resist the British by totally appropriating the Hindu
rituals to remain in his power discourse. In the second half of the novel,
though, Neel is deported by the Ibis, and in his new community of
shipmates, he must transform many of his rituals if he is to survive. Thus,
in both cases, a social, cultural, ideological, and praxial clash comes to the
fore, but the struggle is more internal in Achebe and more between the
coloniser and the colonised in the case of Amitav Ghosh. Obi does not come
into direct conflict with the colonisers since he inhabits the postcolonial
time scape, and Neel lives in colonial times. Hence the nature of struggle
with the coloniser's ideology is different. Obi's struggle is more directed at
the fissure that exists between his definition of modernity, constructed by
his affiliation to the European ideation of modernity and the traditional
practices of his community, especially related to the question of 'osu'. Neel,
however, comes into direct conflict with the British as they seek to mortgage
his property and estate in the name of the East India Company so his
struggle is as political as it is ideological.

A factor that differentiates the purposes of Obi and Neel is their relationship
with the coloniser. Whereas Obi’s purpose is to get educated in Western
paradigms, perhaps because as a colonial subject he does not want to remain
powerless, Neel’s purpose is to prevent the British from appropriating his
political space, which defines the different ways they look at myths. They
belong to two different communities, not in the obvious sense of the term,
which they of course are, but in the relational sense. In the words of Paul
Gilroy
 A Brief Comparative Analysis of Myth Formation in the Fiction 229
of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

Community is as much about difference as it is about similarity and identity.

It is a relational idea which suggests... the idea of antagonism – domination
and subordination between one community and another. The word directs
analysis to the boundary between these groups. It is a boundary which is
presented primarily by symbolic means and therefore a broad range of
meanings can co-exist around it reconciling individuality and commonality
and competing definitions of what the movement is about. (Gilroy, 415)

Since myth narratives are co-relational with the collective experience of the
community at the macro level, it is imperative to also understand that at the
micro level, the discursive relationship between the individual and the
society also shapes the way an individual receives the narratives operative
at the level of culture. Gilroy’s individuality and commonality are not
oppositional but reconciliatory through symbolic assertions of narratives.
By extension, we can observe that myths are such symbolic representations
of a community that they can define the relationship between the individual
and the community in a given space and time. However, once the axis of
that space-time continuum is changed, the praxis of that interrelationship
also changes. The power position that Neel and Obi occupy are not the same.
And this determines the way they participate in the narration of the myth.
Obi and Neel suffer from different centre-margin conflicts in terms of the
colonial dimension, and so whereas Obi feels the need to resist the Osu
myth, Neel needs to maintain a kind of acceptance-rejection balance to
protect the power structure of which he is a part. Within the internal
dynamics of the community, Obi is the enlightened one as he has had the
privilege of getting a Western education. However, that privilege was
granted to him by the village elders as they wanted someone from their
community to learn English so their postcolonial society could have a more
advantageous power equation with that of the erstwhile colonisers. This
neo-colonial mindset of defining the power of the self through affiliation to
the coloniser is counter-productive for Obi since he becomes a “split”
subject in terms of his politics of culture. He does not like to talk in English
with his Igbo mates in England.
It was humiliating to have to speak to one’s countryman in a foreign
language, especially in the presence of the proud owners of the language.
They would naturally assume that one had no language of one’s own.
(Achebe, 2010: 40)

At the same time, he resists the myth of the Osu since that hurts his personal
interests. His girlfriend Clara is an Osu, and on that basis, she is rejected as
a prospective match for him. The narrator observes
230 Chapter Six

It was scandalous that in the middle of the twentieth century a man could be
barred from marrying a girl simply because her great-great-great-great-
grandfather had been dedicated to serve a god, thereby setting himself apart
and turning his descendants into a forbidden caste to the end of Time. (ibid,
57)

This contradictory stance is perhaps indicative of a postcolonial subject

coming to terms with a global culture as opposed to a local settled form of
social narrative. Neel in Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies also participates in the
narrative of colonisation, albeit in a different power axis. Neel, like Obi, is
Western educated but he does not travel to England for that purpose. Rather,
he becomes a representative of the Zamindar class by inheriting the title of
Raja of Rashkhali (the king of Rashkhali), and from that position of power,
he appropriates certain British narratives in order to become a colonial
subject. Neel, unlike Obi, appropriates the myths and the rituals of his native
culture since that is his political statement of resistance against the
onslaught of British cultural appropriation. The interesting difference in
these two cases is the relationship that the third-person omniscient narrator
shares with Neel and Obi. Understanding this relationship is crucial to
discerning how Achebe and Ghosh ultimately look at myths in their literary
representations. In the case of Achebe, the omniscient narrator is
ideologically placed on the side of Obi, even though the tone of narration is
not necessarily always on his side. While discussing the myth of Osu with
his father, Obi denounces it as something “dark” and “ignorant”, relating
myth in terms of a Eurocentric historical timeline, differentiating between a
mythical, pre-modern, and modern time scape. However, the narrative voice
intrudes to highlight the complexity of the issue.
He [Obi] slept very little that night. His father had not appeared as difficult
as he had expected. He had not been won over yet, but he had clearly
weakened. Obi felt strangely happy and excited. He had not been through
anything quite like this before. (ibid, 107)

A close look at this extract shows that the tone and texture of the narrative
voice reveals a certain sense of disapproval as far as the Osu myth is
concerned. The very fact that Obi’s father could be weakened to the extent
of almost getting persuaded to discard the Igbo tradition means that there is
something wrong with the tradition and that it needs to be resisted. In the
classic realist way, Achebe’s narration is intrusive and value-judged. Let us
look at another extract where the narrative voice intrudes in relation to the
representation of a myth and its reorientation by Christian dogma.
 A Brief Comparative Analysis of Myth Formation in the Fiction 231
of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

He [Obi] faced the class boldly and told one of the new stories his mother
had told him. He even added a little touch to the end which made everyone
laugh. It was the story of the wicked leopardess who wanted to eat the young
lambs of her old friend and sheep. (ibid, 47)

It is a cultural, social, and political clash, as we have seen in the earlier

chapters, where the colonisers are trying to appropriate the cultural space of
Umuofia as part of their colonising mission. However, again, the narrative
voice is making a pitch for Obi’s cause, who resists the “native” version of
the myth by refashioning it with a Christian dimension. In a way, the myth
produced by this colonial culture becomes Christianized and Obi allows
himself to become a part of this politics. Amilcar Cabral observes
History teaches us that, in certain circumstances, it is very easy for the
foreigner to impose his domination on a people. But it also teaches us that,
whatever may be the material aspects of this domination, it can be
maintained only by the permanent, organized repression of the cultural life
of the people concerned. (Cabral, 53)

Cabral’s hypothesis may be a bit oversimplified, especially in understanding

culture vis-a-vis the power structures in operation during a colonising
process, but the important point is the role of the voice of the cultural
vanguards in this process of hegemonizing. In No Longer at Ease, the
narrator plays this role; the voice that asserts the “need” for cultural
reorientation in Igboland so the “natives” can gain more influence over the
way the British want to represent them in the global space, and hence the
general tone of disapproval of the Osu myth throughout the novel.

Amitav Ghosh’s literary politics is different from Achebe's. Achebe’s

literary technique is intrusive in a qualitative approach, but Ghosh’s
narrative voice remains largely non-intrusive, especially in relation to
offering commentaries on the narrative. The Ibis metaphor, as we saw
earlier, was used in Sea of Poppies as a visionary intuition on the part of
Deeti. The passage below is in context to Deeti’s “vision”.
In time, among the legions who came to regard the Ibis as their ancestor, it
was accepted that it was the river itself that had granted Deeti the vision:
that image of the Ibis had been transported upstream, like an electric current,
the moment the vessel made contact with the sacred waters. (Ghosh,
2008:10)

This extract reveals the variation in the narrative technique of Amitav

Ghosh with that of Chinua Achebe. The ‘voice’ differs. In Achebe, we saw
how the narrative voice intrudes in the text to make a stand politically or
232 Chapter Six

ideologically. Here, the ideology is not to assert the identity of the colonised
subject for a nationalistic discourse or to critique that, but to underline the
mythical narrative that drives the characters to find their subjectivity in a
given socio-political setup. That is, in Achebe, the characters are already
aware that they have been appropriated by the colonial narrative and that
they function within the discursive space of being the ‘colonised’. In Ghosh,
the characters that come from the rural scape in Sea of Poppies, like Deeti,
Kalua and the other coolies, are yet to form their identity as the ‘colonised’
in the British/Indian binarized sense of the term. Neel is aware of his
colonised status, more so when he is arrested, but he does not work under
compulsions of identity promulgation since the idea of the Indian nation
being colonised is yet to gain momentum in the mid-nineteenth century.
These characters practice or believe in myths and rituals from the point of
view of cultural compulsions and appropriations, and not necessarily out of
identity formation through resistance. In the poststructuralist formulation of
a text, the narratology subsumes immense importance in deriving the
symbolic nature of the text. Roland Barthes observes
The logic regulating the Text is not comprehensive but metonymic; the
activity of associations, contiguities, carryings-over coincides with a
liberation of symbolic energy... the Text is radically symbolic: a work
conceived, perceived and received in its integrally symbolic nature is a text.
(Barthes, 1986:1472)

Barthe’s poststructuralist viewpoint of a text being an epistemological

interplay of signs, signifieds and signifiers is more appropriately applicable
to Ghosh’s representation of myth than Achebe’s. The metonymic function
of a text that Barthes talks about relates to the symbolic power of a text in
constructing a series of signifier and signifieds to generate meaning. In other
words, instead of basing myths only on the grounds of ideological
significance, Ghosh tries to discern the epistemological pattern in them that
might generate meaning. The Ibis symbol, for example, is not a vision that
Deeti has exclusively for herself. That symbol is related to the destiny of all
the characters in Sea of Poppies, irrespective of the fact that they are far
apart in terms of class, geographical location, and identity. In the novels of
Chinua Achebe, the entire community is bound by the ideological
interpretation of the myth. That is, whatever the popular interpretation of
the myth might be (the meaning being decided by factors of power relation
in that the priest or the warlord gets the privilege to interpret myths and
generate discernible patterns out of natural/artificial phenomena), the entire
community is accommodated within that narrative space. In Amitav Ghosh,
there is no formation of a fixed community based on myth formation or
 A Brief Comparative Analysis of Myth Formation in the Fiction 233
of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

interpretation. In The Hungry Tide, the Bon Bibi myth does not produce a
community in the way Achebe represents community in his novels.
Achebe's community is structured around a system of belief, presided over
by the head priest, but in Ghosh, the community is not bound by the single
system of belief, as in Igboland. Fokir is not bound to a ritualistic pattern as
directed by a priest; his rituals are passed on as generational knowledge but
not presided over by human authority. Moreover, in Achebe, there is a
representation of a community with a large conglomeration of characters,
all bound by a system of belief, but in The Hungry Tide, the conglomeration
of characters is not shown and so affinity to a system of belief is reduced to
a single human subject. But what it does is it produces a narrative of a
symbolic interpretation of the space of the Sunderbans, based on the various
narratives of Bon Bibi – written, oral and aural. On the other hand, the myth
of the Osu, the myth of the Agbala Caves, the myth of kola-nuts, and the
numerous narratives on gods and creation that Achebe portrays produce a
community. The entire identity of the Igbo community is based to a large
extent on how the individuals receive those myths as a part of cultural
appropriation, and instead of looking at them from the perspective of signs
and symbols linguistically, Achebe looks at them as a source to generate the
meaning of a community. This is one of the reasons Achebe intrudes in the
text in the form of an authorial voice. He has to establish the ideological
base behind the myths that construct the identity of the society he chooses
to represent in his literary artefacts. A passage from Arrow of God can be
cited in reference to our point of discussion.
Everywhere elders and men of title heard the signal and got ready for the
meeting. Perhaps it was the threat of war. But no one spoke of war anymore
in these days of the white man. More likely the deity of Umuaro had
revealed through divination a grievance that must be speedily removed, or
else. (Achebe, 1974:141)

The texture and tone of the authorial voice are almost non-problematic in
their presence. The god wants retribution or else disaster will follow. The
author is clear in his representation of identity. Either he supports the cause
of myth formation as a necessary ingredient for identity formation for the
Igbos within a colonial space or he resists it, but even in that case, he
champions the cause of the Igbos as they transit from a colonial to a
postcolonial phase of history. Ghosh’s concern is not to show myth
formation as a modus operandi for building socio-cultural, political, or even
national identity. He sees myth more from the poststructuralist point of view
of a metonymic symbiosis between symbol and generation of meaning.
Poststructuralists try to portray the relationship between signifier and
234 Chapter Six

signified as unstable and filled with slippages and discontinuities, without

any fixed markers on meaning. Amitav Ghosh tries to look at myth from the
perspective of meaning generated by a variety of symbols and cultural
markers, and the fluidity in that meaning itself when that symbol, acting as
the signifier, changes. In The Hungry Tide, for example, Kanai’s act of
reading discerns the meaning of the Bon Bibi myth for him. The text that
Nirmal presents him with is acculturation from the aural, auditory and visual
inputs Nirmal had from various sources, like the popular tales and the jatras
(street plays) related to the Bon Bibi myth he came across. Nirmal, unlike
Okonkwo or Ezeulu, is not an insider or a participator in the myth making
or myth formation process. He does not contribute to the narrative of the
myth, nor does Kanai or Piya. They all are receivers of the Bon Bibi myth
and therefore their contribution to the myth making process is limited to the
role of constructing a second-order text of the myths. Ezeulu and Okonkwo,
or even Obi through his resistive temperament, can actually construct and
refashion the text of the myths “produced” by their culture. The struggle is
between the notion of cultural purity versus the cultural, sociological and
political dominance of the British over, what they believe to be, nativity. In
Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke, cultural purity as hegemony is both
challenged and tested by the major characters since they refuse to participate
in the production of myth narratives or ritualistic practices that are
sanctioned by the society. Deeti does not want to become a Sati, Kalua saves
her, and both of them construct a new social paradigm by moving outside
the mainstream ritual discourses by not allowing society to gain access to
Deeti’s body as a site to assert social practices. Neel, however, participates
in the ritual practices, perhaps because of his class. He is part of the
aristocratic circle and so he might have the compulsion to become “pro-
establishment” in order to preserve his identity as the Zamindar of
Rashkhali.
Parimal had already gone ahead to make sure that the constables who were
accompanying Neel to the court were Hindus of respectable caste and could
be entrusted with his food and water. Now, as Neel was climbing into the
shuttered carriage, his retainers joined together to remind him, yet again, to
make sure of keeping the windows closed, so that his gaze would encounter
no ill-augured sights-on this of all days, it was best to take every possible
precaution. (Ghosh, 2008:218)

Even though he is no longer an “independent subject”, he performs the

rituals as a way of preserving his identity as the Bengali. And in this
preservation lies the resistance. The resistance is against the British to
appropriate the culture of “Bengaliness”. When the British officials come to
dine with Neel on his houseboat, he does not touch even a morsel of food
 A Brief Comparative Analysis of Myth Formation in the Fiction 235
of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

since the white men are having duck and chicken, which are strictly
prohibited in the dietary rituals of a Hindu Brahmin. Therefore, by staunchly
protecting the “nativity”, Neel resists cultural appropriation by the British.
Now, this resistance is quite different from that of Okonkwo and Ezeulu,
and the reason is the context in which the characters function in the texts. In
Achebe, the resistance is not only against the external political forces, that
is, the colonisers. The resistance is also against the internal dynamics of the
Igbo culture. Neel does not have the compulsion to preserve the rituals in
order to prevent the Bengali culture from falling apart; his attempt to follow
the rituals is more a political move to prevent the British from intruding into
the autonomy of his estate. In the case of Ezeulu and Okonkwo, they are
forced into the discourse of myths so that within the internal hierarchy of
their clan, the sacred ties are maintained, which, in turn, ensure their
position of power in the status quo . Simon Gikandi observes in relation to
Ezeulu’s character that he is “so keen to assert the monolithic nature of his
power and knowledge that he will not allow for any polarity in either; for
him, dispersed power is no power at all... Ezeulu’s behaviour is contrary to
the doctrines of his culture which seems to allow indeed, celebrate an
oppositional perspective” (Gikandi, 71). In Things Fall Apart, we have
already seen that Okonkwo does not question the dictates of Cheilo. Even
though his culture allows for such dissent, he chooses to maintain his image
as the macho-hero whose masculinist principles determine his relationship
with the interpretation of myths. Obi is the binary opposite of Ezeulu and
Okonkwo; to him, every aspect of European modernity is capable of
questioning the production of cultural artefacts in Igbo. His mode of
representation, his language of recognition, is distinctly European as he
remembers the myth of King David and the end of T.S Eliot’s The
Wasteland to represent his thought process about the sense of waste he feels
at the end. It seems that the characters in Achebe fall into a type of temporal
paradox. They know that modernity is creeping into the native cultural
space. They know the myths determining the cultural base of that nativity
are being constantly interrogated, and resistance by the colonial power
pushes through an “acculturation” of Biblical myth narratives, done, of
course, keeping in mind the coloniser/colonised dynamics. Ezeulu knows
that he needs to find a compromise to keep his power and knowledge intact.
However, he fails to achieve a “modernity” that lies between the diminished
African mode of production and the colonial political economy. Neither
Ezeulu nor Okonkwo can find a space where they can maintain the status
quo of their power and their absolute hold over interpreting myths and
directing their community towards subsequent rituals. Ezeulu makes the
236 Chapter Six

mistake of thinking that Ulu is his when Ulu is the god of the entire
community. V.Y Mudimbe observes
Marginality designates the intermediate space between so-called African
tradition and the projected modernity of colonialism.... This space reveals
not so much that the new imperatives could achieve a jump into a modernity
as the fact that despair gives this intermediate space its precarious pertinence
and, simultaneously, its dangerous importance. (Mudimbe, 78)

The social structure Achebe portrays in his novels, especially in the trilogy,
gives immense power to the priest to interpret myths but also guards against
the arbitrary use of power by them. When that happens, society resists the
power push towards authoritarian anachronism, leading to an internal
breakage of the structure.

In the novels of Amitav Ghosh, power remains an important factor by which

myths are interpreted or used, but that power does not manifest only in terms
of the coloniser/colonised or external/internal dialectics. The power relation
is also defined on the basis of the giver and receiver dialectics of the
knowledge related to mythical narratives. The diary that Kanai receives
defines the power position of Nirmal, who claims to know more about the
Bon Bibi myth than the reader since he has access to the oral and
performative texts of the myth. Ezeulu and Okonkwo are not required to
play the role of the receiver since they suffer from the over-confidence that
they have absolute right over generating meaning out of the oral texts that
come their way in the form of myth representations. Fokir is part of the
culture that produces the narrative of Bon Bibi but, unlike Okonkwo and
Ezeulu, he does not belong to the “privileged class”. His subaltern status
means that he does not command the power to read the Bon Bibi myth for
others. His observance of the ritual or puja to the Forest Mother is
interpreted by Piya in terms of silence and bodily actions since she cannot
understand the language of the chant that Fokir whispers. The reception of
the myth from Piya’s side is almost through silence because she is
unfamiliar with all the receptors – oral, aural, and actions – and so Fokir
cannot claim to have the power to assess the myth for her. Her subjectivity
is problematic here since her ignorance can be read as a colonially
influenced act against narratives that are not located at the colonial centre.
However, unlike the colonial subjects in Achebe, she is not averse to gaining
knowledge about spaces she is not aware of and at the end of the text, she
does attempt to travel from the centre to the margin in order to participate
in the narrative of the Other.
 A Brief Comparative Analysis of Myth Formation in the Fiction 237
of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

Ghosh generates meaning more at the level of meta-language or non-

linguistic non-oral levels, leading to an absence of the human subject as the
teller of tales. In Achebe, if the power and intention of the teller are of
paramount importance, then, in The Hungry Tide specifically, the ideology
and the subjective position of the receiver are of maximum importance in
constructing the interpretive dynamics of the myth-text. The dynamics,
however, change in Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke since the coordinates
of representation change along with that of power. In these two novels,
language is no longer the barrier because most of the characters know each
other’s language, until they embark on the Ibis where there is a
conglomeration of people from Bihar and Bengal, but there is a class
difference between them. Deeti and Kalua exercise resistance by running
away from the funeral pyre where Deeti is about to be made a Sati.
However, unlike Ezeulu and Okonkwo, they are subaltern subjects and they
are not allowed to participate in the production of the myth narratives that
circulate in their village. In the power structure system Deeti’s village
follows, Deeti and Kalua (Kalua belongs to the lowest rank of the society
and is marginalized and voiceless) are not considered part of society’s
mainstream narrative. Hence, Deeti can only observe the rituals, taking the
role of the passive woman who can only be appropriated by myth narratives
without producing them. Yet their resistance is not passive. Kalua’s daring
act saves Deeti’s life but because they have resisted the ritual of Sati, they
are ostracized from their community. However, ironically, their
ostracization is also an opportunity for them to travel from the margin to the
centre. Once they are away from their community, Deeti and Kalua do not
have to become subjects of their community but they are not able to let go
of the ritual practices and myth narratives that were a part of their
upbringing. In Achebe, characters like Ezeulu and Okonkwo constantly
strive to remain in the centre, and their main tool to maintain that status quo
is the self-invested power to issue directives for observing rituals and
interpret myths for others. Deeti and Kalua are subaltern figures who do not
command such power but their journey to the centre is through extricating
themselves from the predefined boundaries of their community and locating
in a different social space. What it also does is bring the question of Sati
from the private to the public domain. Sati was never a part of the private
space; it was deemed that it was a self-willed act of immolation on the part
of the concerned woman, since the body is her “right”, but once the ritual is
completed, the history of sacrifice comes into the public domain as she is
worshipped as a Sati-Ma, or a mother goddess. But Kalua’s rescue brings
the artificial binary between the private and the public to question. Deeti’s
body was never hers until she escapes from her community, and she had to
238 Chapter Six

depend on the male to define her body. Once Kalua rescues her from being
thrown into the funeral pyre, Deeti’s body becomes her willed object,
thereby creating a new dimension of body politics through resistance to the
myth of Sati. Talking about this paradox of the private-public debate in Sati,
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak observes
The woman’s subject, legally displaced from herself, is being consumed...
For the male subject, it [the act of Sati] is the felicity of the suicide, a felicity
that will annul rather than establish its status as such, that is noted. For the
female subject, a sanctioned self-immolation, even as it takes away the
effect of ‘fall’ attached to an unsanctioned suicide [noted in the Hindu text
Rig-Veda], brings praise for the act of choice on another register. (Spivak,
96)

A similar situation arises in Things Fall Apart when Cheilo takes charge of
Ezinma to sacrifice her to the gods of the Agbala Caves. Even in the Igbo
culture, a woman’s body is assumed to be the property of the gods and hence
can be consumed through patriarchal rituals. However, on a comparative
basis, it can be noted that whereas Kalua has the courage to come and resist
the “self-immolation” of Deeti, Okonkwo lacks the courage to do the same
with Cheilo. The reason perhaps is the class difference between the two
men. Kalua is already an “outsider” to his community; one ostracization
further will not change his power relation with his community. In any case,
he is right at the bottom of that power scale. Okonkwo commands the power
to interpret myths in a certain manner but that power is not limitless and he
has everything to lose if he is ostracized or challenged by his peers and
elders. This fear stops him from challenging Cheilo directly; he can only
walk passively behind his wife on the dark night Cheilo takes Ezinma to the
Agbala Caves.

On a whole, therefore, the comparative design between the two authors is

attainable at the micro-narrative level. The obvious cultural difference is not
the point of comparison – the comparison is on the basis of literary
representational politics. It is for this specific reason we have not brought in
the theoretical perspectives of Jung or Fraser because the theory of the
collective unconscious5 or trying to find universal symbols/symptoms in a
myth narrative is too general an idea and often Eurocentric. Northrop Frye,
taking a cue from Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious, defines myth
in the following terms.
The myth is the central informing power that gives archetypal significance
to the ritual and archetypal narrative to the oracle. Hence the myth is the
 A Brief Comparative Analysis of Myth Formation in the Fiction 239
of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

archetype, though it might be convenient to say myth only when referring

to the narrative, and archetype when speaking of significance. (Frye, 429)

Frye adds that “in human life, a ritual seems to be something of a voluntary
effort...it is a deliberate expression of a will to synchronize human and
natural energies at that time which produces the harvest songs, harvest
sacrifices and harvest folk customs that we call rituals” (ibid, 428). In Frye’s
assumptions, there are too many generalized observations that seem
untenable when we look at myths through the prism of politics and the
postcolonial energy of identity. Frye’s attempt to identify the general
patterns of imagery or movement seems to be Eurocentric. His identification
of dawn-spring-birth, zenith-summer-marriage-triumph, sunset-autumn-
death, and darkness-winter-dissolution patterns of the myth-ritual continuum
seems to be drawn from European myths, especially related to classical and
pulpit literature, and these overarching structures of myth may not be
present in the same form and context in myths coming out of Africa or South
Asia. Frye’s theory of identifying general patterns of structure in myths,
therefore, proposes a grand narrative that negates the possibility of
understanding the finer nuances of power and identity politics in a given
myth, and it does not open itself up to possibilities of looking at non-
European myths and rituals whose representation does not follow the
“archetypes” listed by Frye. Therefore, when we look at a comparative
study in the use of myths in the fiction of Achebe and Ghosh, we are not
trying to impose a grand structural unity between them as that will defeat
the purpose of looking at their works as attempts to represent culture and
power in coordinates different from each other. Our attempt has been to look
at their politics of representation and how both of them represent culture
through myths in a postcolonial space. Even the phrase ‘postcolonial space’
should not be construed as a homogenized singular political energy where
every author belonging to an erstwhile colony will write in an identical
fashion. There are bound to be differences in the way they look at their
colonial past since they will not share the same narrative of colonial
domination. When it comes to myth as a representation of power and
identity, both Achebe and Ghosh are looking at the possibility of creating a
postcolonial identity that questions the documentation of history by the
colonial masters. At the same time, both authors are aware of the pitfalls in
the “native” politics of constructing history through myth narratives.
However, Achebe and Ghosh do not look at power and identity in the same
manner. Achebe’s construction of power and the resistance to the
establishment is done with “nationalism” in hindsight. It must be
remembered, however, that Achebe was not an ultra-nationalist, unlike
some of his contemporaries, like Leopold Senghor, and his role in the Biafra
240 Chapter Six

movement makes it clear that he does not support the mere alteration of
power from the “external colonisers” to the “internal colonisers” (the
military authoritarianism). He says in There was a Country: A Personal
History of Biafra
There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against
the powerless. (Achebe, web)

This moral obligation is something that accentuates the difference in

approach between Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh as far as their
literature goes. It is not as if Achebe looks at literature as a moral enforcing
agent of society, but he does not shy away from the classic postcolonial
concern of asserting the identity of the “nation” over the coloniser’s
representation of it. Amitav Ghosh, on the other hand, is not much interested
in the author’s moral concern to set things straight as far as the
misrepresentation of the colonized’s culture by the coloniser is concerned.
Even in novels like Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke, where the colonial
narrative gains importance, myth narratives are more directed to defining
the various power relations in the society rather than asserting the
“Indianness”, or the lack of it, of the characters. Rather than going into the
modalities of myth narration as a social force to gain hierarchy in a power
structure, Amitav Ghosh attempts to look at myths as a historical
documentation of events through symbolic gestures that define the way a
society evolves, ultimately arriving at the present form. In Achebe, the
interpretation of myths is a major cumulative social energy that defines
hierarchy since only a “privileged” few are entrusted with the power to
interpret myth and direct society to the necessary remedial rituals. This
causal effect defines the individual/society binary and manifests in power
struggles, clashes of ideology and personal interests, and, ultimately, the
fissure within Igbo society as to how to deal with the white man. In Ghosh,
myth narration is not institutionalized; it is present in the “higher” as also in
the subaltern sections of the society as a fluid text. Nor are rituals directed
from the institution of the priest; rather they a general form of social
appropriation. Achebe’s moral obligation leads him to construct a narrative
of the nation whereby he discerns the glories and the fissures of the Igbo
society. Ghosh does not create such binaries. He looks at myth formation
through the prism of how narratives are formed in history and how they
function as a modality of cultural narration, and looking at myths from this
episteme makes him more of a postmodern postcolonial who is not acutely
concerned about identity assertion as much as the social, cultural, and
ideological narratives that contribute to the construction of it.
 A Brief Comparative Analysis of Myth Formation in the Fiction 241
of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh

Notes
1 The concept of ‘mythical past’ has already been discussed in chapters II and III. It
refers to a certain representational time scale in myth narratives where, to heighten
the “mysticism” of it, the narration is located at “then” and “there” to distance the
audience/reader from the immediate spatial reality thereby constructing myth as a
conception or idea that belongs to a space far removed from human reality. This
creates the notion of “divinity” in a myth narration that helps to propose it as a text
that must never be challenged since it is the decree of the gods. For further reading,
refer to Isidore Okpewho’s Myth in Africa (CUP, Cambridge: 1983).
2 This is a term explored by Roland Barthes in his book Mythologies (Random
House, New York: 2009). In a second-order system, the meaning is not only
generated by the sign itself but also by a whole range of cultural signs, the meaning
of which are defined by the way the society values the relationship between the
signifier and the signified. According to Barthes, second-order signification works
at two levels – as mythmakers and as connotative agents. When signs move to the
second order, they carry cultural as also representational meanings. Barthes calls the
cultural meanings of these signs myth, and the signs lose their specific signifieds
and become carriers of the cultural meaning, thereby operating at the axis of second-
order signification.
3D.W Cohen, Womunafu’s Bunafu, p. 189 and “Reconstructing a Conflict in
Bunafu”.
4 Louis Althusser conceptualized the term ‘interpellation’, signifying that an
individual’s identity is produced by the very processes of social discourse and
institutions of which the individual is a part. Althusser points out that individual
subjects are produced by social forces and they cannot claim to be self-produced
identities. Piya and Kanai take part in this interpellation as their identities are defined
by the way they receive the Bon Bibi myth and include it in their subjective selves.
5 Carl Gustav Jung coined this term to refer to the similarity in the structures of the

human unconscious by virtue of being the same species. This term was applied by
Jung to explain certain aspects of human psychology in his 1916 essay “The
Structure of the Unconscious”. He also gave a lecture titled “The Concept of the
Collective Unconscious” to the Abernethian Society at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital
in London on October 19, 1936. Jung opined that the human unconscious operates
through “instincts” and “primordial symbols or archetypes”, which are not
individual cognitions of reality but a collective force that defines the unconscious
archetypal symbols and patterns in human civilizations across all cultures, like the
fallen hero or the caring mother, and the human mind responds to such imageries as
it is aware of such symbols “instinctually”. For further reading, refer to 20th Century
Literary Criticism. Longman, New York: 1986. Print.
 CONCLUSION

No work of research can be said to have a conclusion since the debate on

the given topic continues. Myth formation in the fiction of Chinua Achebe
and Amitav Ghosh is not a closed debate after this book by any stretch of
imagination. What we have tried to argue in this book is that myth formation
is an important part of the literary politics of both authors and constructs
their worldview in the novels discussed. We chose two authors from the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries to examine the genre of myth in fiction
and to what extent myths continue to function as an important modality of
cultural pedagogy. With the renewed interest in anthropology, totems and
taboos post-Freud, Malinowski and James Frazer, both modernists, used
myths in their art forms to form a ritualistic order within the literary world.
The ritualistic order was used as a mythico-historical backdrop to the
purported modern alienation and fragmentation. The Anglo-American and
European modernists were using myths as a spatio-temporal statement on
the mythopoeic past of their civilisation, but the postcolonial writers use
myths to construct the image of the natives with the intention of resistance.
The colonial oppression, among other things, would have stereotyped the
natives as the Other to the ‘cultured’ white man. The postcolonial writers,
therefore, have the political compulsion in mind to restore the balance of
image building, though not all the postcolonial writers share the same
literary activism. In fact, in this conclusion, it must be stressed that the term
postcolonial itself tends to construct a grand narrative, putting all the
postcolonial writers under the umbrella of similar politics. Not all
postcolonial conditions can be the same, and not all authors within the same
postcolonial history can have the same representative literary or artistic
values. So, caution must be exercised before we call an author “postcolonial”.

This book looked into the very conception of myth formation and the
various stages in literary history where this has taken place. It has given a
graphic outline of the history of myth criticism, though, in this short space,
it cannot be said to have discussed the entire gamut of myth criticism.
However, by looking at the various schools of myth criticism, from the
classical to psychoanalytical, cultural and post-structural, the opening
chapter tried to give an outline of the various critical perspectives from
which myths have been examined through the centuries. A look at the
difference between myth and ritual was necessary as the two terms are not
 Myth Formation in the Fiction of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh 243

implicative of the same meaning; they are instead a part of the same
continuum. This part of the book has tried to argue that myths are more
literary in origin and rituals a more cognitive social practice that seeks to
represent the cults mentioned in the myths through religious practices and
order.

The book then looked at the issue of myth formation in the novels of Chinua
Achebe. Again, it must be stated that within the parameter of a book, it is
not possible to discuss all the novels, which is why we chose mainly the
Igbo trilogy for our discussion, along with a later novel of Achebe’s –
Anthills of Savannah. The book has tried to argue that Chinua Achebe uses
myths to construct a postcolonial identity for his community, which the
Africans in general, and the Igbos in particular, have been denied for
centuries. The Africans have been stereotyped racially as “uncultured”,
“cannibal”, “black”, and “non-human”, whose only identity is that they are
violent, blood-loving tribal people. Achebe counters this Eurocentric racism
by portraying the native culture of his community literarily. However, the
book has shown that Achebe is not a unilinear representative of his culture;
he problematizes his narrative by showing the fissures and cracks within the
cultural artefacts of his community, which lead to violence and internal
colonization. The book has tried to argue that Achebe’s art cannot be looked
at from a singular perspective of literary activism that politically tries to
reinstate Africa from racial stereotyping. Achebe’s myth formation thereby
becomes an important aspect of his art because it is through the reception of
the myths by the Igbo community that Achebe is able to discern the multi-
layered approach to the various cultural and social practices of his native
community. The book has tried to focus on the bush in Achebe’s novels as
well as the urban settings so that a rounder perspective can be drawn on the
issue of myth formation in his novels. There is a timeline factor in this
choice as the bush novels are mainly set in colonial Nigeria whereas the
urban novels, like No Longer at Ease and Anthills of Savannah, are set in
postcolonial Nigeria. Apart from the political difference in the two times,
there is also the issue of the rural-urban divide. The politics of myth
formation differs because of these factors, and this brings attention to
Achebe’s expanding focus in his art with the movement of time.

After the discussion on Achebe, the book moves onto the novels of Amitav
Ghosh. We chose four novels for our discussion – the Ibis trilogy and The
Hungry Tide. The latter is given more prominence in the discussions
because it is more in the scope of our interest, that is, myth formation.
Ghosh’s literary politics mainly deal with identity formation, much like
Achebe, but since he is dealing with different cultures, the content becomes
244 Conclusion

different. In The Hungry Tide, we argue that Piya is the “outsider”, who
shows signs of colonial ignorance by not knowing about the Bon Bibi myth.
However, her politics cannot be said to have the aggressive aim of Othering.
She may not be too knowledgeable about the rituals and myths of the tide
country but she is not derisive of the Other. This novel is contemporary
while the Ibis trilogy is Ghosh’s look at history with respect to the Anglo-
Chinese Opium War in the mid-nineteenth century. However, Ghosh
chooses a comparatively untold story in his narrative. As it is, the Opium
War is not part of the mainstream historical discourse in India, and even less
is the story about the Indians who took part in it. Within this story is the
narrative of how these characters deal with myths in their daily lives. The
book argued that myths and rituals define the way characters look at their
position in society. Whether it is Deeti’s vision of a ship or Babu Nob
Kissin’s gender fluidity in wanting to become a sakhi and appropriate the
femininity of Taramony to become a devotee of Lord Krishna, myths define
the way the characters look at their selves. The last chapter attempts to
merge the two authors in terms of a comparative analysis of the way they
form myths in their fiction. The difference lies in the politics which the two
authors seek to practise – one born in a postcolonial society, in need of
challenging the Eurocentric discourse on the ‘native’; the other born in an
independent nation that seeks to find new avenues of expression, even in its
history.

While discussing the topic of myth formation in the fiction of Chinua

Achebe and Amitav Ghosh, we tried, as far as practicable, to avoid
constructing a grand narrative. The analysis in the given topic is not the last
word, and future research can be conducted in this field. Like Piya, who
decides to stay in Sunderban to study the local culture, mythology and
history, researchers can further delve into the topic and bring out new ideas
and perspectives to contribute to the existing critical body of work in myth
formation in the two authors. One aspect we have not concentrated on in
this book is the school of ecocriticism, which can be used to analyse myths
and their social/environmental validation. Ecocriticism is a relatively new
school of criticism that gained prominence with Rachel Carson’s work
Silent Spring (1962). The first critic to use the term ecocriticism in relation
to literary criticism was William Rueckert in his 1978 essay “Literature and
Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism”. Ecocriticism seeks a critical
perspective by studying nature and environment through representative art
forms, and some may try and find prescriptive solutions to contemporary
environmental problems through such artworks, which speak of conserving
nature and its various manifestations.
 Myth Formation in the Fiction of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh 245

Myths can be looked at from the ecocritical point of view, especially when
they talk about stories of creation, nature and animals. One aspect of culture
is humankind’s relationship with nature – in fact, there is a critical school
of thought that puts nature as opposed to culture, especially after the
increase of urban settlement. Without going into the nature-culture binary,
it can be observed that there is scope to relate self, society, nature, and texts
to study the pattern of relationship between man and his environment.
Questions can be raised about the validity of the term ‘nature’ but let us first
discuss what can be done with myths in terms of ecocriticism. In Achebe,
for example, there are many myths in his novels that deal with natural
objects and environment that can be used to study the way members of the
Igbo community look at nature. In Arrow of God, Ezeulu's son is
reprimanded for killing a python. He is sent to the Church and converted to
Christianity by Ezeulu himself to be a political negotiator between his
community and the colonizers. However, Oduche kills the python because
it is an anti-Christian symbol. The myth is that the royal python is not the
deity of Umuaro, the village whose head priest is Ezeulu. Actually, it
belongs to the village of Ezidemili, whose deity Idemili owns the royal
python and so it should not be killed. We have already analysed the feudal
and patriarchal assumptions behind the formation of this myth. But, if we
bring in the ecocritical school of thought, it might be possible to observe
that the myth operates to save the environment by stopping the
indiscriminate killing of animal life. This is imperative to the continuation
of the human race on earth as we are all dependent on each other for
ecological sustenance. Myths and rituals, though not indiscriminately, can
be seen as the earliest documentation of nature conservation by relating the
human world and the animal world. This might be used as a starting point
to critique the anthropocentric approach to literary criticism. Similarly, in
The Hungry Tide, the myth associated with Bon Bibi can be studied from
the perspective of ecocriticism. If the human self is Bon Bibi, the protective
deity of the mangrove forest, then Dakkhin Ray, the human manifestation
of the tiger, is the Other. However, from the ecocritical point of view, this
might be looked as achieving something positive through the rule of fear. If
the cultural psyche of the people can be appropriated to the belief that
venturing into the forest incurs the wrath of Dakkhin Ray, then people might
be wary of entering the forest. Secondly, by installing the belief system
surrounding Bon Bibi, people are encouraged to take precautionary steps to
prevent a chance meeting with a tiger. The myth, in this case, functions to
avoid the man-tiger conflict by restricting the forest space as exclusive to
the animal world, which is turn protects the forest from major ecological
catastrophe.
246 Conclusion

However, the problematic side of ecocriticism is the very word 'nature'. The
word not only denotes the opposite to human settlement, it also denotes
human behaviour. Nature has been often used as a justification to further
the project of patriarchy and impose a hegemony in gender identity
formation. For example, women as the passive, conformative stereotype is
a patriarchal assumption justified under the term 'nature'. Sexuality is also
an area where the word is used to underline the heteronormative hegemony
of society. In Things Fall Apart, Ikemefuna is sacrificed because it is
deemed to be natural. Obi is expelled from his native society, in No Longer
at Ease, because it is unnatural to marry a woman who is an osu. In Sea of
Poppies, Deeti, after being made to consume alcohol and opium, is pushed
towards the funeral pyre of her husband because it is natural for a widow to
become a sati. Hence, from the perspective of myth formation and ritualistic
practices, ecocriticism can be used to critique the way nature has been
abused by the existing power structures in society to perpetrate violence and
gender-related inequality. Mythology, in a general sense, seeks to be pro-
establishment and uses nature as a tool to further the cause of strengthening
patriarchy and feudalism, but ecocriticism can be used to critique this
politics, thereby establishing a code by which myths can be seen as
narratives that both play a constructive as well as a negative role in defining
human relationship with nature.

It must be accepted that this discussion on the ecocritical perspective on

myth criticism is rudimentary and rather inadequate. However, we have
tried to give a small lead into what could be the future course of discussion
as far as myth formation in the fiction of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh
goes. It is always worth a look at two authors who belong to different
cultures through the same critical lens. This gives a wider sense of how
cultures work in terms of social beliefs, art production and aesthetic
representations. Myth formation in fiction is a specialized area of research
within the larger frame of myth formation in general. Myth formation
constantly takes place in society, but to appropriate it and then form a
secondary myth formation in fiction requires an approach that will discern
the literary politics of the author. As Barthes argued in the essay "Myth
Today" in Mythologies, myth is a form of signification, and as such it has
no specific timeline to denote that myths can only be ancient in origin. Myth
is a part of a speech in so far as it is a part of a communication that bears
meaning. Meaning, however, is signified by ideology, which Barthes calls
myth. Since every cultural product produces a meaning based on an
ideology, any cultural product can be put under the lens of mythological
analysis. Based on this argument, many cultural artefacts and contemporary
cultural images can be analysed in terms of myths. Fiction, or, for that
 Myth Formation in the Fiction of Chinua Achebe and Amitav Ghosh 247

matter, any form of art, is a cultural product that produces meaning through
ideological intervention. It is the ideological strata that shapes the way
meaning is constructed by a given receiver of that signification. So, myth
formation is an important aspect of modern criticism that can study the
various ideological constructions by producing the meaning of an artefact.
This book has specifically looked into the art of Chinua Achebe and Amitav
Ghosh for myth formation, but it is definitely possible that other authors can
be studied keeping this critical perspective in mind. There are numerous
other authors who directly interpret and re-interpret myths in their fiction or
poetry, or even in drama, but there are also others who keep constructing
new myths in their works. As such, the last word on this topic has yet to be
said, and the writer of this book will be more than happy if new debates are
opened in the area of myth formation in the works of different authors.
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