THE POLITICS OF IRONY AND SATIRE IN CHINUA ACHEBE’S A MAN OF THE PEOPLE, NGUGI WA THIONG’O’S DEVIL ON THE CROSS, AND WOLE SOYINKA'S THE INTERPRETERS

Abstract

The guiding principle underlying this dissertation is to cast a critical eye on the politics of irony and satire prevailing in three famous African novels: Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross, and Wole Soyinka's The Interpreters. These highly satirical texts expose, through different techniques of derision, the evils of authoritarian power that followed the departure of the white man from Africa. The tree novels mentioned apply derision to some of the contemporary power elites for betraying the promises of independence. Politics is kept by Machiavellian power-despots from being an arena of meaningful social relations and practices and becomes instead a hermetic ivory-tower where they have locked themselves and proved to be more corrupt, absurd, grotesque and brutal than their predecessors – the departed imperialists. My intention in this dissertation, via the three outstanding fictional works and other related texts, is to probe the game of politics and the way it is deconstructed in African literature. Achebe, Ngugi and Soyinka employ diverse techniques of the satiric spectrum ranging from irony to ridicule through laughter and cynicism in order to blow the whistle on the growing crisis which is inflicted by the body politic. They exploit the gap between the exploiting “haves” and the exploited “have nots” which widens and bring to light uncertainty, dejection and bitter cynicism. Achebe, Ngugi and Soyinka claim that African literature exists in a historical continuum. Neo-colonialism infected post-colonial Africa as a cancer or a severe form of imperialism where the neo-colonial hegemony assume a kind of power without responsibility or exploitation without restitution owing to the continuation and perpetuation after independence of economic, political and social practices established by the old-fashioned colonialism. It will be shown that the language of irony and satire is skilfully employed by Achebe, Ngugi and Soyinka to express their bitter disillusionment and that of most African peoples and to denounce the shortcomings and flaws of contemporary Africa in its dealing with neo-colonialism. For this purpose, I shall resort to a variety of theoretical notions that will support my analysis of satire and show how this particular writing strategy has informed and enriched the post-colonial African novel. It has also provided a wealth of insights in what it means to write satire, to be ironic, and to surmise to satire’s social or political purpose. The three canonical texts of African literature selected, share a number of affinities at the linguistic, aesthetic, and ideological levels, as I will attempt to demonstrate. Chapter One will be devoted to the discussion of Achebe’s techniques of irony and satire in A Man of the People. In this novel, Achebe draws humorous and grotesque portraits of post-colonial Nigeria through his witty foreshadowing of the crisis of leadership facing it. His satire derives from the duality intrinsic to the Igbo world view and best illustrated in the Igbo proverb that advocates the idea that whenever something stands, something else will stand beside it, and 6 The Politics of Irony and Satire in Achebe’s MOP, and Ngugi’s DOC traditional modes of representation of derision constitute the essence of Achebe’s satiric spectrum, and in each of these, a norm is transgressed and a gap is constructed to strengthen the satiric intent. Chapter Two follows on with Ngugi, who introduces Religious Allegory, grotesque body and satire in Devil on the Cross as potential threats to Kenya’s mundane reality and most significantly to capitalism in a totalitarian state. In his ritual of anatomizing the monster capitalism in his novel, Ngugi’s satire is didactic and polemical to the point of transgressing the boundaries of conventional creative writing. He is particularly mocking the gullibility and insatiable envy of those members of Kenya’s capitalist bourgeoisie, thus he enters into a brutal and savage satiric exposure to disclose their inanities and immoral actions. Chapter Three will focus on the use Satiric Humor and Laughter in Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters. The novel is, without question, a linguistically rich and sharp satiric representation of the new, hybridized culture of post-colonial Nigeria. In this polyphonic and highly rhetorical work of art, Soyinka juxtaposes existentialist philosophy and indigenous myths, creating thus memorable satiric passages fused with humor, sophisticated wit and memorable laughter. The ultimate objective of this dissertation is to study the discursive strategies stressed by Achebe, Ngugi and Soyinka based on irony and satire, in order to generate an opposition to despotic abuses of power. Their crucial purpose is to move the African audience to scrutinize and denounce the flaws and shortcomings of post-independence politics.