Question

Examine A Dance of the Forests as presenting issues of Nigerian independence.

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Wole Soyinka’s play, written on the brink of his country’s independence, examines Nigeria’s colonial past through a critical lens. Rather than seeing liberation as a cure-all for the country’s many problems, Soyinka realizes that emergence from the colonial yoke would be an on-going process. In particular, he points to the influence of corruption as a brake on instituting a broad-based, participatory democracy. The playwright evokes ghost from the distant past as spokespersons for the concerns and unsettled scores of the living. A potent representative of the spirit world, the character of Aroni, is responsible for the summonses and accusations that the dead level against those who survive. Soyinka implies that the social and political ills of the present are continuations of those instituted in the past and not exclusively by the British rulers.

A Dance of the Forests

Examine A Dance of the Forests as presenting issues of Nigerian independence.

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