The Healers'¹ integral structure is based on myth-making through which it attains symbolic proportions. In fact, Armah superimposes on its history of the Asante Empire a mythic level which is crucial to a full understanding of the novel. Since “a myth always refers to events alleged to have taken place in time” and “explains the present and the past as well as the future,”² the two intentions of myth and history are compatible. The Healers demands mythic interpretation, but it is informed by no classical European myth. In fact, Armah had already used myth, on a limited basis, in his earlier novels.³ In Two Thousand Seasons and The Healers, however, he embarked on a full-scale program of myth-making. The Healers makes several references to traditional beliefs and practices, and habits of thoughts or behavior, which derive their origins not from the Greco-Roman myth of course, but from the African background. The novelist's overt purpose in myth-making is to offer a dynamic impetus to the formation of a new social order and a new political ideology in which the collectivity, as opposed to individual achievement, competition or manipulation, plays a leading role. In the writing of The Healers, Armah's imagination was unmistakably mythopoeic; myth-making serves as an intensification of mood, a clarification of characters, and as a form of perception which brings his material to artistic concentration, and endows his scenes with depth and liquidity. Armah's myth-making thus exhibits both the “philosophic” and the artistic properties of myth in general. It proposes an admittedly individualized version of a people's ethical and cosmic vision, and it does so with narrative forms typical of myth's arbitrary plot （here the journey or quest）, characters of heroic grandeur, and nature's complicity in the drama.

Armah's mythic didacticism is governed by two complementary arguments, one destructive, the other constructive. The first is “demythification.” In presenting the rivalry and fragmentation of the Asante Empire and its failure to prevent British conquest, Armah demolishes currently prevailing myths which eulogise the government and society of that period. For its purpose, the novel relies on history—recorded fact in abundant detail—for support.

The constructive or positive myth is illustrated by Armah's dexterous interjection of a new, idealized society in which the only path to a harmonious and lasting survival is that of a communal consciousness and the total integration of individual feelings with collective life. Such a society is represented by the community of “healers” and their inspirational work in the novel.

The healers' society is an alternative in which “the body that is whole moves always together. No part of it goes against any other part.”⁴ The need for a community of healers had already been suggested in Armah's fourth novel, where the founders of such a utopian society are the “healers,” the “indispensable finders of paths to the way again.”⁵ However it is only in The Healers that their acts of healing and teaching are put to work. The healers and their “philosophy” are presented as the only possible means to salvation and as the only effective force against the danger of integration, corruption, and foreign occupation. In essence, Armah's mythic society of the healers is consistent with the plot and didactic purpose of the novel.

Armah's myth-making is centered on four individuals: the healer Damfo, Araba Jesiwa, Densu, and Asamoa Nkwanta. Since the last three have been exposed in one way or another to the political and social （as well as physical and psychological） violence of the Asante rulers and British colonialism, they have to be treated by Damfo.

It is worth remarking that from the start Damfo is classified as a special man having mixed powers of “inspiration” and “healing.” The society of the healers, and Damfo's inspirational work in particular, are sharply contrasted with the background of the so-called “destroyers,” the royal manipulators, “the poison,” and the “disease” of division that had befallen the Asante people—the black people. Indeed, Damfo's personality, life and work of healing are endowed with frequent mythic descriptions and mythic perceptions. Along with other dedicated healers, he lives in a remote area in the eastern forest far from Esuano and the royal family. It is here that Araba Jesiwa and Densu go to visit him from time to time.

Because of her marriage to Bedu Addo, a member of the royal family, Araba Jesiwa has been leading a life of fear, despair and suffering. In marrying a royal man whom she does not love, she has in fact violated her “soul,” her womanhood. As a consequence, “for years her soul has sunk into a deep, horrifying hole and stayed trapped there at the bottom, unable to crawl” （p. 67）, and “for years it had seemed that Araba Jesiwa was fated to die childless” （p. 69） if Damfo did not come to her rescue. After Araba's consultation with many medical practitioners who just “stuffed her stomach with scrapings from the barks of innumerable trees … Damfo the healer from the eastern forest came to her” （p. 70）. Thus through inspirational healing, he helps her find her true self and recover her fertility. On the one hand, Jesiwa's marriage with Bedu Addo is meant to reflect the barrenness and destructive nature of the royal rulers. On the other hand, her marriage with Kofi Entsua, a craftsman （carver）, who loves her and whom she loves, must be interpreted as a symbol of harmony and creation. Not only does Damfo help Jesiwa regain her fertility, he has saved her life as well after she has been maimed beyond recognition by Buntui.

The second example of Armah's myth-making of healing concerns the young Densu who refuses to cooperate with a political manipulator, Ababio. Instead he chooses to join the “inspirers,” the community of the healers. After having witnessed the violence of the games of remembrance and their harmful impact on the people of Esuano, and after having discovered the wickedness and corruption of Ababio and other leaders, Densu has been facing a bitter choice between joining the repugnant “manipulators” and linking with the enigmatic community of the healers. Thanks to Damfo, who helps him see things clearly, Densu “did not like manipulators, he loved inspirers” （p. 27）. But before the final decision, Damfo gives Densu more information about the profession of healers, and the nature and objective of healing.

In an open atmosphere involving teacher and disciple, Damfo patiently instructs Densu about the rules and regulations regarding how an individual may become a healer. He must have an intuitive ability to comprehend the world of plants, animals, birds, sounds of rivers, and the physical and spiritual composition of forests. Therefore, a learner has to train himself to hear, to understand sounds and grasp their spiritual meaning. More than an ordinary person, a healer is bound to act honestly. Furthermore, Damfo reminds the young Densu that a healer does not aspire to have power over other men. Instead, “he dedicates himself to inspiration. He also lives against manipulation” （p. 81）. Hence “the healer is a life-long enemy of all manipulation. The healer's method is inspiration” （p. 81）. Damfo adds that “inspiration” is that state in which both spirit and body are in harmony and that “manipulation” is the total negation of “inspiration.” “It's a disease, a popular one. It comes from spiritual blindness. … Manipulation steals a person's body from his spirit, cuts the body off from its own spirit's direction” （p. 81）. Damfo goes on to explain that the art of healing does not involve the small parts of society only but the segments of a whole nation, if not of a whole race. These ideals, Damfo remarks, cannot be achieved by the heroism of a single individual. Instead, they require a group's collective engagement.

Armah's myth-making of healers and healing attains a new dimension with subtle juxtaposition of Damfo and Densu. As a matter of fact, through his teaching of the art of healing to Densu, Damfo serves as a striking model of the novelist's mission as an educator of his people. The conversation reinforces Armah's didactic intent. For instance, listening to Densu's questions about the art of healing and Damfo's answers, the reader cannot help feeling that the Ghanaian novelist has taken upon himself the responsibility to educate, guide and “heal” the new generation of African readers. Like Damfo, his spokesman, Armah becomes an awakener “of a people who have slept too long” （p. 83）. In plunging Densu into the Asante past, Armah wants his readers to learn about “inspiration” and “manipulation,” the forces of “unity” and “division” of that special period of the myth of the African past. Above all, he wants him to know that “the events that have shattered our people were not simply painful events. They were disasters. They were strange, unnatural catastrophes” （p. 83）. Cataloging these “catastrophes” is itself a call to a “lost unity” （what Armah called the “way of reciprocity” in Two Thousand Seasons） and a reminder and a warning that “the highest work, the bringing together of the black people, will take centuries” （p. 83）. Hence Damfo says to Densu that “a healer needs to see beyond the present and tomorrow. He needs to see years and decades ahead” （p. 84） in order to bring about sound changes which transform society's defective structure. Wounded by the nobility and alienated by its political and social values, Asamoa Nkwanta has to be healed and rehabilitated.

The author's creation of Asamoa Nkwanta is closely consistent with the didactic framework. Like Araba Jesiwa, he serves as a major device for the novelist to probe deeper into the political and social structure of the Asante society. In addition, as the historical Asante army commander, Asamoa Nkwanta is a fascinating match for the British general Wolseley, paralleling him in stature and exploits, and even surpassing him in ingenuity and valor. He is the greatest of the Asante generals and their teacher as well （p. 98）. He is a national hero, a man of humble birth who becomes the saviour or “Osajefo” of his people, freeing them from fear, from invasion, and from famine and death. Describing him to Damfo, the healer Nyaneba says that “Asamoa Nkwanta is a good man. He is also a valuable man, one of those highly skilled in the pursuit of a vocation” （p. 269）. And his healing must be considered as “a force for the healing of our people,” Nyaneba adds. However, “all his goodness has been spent in the service of Asante royalty, which is part of the [communal] disease” （p. 269）. By serving the nobility Asamoa Nkwanta has, in fact, wronged himself by waging “war on his own natural self” （p. 173）.

Asamoa Nkwanta's “disease” is partly caused by the royal customs. When an Asante king dies, his slaves and belongings are buried along with him. One prince takes advantage of these traditional practices to murder Asamoa's favorite nephew. After this murder, Asamoa becomes “diseased” and his anger “turned into sorrow of such depth that he vowed not to touch arms again in defense of Asante” （p. 98）. More than this, “that murder sickened his soul” （p. 99） to the extent that he

looked a wasted wreck. On his body the flesh was wasted. The skin hung loose on his limbs. His face looked as if he had inherited the skin covering it from one several times bigger, and the difference showed in long, deep lines. It was plain the man had suffered—the kind of suffering that comes from within. Strong men may resist pain inflicted from outside themselves. But against the pain that has its source inwards they are more helpless than the weak. … Asamoa Nkwanta's body showed the results of a terrifying struggle. His eyes showed worse—that the struggle was far from over.

（p. 172）

Thus the Asante general needs both physical and psychological healing. He is taken to the main village of healers at Praso for treatment. The physical healing comes smoothly and quickly. But Asamoa Nkwanta's psychological recovery proves to be difficult, for despite his physical and moral strength the general cannot free himself from injuries suffered in the past. In the course of the psychotherapeutic treatment, Damfo makes him look back into the past so that he can understand the nature and the source of his “disease,” and reminds him that “if the pains bringing disease to the mind come from the past, healing means the mind must go beyond the past, traveling into the future as lightly as it can” （p. 172）. In leading the general through a self-examination and a scrutiny of his past experiences from a much more philosophically comprehensive viewpoint, Damfo succeeds in making him see that his sorrow and despair are rooted in his serving a single group—the Asante kings—instead of the whole Akan people. Thus the episode demonstrates how Armah combines historical fact with destructive and constructive mythologizing to weave his didactic fabric.

In essence, the Ghanaian novelist employs Asamoa Nkwanta's “disease” and healing as a lesson to military leaders about the grave consequences which may result from their supporting a privileged ruling minority while ignoring the welfare of the majority of the population. For instance, by defending the nobility Asamoa Nkwanta has not only harmed himself but also contributed to the divisions that have torn apart the Akan people. These divisions serve only the interests of those who “do not wish the unity of black people all over this land” （pp. 267–268） because “the royals these days serve only themselves” （p. 180）, Asamoa says to Damfo. And even the Asante army he tries to save from total destruction by the British forces is, in fact, “a plaything the royals indulge themselves with” （p. 198）.

While Damfo's healing of Asamoa is imbued with an appeal for a new awareness of unity and solidarity based primarily on race consciousness, it also serves as a profound contemplation of the present conditions in Africa. In this context, Damfo says to the Asante general in an optimistic tone that

“If the past tells you the Akan and the black people were one in the past, perhaps it also tells you there is nothing eternal about present divisions. We were one in the past. We may come together again in the future.”

（p. 176）

To support this new myth of a healing vanguard, Armah employs a mythic apparatus which embraces such elements as a formulaic journey and quest, omens, rites of aversion, and empathetic setting. These do not merely illustrate themes; they are fundamental agents in the narrative design and vehicles of philosophical assertions.

The novel is replete with mythic journeys. There are three types of journey. One is the physical journey undertaken by various characters or armies. Another is the time journey by which the reader is explicitly invited on an excursion to retrieve the Asante past as part of a quest for a map to the future. The third type is metaphorical, the evolution of the Asante national consciousness.

Densu's heroic and epic experiences are vivid illustrations of the journey and the quest. He is a wanderer, separated from his family by death, idealistically in search of a reality more ethical than that embraced by the corrupt and materialistic society he has rejected. After rejecting the competitive spirit of the games of remembrance and Ababio's offer to make him king of Esuano, Densu undertakes several long journeys in the course of which he encounters dangers and obstacles. The experiences of his journeys portray the evolution of his character and perceptions. His journeys take him back and forth from Esuano to the eastern forest, to the main village of healers at Praso, to Cape Coast, and to Kumase. He crosses whirling rivers and ventures through jungles of forest by day or night. Once on his way back to Esuano from the eastern forest, Densu is attacked and captured by Ababio and his men, then jailed and forced to stand trial by the “drink of death.” As a young and inexperienced orphan and as a growing man and, of course, as a mythic hero, Densu has to go through stages of immaturity, innocence, and nascent awareness. Eventually he reaches a social and spiritual maturity, for it is important to the myth-making conception that the hero comes to understand what he is. Densu reaches that point: “at first the change inside Densu made him see the world outside as too had changed. In his mind a great distance had come between him and life at Esuano. He thought of a complete break with the old life, and an immediate initiation into a new life, the life of healing” （p. 86）. In addition he “also came to know of the ways of Esuano and the wider world it belonged to” （p. 87） in spite of the fact that “the journey had been heavy on his soul” （p. 109）.

In addition to the devices of the journey and the quest, the rites of aversion and the omens are also relevant to The Healers' myth-making mechanism. They embrace the cultural reality of the historical themes and setting. One example of the rites of aversion—what the novelist termed in Part Five “The Sacrifice of Victims”—consists of a sacrifice of human beings as offerings of thanks to the gods and as a message to the spirit of the sacred river Pra. Densu is deeply appalled by such primitive beliefs and brutal practices, which he believes to be unnatural and a defect in the society of the Asante.

Those omens that occur in the last part of the novel （pp. 239–287） have both structural and symbolic functions. They serve not only as a striking prelude for the final downfall of the Asante Empire but also as a symbolic indication of the internal divisions and the chaotic forces of its political and social structure. Just before the final assault on the Asante capital, Kumase, Armah turns the flow of the narrative towards a climax by carefully enumerating a series of omens. This action creates an intense atmosphere of suspense for the reader. Besides, this section, entitled “Omens,” involves sudden and extensive alteration of sky, human, animal and vegetal beings. Reports of these phenomena are accompanied by widespread tales of strange stories and events.

Setting is by no means a minor element of The Healers' form and structure. The geographical environment and the cultural milieu are quite integral to the portrayal of both history and myth. They constitute a vital medium through which a portion of the metaphorical and symbolic meaning is transmitted. Moreover, Armah uses the setting as the major device establishing the general atmosphere and tone of the novel. Therefore, it is essential to Armah's intention that there should be no vagueness about the setting of his novel. This setting is in fact the product of a meticulously researched background, because the novelist wished to bring to life a vanished age, an earlier social order, and to do so in such accurate and appropriately documented detail that, without harmful, idealised delusions, the reader would experience the Asante past.

Rivers and forests are the dominant features of the physical environment of The Healers. Frequent references to rivers, streams and waters are made throughout the novel, and many events take place in or around the rivers Nsu Ber, Nsu Nyin and Pra. For instance, the festive rites of the games of initiation, Densu's and Damfo's journey, the sacrifice of victims, the Asante and British military confrontation; all these episodes deal in one way or another with these rivers, which are depicted not only as active agents of the Asante landscape but as relevant aspects of the Asante culture as well. Thus before any major event is presented, Armah gives a clear, descriptive account of the physical environment in which it will occur. For example, before the games of remembrance are introduced, the novelist gives us a vivid picture of their physical background in the following passage, which is instructive to examine carefully:

Two streams flowed by Esuano. One was a calm stream. It flowed so gently there were places where this motion was barely visible. Its waters were extraordinarily clear. You could see all the way down to the bed of fine sand sprinkled with pebbles of many colours, from light yellows to deep, dark purples.

If your hearing was keen and your imagination alive, you could hear, deeper than the light breeze's sound, the sound of pebbles rolling forward under the water.

Along the clear river's right bank the fine yellow sand brought by this stream formed a narrow strand. Below Esuano, just before the confluence with the second stream, the strand widened into an open beach. Because the first was smaller and gentler than the second, and also because it was such a clear thing of beauty, people named it Nsu Ber, the female river.

The second river was wider and more turbulent than the first. Its bed was invisible; its water was opaque with mud. In its flow past Esuano it carried a heavy load of leaves, twigs, and broken branches from its course upstream. Along both of its banks it deposited not sand but silt, a thick muddy ooze. Partly because this second stream was heavy and physically forceful, and partly because it lacked the beauty of the first, people called it Nsu Nyin, the male river.

The male river flowed north for most of its course, but not far below Esuano it began a powerful westward turn, after which it held the new direction till it reached a greater river, the sacred Pra.

The female river had a more consistent course. It flowed steadily north-west, to meet the male river just past Esuano, a good morning's walking distance before the greater confluence with the Pra.

Between the female river and the male, below Esuano, lay a wide strip of land cut off as if deliberately from other surrounding land. No one farmed it, though it was fertile, being river soil. A soft mat of grass covered it.

（pp. 3–4）

The above detailed description of the beauty and smoothness of the female river contrasting with the roughness of the male river and of their final confluence with the great sacred river Pra is not only part of the distinctive local color, but is also a revealing cluster of symbols for the socio-political disparity simmering at Esuano. These rivers are powerful indications of the salient division and antagonism within the Asante Empire in general. Furthermore, they are reflections of the flow of time, life, death, and the phenomenon of historical cycles. Thus the flow of history with all its irregularities becomes a river of events inexorably washing individuals and nations along.

Parallel to the importance of the rivers is the weight or significance given to vegetation. For example, throughout the novel the forest is presented not just as a part of the physical environment but also as a force capable of supernatural danger or protection. Like the rivers, its presence contributes greatly to the mythic quality of The Healers' setting. Because of its protective and defensive topography, the eastern forest is the abode for the healers. It is the center where the future healers are initiated and trained and where herbs used for healing are found. And because in Africa some trees and plants are considered to be the haunts of spirits and departed souls, Armah has included these animistic attributes of plants as part of the beliefs endemic to the Asante cultural milieu.

Besides the physical setting, there is also a cultural setting. Events and actions in The Healers are presented through their cultural perspectives with regard to tribal systems of social norms and political organization, hierarchy of chiefs, functions of chieftaincy and kingship in times of war, forms of customs and beliefs, symbols and concepts held by members of the tribes. The ardent feelings of nationalism exhibited by the more powerful Asante people with their expansionist tendencies are also depicted. All these specific cultural details, and many others, are symptoms of a condition, signs of a socio-political thought we are required to understand. All in all, combined with the physical environment, the cultural milieu constitutes a commanding network of myth and reality of the Asante past that Armah strives to resurrect in his novel.

In summary, The Healers' myth-making operates in two directions. On the historical level there is what has been called the destructive myth which seeks to counteract false perceptions of the Asante past. Interwoven with this is the constructive myth, which is illustrated in the healer's communal work and teaching. For both of these designs, Armah employs a full panoply of conventional mythic devices such as the journey and quest, the rituals of games, the natural and supernatural settings. The whole emphasis on myth-making in the novel is aimed not only at heightening tensions and intensifying actions but also at adding significance to theme or situation. And most of all, the mythic design gives unity and strength to the novel, thereby producing an aesthetic medium for the novel's socio-political ideas. In keeping with The Healers' didactic matrix, Armah's myth-making is an expression of a profound sense of togetherness—a racial togetherness of feeling, of action, and of wholeness of living. Hence, Armah uses both the negative and positive myths to teach the lesson of the necessity for oneness of the individual with the group. By recreating the mythic time of the Asante past Armah aims to evoke contemplation of the possibilities for tomorrow and its bearing on the present.

Notes

1. Ayi Kwei Armah, The Healers （London: Heinemann, 1979）. All subsequent numbers in parentheses will refer to page numbers of this edition.

2. Claude Levi-Straus, “The Structural Study of Myth,” in Myth: A Symposium, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok （Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965）, p. 85.

3. Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born （New York: Collier Books, 1968）, pp. 79–80, Fragments （New York: Collier Books, 1969）, see Chapters Five and Six; Why Are We So Blest? （Garden City: Anchor Press, 1973）, pp. 101–2

4. Armah, Two Thousand Seasons （Heinemann, 1979）, p. 202.

5. Ibid., p. 203.