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his household. Rotimi has a dual purpose in this action : to portray Odewale 's
submissio n to the gods and emphasize his awareness of his debilitating temper.
Give me some of her patience. [ pray you. Some .. . some of her cool
heart ... let her cool spirit enter my body. and cool the hot , hot. hotness
in my blood - the bot blood of a gorilla! [Cleansing himselfin the
sacred warer.} Cool me, Ogun, cool me. The touch of palmoil is cool
to the body. Cool me. The blood is hot. The blood is hot because fear
now grips the heart of Odewale, son of Ogundele , a stranger in this
land (39).
Odewale 's persistence in his pra yer to Ogun implies this anger that runs through his
veins can only be alleviated supernaturally. He likens his blood to that of a gorilla.
noting that these bestial qualities are detrimental in humanexperiences. He expresses
his fear and puts himself at the mercy of the gods. ntis scene justifies Rotimi's
juxtaposition between the gods' oracular prediction and the character's tragic flaw.
In Mala man Talk True: Nigerian Drama in English Since 1970, Chris Dunton
insists that Odewale's hasty temper is introd uced too abrup tly in the drama. He says:
"No more than twenty minutes of stage time later, and Odewale has changed almost
out of recognition from his earl y model of self-contro l and initiative [and] by the: end
of Act two he:appears pathological" (16) . In the opening scene of the Greek original ,
Sophoc les ' Oedip us is presented as a calm and self-con trolled leader. who 325 lines
into the play becomes extremely angry at Teiresias , and later requires death for
Creon's plotting against him (513-679). Conradie argu es, in response to Dunton, that
a "drama tist does not have the time for an extended character analysis and frequently
has to juxtapose two differe nt states of mind " (34) . The latent anger in Odewale,
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