Untitled - Memorial University of Newfoundland

off against the old myths, the supematura1 and magical explanations of
man's existence within society and nature. And no wonder, for quite
often these plays deal with the more basic, more concrete problems that
confront Africa and Africans : foreign domination . .. the degradations
and oppression of the -little people" , that is of Africa's vast urban and
run! masses. The sights are focused more sharp ly on all the meansof
liberation. as much from foreign and domestic oppression . as from the
systems o f thought and the mystifications of reali ty inherited fro m
previous ages unencumbered by the problems o f the presen t epoch (62) .
Rotimi participates in the liberating project of postcolonial writers; here he is not onl y
revising a western canonical text, but is addressing the issues surro unding the
aftermath of colonization. sueb as ethnic marginal.izaIion.
Tri balism is the secondissue that arises from Rotimi ts argument a!x>ut the
theme of The Gods An Not To Blame; OdcwaIe reveal s his motive for murder:
The y [the gtxls} knew my weakness: the weakness of a man easily
moved to the defence of his tribe against others. I once slew a man on
my farm in Ede. I could have spared him. But he spat on my tribe. He
spat on the tribe I thought was my own tribe . Th e man laughed. and
laughing, he called me a ' man from the bush tribe of Ijekun' . And I lost
my reason (71) .
Rotimi brings together the god's prediction and human destiny in such a way that
Odewale realizes that he bad played a part; he allowed the gods to use him, to use his
quick: temper or loss of reason . Rotimi in his interview with Enekwe arti culates the
didacti c locus of the drama:
Rather than blame the gods for letting Odewale perpetrate such heinous
crimes , people should look at Odewale 's experience and learn the
lessons from unbridled tribal bigotry . In other words, Odewale is used ,
in the idio m of the play, to dramatize the shocks which ethnic jingoism
is capable of pan1leling in the relationships of African peopl e. In this
sense, Odewale's trib ulations can be seen as dra wing atten tion to that
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