Untitled - Memorial University of Newfoundland

itual . As Tiresias says, Dionysos "bas broken the barrier of age, the barrier of sex or
slave and master " (26) . Tiresias discovers that his old traditional carrier rite is
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inefficacious and that "life-sustaining earth I Demands .. . a little more .. . I Than token
offering for her own needful renewal" (96). In "Melting the Barriers of the Mind : The
Bacchaeof Euripidesas a Liberation Rite," lane Wilkinson suggests :
No longer separated from his people, Pentheus hasbecome the centre of
their communion. the symbol of their victory over the old regime and
of their power to transform what remains into anew. more human
order, building a future of plenitude. well-being and renewal in which
all can share (81) .
The communal rite takes on spiritual, social and political dimensions as it also releases
the community from the political tyranny of Pentheus. Like the Slaves. Soyinka, a
representative of the colonized, sees the dawning of a new day when the African's
history will be validated and when the old political regime will be replaced by a new
and more human order.
Soyinka 's use of language is relevant to his postcolonial discourse . In
"Conversations, " he takes up the issue of Nigeria 's multiplicity of languages and
explains that he writes in English in order to makehis work accessible to Nigerians
(27). He also discusses the response to his proposition for Ute utilization of Kiswahili
at Ute UNESCO Conference on the Use of Culture in the Decolonization Process :
1 remember the shadow foreign minister who was there from FRELIMO
said: -I agree with you in principle ... We have taken the Portuguese
language, we turned it inside out, we made it an instrument against the
very colonial masters, the original owners, in such a way that they
won't even feel that it belongs to them.· So there is language as