Preorcjah Vol. 1(1), 2016 www.ezenwaohaetorc.org Fact-fiction correlation: The abuse of authority in Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of god and There was a country Uchenna David Uwakwe & Adaeze Regis-Onuoha Abstract The engagement with literary creativity and criticism has always received impetus with the measure of relatedness to reality. In this regard, the socio-political conflicts in Africa and Nigeria in particular have been seen to take a centre stage in all the works of Chinua Achebe. From Things Fall Apart through A Man of the People and Anthills of the Savannah, power and the abuse of authority remain protuberant as the overriding conflict. It is intended to present the patterning of the social-political system within the Igbo state at the immediate dawn of colonialism. This work previews the posture of the court clerks who were merely stooges of the colonial government. Again, this comes with the persistent indictment of Britain in the postcolonial woes of the Nigerian ship of state. Therefore, this work considers the intensity of this posture from Achebe’s fictional creations in Arrow of God to the correlating historical events which There Was A Country embodies. There is an attempt here to examine how the facts presented in Achebe’s memoir may have instigated and coalesced into his creative work in spite the wide gap in publication dates of the texts under study. Key words: Power, society, history and narrative Uwakwe, U. D. & Regis-Onuoha, A. Preorcjah Vol. 1(1), 2016 Introduction Chinua Achebe insisted that the contemporary African artist cannot afford to avoid the pressing socio-political concerns of his time. This assertion has been justified in both his creative and critical works. While the critical works, Morning Yet on Creation Day presents a reflection from a literary perspective, The Trouble with Nigeria undertakes a projection into the politics and governance of the country. In each of these works, there are ample pointers to ‘where the rain started beating us’. And, as Achebe says, until this point in history is recognized at the different levels of existence in society, it is difficult to keep track of where any such calamity will end, if indeed it will. The projection of this standpoint is not diminished in any of Achebe’s creative works. Each of the novels comes with the pulse of history and relates the immediacy of the crucial social challenges. And, the publication of There Was A Country comes as ‘the icing on the cake’ of this searchlight on the confrontations of man within his society. We find in this rare kind of memoir, the antecedents whose echoes had been crafted to reverberate in all his creative works. Arrow of God is adjudged to bear the most intense philosophical portrayal of power play in its setting and subject matter. There are certain sounds of ideology whose reality appear clearer in There Was A Country. The most prominent of these is the leadership challenge which finds elucidation in the abuse of force and authority. This cankerworm in the socio- political set up of Nigeria remains indicted as the prelude to the many crises. Often, this betrays the selfishness of the authoritarian ruler. At other times it is the precursor to the ‘nepotic selvesishness’ perceivable in the tribal groupings in the country. 50 Copyright @ Ezenwa-Ohaeto Resource Centre, Awka, Nigeria Uwakwe, U. D. & Regis-Onuoha, A. Preorcjah Vol. 1(1), 2016 Force, which could be viewed from both the physical sciences and the social sciences, appears to draw the polysemic signification of compelling a thing to align or follow a given order. In the physical sciences, machines are employed to execute whatever force is required while in the social sciences security operatives are equipped with arms as a fortification against any form of dissidence. It seems also that the robotic views of the machines as objects devoid of human feelings are identifiable in the application of force by the law enforcement agents. It becomes pertinent to question how the abuse of power which is viewed as inhumanity to man negates the expectation of the people who have bestowed authority on their leaders. Perhaps, there are indications that authority, in such situations, is neither given by the people nor meant for their wellbeing. In such cases, the ensuing conflict has always distorted the harmony within the society by placing humanity at the precincts of the jungle where only survival matters. This work is hinged on the sociological critical framework in examining how these experiences which had come as fictional presentations are given reality in a more or less autobiographical bearing. Dobie (15), however, recognizes that the contemporary view of the sociological approach to literary criticism is presented by Rene Wellek and Austin Warren in their Theory of Literature. The thrust of Wellek and Warren is that literature is basically a product of the society in which and for which it is produced. Scott observes that “Sociological criticism starts with a conviction that art’s relation to society is vitally important, and that the investigation of these relationships may organize and deepen one’s aesthetic response to a work of art” (123). From a more or less literary perspective of the sociological approach, Richard 51 Copyright @ Ezenwa-Ohaeto Resource Centre, Awka, Nigeria Uwakwe, U. D. & Regis-Onuoha, A. Preorcjah Vol. 1(1), 2016 Schaefer and Robert Lamm identify that “An essential task in building a sociological theory is to examine the relationship between bits of data gathered through research that may seem completely unrelated” (12).There are indeed several relationships that may be pinpointed, each as a given perspective in the appreciation of the literary value of the work in focus. Some of these relationships might include: the one among the characters that make up a given narrative, a survey of relatedness in the attitude of characters in different narratives or the treatment of related subject matters in different works. It is to this extent that the fact-fiction correlation in these two Achebe texts, in spite of varying in their generic mode, is perceived to be germane in this study. There are many implications in the portrayal of Ezeulu’s abuse of his position as the priest-king of the Umuaro community. One is that the ensuing conflicts annihilate the people’s confidence in both the priest and his god. The other is that Ezeulu brings about destruction for himself and his community. These consequences which trail the abuse of authority as portrayed, demonstrate how both the society and its leadership experience the gory entrails of each perversion. But most succinctly, in There Was A Country, is the appendage to this memoir’s title, A Personal History of Biafra. It culls several levels of perception of history and the many antecedent facets of political entrenchments. Subverted authority in Achebe’s works A critical reading of Achebe’s works, gives a clue to the myriad significations of force and its abuse in society. But more succinctly, this vice is portrayed in the characters whose actions 52 Copyright @ Ezenwa-Ohaeto Resource Centre, Awka, Nigeria Uwakwe, U. D. & Regis-Onuoha, A. Preorcjah Vol. 1(1), 2016 run contrary to the preferred mores of society. In Things Fall Apart, such significant portrayals is found in Ogbuefi Ezeudu’s counsel; “That boy calls you father, do not bear a hand in his death”(45). The boy, Ikemefuna was to die for an offence he neither committed nor knew anything about. This ‘ill-fated’ boy was made to live with a man he assumed to be his father and who, with the Umuofia community had to permit him to be live until a certain point in time when the gods demanded the boy’s life. This man, Okonkwo considered his ego as being of greater value than the life of the harmless boy. And so, Okonkwo refused to heed Ogbuefi Ezeudu’s remark, which stands as both a plea and a counsel. Like Brutus’ stab on Caesar, the kind of strike with which Okonkwo kills Ikemefuna goes with unmitigated repercussions. In Anthills of the Savannah, power and abuse of authority is projected in the light of the ‘Tortoise and Leopard’ paradigm. The ferocity of Sam, His Excellency which is placed against a harmless populace is seen in the autocratic dictates to the commissioners, as the story in the novel opens. All through the novel, Bassa citizens live in fear and torment as a result of Sam’s dreadful disposition towards them. Here, there is no question of authority at all since the setting had a military dictatorship. This inordinate exhibition of force is projected by the characters whose attainments in each setting are imbued with some form of authority. It is the apparent abuse of the positions that presents the paradigm of the jungle law, ‘survival of the fittest’. And, in the Nigerian setting, it appears to foreshadow the challenges of the amalgamation whose implications reflect the position of things as portrayed in Arrow of God. 53 Copyright @ Ezenwa-Ohaeto Resource Centre, Awka, Nigeria Uwakwe, U. D. & Regis-Onuoha, A. Preorcjah Vol. 1(1), 2016 Perhaps, it is same amalgamation, and the implicating incongruity of the three major tribes, that the friendship of Sam, Chris and Ikem highlights in Anthills of the Savannah. It is such relationship of strange bed-fellows which results in the struggle for survival and fear of domination. In all these turn out to be the corollary to wielding and abusing power. It may be suggested that the strange patterning of the society being portrayed, accounts for the absurdity in the various narrative patterns adopted in portraying ‘the struggle’ for survival. In this regard, we find the tortoise and leopard archetype most protuberant. The ferocity of the leopard is placed in contrast to the wittiness of the tortoise. Critical focus on Achebe’s view of conflict It is logical to suppose that there is a larger body of critical works on Arrow of God than there is on There Was A Country. In spite of fact that one is a creative work and the other an autobiography, the gap in the years of publication gives this justification for larger body of criticisms which Arrow of God has. The question of power takes a prominent place in the criticism of Arrow of God. Virginia Ola presents an assumption that “Ezeulu is his (Achebe’s) best realized hero within the context of his early village novels where character and history are inseparable”(95). She justifies this assumption by recollecting the picture of the “precariousness of Ezeulu’s office which the title of the novel underscores”. Indeed, this relates to the very foundation of Nigeria as a nation-state. If also the abiding problem of tribalism is examined more closely, it is most likely to reveal the extent to which the different regimes have aided and abated this cankerworm in the fabrics of the nation. And, this has often come under the ruse of the much acclaimed ‘unity in diversity’. 54 Copyright @ Ezenwa-Ohaeto Resource Centre, Awka, Nigeria Uwakwe, U. D. & Regis-Onuoha, A. Preorcjah Vol. 1(1), 2016 In the face of the confrontation with the challenges of colonialism and the possibility of its transmutation into neo- colonialism, Achebe and his contemporaries took up the burden. It was such great task that received impetus with their acquaintance with the oral and written literary traditions. Both traditions (oral and written), employ conflict as the initial situation which portrays in fictional terms, the abnormalities that require to be rectified to in mitigating the threats to existence. The most vociferous of such conflicts centre on the question survival in the face of marginalization and denigration. In this regard, we see how this plays out in the portrayal in Arrow of God, of the early contact with colonialism. It is seen to have come with the denigration of the culture of the colonies and the imposition of alien patterns of governance. Slave trading had been reformed into colonialism. In spite of the dissimulations, its authoritarian posture was not entirely concealed. The penetrating effect of dictatorship became glaring. In the Igbo circumstance, many things had begun to ‘fall apart’, as Achebe’s title bore. However, the Igbo narrative tradition, which re-presents the equation of power, was very much performed and served as a reminder of what status quo to maintain. There were pointers to the threat on the people’s existence and that of their cultures. There are proverbs whose import had begun to lose their significance with the colonial invasion. These include; – onye aghala nwanne ya (no one abandons his brother), Egbe bere: ugo bere (let the kite perch and let the hawk perch) oha zere eze: eze ezere oha (the people respect the king: and the king respects the people). In Birago Diop’s poem, ‘Vultures’, there is a glimpse of the abuse of authority by colonial forces. The poem says: ‘when 55 Copyright @ Ezenwa-Ohaeto Resource Centre, Awka, Nigeria Uwakwe, U. D. & Regis-Onuoha, A. Preorcjah Vol. 1(1), 2016 civilization slapped our cringing brows’. The ’slap’ was on the civilization of Africa. Many literary artists like Achebe have always recognized how colonialism came with the force of oppression and dehumanization. It came with the relegation of budding cultural values which needed to have been rejuvenated and repositioned. For instance, the age grade system which performed several functions, as seen in Arrow of God is vanquished. In flogging Obika, there was a declaration that the age grade system must have to operate by the standards and limitations of the white man rather than the natural pattern in which the society was stratified. In ‘The Novelist as Teacher’, Achebe emphasizes the place of the writer in his society, Here then is an adequate revolution for me to espouse – tot [sic] help my society regain belief in itself and put away the complexes of the years of denigration and self- abasement. And it is essentially a question of education in the best sense of that word. (105) Achebe makes this observation in recognition of many conflicts, particularly of the inordinate application of force within the society. In another treatise, ‘The Truth of Fiction’, Achebe cites I.A. Richards and Coleridge in arguing that the acceptability of a work of art lies in its potency in provoking a “willing suspension of disbelief”. 56 Copyright @ Ezenwa-Ohaeto Resource Centre, Awka, Nigeria Uwakwe, U. D. & Regis-Onuoha, A. Preorcjah Vol. 1(1), 2016 Given the great gulf between being and knowing, between his essence and existence, man has no choice really but to make and believe in some fiction or other. Perhaps the ultimate judgement on a man is not whether he acquiesces to a fiction but rather what kind of fiction will persuade him into the acquiescence. (108) This is what might be considered as the force of imaginative creativity against the force of human denigration. Ngugi views Peter Abraham’s title, Tell Freedom, as the summation of the African writers’ thematic quest in challenging the variegated shades of the force of colonialism. Ngugi finds this justification in such works as; Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests, Laye’s The African Child and Ousmane’s God’s Bits of Wood. He also draws same exemplification in David Diop’s versification of ‘Africa’. With some kind of allusion to Achebe’s configuration of ‘things falling apart’, Bernth Lindfors observes that Biafran War literature has been more concerned in portraying the moral significance of the war events. Lindfors sounds quite ironical here: In such novels things and people did not fall apart; they were pummeled into oblivion by forces too powerful for them to withstand or else they tried heroically to resist the cataclysmic dehumanization that was overtaking their world” (26). 57 Copyright @ Ezenwa-Ohaeto Resource Centre, Awka, Nigeria Uwakwe, U. D. & Regis-Onuoha, A. Preorcjah Vol. 1(1), 2016 It may be valid to say that the same frame of imagination that informed the maternity of the characters in Arrow of God was by no means emasculated in There Was A Country. Rather, a clearer picture is presented of the historical facts which inundated Achebe’s imagination in crafting Umuaro, the fictional setting for this conflict. Anyanwu’s discourse on the ‘Language of Altercation in Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God’, touches also on certain instances of the abuse of power. The discourse recollects the conflict generated by Oduche’s act in beating up Ojiugo and the language use that gives this indication. Anyanwu cites some of the lexical features of the language of altercation in Arrow of God (128-129) thus: “I say shut your mouth! Are you mad?” “I have shut my mouth. Why should I not shut my mouth? After all Oduche is Ugoye’s son. Yes, Matefi must shut her mouth.” This discussant concludes that his view of language and altercation reveals the state of disorder and conflict within the Umuaro setting. If Ezeulu’s charge on Matefi is construed as an abuse of his authority as the head of a polygamous home, perhaps Matefi’s may be seen to bear the rhetorical force which Aizenberg sees as another weapon which if employed, could be adopted in confronting the dictator. For Aizenberg the myth of power, that is rhetorical power, becomes a strategy with which the intellectual confronts the brute force of the authoritarian. Opata’s view of the abuse of power is seen as a reinforcement of Achebe’s penchant for poetic justice, but the 58 Copyright @ Ezenwa-Ohaeto Resource Centre, Awka, Nigeria