A Dance of the Forests

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1963

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Themes

Rejection of a Utopic View of the Past

Wole Soyinka was opposed to Negritude, the literary/theoretical movement that developed across postcolonial Africa and in the African diaspora. While Negritude sought to elevate Black literature and art, Soyinka saw it as reductive, placing the Black literary movement in a defensive position. In addition, he objected to the over-glorification of pre-colonial Africa that was an impulse in many postcolonial texts. A Dance of the Forests was partially written in response to this impulse. Rather than present the past as a utopic model for the future, Soyinka emphasizes the mistakes and violence in Nigeria’s past by illustrating instances of violence, cruelty, and corruption. Because the play was written and performed for the celebration of Nigeria’s independence from the UK in 1960, it serves as a warning to the Nigerian people about how they will shape their future. Soyinka suggests that rather than emulating the past, his country should learn from it in order to create a brighter future.

The deity Aroni heeds the villagers’ request to bring back dead ancestors for the Gathering of the Tribes. However, while the villagers expected exemplars from the empires of Africa’s past, Aroni summons the Dead Man and Dead Woman as an indictment of the villagers for the behavior of their ancestors. The shameful treatment of a noble warrior and his innocent wife by the mortals’ ancestors reflects the danger that society faces due to the corruption and violence of human nature. Mata Kharibu acts out of passion and impulse; he kidnaps and marries another king’s queen, Madame Tortoise, and wants to start a war over retrieving her wardrobe, and his violence is aided and abetted by his advisors. In Mata Kharibu, Soyinka resists the idea that Nigeria’s past rulers were inherently more moral than Nigeria’s British colonizers. It is significant that Mata Kharibu is absent from the cast of reincarnated characters In the present. Instead, Mata Kharibu’s Court is represented by ancestors of the common people whose collective bad behavior was as much a threat to the future as a bad ruler. Even though Mata Kharibu gave the order, it was the collective failure of the people which enabled the cycle of violence to continue.

Variations on Yoruba Beliefs and Sayings

Nigeria is home to over 250 ethnic groups and 500 languages. Wole Soyinka belongs to the Yoruba people, and A Dance of the Forests, despite being written in English, is heavily influenced by Yoruba customs, culture, sayings, and spiritual beliefs. From creating his own gods to coming up with English equivalents of Yoruba sayings, Wole Soyinka tailored many aspects of his culture to fit the narrative of his play and his critique of the present moment.

While some of the gods in A Dance of the Forests are true Orisha, deities that comprise the Yoruba pantheon, Soyinka invented or altered several key ones. Aroni, for example, is a forest Orisha, typically depicted with a canine head and one leg. Ogun is a Yoruba war god who is also the patron spirit of artists and metalworkers. Eshuoro, the antagonist of A Dance of the Forests, is described by Soyinka as the wayward flesh of Oro. Oro is a fierce, warlike god in Yoruba tradition. Eshuoro, however, is an invention of Soyinka’s. By combining the god Oro with “Eshu,” a Yoruba trickster god, Soyinka’s Eshuoro embodies both the wrath of Oro and the elements of a trickster, evident the various disguises he takes on during the Dance of the Dead. The chief god of the play’s cast, the creator god Forest Head, is also an invention of Soyinka’s, reminiscent of Olodumare, the Yoruba supreme deity and creator god.

The characters in A Dance of the Forests frequently use idioms and folk sayings to illustrate their points, modeling on the individual level what Soyinka does with his play as a whole. Agboreko, the Soothsayer, is a frequent source of these sayings, such as “Until the last gourd has been broken, let us not talk of drought. Proverb to bones and silence” (37), however Agboreko is not the only character to use such proverbs. Such sayings are prevalent in Yoruba culture, and many are tied to the language itself—either mnemonic devices, plays on words, puns, or references to customs. Some critics note that this presents a difficulty in translation faced by many postcolonial writers. Because Soyinka writes to an audience of newly independent Nigerians, writing in English runs the risk of being seen as a betrayal. Translating Yoruba idioms (or, as some scholars note, making up new ones to fit the English language) causes much of their original context and meaning to be lost. On the other hand, it makes the play more accessible to foreign audiences who lack the linguistic and cultural background necessary to render authentic Yoruba idioms and folk sayings legible. In this way, Soyinka acknowledges the effects of colonization and globalization while attempting to retain essential characteristics of national culture.

Atunwaye (Reincarnation): Akudaaya, Ipadawaye, and Abiku

Reincarnation (Atunwaye) is a theme that is central both to the plot of A Dance of the Forests and to Yoruba spirituality. Yoruba tradition holds that there are three types of reincarnation: Akudaaya, Ipadawaye, and Abiku. The first, Akudaaya, is the reappearance of the dead. This is represented in the play by the Dead Man and the Dead Woman, who were summoned by Aroni at the request of the village council members who wanted illustrious ancestors present at the Gathering of the Tribes. The dead couple have been born and reincarnated several times, but their souls remain ever-restless due to the wrongs they suffered in life. According to Yoruba belief, the soul has two components: one remains in Heaven after death, while one may be reincarnated down the family line. This form of reincarnation, the rebirth of ancestors, is known as Ipadawaye. The part of the soul that reincarnates is said to carry with it the accumulated knowledge of the ancestor. In the case of A Dance of the Forests, it also appears to carry the weight of the ancestors’ sins and bad behavior. The souls of the Court Poet, the Court Historian, and Madame Tortoise, among others, have undergone Ipadawaye, reappearing in the present as Demoke, Adenebi, and Rola. Rola and Adenebi, in particular, have a close affinity with their ancestors’ souls. Adenebi’s shiftless behavior causes the death of 65 people on their way to the Gathering of the tribes when the lorry now known as the Incinerator crashes. In the past, he was the Court Historian who provided historical justification for Mata Kharibu’s treatment of the Warrior. Rola maintains Madame Tortoise’s haughty attitude and dangerous manipulation of men.

The final form that incarnation takes in Yoruba mythology is Abiku, a child who is born to die before puberty, resulting in continual reincarnations by the same mother, plaguing her with grief. While some scholars argue that the Half-Child, born of a liminal state between life and death, does not fit the concept of Abiku that Soyinka depicted in his poem of the same name, it must be acknowledged that the Half-Child exhibits some traits that link him with the Abiku. At one point during the Dance of the Dead, the Half-Child laments,

I who yet await a mother

Feel this dread,

I who flee from womb

To branded womb, cry it now

I’ll be born dead

I’ll be born dead (74).

The condition of an apparently living speaker claiming to be stillborn in the future tense is evocative of the condition of the Abiku, as is the phrase “branded womb,” repeated by the Half-Child throughout the Dance of the Dead. He is essentially marked from birth; though he is alive for now, he is born to die again. Soyinka suggests that Nigeria itself is being reincarnated as a nation, returned to a state of independence after more than 150 years of British occupation. Soyinka poses the question as to what kind of reincarnation the nation will have, and whether is doomed, like the Abiku to die in adolescence.