Conflict between tradition and modernity in the swamp dweller

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Name :- Parmar Darshna V.
Roll No :-  6
Batch:-  2017-2019
M. A.:- Sem -4
Paper No :- African literature
Topic Name :- Conflict between Tradition and Modernity in "The swamp Dweller "
Email ID :- parmardarshana1997@gmail.com
Submitted by :-  Smt. S. B.. Gardi Department of English









About the author and his style


Wole Soyinka’s play The  Swamp Dweller  was written in 1957. The Nigerian playwright WoleSyoinka was born in 1934.  Soyinka was one of the few African writers to denounce the slogan of Negritude as a tool of autocracy . Soyinka also enjoys the rank as the first black African to be awarded the Nobel prize in literature. He wrote the lays like
1.    The Invention
2.   The Lion and the Jewel
3.   A Dance in the Forest
He also wrote the famous poems like
 The Immigrant
My Next Door Neighbour
                              In his plays , he showed his ability to project traditional Nigerian themes and stories through English rather than Yoruba. He is famous as a dramatic poet and skilled dramatic craftsman. He was concerned with the universal problems. His plays are concerned with town life, a retrograde countryside and the ambitions of the new “Nigerians”
 Soyinka presented Nigeria as a country in tradition, attempting to mold itself out of a variety of tribal cultures and a turbulent Europe colonization. He was willing to charge Nigerian politicians and bureaucrats with barbarity and corruption as he was to condemn the greed an materialism of the Europeans. Some of hi works took on a darker and angrier tone.
v        About  the Play
The play is about struggle between human being and the unfavorable force of the Nature. Use of River, Serpent, Swamp and use of city life these are polar oppositions in the play. From the beginning of the play they are talking about death of his son but clearly mention that really he is dead or not. Swamp is chaotic and they are living in the chaos.



Tradition:- Tradition is a belief or behavior passed down within group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. Makuri, Alu and Igwezu are representation of tradition.




Play starts with the description of village which shows traditional side of the play.

“A village in the swamps. Frogs rain and other noises. The scan is a hut on stilts, built on one of the scattered semi-firm island in the swamp. The walls are marsh stakes plaited with hump ropes. Near the left down stage are the baskets he makes from the rushes which are strewn in front of him.”(1 pg of TSD)

                  These all lines show that they are traditional people doing work but which can’t give them food. At some extent tradition is good because you have your own belief and way of looking towards life but not accepting change in life is bad. Too much exaggeration is bad for your life which is shown through the play.

Wole Soyinka’s  peculiarity is that he hardly presents the countryside as a stable and innocent world. He very carefully designs the generation gap and differentiates the traditional  from modern as –
       
Makuri: “ Ah....well ... Those were the days .... Those days were really good. Even when times were harsh and Swamp overran the land we were able to laugh with the serpent.... but these young people...... They are no sooner born than they want to get out of the villages as if it carried a plague......”
           This play brings light to the corruption and contradiction found throughout Nigerian society including both traditional and modern views.



Modernity:-Modernity typically refers to a past traditional post medieval, historical period one marked by the money from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialism. Secularization, rationalization, the nation state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance. Awuchike and Desala are representation of modernity.



Modernity invades the tradition of the village. Forty years later after the cruel alliance of shell Oil and the Nigerian military in repressing Nigerian democracy. The capitalism industrialization, the city has already invaded the countryside here, in the form of spillage from the drilling of oil, drilling that eventually grow to enormous ecological and human waste.







Tradition V/S Modernity
 Igwezu went into city to earn more in life but he can’t accept the reality of life which is in city. There is starvation for shelter in city, so cold sophisticated life than village so we can say that Igwezu and Awuchike both are suffering because of their acceptance or to much exaggeration of their life.
    There is Constance struggle or conflict between the old and new ways of life in Africa. There is the dialogue that old and children are living in village. It means that yougs are living in city.
Makuri :-It’s lie all the young man go into the big town to try their hand at making money only some of them remember their Falk and send word once in a while.
Makuri: - The city is a large place .You could live there all your life and never meet half the people in it.
     Second dialogue shows the reality which lies in city life. In city there is not any feeling in between human being. Even they don’t know each other if they are living near. And this is the harsh reality of city life. You will lose yourself in city.
      They are to much traditional people they are believing that river bed it is perfect bridal bed this comes in talk between Makuri and Alu when they were remembering their past.
Alu:-Where the rivers meet there the marriage must begin and the river bed it self is the perfect bridal bed.
   Thinking to much about past is also rigidity or Very sticky towards traditional belief system.     Character of Kadiye and Beggar both are also representation of tradition and modernity. Kadiye who is local priest and he always tries to make himself in a better position. Beggar who is not really a beggar by his nature he is blind but he always ready to do work. He accepts what is reality and tries to struggle for his survival and comes from Bhukanji.
Makuri:-Much damage? Not a grain was saved not one tuber in the soil......and what the food left behind was poisoned by the oil in the swamp water.
   They are still believes in Kadiye what he says to them he tells to them that he has take vowed to the serpent that I would never shave nor washed until the rains greased to all to gather.
    When Igwezu comes back from the city with the hope that he will cultivate a farm but when he shows that every thing is ruined by food.
Igwezu:- I have had my feast of welcome. I found it on the farm where the beans and the corns had made an over lasting potage with the mood.
    When Igwezu talks about Awuchike because Desala leaves him for Awuchike. Igwezu doesn’t earn that much money like Awuchike that is when he talks about him we come to know that because of city life or to much exaggeration destroy family structure.
Igwezu: - I do not know at this moment. I do not know so perhaps it is as well that he comes. Perhaps he can explain, perhaps he...........dark and sour I Shaw its knife saver the ties and the love of kinship and terns brother against brother.
    When Alu is talking about him she says that perhaps there is something in the place that makes man forgets.
          Igwezu is destroyed by farm and his brother both.
Igwezu: - It was never in my mind the thought that the farm could betray me so totally, that it could drive the final ways into this growing lose of touch.
     So we can say that both lives are not satisfied. Desala and Awuchike both are not happy. They are dead not physically but spiritually.
 Conclusion
     We can see conflict of tradition and modernity in the play. Village is representing tradition and city as modernity. They both are different from each others. This play is representing those different very well.