From past to present and future: the regenerative spirit of the Abiku

Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, Annual, 2004 by Mounira Soliman

These seem to be the two positions of Clark-Bekederemo and Soyinka in their respective poems. Each poem reflects a different socio-political agenda. Whereas Clark-Bekederemo advocates history and tradition as the only way to preserve the strength of the African identity, Soyinka, perhaps by virtue of his own experience, perceives a different image, one based on conflict between past and present and the implications of this conflict upon the African identity. It is very interesting that Soyinka's poem, written almost fifty years ago, is still a true reflection of the post-independence Nigerian society as it is today. In fact, this is the starting point for Ben Okri's novel The Famished Road. Written in 1991, the novel tackles the same historical period covered by Clark-Bekederemo and Soyinka when they composed their respective poems, Nigeria on the verge of independence facing social and political turmoil. But Okri does not remain locked in that historical framework because his novel breaks the dilemma between past and present and moves beyond the past to project a future for Nigeria.

Okri's Abiku

Commenting on what he does in The Famished Road, Okri explains that the book is about hope:

   One should be very, very serious when one is going to talk
   about hope. One has to know about the very hard facts of
   the world and one has to know how deadly and powerful
   they are before one can begin to think or dream oneself into
   positions out of which hope and then possibilities can come.
   It's one of the steps I try to take in this book. (Wilkinson 88)

In The Famished Road (1991), Okri, ethnically an Urhobo, projects two abiku children: Azaro, the narrator of the novel, and his friend Ade. Azaro and Ade are opposite characters so that the hope, which Okri talks about, stems from a discrepancy in the portrayal of both characters. Ade is a typical abiku who never wanted to be born and who eventually returns to the world of the spirits in Songs of Enchantment (1993), the second book in Okri's trilogy. In The Famished Road Okri characterizes him:

   Ade did not want to stay any more, he did not like the
   weight of the world, the terror of the earth's time. Love
   and the anguish of parents touched him only faintly, for
   beyond their stares and threats and beatings he knew that
   his parents' guardianship was temporary. He always had
   a greater home. (486)

The attitude of Ade and his parents is typical of the abiku phenomenon, and on first encountering Azaro, the second abiku child in the book, the reader gets the impression that the situation of both children is the same. Azaro also, like other abiku children and like Ade, did not want to be born:

   There was not one amongst us who looked forward to
   being born. We disliked the rigours of existence, the unfulfilled
   longings, the enshrined injustices of the world, the
   labyrinth of love, the ignorance of parents, the fact of
   dying, and the amazing indifference of the living in the
   midst of the simple beauties of the universe. We feared the
   heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind,
   few of whom ever learn to see. (The Famished Road 3)