The Gods Are Not to Blame: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 05:02, 18 February 2011
| 180px edition | |
| Author | Ola Rotimi |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press Oxford |
Publication date | 1971 |
| Publication place | Nigeria |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 80 pp |
| ISBN | 0-192-11358-5 |
| Preceded by | Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again |
| Followed by | Kurunmi |
The Gods Are Not To Blame is a 1971 novel by Ola Rotimi. Refered to as a the piece that established him as a significant African playwright and director following To Stir the God of Iron and earning his M.F.A. in 1966 with Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again premiered at Yale that year.[1] An adaptation of the Greek Classic, Oedipus Rex; the novel centers around Odewale who gets trapped by pride, ignorance and the caprices of the divinities.
[2]
Plot
The novel is set in an indeterminate period of a Yoruba kingdom in Nigeria, In this reworking of Oedipus Rex, the action is transposed to a local setting.
The book begins with an Ifa Priest's predictiction of a newborn son of King Adetusa and his Queen Ojuola that will grow up to ‘kill his own father and then marry his own mother!’ The baby's feet are tied with a string of cowries and sacrificed to the divinities.
Now years later, the child Odewale is King and married to Ojuola. An old man Alaka, half clown, half philosopher, comes to tell Odewale that his ‘parents’ have died. However, Alaka also lets slip that they were not Odewale's real parents. Shamed by the suggestion that he is illegitimate, Odewale brutally forces Alaka to reveal the truth: that Alaka found him in the bush and brought him to the neighbouring Ijekun chief to be fostered.
The terrible revelation that the Ifa Priest's prophecy has been fulfilled leads to the suicide of Ojuola and blinding of Odewale.[3]