Abstract:
This paper is an attempt to analyze Ben Okri’s Infinite Riches through an Eco-critical lens. The novel is third in the ‘The Famished Road’ trilogy and highlights the theme of environment and nature along with the political theme. This novel highlights the consequences of modernization and western capitalization which has adversely affected the ecology of Africa. It is set in the post-colonial Nigerian ghetto which was earlier exploited by the colonial masters who transferred their power to the native elites. Eco-critical theory seems to be the most apt theory in present times of ecological crisis and it becomes more relevant in the case of African literature as the ‘Dark Continent’ of Africa with deep dark forests has lost most of its flora, fauna and large canopy of trees in the post-colonial era.
Key Words: Yoruba, Ecocriticism, Nature, Biodiversity, Deforestation, Nigeria
Ecocriticism studies the representation of man’s relationship with nature in a literary text. It helps us to evaluate the role of humans in the preservation as well as the destruction of the environment. William Rueckert in his essay ‘Literary and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism’, which was published in 1978 focuses on the application of ecology and ecological concepts to the study of literature. After William Rueckert, Cheryll Glotfelty who is one of the pioneers of Ecocriticism has revived the term Ecocriticism. She defines it as the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment. In Ecocriticism Reader, she comments, “Despite the broad scope of inquiry and disparate levels of sophistication, all ecological criticism shares the fundamental premise that human culture is connected to the physical world, affecting and affected by it” (Introduction xix). So, Ecocriticism takes its subject as the inter-connections between nature and culture and specifically the cultural artifacts of language and literature. It has flourished in two phases worldwide i.e. the first wave and the second wave of Ecocriticism. The First wave of Ecocriticism focuses on literary explanations of the natural world in literature. The second wave concentrates on literature concerning metropolis and industrialization. Jonathan Bate was the first British writer to use the term Ecocriticism in his work Romantic Ecology (1991).
Laurence Buell, Ursula K. Heise and Karen Thornber in their work Literature and Environment (2011), comment, “Literature and Environmental Studies- commonly called ‘Ecocriticism’ or ‘environmental criticism’ aims to explore the environmental dimensions of literature in a spirit of environmental concern not limited to any one method or commitment. The environmental concerns must be addressed qualitatively as well as quantitatively (430). They try to theorize the connection between literature and the environment. They not only highlighted the relationship between the characters in any work of art and the physical environment but also between the nature of language, textuality, perception of spaces, differences, and boundaries etc. since its inception, literature has an enduring relation with nature. The closer relation between nature and mankind is evident in works of writers down the ages irrespective of their culture, language, country and the period to which they belong. The representation of nature and its association with human beings in the text not only highlights the mental, social, cultural state of the characteristics but it also suggests the author’s approaches towards the environment. There are different representations of nature in different eras. In the Renaissance, writers lamented the degradation of nature and favored pastoral life to city life. Later, the age of enlightenment saw nature as a scientific object. However, for romantics nature remains an inspiration of their poetry. By the end of the 19th century, environment, society and heredity were considered as underlying features of human character. The modern writers were more interested in city life rather than in the solitude of forest and serenity of mountains. With the turn of the 21st century, the debate on the environmental crisis intensified worldwide.
Delving into humankind’s engagement with nature in the literary text, the engagement is not a very rewarding experience on a subjective level for a serious reader. This act of reading open up ways of becoming sensitive to images of nature and also for problematizing the idea of harmony between nature and humankind which is otherwise commonly taken for granted. So, such readings have received tremendous encouragement in the last 40 to 50 years because of the looming spectacle of global warming, immunity, and climate change making our globe an extremely risky space for the survival of all kinds of life. Recognizing the agency addressing the environmental issues and the vitality of inter-connections between nature and culture, the eco-critics focus on the study of literature from an ecocritical perspective. Hence, Ecocriticism which takes an earth-centered approach to literary studies has emerged as an important era of inquiring in the field of literary studies. Given the fact that the destruction of biodiversity, depletion of valuable natural resources, proliferation of exploitative technologies, pollution and accelerated warming of our planet leading to perceptible climate change with ruinous consequences are no longer mere fictions but these are the issues which have been debated into their acutely failed immediacy by scholars from almost all fields of knowledge. Ecocriticism in a nutshell is an environmentally oriented approach to reading literary works which focuses on representation of nature and intersection between environment and human culture and how these intersections impact the overall tenure of life. It foregrounds the essentiality of maintaining ecological balance and bringing in cultural change through the study of representation of human and nature relationship in the text.
This paper is an attempt to analyse Ben Okri’s novel, Infinite Riches through an Ecocritical lens. The novel has an underlying theme of magical realism which blends the political theme along with the environmental theme. The novel is set in the ghetto near the city of Lagos which is inhabited by the Yoruba community which is very old and nature- centric. Yoruba people are one of the most popular ethnic groups in all over Africa. They are said to constitute about 44 million people which makes them one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa. They are primarily located in Southwestern Nigeria and parts of Benin. The legendary Yoruba city Ile Ife is regarded by an overwhelming majority to be the source and heart of the Yoruba nation. This fact coupled with its impressive culture as demonstrated by its famous brass stone and clay sculpture placed it in a position of pre-eminence among the Yoruba people. The belief that Oduduwa was the first king of Ile Ife and that he was the father of the following princes of other Yoruba Kingdoms have inspired the description of the Yoruba as the offspring of Oduduwa. Every Yoruba town and deity has its own myth of origin yet in all of them Ile Ife is regarded as a spiritual sensor. The Yoruba religion is centered around an all powerful creator God named Olorun. It is through him that life is possible. Shango is also one their popular deity, who is God of thunder and lightning. At present, half of the Yoruba population practices the traditional religion while the others practice either Christianity or Islam. The indigenous Yoruba culture and religion during pre-colonial times was more nature centric. There is loss of this harmonious bond between human and non-human nature in the novel with the onset of Western capitalization.
The novel Infinite Riches was published in 1998 and falls under the rubric of Post-colonial Literature. Post-colonialism aims to describe the mechanisms of colonial power to recover excluded or marginalized subaltern voices and to theorize the complexities of colonial and Post-colonial identity, natural belonging and globalization. However, the idea of place is control to Post-Colonial thinking and writing which foregrounds the spatial imagination made possible by the experience of place in Post-colonial theory places foremost expressed through geography in terms that characterize the expansion of empire and its effects in geo-locative nomenclature such as those of the imperial center or the colonial periphery. It is also considered environmentally in terms of wilderness or urban settings genealogically in the ways in which embodied experiences are linked to place. Some of the Post-colonial critics like Huggan and Tiffin, Elizabeth Delourghey and others have merged the Post-colonial theory with Ecocriticism in their works. Post-colonial Ecocriticism considers environmental issues as part of a larger set of problems resulting from imperialism including racial oppression and their works address all these issues.
However, there is relative reluctance in African writers in general and Nigerians in particular to write under the umbrella term of Eco-criticism. William Slaymaker in the essay ‘Echoing the other (s): The call of Global Green and Black African Responses’, argues that, “Black African writers have traditionally embraced nature writings, land issues, and landscape themes that are pertinent to national and local cultural claims that also function as pastoral reminiscences or even projections of a golden age when many of the environmental evils resulting from colonialism and the exploitation of indigenous resources have been remediated” (683). Slaymaker also coined the term ‘Ecohesitation’ which according to him appears to African writers as one more hegemonic discourse from the metropolitan West. He highlights that, “This Eco-hesitation has been conditioned in part by black African writers and suspicion of the green discourses emanating from metropolitan Western centers. Also, Black African experiences of nature, it is often argued, are different and other” (684). African writers focused more on other themes in spite of facing the issues of ecological degradation and crisis around them. The global ecological crisis did not get enough space in African literature until the 21st century.
Infinite Riches portrays the exploitation of mother-nature and natives of the land by the neo-colonial masters. The industrial revolution and the western capitalization in the African land have heightened the ecological crisis. The representative of neo-colonial masters like the character of Madame Koto in the novel has a very influential position as the bar-owner in a ghetto in the city near Lagos. She promoted the western ways of living as she converted her restaurant into a bar and replaced Palm-wine with English wine. She owned a big-car and was a member of the Party of Rich which finances her expenses at the cost of exploiting the labor and nature of the ghetto. The Party of the Rich also finances many developmental projects like building of roads deep into the forests by cutting the trees at a fast pace for better connectivity with the city. The ease of connection also gives access to the riches of deep dark forests and the neo-colonial masters loot the virgin forest lands easily.
The protagonist of the novel, Azro who is also the narrator of the novel, was astonished to see the many new developmental projects in the village, “The roads which led to bridges. The bridges which led to highways. The highways built on reclaimed rivers, whose goddesses sue constantly at the higher courts of justice for the annexing of their ancient territories' ' (IR 20-21). The new projects in the name of modernization have not only cleared the forest land but also claimed the old path of water-ways which obstruct the flow of river water through the old course which in turn causes natural havoc in the form of floods and it has also disturbed the aquatic ecosystem. The modernization has also caused the loss of biodiversity as many animals have lost their habitats by the fast cutting of the forests as the displaced animals find it difficult to survive and reproduce. The Yoruba community believes in the spirits and supernatural elements and the loss of forests have directly influenced their faith in spirits and their religion as forests were the dwelling place of spirits. Man has become the ultimate master and exploited the mother-nature and in turn has suffered the most. The native elite have become indifferent to the sufferings and havocs caused by the non-human nature.
The chapter entitled ‘Destroying the Veil’ from Book I of the novel highlights the importance of forests and the changed relationship between non-human nature and humans. Okri portrays the role of forests in pre-colonial era,
The forest once represented the beginnings of dreams, the boundary of our visible community, the dreaming place of mysteries and innumerable old stories and innumerable old stories that reincarnate in the diverse minds of human beings. The forest was once a place where we saw the dreams of antelopes roamed with crowns on their heads. It was a rich homeland of the spirit. Its nocturnal darkness was the crucible of all our experiments in imagination. The darkness there had always been a spell, a hallucination, a benign god. In its silences old herbs kept their secrets of future cures. The trees stored the stories of our lives on their gnarled and intelligent faces. In the dark forest snakes swam on dead leaves, spiders laid eggs that shone at night, and the eyes of strange animals turned yellow and flared intermittently. (IR 83)
Azaro felt bad for the fast disappearing of the forests, “The destruction of the forest, the unfamiliar gaping holes, the great wound of it, seemed to our horror like a veil rent asunder, cut through with flashing knives, to reveal not mysteries, but nothingness. It was as if the veil were the mystery” (IR 84). The clear lands and the sky were clearly visible from within the forest. The shrinking forest lands were evident of the atrocities of human over non-human nature, “At first…humans didn’t notice the great trees dying, crying out as they fell in the agonized voices of slain benign giants” (IR 84). Humans are too late to acknowledge this ecological crisis and the adverse effects of deforestation. They kept on exploiting nature until they were visible. Azaro was astonished and lamented over the loss of canopy of forests:
I made my way into the forest. I saw blobs of snake spit everywhere on the matted grass. Animals gasped for breath in the undergrowth. I heard the roar of the distant river. The forest had the dense odour of crushed leaves, fervent tree sap, broken bark, dead animals, the cruel fragrance of uprooted herbs and the intoxicating aroma of over fertile earth. (IR 94)
Deforestation has caused lowered water levels and increased temperature in the ghetto. The ghetto-dwellers find the heat difficult to bear. The newly laid tar on the road has started boiling in the hot sun and made it inappropriate for walking. The trees and plants around were dying of dryness and scarcity of water. Azaro said, “Cracks appeared on the walls of our houses. Everywhere the water was hot, and drinking intensified our thirst, and dehydration left us breathless … Cracks appeared on people’s faces. Children playing in the street collapsed suddenly. The air was still” (IR 137). Everything has started melting in the village. Even the nights were as hot as days and it has also given rise to many diseases.
Okri has introduced the character of the Old woman in a chapter entitled ‘Circling Spirit (2)’ from Book II of the novel. The old woman has survived the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial times of Africa and has seen the changing dynamics between human and non-human nature. She made mockery of the selfish people of the post-colonial nation who were harming the essence of their own origin. She was shunned by society and took shelter in the forest. She weaved a tapestry throughout the chapter in which she had woven the story of every forest dweller. Erin James points out the stories weaved on the tapestry, “Her tapestry of stories is epic in scope; it includes mythic representations of the origin of human beings and various gods, historical stories of exile and war, and, importantly, tales that help the narrative’s interpreters make sense of the local climate, geography, and species” (The Storyworld Accord: Econarratology and Postcolonial Narratives 174). She knew every secret of the forest. The incident of bullet shooting in the forest so as to frighten the inhabitants of the forest has disturbed the old lady,
She was heavy that night. All the cries and sufferings of the earth tugged at her heart for the first time in many years. The agony of innocent human beings. The genocide of trees. The insomnia of the beasts of the forests. The homeless spirits and the dislodged diseases. The rising seas and shrinking forests. The unstable earth and the misery to come. All tugged at her and made her heart a mass affected by their force of gravity. Her sorrows made her heavy. The unalterable destiny of her people which she willed and changed too late filled her with nostalgia. (IR 110)
The old woman put an effort to regain the disturbed ecology of the surroundings by trying to weave a desirable truth in her tapestry but was bound to keep the true account of things happening around. She decided to regain the old and rich history of nature of Africa and in order to do so she, “coded the secrets of plants and their infinite curative properties; she coded the language of spirits, the epic speech of trees, the convergent lines of vital earth-forces, the healing uses of thunder, the magic properties of lightning, the interpretations of the human and spirit world, the delicate balances of unseen powers and the ancient formula for glimpsing the unalterable movement of fate” (IR 128).
Okri has given a chance of redemption to the characters like Madam Koto, who has joined hands in ruthless dealing with nature. She dies at the end of the novel and realizes the importance of nature. In her last address to the ghetto-people she makes them aware of the losing bond with the non-human nature. She told them that they were equally responsible as their fellow elite brothers in worsening the ecology of the village, “You people believe in scattered gods; you don’t even worship at your shrines. Your gods have too many names; and because you have forgotten why the gods were born there are holes in your souls through which your lives leak out” (IR 31-32). She also advised, “The sun bakes the barks of the trees, and they die- all the young trees that are not good for eating. They die and the great trees that were here before we knew the names of our continent, they give shade to two thousand caravans of spirits (IR 32). She talked at length on the benefits of trees for humankind. The Yoruba are nature-centric tribe and their every custom and religion is based on nature-cure even the dead-body of Madam Koto is cleaned through natural cure. Before her funeral she was given the final bath,
Her ministers strove to disinfect her body. They scrubbed it with carbolic and the juice of banana plants. They washed it with fermented palm-wine and tar soap. They soaked her in a mighty tub full of herb-marinated alcohol and rubbed her over with palm-oil till her complexion turned ripe and beautiful…” (IR 332).
This ritual shows the role of nature as a cleanser of the bodies of even the sinful humans like Madam Koto. The people of the ghetto had learnt no lesson from the advice and death of Madam Koto. They were charmed by the new constructions and inventions of science. They felt bad for the loss of biodiversity and ecological degradation but had done nothing to curb the situation.
Conclusion:
At the end of the novel, Okri is hopeful of the revival of nature. Through the magical power of old women Okri tries to revive the damage which is done to the forests and its dwellers. As she was weaving the true picture of African history, the other time she weaved the future of Africa which is as bright as its past, “She wove charming designs for future African cities. She wove the rich dream of a city, with magic water sprouting from mountains … Trees with palatial interiors. Serene rivers running alongside well-made roads. Trees in bloom along the streets (IR 191). The Utopian city has angels to absorb all the dust particles and is surrounded with trees and plants. Okri gives hope to the readers that it is still possible to save the mother-earth and has given a call for return to nature.
Works Cited:
- Okri, Ben. The Famished Road. London: Vintage, 2003. Print.
- ---, Songs of Enchantment. London: Jonathan Cape Limited, 1993. Print.
- ---, Infinite Riches. London: Phoenix House, 1998. Print.
- Rueckert, William. “Literary Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism.” Iowa Review, Vol. 9 Issue 1, pp 71-86. 1978.
- Glotfelty, Cheryll and Harold Fromm. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996. Print.
- Bate, Jonathan. Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition. London: Routledge, 1991. Print.
- Buell, Lawrence, Ursula K. Heise and Karen Thornber. “Literature and Environment.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Vol 36, Issue, pp 417-440. 2011.
- James, Erin. The Storyworld Accord: Econarratology and Postcolonial Narratives. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 2015. Print
- Slaymaker William. Ato Quayson and Tejumola Olaniyan Ed. “Echoing the other (s): The call of Global Green and Black African Responses.” Africa Literature: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory. Wiley: Blackwell. 2007. Print.