OVERTHROWING THE STATUS QUO: INTERPRETING WOLE SOYINKA`S THE BACCHAE OF EURIPIDES FROM A MARXIST PERSPECTIVE

Norbert Oyibo Eze

doi:10.18769/ijasos.71428

Abstract

Certain critics of contemporary Nigerian drama represented by Abiola Irele, for example, seem to place the plays of Wole Soyinka, the 1986 Nobel laureate on literature, squarely within the confines of ritual aesthetics, in terms of dramatic taxonomy. Although ritual, especially Ogunism, exerts a huge influence and, no doubt, constitutes a major master code for interpreting a play like The Bacchae of Euripides , this paper argues that the religious elements in this transnational play merely serve as a camouflage for the exploration of class struggle. Class consciousness, though expressed through religious symbolism, is given much force and weight in the play from its beginning to the end that it seems to be the principal theme of this play. In the text, the masses knowledge of their position as not given, constrains them to remain steadfast and pushful until they overthrow the status quo through mass revolution, thereby securing unfettered freedom for themselves. In the light of the foregoing, this paper will attempt to interpret The Bacchae from Marxist perspective in order to show that not all Soyinka`s plays lack solid class ideology. Keywords: Overthrowing, Bacchae, Marxist, Soyinka

Highlights

The above excerpt from the dialogue between Tiresias and Pentheus in the early part of The Bacchae of Euripides seems to suggest that in the play, mythic thinking and religious activities are used as a veneer to examine human material conditions
This study employs Marxist theory to critically analyze and interpret the meaning of the play. It argues that the class structure of human society represented by the world of King Pentheus, on one hand, and the world of the slaves and helots, on the other, as well as the tensions and mutual hostilities they generate, which eventually leads to the killing and toppling of the status quo, follow a dialectical process
The slave question is a form of contradiction that is the first necessary condition for change because servility creates a relationship of mutual hostility between the master and the slaves

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The slave question is a form of contradiction that is the first necessary condition for change because servility creates a relationship of mutual hostility between the master and the slaves It is, argued that in The Bacchae, Dionysos is a revolutionary force that comes to give impetus to the struggle of the downtrodden class to liberate itself from a “pre–industrial kind of society where hardship and suffering and waste of human resources” (Marxism and Ethics 22) are the order of the day. It seems to me that it is the new political awareness that compels the slaves to destroy “their prison and chains in the divine dance of joy” (Moore 150) Their mounting hostility and revolutionary activity get to the peak at the mountain where through the manipulative activity of Dionysos, they join forces with the helots to topple the authoritarian government of Pentheus by killing and dismembering him body. This is why they quickly and boldly accept the opportunity Dionysos offers them to regain their freedom

CONCLUSION

REFERENCE LIST