Lesson Notes By Weeks and Term - Senior Secondary School 1
THEMES, LANGUAGE AND STYLE IN THE PLAY
THEMES, LANGUAGE AND STYLE IN THE PLAY
SUBJECT: LITERATURE-IN-ENGLISH
CLASS: SS1
TERM: 2ND TERM
REFERENCES
WEEK SEVEN
THEMES, LANGUAGE AND STYLE IN THE PLAY
TRADITION VS MODERNITY
The Lion and the Jewel was written and first performed the year before Nigeria was granted its independence from Great Britain, and the script was published two years after independence. As such, one of the primary conflicts of the play pits traditional Yoruba customs against a western conception of progress and modernity, as represented by the conflict between Baroka and Lakunle for Sidi's hand in marriage.
Lakunle represents the modern Nigerian man. He wears western clothing, has been educated in a presumably British school, and wants to turn his village into a modern paradise like the city of Lagos. Lakunle does not just admire and idolize western society; he actively and loudly despises the traditional customs of his village and the people who support them. This is best illustrated by Lakunle's refusal to pay Sidi's bride price. Sidi indicates that she would marryLakunle any time if he could only pay the bride price and observe local custom. Lakunle's refusal shows that it is more important to him to convert Sidi to his way of thinking and turn her into a "modern wife" than it is for him to marry her in the first place.
For much of the play, other characters describe Baroka as being directly opposed to modernity and extremely concerned with preserving his village's traditional way of life. Lakunle, in particular, finds Baroka's lifestyle abhorrent. He describes how Baroka paid off a surveyor in order not to route train tracks through the outskirts of Ilujinle, thereby robbing the village of a link to the modern world that would modernize the village. However, when Baroka himself speaks, it becomes apparent that he doesn't actually hate modernity or progress. While he obviously delights in the joys and customs of village life, when it comes to modernity he simply hates having it forced upon him. He sees more value in bringing modern customs to the village on his own terms. For example, he argues that creating a postal system for the village will begin to bring it into the modern world without entirely upending the village's way of life. Further, when he does talk about modern ideas that were forced upon him, such as his servants forming a union and taking Sundays off, his tone is resigned rather than angry—he sees it as inevitable and annoying, but not bad.
The competition between Baroka and Lakunle for Sidi’s hand in marriage brings the conflict between tradition and modernity to life. Baroka wishes to add Sidi to his harem of wives, while Lakunle dreams of having one wife who, in theory at least, is his equal. Both men promise Sidi a different version of power and fulfillment. When Baroka dies, Sidi will become the head wife of the new Bale, a position that would make her one of the most powerful women in the village. Lakunle, on the other hand, offers Sidi the possibility of an equal partnership in which she isnot required to serve her husband as is traditional. However, the way Lakunle talks to and about Sidi indicates that agreeing to marry Lakunle and embracing modernity will not necessarily be better for her, as modern science provides Lakunle specious evidence that women are weaker and less intelligent than men. Sidi recognizes that Lakunle's idea of modernity might not improve her life; in fact, it might mean that she would have less power and fewer rights than she would have in a traditional marriage.
Baroka's actions (and the fact that he triumphs in the fight for Sidi's hand) suggest that while Lakunle may be right that Ilujinle will indeed need to join the modern world, modernization and the outright rejection of local custom simply for the sake of doing so are foolish goals that benefit nobody. Instead, Baroka's triumph suggests that progress must be made when and where it truly benefits the village and its inhabitants.
MEN VS WOMEN
The Lion and the Jewel focuses on the competition to win Sidi's hand in marriage, which makes the play, in a sense, a battle of the sexes. As such, the play asks a number of questions about the nature of each sex's power: why men or women are powerful; how they became powerful in the first place; and how they either maintain or lose that power.
The men who fight for Sidi see her only as a beautiful prize to be won; Baroka and Lakunle value Sidi for no more than her beauty and her virginity. Meanwhile, the men in The Lion and the Jewel are valued by others (and value themselves) based on what they can do or have already done. Lakunle, for example, values himself because he is educated and he seeks to bring education, modernity, and Christianity to Ilujinle, and Baroka’s value derives from his role as the Bale of Ilujinle and his responsibilities to keep his people safe and build his image by taking many wives and fathering children.
To both Baroka and Lakunle, Sidi is a jewel—a valuable object capable of teasing and annoying the men, but an object nonetheless. Lakunle wants Sidi to marry him so he can better perform modernity by taking a modern wife, one who wears high heels and lipstick. Similarly, Baroka wants Sidi to be his wife and complete his harem. While it is unclear whether or not Baroka will keep his promise that Sidi will be his final wife, she too will be the jewel of his wives. To both men, then, marriage to Sidi is a status symbol and an indicator of their power, virility, and the superiority of their respective ways of life (modern versus traditional). Further, the end of the play suggests that what Lakunle wants from Sidi (a modern wife to make him seem more modern) does not even require Sidi specifically; by immediately turning his attention to the next woman who dances at him, Lakunle indicates that while Sidi may have been an appealing prize, he can accomplish his goal of having a modern wife by marrying any woman up to the task. This reduces women in general to objects who must simply play a part in the lives of their husbands.
The idea of reducing people with little power to objects, however, works in reverse as well. When Sadiku believes Baroka's tale that his manhood (virility) is gone, she dances gleefully around a statue of Baroka and chants that women have won the war against men. She knows that Baroka's position of power in the village is tied to his ability to perform sexually and produce children, and she believes that when this specific power is gone, the rest of his power will also disappear, leaving his wives (who are still capable of performing sexually and bearing children) victorious. In this case, when Baroka appears to have lost what gives him power, he is reduced to being represented by an actual object (the statue). However, the play suggests that there is a great deal of difference between Baroka's weakness being represented by an object and the fact that women are literally treated as objects. When Sadiku dances around the statue of Baroka, it is important to note that she cannot celebrate her victory publically. She can celebrate in private and taunt a representation of Baroka, but she cannot taunt Baroka himself. In contrast, Sidi, Sadiku, and other female villagers are teased, taunted, and demeaned to their faces throughout the play. They are grabbed, fondled, raped, and told that they are simple and backwards because they are women. The male characters do not have to privately taunt inanimate objects; their culture, regardless of how they engage with modernity or tradition, allows them to reduce women to objects and treat them as such.
LANGUAGE AND STYLE IN THE PLAY
The play is often viewed as an allegory in that Sidi is Nigeria, caught between the modern (Lakunle) and the traditional (Baroka). She is interested in the modern because it feeds her ego and seems to offer youth and excitement, but she is also derisive of its falseness. The traditional does not interest her at first because she thinks she is better than it is, but she comes to recognize the safety, security, and value in it.
The stranger's camera symbolizes modernity. It is a newfangled object to the extent that one of the village girls calls it a "one-eyed box" (10). It is able to capture Sidi's young, beautiful image and reproduce it for everyone to see and gaze on in perpetuity.
The railway is another symbol of Western modernity. Railways, commonly implemented by European colonial governments, is a system of transportation, something that brings people in and takes people out. It irrevocably opens a place up to the rest of the world, and this is why Baroka is so opposed to it. The physical breaking of the ground represents to him a smashing of tradition and autonomy.
Sango is the Yoruba orisha, a ruler, and a wielder of justice. He also uses thunder and lightning to enforce justice. He is evoked several times in the text. First, Sadiku uses him to threaten the obnoxious Lakunle. Second, she evokes him again when she is exulting over the Bale's impotence ("Oh Sango my lord, who of us possessed your lightning / and ran like fire through that's lion's tail..." [33]). Third, Baroke mentions him when he tells Sidi his views on progress ("Among the bridges and the murderous roads, / Below the humming birds which / Smoke the face of Sango, dispenser of / The snake-tongue lightning" [52]). Fourth, Lakunle angrily evokes Sango when he hears what has happened to Sidi ("Let Sango and his lightning keep out of this" [60]). Every time he is mentioned, the character mentioning him is talking about justice, retribution, and revenge.
Sadiku carries with her a little statue of the Bale and uses it in her merry dance after she hears he is impotent. The statue, which is naked and well endowed, ordinarily represents the Bale in his power. However, now that Sadiku knows the truth about the Bale's power and strength, it now seems like an impotent, inert object and nothing else. It is a reminder of what he once was and what he now is—a figurehead.
Much of what Lakunle says and does is ironic. He utters things without knowing how ridiculous he sounds or how false his claims are. He pretends to adhere to certain principles, but undercuts them without even realizing it. In the very last scene he chases after a young girl just moments after pledging to marry his true love Sidi.
There is dramatic irony that even the audience does not become aware of until later: Baroka knows exactly what Sadiku and Sidi have planned, and thus everything he says to Sidi drips with irony since he is actually the one in control.
Sadiku's actions, such as laughing at the Bale's statue and how women have bested him and acting in the performance where he is killed, prove to be ironic due to the Bale's clever trick (see previous Irony entry).
It is ironic that the old Baroka, a man who did not want the railway to come through Ilujinle, decides that he must embrace modernity by having a stamp machine. This is also ironic given the fact that he was treated poorly by images (his photo was next to the latrines in the magazine).
Lakunle says to Sidi, "my love will open your mind / Like the chaste lead in the morning, when / The sun first touches it" (6). This is an example of Lakunle's verbose, faux-poetic type of rhetoric. He thinks flowery words will impress Sidi, but she is merely annoyed and tells him that he tires her. In his comparison of love to a "chaste" flower, Lakunle is also indicating how he sees Sidi.
Lakunle whines to Sidi, "my heart / Bursts into flowers with my love. / But you, you and the dead of this village / Trample it with the feet of ignorance" (6). He uses the metaphor of a flower blooming due to the power of his love, but then depicts that flower being trampled into oblivion by the callous village. It is an extreme metaphor and one that bespeaks Lakunle's hyperbolic tendencies. He depicts his heart as being delicate and fragile, which ironically is proven not to be the case: when he thinks he is to marry Sidi, the putative love of his life, he thinks it is too scary and too soon; then, he forgets her almost immediately by chasing after another village girl.
Sidi scoffs about Baroka, "But he—his face is like a leather piece / Torn rudely from the saddle of his horse" (22). She contrasts him with herself—a light, lovely, sparkling creature, whose fame is beginning to rise. These words about Baroka prove to be ironic since he ends up winning her.
Baroka tells Sidi, "I see you dip your hand / Into the pockets of the school teacher / And retrieve it bulging with knowledge" (50). This metaphor depicts Sidi as a child reaching into an older person's pocket in hopes of finding knowledge, which effectively diminishes her stature. It also depicts the school teacher as rather haphazard and informal in his possession of knowledge: why is this knowledge just stuffed willy-nilly into his pocket? In this metaphor Baroka subtly and slyly undermines both Sidi and Lakunle.
Baroka tells Sidi, "old wine thrives best / Within a new bottle" (54). This metaphor works on two levels. The first is the surface-level metaphor that Sidi is supposed to pick up: traditions and old ways of doing things will seem fuller and sweeter if they are housed and filtered within modernity and progress. However, the more debauched meaning that Baroka amuses himself with is that he will pour his old wine—his semen—into her new body, and thus create a child. Old men do well with young women, he thinks.
GENERAL EVALUATION/ REVISION QUESTIONS
1 Discuss the theme of tradition vs modernity in the play.
2 How does the writer explore irony in the play?
WEEKEND ASSIGNMENT
SECTION A
INSTRUCTION: Answer all questions.
SECTION B
Write a short biography on Maya Angelou.
READING ASSIGNMENT
Read up The Caged Bird in Exam Focus and explain the content.
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