LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF CONTRAVENTION OF THE LAW IN SELECTED NIGERIAN PLAYS AND NOVELS

Abstract

Nigerian literature has, over the years, reflected different aspects of the law. Existing studies on the law in Nigerian literary scholarship have focused on morality, crime and punishment, with little attention given to representamina (words and actions) and agents contributing to violations of the law. This study was, therefore, designed to examine representations of the breach of the law in selected Nigerian plays and novels with a view to determining the socio-political factors responsible for characters’ violations of the law.

Jean Francois Lyotard’s approach to Postmodernism and Charles Sanders Peirce’s Triadic Semiotics were adopted as framework, while interpretive design was used. Five plays and five novels were purposively selected for their reflections on legal issues in the Nigerian context. The plays were Frank Ogodo Ogbeche’s Harvest of Corruption (HoC), Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman (DATKH), Ahmed Yerima’s The Trials of Oba Ovonramwen (TToOO), Chukwuma Anyanwu’s Another Weekend Gone! (AWG) and Denja Abdullahi’sDeath and the King’s Grey Hair and Other Plays (DATKGHAOP). The novels were Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God (AoG), Chukwuemeka Ike’s Our Children Are Coming (OCAC), Eghosa Imasuen’s Fine Boys (FB), Okey Ndibe’s Arrows of Rain(AoR) and Femi Ademiluyi’s The New Man (TNM). Texts were subjected to literary analysis.

The law, as a social and moral instrument, is breached through the representamina of characters suggesting contravention in all the texts. The texts foreground the failure of political and religious leadership, the feeling of injustice, Western imperialism, poor parenting, economic hardship, corruption, and peer group influence as agents responsible for characters’ violations of the law. Most characters subvert justiciable actions through their representamina, and often suffer paranoia arising from feelings of guilt. In AoG, DATKH, TToOO, and DATKGHAOP, which have traditional settings, the corrective functions of the customary law are emphasised in the lives of depraved characters such as Ezeulu and Obika in AoG, Pilkings and Elesin in DATKH, Eyebokan and Phillips in TToOO, and Esutu and Prince in DATKGHAOP. The TNM, AoR, AWG, FB, HoC and OCAC signify infractions by characters like Ayo and Layeni in TNM, Ganagana and Ugojah in AWG, Wilhelm and TJ in FB, Ochuole and Aloho in HoC, and Isa Palat Bello and Askia Amin in AoR from the perspective of common law. While AoG, TToOO and DATKH suggest the moral authority of the law in the colonial administration, DATKGHAOP makes the vulnerable natives moral agents. In addition, TNM, AWG, FB, HoC and OCAC represent the primacy of the law and the consequences of its subversion for dissidents. While the plays project legal processes and representations of the law more strikingly, the novels are stylistically less procedural but saturated with legal motifs. The meanings projected by characters’ representamina in the texts are those of subversion. With their mix of metanarrative and maximalism, the texts advocate obedience and caution against deviant representamina capable of undermining the rule of law.

The selected Nigerian plays and novels explore the law through characters’ representamina, and socio-political factors responsible for their violations of the law.