The aesthetics of social responsibility: a study of Tanure Ojaide’s The Tale of The Harmattan

Abstract

The destruction of flora and fauna and the lack of corresponding human and infrastructural development have been the lot of the Niger Delta people from the outset of the exploration of oil in the region. The above situation has led to many physical and intellectual protests. Many writers have evoked the role of the writer in the society in creating the awareness about this scourge, and at the same time, in the strongest terms, condemning same. This paper appraises how the aesthetics of social responsibility is brought to bear in Tanure Ojaide’s “The Goat Song,” “Lessons from Grandma’s Night-Time School,” “For the Egbesu Boys,” “Tale of the Harmattan,” “Dots Within a Circle,” and “Quatrain Suite.” It examines how Tanure Ojaide mobilizes the poetics of poetry in his revulsion and rejection of the deadly environmental impact of oil exploitation and exploration in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria. To achieve the above aim, an interpretation of the above mentioned poems from his poetry collection The Tale of the Harmattan is within the theoretical framework of ecocriticism.