Church versus Ogun: Subversion and Irony in Wole Soyinka’s The Road

Abstract

Subversion is the thrust of irony in Wole Soyinka’s The Road. The play reveals a space of foreboding that is charged with confrontations.  The cosmos of the dramatis personae is designed as a kind of high mimetic arena in which all the participants are trapped as they seek to  find meaning and value for their daily existence. Their lives are soused in irony, and they are caught on the quicksand between Church  and Ogun. A psychic figure spins everyone and everything in thrall and into a vortex of persuasions which keeps knowledge and  truth in a state of convolution from one point to another. This study examines the dimension of this subverted space, to mark out the  indices of its subversion, and situate the pervasive tangles within the matrix of irony. It also locates the median of the conflict, the lead  character, whose past and present collide within him as he propagates Ogunian perceptions in a manner that leaves a grim smudge on  both deity and propagator. The confusion of values in the life of the propagator extends as a contest of values in the play