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

Abstract

Inverted subversion is the thrust of irony in Wole Soyinka’s The Road. The play reveals a space of foreboding which 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. The aim of this study is to examine the dimension of this subverted space, to mark out the indices of its subversion, and to situate the pervasive tangles within the matrix of irony. It is also to locate 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. It will be argued that the confusion of values which are entrenched in the propagator extends as a contest of values in the play.

Keywords: Soyinka, Subversion, Irony, Church and Ogun.