A PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY OF WOLE SOYINKA’S

AKE: THE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD

A PAPER PRESENTED AT THE 2ND NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF ILORIN
ILORIN, NIGERIA

SATURDAY 3RD APRIL, 2021

BY

ADEOLU, ADEKUNLE OLANREWAJU

Ph.D Student

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Abstract
Many studies on Soyinka’s writings, especially the dramatic and poetic works, have been done
in recent years. While acknowledging the measure of justice in the conventional charges against
Soyinka’s writings concerning their obscurantism and complexity (Jeyifo, 2001; Macebuh,
2006), some critics have attempted to evaluate what is veritable in his works. The present study
has attempted to do something a little different from any of them: to evaluate the specific quality
of Soyinka’s imagination in his autobiographical memoir, Ake: the Years of Childhood (1981)
and to identify what persists throughout this memoir as a unique and unchanging consciousness
of the world. The approach taken in this study takes for granted that each expression in a work of
literature signifies a unique state of connectedness between the subjectivity of a conceiving mind
and its experience of the world. This approach aligns closely with the phenomenological critical
method of the Geneva School. Viewed from this perspective, Soyinka’s Ake reveals that the
author’s innate curiosity, quest for answers, and remedial sense of right and wrong are
important factors that shape the consciousness and subjectivity of the adult Soyinka. The study
concludes that little Wole’s natural inquisitiveness, coupled with his moral appreciation, is an
integral element in the constitution of the adult writer.
Key Words: imagination, phenomenological, consciousness, memoir, subjectivity, experience

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Introduction
To speak of the consciousness that permeates an autobiography is to speak of a mediated

consciousness; a consciousness that has been negotiated through the agencies of time, memory

and imagination, and is eventually expressed in words. When we speak of ‘consciousness’ in

these terms, we speak of the elusive and pervasive consciousness which is expressed and

embodied in the words of the memoir, and is present everywhere and recoverable as the

persistent tone we apprehend as we read through the story. Viewed this way, this consciousness

becomes the stance or position of the narrator in relation to the events and characters of the story.

In an autobiography, the consciousness that is being recovered and the consciousness of the

narrator, as a matter of necessity, must coincide since both are trying to access the subjective

identity of a single individual as lived in his own life.

Soyinka, present here as the voice of the narrator who tells the story, cannot, as a matter of

course, totally distance himself from direct involvement and narrate events from the point of

view of detached objectivity. After all, the events being recounted here, though happening in a

past time, are events about himself. Yet, he must be able to assume some measure of objectivity

and detachment. This is the nature of autobiography: there is a necessity to maintain a delicate

balance between subjectivity and objectivity. The subjectivity of the narrator is evident

throughout the story and permeates the style of narration. The narrator, though separated from

the subject of the narrative and viewing him from the outside, nevertheless sees this subject from

the point of view of an involved spectator. This is due to the fact that he could, through the

imaginative reconstruction of memory, be caught up in the events and recreate them since the

events had happened in his lived world. In this way, he could apprehend the thoughts and

feelings of this subject from the inside while objectively re-presenting them. The consciousness

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of the adult memoirist, at once subjective and detached, mediates between the reader and the

consciousness of the subject of the memoir, and creates the true soul and unity of Ake.

Since Ake is an autobiography it is safe to say that the events and the characters have an

objective existence. True, they might have been ‘mediated’ to an extent by the memory of the

author, the fact remains that they were not completely invented as in the case of pure fiction.

They were experienced by Soyinka himself. Soyinka is more or less the observer of a real world.

This observation, and consequently, its documentation takes the form of imaginative re-creation,

as, for instance, the author visualises his past self and plays the part accordingly. Hence, the

author cannot completely detach himself with cold objectivity from the narrator. As a result, the

author, along with the reader, is both inside and outside the narrator. In the next paragraphs I

shall attempt to describe the basic sequence of possibilities, made by putting together cognitive

and perceptive instances from varied parts of the memoirs – instances that depict the growing

consciousness of the narrator as he experiences the world, laying the foundation for the making

of the adult that he is today.

Theoretical Framework

Phenomenology, the theory of consciousness and essence, and the science of pure

phenomena (Eagleton, 1983:55), was developed by the German thinker Edmund Husserl (1859-

1938). Taking their cue from Husserl and others, Georges Poulet and other members of the

Geneva School attempt to remain metaphysically neutral when approaching a literary text and to

merely experience and explicate what is in the literary text itself. Magliola (1977) summarises

the Geneva critics’ argument in the following words:

For the Geneva school the experiential world of the author as

enverbalized in the text is all-important: as we shall see, it is the
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 centre and foyer of the text, and ultimately imparts whatever mean-
ingful coherence the poetic text displays (8).
Geneva critics study a specific literary work for experiential patterns. They expect these patterns

to function as “an organic network responsible for the work’s unity” (Magliola, 1977: 48). An

underlying experiential pattern is “vitalised” and made manifest on the surface level by a surface

configuration. It is therefore through these surface configurations that a work of literature can be

approached since it is through this method of entrée that the deeper meaning of the work can be

accessed. Indeed, The Geneva critics hold that a work of literature is the world reworked into

conformity with the internal structure of the writer’s spirit while at the same time it is the

enverbalised spirit endowed with a form and substance borrowed from the shared solidity of the

external world (Miller, 1958). It is for this sole reason that the phenomenological critics of the

Geneva School, from whom a cue is taken in this study, limit themselves to the literary text for

the generation of meaning, and advocate a systematically empathetic reading.

Needless to say, the present study aspires to adhere to this tenet and explore the

consciousness of Soyinka through his perception and cognition in Ake with the goal of revealing

the organising unity, or essential structure, hidden at the centre. This unifying factor is present

everywhere in Ake and is covertly revealed in the “embodied disguises” of actions, mental

viewpoints, and character depiction.

The World of Ake: Perception and Cognition

Soyinka’s Ake: The Years of Childhood opens by giving a description of the part of the

community where the author lives from the point of view of a child. If there is one singular

feature that immediately strikes the reader at this stage of the narrative, it is definitely the

somewhat muddled perception of the narrator. This somewhat bewildered cognition,

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foreshadowed by the word “misty” (1) in the very first line of the narrative, is repeated over

and over throughout the memoir. The child narrator, obviously of a Christian background, tries

to make sense of the apparent contradiction that surrounds his Christian existence with its

backdrop of animism. Prior to this time, unaware of his surroundings, unable to rise out of infant

unconsciousness, he has had no existence as far as he is concerned. He has not really been

himself. His earlier history is sunk in oblivion. Only when he begins to take cognizance of his

surroundings and to “review the world” (4) does his actual perception and, consequently,

existence begin.

Viewing the outside world from the safety of the parsonage, then, is only the beginning of

this process of acquaintanceship for little Wole. He has to venture into the outside world to

experience the reality of existence for himself. If he remains in the parsonage compound only,

his existence is restricted to the same puzzling view of the world as seen from within the

compound. This world would hold no surprises, no novelty, for Wole. It is a world he has

become accustomed to, a world he has consequently taken for granted, and, to borrow a phrase

from Miller (1968: 12) “a world of pure surface”. We read:

If I lay across the lawn before our house, face upwards to the
sky, my head towards BishopsCourt, each spread-out leg would
point to the inner compounds of Lower Parsonage. Half of the
Anglican Girls’ School occupied one of these lower spaces, the
other half had taken over BishopsCourt. The lower area contained
the school’s junior classrooms, a dormitory, a small fruit-garden
of pawpaws, guavas, some bamboo and wild undergrowth . In the
other lower compound was the mission bookseller . (4).
If the narrator therefore wants to delve beyond this overt surface and deepen his experience

of his reality, he must venture outside his limited horizon in order to uncover the secrets and

reasons which await beyond. An example of this revolves around the Vicar of the Anglican

Church, Pa Delumo. Wole, like Essay his father, decides to refer to Pa Delumo as “Canon” only

6
because he discovers the “reason” for Essay’s choice on one of the occasions he ventures

outside the parsonage. This discovery is possible because of one of his early excursions with his

mother, Wild Christian, outside the walls of the parsonage into the real world. This time they

visit THE RESIDENCY, and here Wole encounters what his mother tells him are called

“cannons” which are used to fight wars (13). The little boy quickly associates the cannons and

their round metallic balls with the strength and solidity of the vicar, and nothing afterwards could

dislodge this conviction from his mind. The sense of coming into contact with the real world

occasioned by these visits to the world beyond the parsonage is not lost on little Wole as he

reflects:

We made several of those outings; visit to relations, accompanying

Wild Christian on her shopping expeditions or for some other pur-
pose which we could never grasp. At the end of such outings how-
ever, we were left with a vague notion of having been taken out to
see something, to experience something (12).
The appropriate picture depicting the beginning of Wole’s life, then, is not the description of

Ake town as seen from within the confines of the parsonage, but his immediate encounter of the

community when the "pieces of Ake which had entered our home on occasions, or which gave

off hints of their nature in those Sunday encounters at church, were beginning to emerge in their

proper shapes and sizes” (38). Now, the little boy begins to piece together the shades and shapes

the world of humans can take.

Wole could only process received opinion as he is limited to the immediate appearance of

things. Nevertheless, his restless and relentless spirit and his natural curiosity are facilitated by

the desire to investigate beyond the mere appearance of the variety of things. For him, there is a

perpetual extension of the frontiers of knowledge. He confronts experience with wonder and

enthusiasm. He studies the world eagerly and does his juvenile best to process what he sees. For

him, the whole multiplicity of the world is a great spectacle to be encountered and examined. He
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relishes arguments and asking questions, thereby reaffirming earlier tentative positions or

discarding them to acquire new knowledge. This is one way for Wole to encounter the world:

“He is too argumentative” (55), his mother says and “he only embarrasses me at the shop with

his foolish questions” (56). His first opportunity to sample the world on his own arises when he

trails a marching police band from the parsonage in Ake all the way to Ibara. Even as young, and

oftentimes puzzled, as he is, he nevertheless finds the time to feed his curiosity by taking mental

note of many of the places and things he encounters along the way during the march. When he

reads a roadside sign that contains the word “proprietress”, he reflects thus: “I had not

encountered such a difficult word before and I made a note to ask my father how it differed from

the simpler one of a school mistress” (40). Also, by seeing the legend “Miss McCutter’s

Maternity Clinic” on the gates of a wall along the road, Wole comes to understand that the name

he had earlier thought of simply as “Miss Makota” is actually spelt differently. Even in the midst

of his parents’ worry and excitement that greets his eventual arrival home, Wole realises that his

excursion has somehow changed him, and that he has “become markedly different” (50) from

whatever he was before the march.

Wole goes forth to encounter experience with an apparently innocent curiosity and with only

a vague notion that the experience will affect or change him. All he knows is that whatever he

learns is yet another clue about his own intimate life. He enjoys a comforting sense of safety

within the cocoon of his own existence where his security is never threatened. Even during his

expedition with the police band, where he realises that the parsonage does not embrace the entire

Ake community, Wole’s complacency remains unshaken. While he acknowledges the

unfamiliarity this realisation generates, his credulity never wavers:

But then the curious thing happened; after the bookseller’s the wall
rolled away into a different area I had never seen before. Soon it
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 moved away altogether, was covered up by houses and shops and
disappeared forever. It upset my previous understanding of the close
relationship between the parsonage and Ake. I expected the wall to be
everywhere . The… wall had vanished for ever but it no longer mattered
(38).
His discoveries pose no risks to him. With the innocence of a child, he assumes that his journeys

can bring him no harm: “I again experienced the elation of feeling that I was under some special

protection; in Isara, this was a constant, unquestioned state of mind, nothing could even

threatened to unsettle it” (138). He welcomes the novelty and surprises. He continues to ask

questions to supplement his increasing perception, contributing to the overall structure of a

growing mind.

Little by little, Wole’s initial ignorant, puzzled fascination with his world is giving way to a

more informed sort of discernment. While the boy is assailed with a multitude of scenes and

people, from the egungun festivities to the marching police band, the funeral processions, and the

variety of people that visit the parsonage or Wild Christian’s shop, his awareness becomes

gradually more judgmental:

The diversions of the public streets frequently spilled into the

parsonage. The sounds carried well before; we followed its course
and could tell within minutes if the event would pass us by, in
which case we rushed to the ladder and improvised stands which
provided us with a panorama of Ake (85)
Wole and his companions enjoy these spectacles as “they were often just like weddings, or

outings of dance societies” (85). Nevertheless, there is one kind of spectacle Wole does not

particularly relish --- the public shaming of the bed-wetting child. Here, then, we see an early

opposition and mental resistance to what the boy considers an unwarranted exercise of authority.

For Wole, “ except for the urchins who followed them, this kind of spectacle had nothing of

the festive about it” (87).In a similar, though more serious, offence where a child is accused of

stealing from the soup-pot, the trailing urchins, who merely clap and taunt the bed-wetter with

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singing, are encouraged to whip the culprit. Our hero, with a more discerning perception, is

aware of a certain injustice in the behaviour of the adults who mete out this kind of punishment

on the erring youth:

Stealing meat from the soup-pot was considered particularly heinous,

though why, I could not understand. If the thief, when caught, had al-
ready swallowed the evidence of his crime, he was made to carry the
soup-pot on his head, and his mouth was smeared with oil from the pot.
The outing could go on day after day after day. The complainants never
seemed to have enough, such was the outrage of these soup-pot guardians.
I thought, after all he has eaten the meat, no amount of dancing and flogging
would bring it back. And a piece of meat always seemed too small and in-
significant to conjure up the number of people who turned out on parade (89-90).
Wole’s world in Ake is, to an extent, like a sketch of a succession of characters and scenes

and experiences that makes an impression on the boy, with the characters surging up suddenly

and vividly in his field of vision and commanding his attention for a short moment of time and

then disappearing altogether, sometimes never to appear again:

Essay and Wild Christian collected strays. It seemed a permanent aspect

of our life at Ake; with very few lapses, there was always an adult who
appeared without warning seemingly from nowhere, became part of our
lives and then disappear with no explanation from anyone (115).
Each striking character is isolated from all the others and unconnected with all the others. Each

emerges suddenly at the centre of vision, performs his or her own act and then vacates the stage

for good. The overall effect is one of a colourful variety of interesting people in amusing

episodes appearing from nowhere and disappearing just as quickly. From the women trader from

Isara, to Mr Odejimi, nicknamed Le-moo, to Paa Adatan who would single-handedly defeat

Hitler, to You-Mean-Mayself, to Wole’s soldier-of-fortune Uncle Dipo, who, according to

Wole’s mother, “has always been a wild one” (123), to Sorowanke, the madwoman who lives

by the mango tree, the narrative is bulging with a multiplicity of colourful, sometimes comic

characters. Throughout the story, these characters are described, each with his own unique

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behaviour and mannerism: ‘It was the women traders who brought the flavor, the smell and

touch of Isara to Ake . Their self-containment made a deep impression on us ” (128). And:

The first we knew about Uncle Dipo was when a smart-looking

bespectacled man in army officer’s uniform came upon us un-
announced in the yard. We fled . His eyes appeared to be fused
with his spectacles so that what struck me most was that his face
glowed centrally through a pair of head lamps, like a motor-car (122).
You-Mean-Mayself, Essay’s friend who, like Wole’s first school friend Osiki, always

comes at mealtimes, “was short, rather light-complexioned and had a small, box-like head”

(116) and has a way of articulating words that sounds “like the mewing of our cat” (117). This

caricature of a man always sends Wole and the rest of the children into fits of laughter whenever

he is asked whether he has had breakfast:

Mayself’s face then rose from the journal in which he had buried it during
Essay’s planning of breakfast. He looked up, startled, stared at first in any
direction except the one from which the question had so clearly emanated.
Suddenly he realized his mistake, turned to the questioner, registered visibly
that the question had, surprisingly, been directed at him. There followed a
quick intake of breath as the novelty of the question, one which could never
before have been pronounced in his hearing, etched a huge surprise on his face.
Only then came the predictable, ritual answer: ‘Oh, you-mean-mayself? Ny-ou’ (117).
Another character with amusing mannerism is the old warrior who, unlike everybody, certainly

knows how to deal with Hitler when the despot eventually arrives Ake.

Each of these people is at one time or the other a feature of little Wole’s world, and the

gestures, action, and appearance of each one holds his fascinated attention. Every now and then a

specimen is selected out of the mass of people that inhabit our hero’s world and held before us

as if he were an oddity to be examined for its idiosyncrasies. In such a world of pure surface in

which the people seem to exist entirely as their appearances, it would require a certain

perceptiveness to acquire any insight into their true character. Since it is the individual

uniqueness of these characters which make them an object of fascination, and since Wole has no

access to their interior existence, perhaps they are best apprehended and understood at their most
11
ludicrous moments. In such farcical instances, it would then seem, one is able to glimpse both

the comical as well as the pathetic nature of these individuals, thereby getting an indication of

their true character. This growing cognition of his world inspires a certain pity and ruefulness in

Wole. With regard to the women traders, Wole says: “Now visiting them in their own homes, I

sadly watched much of their mystery dissipate . Beneath their joy at our presence we now

sensed the strain of sheer survival ” (130); then: “Paa Adatan, freed, rose slowly . He moved

with a sad, quiet dignity . I never saw him again” (115); and Mayself “ disappeared finally,

and the house became the poorer for his absence” (122).Wole has also acquired a new depth of

perception as, through logical association with his ‘wild’ younger brother, he is able to deduce

the name of the soldier uncle: “The soldier-of-fortune had a name at last. In spite of Wild

Christian’s careful silence on that theme, I decided that his name could be none other than Dipo.

The artlessness with which Wole approaches life is further eroded, giving way to a more

clear-eyed structure of consciousness, when he perceives the inevitable-yet-impossible-to-

predict, GHANGE that attends the real world (93). This consciousness of change by the little boy

signifies a further movement towards measured cognition, despite his young age. Though Wole

is often unable to fully understand what is happening to him as well as to others when the

changes occur, his amazement is a significant and instructive step in his cognition of his

subjectivity and the objectivity of the world around him. The fact that he is suddenly becoming

aware of these changes taking place in others around him is an indication of the psychological

result of his growing perception, learning, and reasoning. While heightening his sense of wonder

in the people and objects around him, this increased power of cognition also deepens his

consciousness of his subjective state: “I began to wonder if I also changed, without knowing it,

the same as everybody else” (93). Yet, Wole’s puzzled surprise is caused not so much by the

12
inconsistence and temporariness of change as by its permanence as exemplified by the death of

Folasade, his little sister:

Yet, even Change often acted inconsistently. Until the birth of

Folasade, I had believed that Change was something that one
or more of the household caught, then discarded --- like Temperature.
Folasade’s was permanent (95).
Even without totally comprehending the existential import of the occasion of his little sister’s

demise on her very first birthday, Wole nevertheless surmises the significance of the loss and

something in him breaks accordingly:

Suddenly, it all broke up within me. A force from nowhere pressed

me against the bed and I howled . I was sucked into a place of loss
whose cause or definition remained elusive. I did not comprehend it
yet, and even through those tears I saw the astonished face of Wild
Christian, and heard her voice saying, ‘But what does he understand
of it? What does he understand?’ (98).
Afterwards, Wole loses some of his excitement about the world, becoming more thoughtful,

craving solitude. Consequently, Bukola the abiku girl becomes his choice companion since

Bukola knows how to be silent: “Even when she spoke, she transmitted a world of silence into

which I fitted” (100). Like his questioning and arguing (55, 56, 90), Wole’s tendency to self-

isolate begins to bother his mother, but his father rationalises: “If it has to do with Folasade it

will wear off” (101). But it does not. Gradually, then, as Wole’s consciousness of the world

around him improves, so also is his cogitation and his self-discovery.

As Wole becomes older, he also becomes more thoughtful. This attribute, considered by his

mother to be brooding caused by emi esu (the spirit of the devil), is something that had been

burgeoning for a long time in the little boy. Now, since his brooding and wandering off by

himself (101) has intensified, Wole is more receptive to the true nature of the changes taking

place around him as he is developing the faculty to ruminate on them more, trying to penetrate

the surface for the essence. When his younger brother’s name is changed from Dipo to Femi

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“because children named Dipo always turned out wild and ungovernable” (125), Wole must

wittingly conceal his amazement: “The change of name left us mostly indifferent, but I hid my

own astonishment” (125). Wole’s growing apprehension of the world of adults and its seeming

contradiction leaves him with a feeling of bemusement as the grown-ups themselves never seem

to “know what they wanted” (125). All the same, his cognition of the world is deepening as his

confusion prompts a need to look beyond the surface of events and characters’ actions. He can

now relate the advent of the radio in their home with the earlier introduction of electricity (107).

He can also reminisce about the departure from their home of ‘Mayself’, that sponger friend of

his father, with apparent longing born of growing perception.

Meanwhile, alongside Wole’s growing insight regarding the speciousness and confusion

that seem to plague the surface world of adults is a subtle, yet-to-be-fully-articulated awareness

of a certain manifestation of the exercise of tyrannical powers and an opposition to brutality and

inordinate absolutism. The world of Wole in Ake offers some instances of the boy’s budding

consciousness of the display of this form of brutality, starting with the strange hold Bukola, the

abiku girl, seems to have over her parents: “I wondered sometimes if Mr B took refuge in our

house to escape the tyranny of this child” (19). At this stage, there is no rationalisation of his

innate disquiet about the oppressive tendencies that Wole will spend a major part of his

adulthood combating; only an indefinable unease laying the foundation for embracing the

decisive catalyst of that future quest.

Moreover, tyrannical or suppressive behaviour is more readily associated with parental

authority or the “irrational world of adults and their discipline” at this stage (230). For Wole,

this is another mystery of the adults, and of the world, which remains incomprehensible. Since he

sees the world from the outside, this form of tyranny acquires a certain mystique, prompting

14
scrutiny. His desire to penetrate such mystery and unravel its motivation stems from a richer

perception of the world and a subconscious acknowledgement of an inherent opposition to high-

handedness and absolutism. Further reinforcing this inclination is his grandfather’s admonition,

after initiating him by ritual scarification, never to turn his back on a fight (147).

Thus grows a cognitive attitude that does not entertain relenting and always attempts to

penetrate the surface of things --- as a means to better comprehend the world. Wole further

enlarges his vision of the world when he secures admission into the Abeokuta Grammar School

(AGS). He eagerly absorbs this new experience and learns a multiplicity of new things. After

having most of his belongings stolen in the first week of enrolling in AGS, Wole acknowledges a

novel order of “initiation into a new world” (164). He begins to respond with enthusiasm to the

new environment: “I began instinctively to study my new companions very closely and devise

ways to survive among them” (164). Here, also, Wole learns to see ‘Discipline’ in a new light

through the conduct of the much admired Daodu, the principal of AGS who is also his uncle, a

disciplinarian who nevertheless adheres to a strict code of justice to the extent that it seems that

the code “‘innocent until proved guilty’ was created specially for him or by him”(173).

Thus, Wole begins to yield himself to the new environment, a new reality that would prepare

him for the rougher experience of the wider world: “AGS was justly called a toughening school,

a training ground for later survival in life” (165). New things are experienced and new lessons

learned: “I did not need to overhear Wild Christian’s remarks to acknowledge that I was now

responding with some enthusiasm to a new environment” (164). Yet, despite Wole’s fondness

for AGS and for Daodu, he still maintains a consciousness of a certain failing in adults:

I had now assumed a definite position with regards to

the rational shortcomings of grown-ups, marveling how,
for instance, an educationist and experienced traveler like
Daodu could behave like Wild Christian who obtained all
15
 her authority from that section of the Bible which said, ‘Spare
the rod ’ (177).
This critical sense of what is right and wrong is also evident in Wole’s unspoken earlier

resistance to the severity of the penalty doled out to the bed-wetting and meat-stealing children.

To him, these methods of punishment are considered inordinate displays of authority. These

experiences, though not indicative of injustice as such, coalesce in our hero’s mind into a

disapproval for high-handedness, and readies his mind for perhaps that most significant of

childhood experiences that will eventually structure Wole’s consciousness of the world: a fight

against injustice. For the adult Soyinka, this notion of standing up against tyranny assumes the

importance of a “categorical imperative” and becomes “an overacute, remedial sense of right

and wrong, of what is just and unjust” (You Must Set Forth at Dawn, 1994:42).

At this impressionable age, Wole, while still at AGS, becomes gradually involved with the

Abeokuta Women’s Union. Led by his aunt, the formidable Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, wife of

Daodu, the women of Abeokuta rise against unjust taxes and lay siege to the palace of the feudal

lord, the Alake of Abeokuta, demanding that he, and his accomplice, the white District Officer,

should abolish the payment of taxes by women. This incident proves to be a turning point in

Wole’s experience as for the first time he witnesses how best to combat injustice head-on and

without hesitation.

As time goes on, Wole becomes more and more involved in the activity of the Women’s

Union as their uprising gathers pace, becoming, apart from being their young teacher, their

“courier extraordinary, scout and general factotum” (213). In this world of defiance and

insurgence, Wole feels totally at home. He is in his natural element as Mrs Kuti rightly implies

during the height of the women’s revolution: “Hm, l’oogun, o ti ya de’bi” (212) meaning

“Man of strife, here already?” Our hero is no longer a passive subject awaiting the world to

16
impress itself upon his mind. He now takes a forceful part in the dynamics of this world. He is

constantly on the move, meeting people, engaging in action, witnessing momentous events, all

the time with a clear-eyed consciousness, a wide-awake awareness.

The excitement and adventure of this time and the impression it has on Wole’s

consciousness is further bolstered by the growing nationalist movement that is simultaneously

sweeping through the whole country at the time. The influence of this latter episode, especially

the unjust treatment of some of the nationalist leaders, on Wole’s own later revolutionary

tendencies could not have been insubstantial:

Some young, radical nationalists were being gaoled for sedition,

and sedition had become equivalent to demanding that the white
man leave us to rule ourselves . The Women’s Union threw its
forces behind the efforts. Concerts were held. We surrendered our
pocket monies, knowing somehow that even our half-pennies mat-
tered in the great cause (200).
This mental attitude of challenging authority and standing up for one’s rights would stand little

Wole in good stead in his adult life --- an adult life whose very foundations are laid in the world

of Ake. In a later memoir detailing his adult life. Soyinka himself attributes an oft-quoted remark

of his that is usually regarded as a justification for his uncompromising stand against tyranny ---

“Justice is the first condition of humanity” ---to this period in Ake

A casual involvement, at a most impressionable age, with the

Abeokuta women’s movement, narrated in Ake, may have pre-
pared the soil . So might also the induction, in my school days,
into the propensities of the class bully, merging onto a broader
canvas of the arrogant ways of colonial domination
(You Must Set Forth at Dawn, 1999:42)

Thus, we have our little Wole perceiving the world with an open, inquisitive mind which,

even at that age, queries the wrongness or rightness of human actions while taking cognizance of

the incongruities in adults’ concept of justice, discipline, and punishment. These never cease to

baffle him. And in order to reduce his bafflement and penetrate the surface world and attain
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deeper understanding, Wole has no choice but to eagerly embrace the scenes, characters, and the

events of his world while all the time arguing and asking questions. One final unreasonableness

of the world he must put up with as he departs for Government College Ibadan is his father’s

and his prospective school’s rule of not allowing children to wear shoes: “‘No shoes’, I

sighed, feeling the oppressive weight of my years. It was time to commence the mental shifts for

admittance to yet another irrational world of adults and their discipline” (230).

IV: Conclusion

The dramatic centre of Wole Soyinka’s Ake is Wole’s realisation that he must venture

beyond his own subjective self, attenuate his bewilderment, and decrease his own ignorance in

order to truly experience and begin the process of understanding his own existence. While the

world does not always lend itself to easy cognition, Wole knows he must keep plodding on with

zest, fascination, faith, and curiosity. Far from providing anything which assists his quest to

unravel the complexities of this world, the adults merely contribute to the confusion that plagues

the boy. The only logical recourse, therefore, is to endeavour to fathom the world through the

power of his own perception and cognition and attain an understanding entirely of his own

making.

This realisation materialises, to an extent, in the shape of questioning and arguing. And while

these twin qualities dovetail with little Wole’s inbred curiosity, the boy nevertheless realises

that he has to leave his comfort zone and confront the world and adapt to its eccentricities. As

such, Wole embraces each new encounter with an aspect of the world he has yet to experience

with interest and fervor, be it the wider Ake community, the egungun phenomenon, personalities,

adult motivation and discussions, school, or organised dissent. In this way, Wole’s perception

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and cognition of the world in which he lives grows while in the meantime his perplexity, while

not totally disappearing, at least reduces significantly.

References

Primary Text:

Soyinka, W. (1981). Ake: The Years of Childhood. New York: Random House. Print.

Secondary Texts:

Eagleton, T. (1983). Literary Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Print.

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Jeyifo, B. (2001). Conversations with Wole Soyinka. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Print.

Macebuh, S. (2006). “Poetics and the Mythic Imagination”. In Perspectives on Wole Soyinka,

ed. Biodun Jeyifo. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Print.

Magliola, R. (1977). Phenomenology and Literature: An Introduction. West Lafayette: Purdue.

Print.

Miller, Hillis J. (1958). Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

University Press. Print.

Soyinka, W. (1999). You Must Set Forth at Dawn. New York: Random House. Print.

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