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Citation: Abechi, A.A. & Iwuji, U.O. (2024). The Futility of Waiting: A Receptionist Study of Tanure Ojaide’s “Waiting” and Isidore Diala’s “Waiting”. Tasambo Journal of Language, Literature, and Culture, 3(1), 404-410. www.doi.org/10.36349/tjllc.2024.v03i01.047.
By
Agada, Adah Abechi
Department of English, Federal College of Education Katsina,
agada.abechi@fcekatsina.edu.ng
,
bechagada@gmail.com
07035603505
And
Ugochukwu Ogechi Iwuji, PhD
Department of General Studies, University of Agriculture and
Environmental Sciences (UAES) Umuagwo, Imo State, Nigeria
ugoiwuji@gmail.com
,
ugochukwu.iwuji@uaes.edu.ng
,
08068781712
Abstract
This paper uses the Reader-response theory to investigate the
futility of waiting as explored in “Waiting” by the two poets in their The Lure
of Ash and The Beauty I Have Seen, respectively. It is a coincidence for two
poets to pointedly dwell on the same title and subject matter. Isidore Diala
and Tanure Ojaide are both second-generation Nigerian poets who witnessed the
beginning of the fall of the Nigerian dream. The methodology used is qualitative as
excerpts of the key poems and relevant works are cited and analyzed. The work
is essentially literary as relevant aspects of literary criticism are deployed
to buttress aspects of the paper. The findings of the study are hinged on the
fact that the two poets of Ojaide and Diala coincidentally explore the metaphor
of “waiting” in their poems of the same title to denounce the political
inequalities in their country. The political class is presented as a set of
hegemonists who exploit and subjugate the people. The two poems are
revolutionary because of the revelation that waiting is futile, and is of the
colour of ash. Indeed, waiting is ash, and ash is waiting, a pun stylistically
deployed by Diala in his “Waiting.”
Keywords
: Nigerian poets, Reader-response, Waiting,
Poems, Hegemonists, Metaphor
Introduction
The
Reader-response theory rose to prominence in the early 1970s. But its
historical origin is traced to the 1920s and 1930s. The advent of the New
Criticism in the 1920s gave autonomy to the text, making it an objective entity
that can be analyzed independently of any historical or social context. I. A.,
Richards one of the earliest practitioners of New Criticism, unconsciously used
a Reader-response approach to textual analysis when he distributed to his class
at Cambridge copies of short poems with diverse literary value. The response he
got from his audience was a “wide variety of seemingly incompatible and
contradictory responses,” (Bresller 2003:59). Richards therefore acknowledged
that a reader brings to the text a vast array of experiences which he applies
to the reading of a text. By this activity, the reader is no longer a passive
receiver of knowledge but an active participant in the formation of a text’s
meaning.
Louise Rosenblatt
further expanded Richard’s assumptions in the 1930s concerning the contextual
nature of the reading process. “Rosenblatt asserts that both the reader and the
text must work together to produce meaning” (Bresller 2003:60) She views the
text and the reader as equal partners in the reading process. Thus, the reading
process becomes a journey of both a reader and a text. The experience is
transactional because the text acts as a stimulus for provoking thoughts, and
past experiences of the reader.
What
differentiates Rosenblatt’s views on the Reader-response from others is the
emphasis on the significance of both the reader and the text in the creation of
meaning. The New Criticism is quite different from this approach because of the
overarching significance it accords to the text alone in the creation of meaning.
The Reader-response theory like most critical approaches to literary analysis
may not provide a unified or single methodology for textual analysis. The
Reader-response critics assert that the proper analysis of literature lies in
the communion between the reader and the text. The construction of meaning lies
in the reading process – the reader and the text must transact to produce
meaning.
The German phenomenonologist,
Wolfgang Iser, made a good contribution in explaining the interaction between
the reader and the text. In his argument, “the reader and the text are
co-creators of meaning.” (Dobie 2012: 137). Iser introduced the concept of an
implied reader, one who brings a unique set of experiences to the reading
process. In this case, a reader unravels the indeterminacy of a text. Dobie
(2012:138) lists a set of questions potentially asked by a Reader-response
critic using the transactional model as reinforced by Iser:
What
kind of reader is implied by this text? For instance, does it address you as if
you are intelligent and well-informed, or as if you are inexperienced and
innocent? What aspects of the text invite you to respond as the implied reader?
What do you know of the author’s intent? List the most vivid images you
remember from the text. How have you reconstructed them from your own
experiences?
The Implied Reader and the Futility of Waiting
The implied reader
in Diala’s “Waiting” and Ojaide’s “Waiting” is one who has been traumatized by
the condition of waiting endlessly for the fulfilment of beautiful promises
made to him. It is not a mere coincidence that both authors produced poetry
with the same title, “waiting”, because they live in the same clime and share
the same grim experience. They reside in a clime well known for failed, wilted
promises. It follows that their implied readers would be those whose
subconscious has been ridden with avalanche of unfulfilled promises by the
political actors of their country.
Ojaide’s Waiting
is a four-stanza poem written in a rhymed couplet. It is part of a trilogy, The Beauty I Have Seen where the persona
assumes the role of a minstrel possessed by the muse who must speak truth to
all sections of his society. In the opening verses, the persona tutors potential
or budding poets on how they must ply their trade through total adherence to
the dictates of the muse. He exhorts them not to be a “masquerade” that claims
divinity with “the god that he masks in costume and dance” (p.12). A young poet is taken through a psychic
journey of knowledge and character in the poem. In another verse in the opening
pages, a budding poet is cautioned to “maintain the sanctity/of the costume
that he swore to keep clean” (p.13). The only way prescribed to keep the
sanctity of the costume is by “following the dictates /of the muse, procurer of
his pain and joy” (p.14)/. The muse here is presented as both a source of joy
and pain because it is through the muse that a writer lives a fulfilled or
miserable life. He is shot into stardom by the quality of his craft. The muse
should therefore be treasured by a young artist who must stand at the
confluence of the muse and the society. In the end elsewhere, the persona asks
a rhetorical question: “But what load placed on me by the muse/ isn’t an honour
to carry with songs” (p.16).
In “Waiting”,
Ojaide progresses in his style of powerful couplets to describe the futility of
waiting. He presents three insincere calibres of people in the society who
represent the political class. The first stanza presents the elders of the
society as complicit in the suffering of the people: “The elders advise us to
wait till we grow old;/ wow, wait for their privileges till we are told”
(p.50). The elders in the lines above are metaphors for insincere, crafty
leaders who dominate the space of Nigeria. They purloin the commonwealth and
shower themselves with expensive privileges. These leaders do not want anyone
who question their excesses. Thus, the act of asking others to wait till they
grow old for their privileges is symbolic of the excessive greed of Nigerian
leaders. Those advised to wait in the poem are the youth who are the strength
of the nation. Advising them to wait is an indirect way of asking them to steer
clear of leadership roles till they grow old or are told to do so. Impliedly, the
good life is the preserve of the leaders, the bourgeoisie of the society. They
are the ones who are deluded to think that they can dominate others.
The second stanza
of the poem indicts the politicians who perform so woefully in their first term
in office. While they underperform, they tell the citizenry to wait till they
are re-elected for a better government. Hear the persona: “The politicians tell
us to wait till their second term/ hurray, wait for prosperity till after “we
re-elect them” (p.50). The first tenure in this poem is symbolically a period
of non-performance, corruption and acquisition of ill-gotten wealth. It is also
a period to enslave the people in poverty. The second line shows that the
people led are stagnant in the pool of suffering. The politicians profit from
their sweat and ask them to wait. Impliedly the politicians believe that they elected
to underperform in the first term and play about with the people’s
commonwealth. The beleaguered people are now subjected to another tenure of the
corrupt, greedy politicians.
Ojaide’s “Waiting”
is a satire on the excesses of greedy politicians who toy with the humanity of
the people who voted for them. The second line of the second stanza makes a
mockery of these politicians who have lost touch with reality, expecting the
people to keep stretching their patience “till after we re-elect them.” This is
a touch of sarcasm on political leaders who are unfeeling of the plight of the
masses whenever they get into office. Ironically, the same politicians promised
a life of Eldorado once voted into office.
There is a binary
opposition in the inference of first term and second term. The first is
supposedly a period of great tribulation and suffering for the masses. It is a
period when they should stretch their patience to the seams because there is
nothing to expect from the politicians. The masses must only survive the period
by waiting. It is a period they must accept to be traumatized by heartless
politicians. Conversely, the second term is a period of illusory prosperity – a
period when the wait in the first term would pay off. The image of prosperity
indicates a period of boom for the masses. It is, however, uncertain whether
this period will truly be that of prosperity going by the negative antecedent
of ruthlessness manifested by the leaders.
The imagery of the
politicians presented to the reader is that of greedy and desperate power
mongers. They become monsters in power who must ruthlessly dictate to the
people. They are the renegades of society who find themselves in the seat of
power only to abuse it. These politicians are the enemies of the people because
they allow the people to be submerged in the pool of misery and want. The
politicians are desperadoes for power as they believe they would win a second
term despite their poor performance, manifested in their asking the people to
wait till they are re-elected.
The futility of
waiting resonates in the third stanza where the poet’s persona refers to the
dreamers of the society who teach the people to wait till they are awake. These
dreamers are a metaphor for insensitive leaders who treat the people with
disdain: “The dreamers teach us to watch till they wake;/ yes, wait till they
make it to another daybreak” (p.50). The dreamers symbolize insensitive leaders
who take the masses for granted. They trample on their rights and privileges.
They derive weird joy in punishing innocent people. They do not think twice about
asking people to keep waiting for them. They are the same politicians in the
second stanza who ask the masses to wait till they are re-elected to nurse any
hope of prosperity. These politicians do not feel responsive enough to work for
the people or to hit the ground running from their first day in office. The
politicians are the dreamers in the third stanza who ask the masses to wait
till they are awake.
The tone of the
stanza is disdainful. The “dreamers” treat the people with contempt by asking
them to wait. The act of waiting till they wake up is open-ended. Their waking
may take longer than necessary. Yet they want the masses to keep waiting. The
verb “teach” in the opening line of the stanza is symbolic of a coordinated
plan by the “dreamers” in all regions of the persona’s country to hold the
masses captive with deceitful indoctrination, a clear case of influencing their
thought and behaviour to learn to wait to no end. “Impliedly, the dreamers of
the land want the people to get used to suffering and pain. The dreamers do not
care if the people are in a critical condition or not. They simply want them to
be used as punishment while they swim in a life of opulence.
The symbol of
daybreak in the second line of the third stanza is that of prosperity and joy
as seen in line four of the poem. The irony however is that the joy so envisioned
or promised is elusive. The politicians are crafty and mendacious. They have no
plan to make the people experience any “daybreak” or “prosperity”. They are
single-minded in subjecting the people to a life of waiting.
The futility of waiting
is reinforced in the last stanza where the persona emphasizes the lot of the
masses to “wait out an entire lifetime” (p.50). The first line of the stanza
summarizes the entire lines of the poem: “They always ask us to keep on waiting
all the time.” It is thus a practice, an art mastered by politicians to subdue
the people and keep them painfully busy with the futile mission of waiting.
These leaders are presented as an unfeeling bunch who have no regard for the
people’s rights, aspirations and humanity.
These are the same
leaders in Ojaide’s “Testimony to the Nation’s Wealth,” who keep the citizenry
poor and hopeless:
An unending
expanse of rain-flushed savannah
With
lost settlements of sorely clad folks
In
thatched and rusted tin homes discovered and
Counted
in preordained censuses and elections
Lonesome
roads of peeled or cracked tarmac
And
potholes inviting a cortege of accidents
At every corner
and intersection of failing paths (p.120)
The first line
glowingly reveals the wealth of the land which is vast. Unfortunately, the land
is occupied by people whose leaders have dehumanized. The allusion to “sorely
clad folks” reveals that the people cannot clothe properly. Their appearance is
scruffy and unpleasant. Again, their shelter is poor and morbid as they live in
“thatched and rusted” tin homes. The imagery evoked in the two foregoing
adjectives is that of poverty and misery. Then people are hungry and hapless.
They are only good for “preordained censuses and elections.” This shows that
leaders in the world of the persona are ruthless and corrupt. They predetermine
censuses and elections for selfish gains. They want to stay in power
perpetually to loot the people’s commonwealth. The people do not matter to them
as they are only good to be counted in “preordained elections.” It is
heart-rending also that roads are poorly built and maintained because they only
invite a “cortege of accidents”, which sadly claimed the lives of the people.
Amid the carnage, the persona bemoans their fate in the hands of their elected representatives
who should speak up for them: “Representatives carousing in faraway Abuja/the
land flaunts a tattered flag of hopeless faces” (p.120). It is an irony that
their elected representatives who should defend them are engrossed in lubricous
acts.
These politicians
or dreamers in their reverie of insensitivity embark on a drinking spree to satisfy
fleshly desires. There is irony in people dying and their leaders are
carousing. This is the type of atrocity committed by leaders who want the
people to keep waiting for them as seen in Ojaide’s “Waiting”. There is
symbolism in the allusion to Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, described as a land
flaunting “a tattered flag of hopeless faces.” If Abuja holds no hope for the
country, it is ironical to assume that the subnational entities would flaunt a
“flag of hope.” In the course of the people, the poet’s persona calls who
pauperize the people, hyenas, a metaphor for beastly people who derive joy in
“scavenging” on others. They collect money that “exceeds entire incomes of many
robust nations” (p.120) but do not deliver democratic dividends to the people.
Diala’s “Waiting”
comes with a more poignant description of the symbolism of waiting itself. The
poem pointedly reflects on the propriety of waiting. When the politicians and
dreamers in Ojaide’s “Waiting” advise the people to wait, it is not because
there is any gain in waiting. When they ask them to wait till their second term
to experience prosperity, it is not because of an envisioned hope.
For Diala,
“Waiting is of the colour of ash” (p.14). If “waiting” itself symbolizes ash, it
implies that the very act of waiting is futile, as expressed in the conceptual framework
of this paper. Ash is a metaphor for grief, sorrow, bereavement and anguish.
The politicians in Ojaide’s “Waiting” undoubtedly want the people to die while
waiting. The second line of Diala’s “Waiting” further describes the act of
waiting as heart-rending. Hear the persona: “The heart aches, but I wait”
(p.14). The heart is connected with emotional stability. So when the
heartaches, the persona’s emotions are in tatters. It is however ironical that
the persona chooses to yet wait in the poem, perhaps, for a departed lover who
promised to return in due course:
The
moments of a lover’s absence
Are
not counted by the hands of a clock
They
are measured by the rhythm of the heart
And each beat is
eternity (p.14)
The futility of
waiting is emphasized in the last line above where “each beat is eternity,”
symbolizing the period of waiting. The absence of the persona’s beloved fills
him with grief. The period of waiting in his absence has been described as an
emotional moment where the time is counted by the heart and not the clock. It
is ironic again that the persona chooses to wait despite its futility.
The persona may be
a hypnotized lover who foresees danger in the act of waiting, yet chooses to do
so. He is like the people in Ojaide’s “Waiting” who are literarily “hypnotized”
to wait for the politicians till they win a second term or wait till they have
woken up from sleep. The act of teaching them to be used to waiting is
hypnotizing. The tool of indoctrination is deployed by the bourgeois class to
perpetually dominate the people. This is the culture which the ruling class
wants to ram on the masses. Hall (1996:33) has maintained that “culture remains
a complex one – a site of convergent interests, rather than a logically or
conceptually classified idea” Carey (1996:65) sees studies relating to culture
as “ideological studies in that it assimilates, in a variety of complex ways,
culture to ideology.” Ideology is hegemonic because it seeks to thrust the
views of the dominant on the dominated. During
(1999:4) defines hegemony as a term used to “describe the relations of
domination … which “involves not coercion but consent on the part of the
dominated (or subalterns)”.
The ideological
persuasion of the persona in Diala’s “Waiting” is influenced by the warped view
of love probably rammed on him by his beloved, whom he must wait for, despite
the futility of doing so. In the last stanza, he exclaims: “Ash is the colour
of waiting/ I wait, but the heartaches” (p.14). The idea of having to wait for
a lover who may never return is hegemonic and repressive. It is a way of
conquering the psychological grit of a person. Right from the first stanza of
the poem, the persona realizes that waiting is futile because it metaphorically
bears the colour of ash. He reinforces
this belief in the last stanza by rearranging the expression; where “Waiting”
played the subject of the sentence, he replaces it with “Ash” in the last
stanza. This symbolizes the oneness of both terms. The persona is thrown into a
state of agony in the act of waiting for his beloved. Metaphors of agony abound
in the poem. “Waiting” itself is a metaphor for sorrow and futility. Ash is a
metaphor for mourning and agony. The use of a “lover’s absence” is metaphorical
of a gap that exists. This is the gap which the poet describes in the
introduction of the book as “a yearning because the cycle is not yet complete”
(Diala 2004: vi). Absence is a metaphor which reinforces the existence of a
hiatus which lies at the heart of the poet’s persona. The repetition of
“waiting”, “wait” and “heart-aches” emphasizes the agony in the mind of the persona.
By extension, it reinforces the futility of waiting itself.
A Reader-response
critic is compelled to analyze what may be responsible for the persona’s
decision to still “wait” despite his admission that “waiting is of the colour
of ash.” The answer lies in the fact that the persona’s heart has been
conquered. He has been made to assimilate the ideology of the hegemonist-lover
on the need to wait. This is the same ideology which the hegemonist politicians
in Ojaide’s “Waiting” pass to the beleaguered masses. Fiske (1996:121) asserts
that in the hegemonic theory, “ideology is constantly up against forces of
resistance.” The politicians of Ojaide’s “Waiting” are the hegemonic forces,
just as the persona’s lover in Diala’s “Waiting” exerts a hegemonic force on
him. These forces want to keep the persona eternally subjugated. They want him
to wait in vain for an illusory moment of joy or reprieve.
It is the same
forces of hegemony flayed by the persona in “I’m Dying, Nigeria, Dying” where
the poem expresses helplessness in the face of insensitive leadership. The poem
is a lone cry for help because the persona is overwhelmed:
I’m
dying, Nigeria, dying
In the
folds of manacles of terror
Wrought
of the glowing mass
Belched forth by
the Emperor’s furnace (p.31)
Symbols of grief
and agony abound in the poem. The repetition of “dying” lends credence to the
anguish of the persona. The metaphor in line two suggests that the leadership
in Nigeria is ruthless. Indeed, “manacles of terror” evokes the imagery of a
people bound against their will. There is the “emperor’s furnace” which
unleashes terror on the people. If the harsh policies of the country’s
leadership make the persona contemplate “dying”, there is also the “mortal
stench/ oozing from corruption forged in the highest places (p.31) in stanza
two. The tone in the excerpt is sorrowful. The hyperbole and personification in
the “mortal stench” that “oozes from corruption” create an image of corrupt
leaders that hold the land to ransom. Every aspect of governance seems to be
submerged in corruption. The allusion to “highest places” as the source of
corruption makes it more certain that those entrusted with the sacred responsibility
of leadership are the perpetrators of corruption.
The persona
therefore seeks a regeneration because the land has been “polluted” by the
leaders of the country. He describes the land in stanza three as “howling” for
cleansing waters” (p.31). It is this regenerative process that may save the
persona from dying.
The implied reader
of these two central poems used in this discourse does not find it difficult to
digest their content. He is already familiar with the grim political condition
in the Nigerian nation. He has been ruled by leaders who do not perform in
their first tenure, and who plead to be given another chance to perform better
in another tenure. He is a reader who has experienced the rudeness and crudity
of poverty and frustration occasioned by harsh economic policies. Certainly, he
has experienced insincere and insensitive leadership.
Conclusion
Ojaide and Diala
have through their anthologies presented their country as a land held captive
by hegemonic forces who frustrate the liberation of the people. Variously
described in the poems as “politicians”, “dreamers”, “emperors” and even
“lovers”, these leaders are determined to compel the citizens to keep waiting
for better times ahead while living in abject poverty and denial in the
present. The two central poems of
“Waiting” by the poets are indicative of their collective belief in the
futility of waiting. Diala has described waiting as bearing the colour of ash,
making the heartache. The metaphor of the lover in the poem is that of a
politician who has cast a spell – an ideology – on the persona to keep him
waiting. The lover knowing full well of the hopelessness of waiting is still
determined to do so at his expense. However Ojaide adopts a more sarcastic approach
to the dominant class, the leadership of his country, questioning the rationale
for waiting. He flays them for asking “us to keep waiting all the time,” having
realized that waiting is futile and vain. The findings of the study are hinged
on the fact that the two poets of Ojaide and Diala coincidentally explore the
metaphor of “waiting” in their poems of the same title to mirror the political
inequalities in their country. The political class is presented as a set of
hegemonists who exploit and subjugate the people. The two poems are
revolutionary because of the revelation that waiting is futile, and is of
colour. Waiting is ash, and ash is waiting, a pun stylistically deployed by
Diala in his “Waiting.” In this sense, the two poets advocate active resistance
against oppressive forces holding down their homeland.
References
Beckett,
S. (1955). Waiting for Godot. Faber
and Faber.
Bressler, C.
(2003). Literary Criticism: An
Introduction to Theory and Practice. Pearson.
Carey,
J. W. (1996). “Overcoming resistance to cultural studies,” in What is Cultural Studies?: A Reader.
Storey, J. (Ed.). Arnold.
Diala,
I. (2004). The Lure of Ash. Nok
Publishers.
Dobie, A.B. (2012). Theory
into Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism. Cengage Learning.
During, S. (1999). The
Cultural Studies Reader. Routledge.
Fiske, J. (1996). “British cultural studies and
television”
n What is Cultural
Studies?: A Reader. Storey, J. (Ed.). Arnold.
Hall,
S. (1996). “Cultural Studies: two paradigms,” in What is Cultural Studies?: A Reader. Storey, J. (Ed.). Arnold.
Ojaide,
T. (2010). The Beauty I Have Seen.
Malthouse.
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