The Freedman in Soyinka's "The Man Died"

Abstract

The Nigerian Civil War fought from 1966 to 1970 has evoked emotions and enthroned writers that have either recaptured their experiences or told imaginative tales based on other’s experiences. But amidst the different structures, the horrific images captured in these works unify these texts as sharing a common interest and resonating a nation’s narrative. In The Man Died, Soyinka, while being held as a prisoner, revivifies his experiences of the war where the bestial acts meted out on man leave him in a silenced state that literally discerns the death of man. This causes the emergence of the freed man, the mind. The mind’s freedom to roam within time in a static body establishes the temporalities between the imprisoned and freed men. This paper adopts Currie’s perception of consciousness and Bhabha’s concept of nation’s narration to show how the mind discerns a chaotic nation, distinguishing the writer as an archival resource. It foregrounds the present as infiltrated with past events, thereby questioning its duration through a nation’s narration.