Introduction to Literary Theories and Criticisms (Enla 422), 2011
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In Arrow of God, by Chenua Achebe, for example, the "rain" (p. 182) and the “rock” (p. 48) represent the disastrous end of the traditional government and the upcoming age long exploitation of the whites on the land of Umuaro. It was a wave of thick rain which went on until Ezeulu's fingers held on to his staff. The rain showered Ezeulu and the one with him heavenly. The rain is there to symbolize the limitless disaster that comes to the traditional government'. The damage came to Umuaro was all against the dripping values, as did the rain that met Ezeulu across his journey. At large, his souff in his goatskin bag is spoiled by the rain to foreshadow the fate of Obika who by then symbolized the strength of the old tradition. Similarly, it is Mr Goodcountry who is symbolized by a rock. He preaches the converters to kill the sacred python by their own. It is his influence that forces oduche to attempt to kill the python. Rock is the hardest mineral having occupied a wide area in a place. The rock represents the white man who inflected a huge loss at Umuaro. It lucidly reflects, then, the year’s long existence of the white man who replaced the old tradition by its own values. (2) In Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Fedallah can be seen as Ahab's shadow, his defiant pagan side wholly unrestrained. Numerous archetypes appear in Moby Dick. The sea is associated both with spiritual mystery (Ahab is ultimately on a spiritual quest to defy God because evil exists) and with death and rebirth (all but Ishmael die at sea, but Ahab's death as if crucified is suggestive of rebirth). Three is symbolic of spiritual awareness; thus we see numerous triads in Moby Dick, including Ahab's three mysterious crew members and the three harpooners. (3) In Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner, for example, we might view Isaac McCaslin's repudiation of the land as an attempt to deny the existence of his archetypal shadow--that dark part of him that maintains some degree of complicity in slavery. When he sees the granddaughter of Jim, and can barely tell she is black, his horrified reaction to the miscegenation of the races may be indicative of his shadow's (his deeply racist dark side's) emergence. Download 333 Kb. Share with your friends:
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