Excremental Vision: A Comparative Study of Armah’s the Beautyful ones are not Yet Bornand Soyinka’s the Interpreters
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Department of English
Abstract
To read Armah’sThe Beatyful Ones Are Not Yet Bornand Soyinka’sThe
Interpretersis to decode the meaning of excremental vision Armah and Soyinka
exploit by using excremental language, especially images of shit and feces, not only
to reverse past colonial representations but also to express postcolonial
disillusionment and to satirize the failures of colonial development and the
corruptions of neocolonial politics. In Armah’s excremental vision, shit and its
corporeal familiars like phlegm, drool, vomit, sweat, piss, and blood emerge as an
index of moral and political outrage in a new Ghana bedeviled by greed and
bureaucratic corruption. Similarly, inThe Interpreters, a story of intellectuals in
decolonized Nigeria, Soyinka uses excremental language to present political and
corporate misdeeds in terms of unhealthy digestion. His characters like Sekoni and
Sogoe are disillusioned because of their project killed by the forces of corruption.