By Dan Amor
In
his short story, "The Madman",
Prof. Chinua Achebe (of blessed memory), easily Africa's most celebrated
novelist of the twentieth century, ventures into a poetic realization of a
disturbing irony. The consuming paradox centres on the protagonist, Nwibe, a
wealthy farmer who has so distinguished himself that he is about to be
initiated into the select, dignified society of men who hold the highest and
most venerable title in the land- the Ozo
title holder.
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| *Chinua Achebe |
Returning from an early
morning work on his farm on a fateful Afor Market day, Nwibe stops to have a
bath at the local stream. Meantime, a desperate madman comes along to quench
his thirst at the stream; he sees Nwibe's loin cloth, gathers it and wraps it
over his nakedness. Angered by the sordid affront, Nwibe runs after the madman
in obvious nakedness thereby turning himself to the original madman.
Symbolically,
this involuntary but tragic exchange of identity between a sane person and a
madman is registered by the jeering, ironic laughter of a taunting madman.
Nature, which seems to be participating passively in this tragic irony,
solemnly echoes the madman's mocking laughter: "the deep grove of the stream amplifying his laughter."
Nwibe, who has been appropriately compared to Okonkwo of Things Fall Apart as a
man of "fierce temper whose
judgement deserts him when he is under its full sway", fully
recognises not only the outrageousness of the madman's affront, but more
significantly, he understands the ominous import of the sacrilegious challenge.
The words Nwibe screams out to the madman: "I
will kill you ... I will whip that madness out of you today", convey,
in fact, more than the obvious threat.
They
also carry the veiled desperation of a man who realises that his precious life
is about to take a certain tragic turn if nothing is immediately done to save
the situation. The condition in which a stark-naked sane man pleads through a
threat with a clothed madman for, of all things, clothes to cover his
nakedness, is rife with a sweeping irony. In his stark nakedness, Nwibe pursues
the fast-retreating clothed madman who is "spare
and wiry, a thing made for speed." In a short while, what Nwibe has
dreamed, swiftly becomes a merciless reality in the irony of mistaken
identities. The involuntary transfer of clothes which only threatens possible
disaster which, in fact, is still laughable, while it remains a private matter
between Nwibe and the madman, suddenly assumes a tragic dimension the moment
the first witness appears on the scene: "Two
girls going down to the stream saw a man running up the slope towards them,
pursued by a stark-naked madman. They threw down their pots and fled
screaming."
