The Parable Of The Mad Man (2)

Click HERE To Read Part 1

By Dan Amor

As we were saying, can a sane person allow him­self to be driven by some spurious emotion to run stark-naked into a crowded market for whatever reason? The moral implication of the story is obvi­ous. It shows that it is the soci­ety that creates its madmen that also treats its madmen shabbily as though they were not human beings. If, indeed, we are at first comfortable with the way the first madman who opens the story is ill-treated, by the time the story closes, and we are fa­miliar with the fate of Nwibe, we certainly can no longer be complacent about the treatment of the madman. What is more, we are awed by the realization that Nwibe’s troubles have only begun by the time the story ends. The alternate implication is that Nwibe might in the end become truly mad. This situa­tion certainly urges us to the be­lief that the madman who opens the story might have become a madman through an experience similar to that of Nwibe. This is a devastating indictment of so­ciety. 

*Nnamdi Kanu 

This indictment is addressed not only to the stone-aged so­ciety ridden with superstitions and taboos such as Nwibe’s, but also the modern society because Nwibe’s village is in the end only a microcosm of the larger human society. The extreme vulnerability of the individual within the society is the major concern of Achebe in this epic. Man is revealed to be ultimately alone and alienated in society which is supposed to exist for his advantage but which ironi­cally seems to exist to destroy him. Despite the solicitude of relatives, the existential tragedy of Nwibe is his loneliness in the face of a horrendous natural ca­lamity.

Consistent with the system of ironies in this story, water which is a universal symbol of life becomes the source of human tragedy. It is the local stream which invites Nwibe to cleanse and purify himself from dirt that has also invited the madman to quench his thirst and rejuvenate his tired body. Yet these invitations lead inevitably to a tragic collision. Similarly ironic is the fact that the road, which is the universal symbol of life and irrepressible human quest for knowledge, is also that which has tragically crossed the paths of Nwibe and the madman. The irony fur­ther extends to the name of the protagonist himself- “Nwibe”, which translates from Igbo into “a child of the community”.

Such a child is supposed to be loved, respected and helped along by all to achieve his life’s goals. The opposite is ironically the case with the Nwibe of this story. The community as dem­onstrated in the upper class of society- the Ozo title holders and the medicine men- prides itself in its realism, good sense and wisdom. However, when these claims are put to test, the society is not only found want­ing, but is discovered to be in­capable of distinguishing ap­pearance from reality. Hence, the community rather than be­coming the making, is the ruin of this Nwibe.