Magical Realism and the Decolonization of Literature: Reclaiming while Integrating Literary Cultures in Ben Okri's Astonishing the Gods

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Reclaiming while Integrating Literary Cultures in Ben Okri’s

Astonishing the Gods

Roos Schiffer St. no. 10166998

MA thesis Literary Studies: English, University of Amsterdam Supervisor Dr. Jane Lewty

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Magical Realism and the Decolonization of Literature: Reclaiming while

Integrating Literary Cultures in Ben Okri’s Astonishing the Gods

Introduction

The development of the postcolonial nation brings with it the development of its literary culture. In Africa, ancient traditions of oral culture have transformed into a unique way of storytelling in its written word. However, the influence of European literary culture is also undeniably present in postcolonial African fiction. Many present-day countries like Nigeria were originally founded by British colonizers, and even after its independence the fact that for many years Nigeria was considered a part of the British Empire cannot be overlooked. Establishing an independent, national and postcolonial literary culture is imperative for a blooming nation. However, the complex and cruel ties to a former colonizer undoubtedly influence its national literature, especially when this colonizer is still a world power, and its language a lingua franca in many situations. In this thesis, I will set out to prove that reclaiming a literary culture can be done without denying a connection to others. To do so, I will look in particular at Ben Okri’s 1995 novel Astonishing the Gods. Okri was born in the year 1959 in west central Nigeria, to an Urhobo father and a half-Igbo mother, but spent years of his childhood and the majority of his adult life in England. Although he is often referred to as a Nigerian author, he also has close ties to England. In many ways, Ben Okri bridges the gap between the two nations. As a resident of both countries, he is familiar with each of their traditions and cultural heritage, and this familiarity is visible throughout his work. The chapters that make up this dissertation will describe the ways in which Ben Okri’s work can assist in the process of decolonizing literature, and how reclaiming African literature can possibly be done while integrating European literary culture, and reaching out to an international audience. Astonishing the Gods is not overtly political; the novel does not pass judgment on any nation or its people. Rather, it provides a hopeful, yet honest narrative that is rich in symbolism and welcomes interpretation. The book follows an invisible young man searching for the secret of visibility. Instead, he finds an island where all the inhabitants are invisible like him. Several spirit guides test the protagonist by making him solve riddles and face life-threatening challenges, hoping that he will realize that his invisibility is actually an advantage. The book concludes with a moment of enlightenment for the protagonist, who finally learns to accept his invisibility. The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the ways in which the works of Ben Okri, a “binational” author, can help further the goal of decolonizing literature, and what part his magical realism as represented in

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Astonishing the Gods can play. Hardly any scholarship has been devoted to this novel in

particular. The reason for this is a mystery to me, and a terrible shame at that.

The novels of Ben Okri are often described as “magical realist”. Although this term might be a contested one, for the purpose of my thesis I shall refer to his literary style as such. It designates a fluid perception of time and space, and an incorporation of “magical” or “supernatural”—or simply traditionally mythical in a non-European sense—elements like spirits, mythical creatures, other dimensions, etc. in a real-world setting. Brenda Cooper rightly states that

Magical realism strives … to capture the paradox of the unity of opposites; it contests polarities such as history versus magic, the precolonial past versus the post-industrial present and life versus death. Capturing such boundaries between spaces is to exist in a third space, in the fertile interstices between these extremes of time or space. (Magical

Realism, 1)

The seemingly oxymoronic nature of the term “magical realism” in fact quite accurately describes how the style works. Narratives that use magical realism blur the boundaries described above by Brenda Cooper. The “magical” aspects play with ideas of realism, but do so in a way that makes the combination appear natural. What the reader perceives as “magical”, the characters find unsurprising, normal aspects of their day-to-day lives. In literature, “magical realism” was first used to describe a genre of fiction that originated in Latin America, and is still commonly used to refer to writers like Alejo Carpentier, Jorge Luis Borges, and Gabriel García Márquez. The use of the term “magical realism” to refer to non-Latin literature is sometimes criticized, as it implies a certain degree of eurocentrism. It has to be said that “magical realism” often does refer to literature that borrows from non-European folklore, but the connotation of the term is hardly negative. It should be understood that the magical realism of Borges is distinctly different from that of e.g. Salman Rushdie or Ben Okri. In this thesis, I am most of all interested in the tools and stylistics often associated with the magical realist style. I want to argue that Ben Okri uses magical realism in Astonishing the Gods to deepen the Euroamerican understanding of African literary traditions, by creating a mythical dreamscape which does not resemble any nation in particular, giving it a symbolic rather than a representative function.

Chapter one of this dissertation will establish in more detail why Ben Okri in particular is an important author to consider. I will analyze how different critics review his work, and where they place Okri in relation to magical realism and other literary traditions. It will be compelling to investigate whether these different views are mutually exclusive, or whether there

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is a common ground that can shed some light on how Okri’s magical realism manifests itself. In this chapter, the introductory points made above will be expanded on in the light of these critiques. Part two of the chapter will analyze essays by and interviews with Ben Okri himself. This will help create a comprehensive basis for the rest of the dissertation, combining academic articles with Okri’s personal opinions about his literary project. Finally, the chapter will briefly introduce Astonishing the Gods, before diving into more detailed analysis in the chapters that follow. The aim of chapter one is to place Ben Okri and his work in the context of my research, and to point out his importance and relevance in as much detail as possible, while also introducing Astonishing the Gods and why this novel is particularly suitable to discuss in the light of the process of decolonizing literature.

Chapter two will analyze Astonishing the Gods more closely. I will work outward from four distinct topics to explore the ways in which the novel represents a search for decolonization. Firstly, the chapter will consider the depiction of the natural world as a symbol for the decolonized space. The second part will look at the city in Astonishing the Gods as a postcolonial urban ideal. After this I will discuss the main narrative of the novel, namely the protagonist’s journey towards enlightenment, in relation to a more universal journey towards decolonization. Finally the chapter will conclude by looking at the importance of both realism and magical realism in decolonizing literature. Chapter three will focus on some of the major themes in Ben Okri’s writing; Childhood, Relearning/Healing, Universality, and Magic. These themes recur throughout Okri’s fiction and non-fiction, and close readings working outward from them will help to support the idea that Okri’s views of the postcolonial world are expressed in Astonishing the Gods.

The final chapter of this thesis will consider Astonishing the Gods and Okri’s philosophies in relation to broader contextual issues regarding the decolonization of literature. The chapter will bring thoughts from the first three chapters together, while furthering the argument by linking them to the topics “literature and nation” and “reclamation through integration”. In the first part I will look at issues of language and nationality. In the second half of chapter four I will return to some of the key elements of this thesis, to see how Ben Okri’s literature can assist the process of decolonization and reclamation, without denying a connection to other literary cultures with his universalist fiction.

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I

On Magical Realism

The aim of the first chapter of this dissertation is to create a comprehensive critical framework regarding Ben Okri’s magical realism. This chapter is primarily observational, so as to provide a clear view of existing criticism that will serve as a basis for my line of argument. The first part of the chapter will look at academic articles that concern themselves with Ben Okri’s writing, what their common views are and where they divert. In the second part I will look at essays by and interviews with Ben Okri, to see how he himself reflects on the magical aspects and important themes in his writing. Finally, I will briefly introduce Astonishing the Gods, which will be further explored and more closely read in the chapters to follow.

1.1. The ‘Third Space’: Critical Approaches

Scholarship on Ben Okri shows three apparent stances on his affiliation with magical realism. Several critics that concern themselves with the works of Okri have little trouble referring to him as a magical realist writer, although their opinions on what “magical realism” entails differs slightly. Others are critical of the term, either in relation to Ben Okri specifically or as a literary style more generally. Finally, there is another group of scholars who try to omit the term “magical realism” altogether, and rather focus on the “magical”1_{aspects in Okri’s oeuvre as}

representative of his worldview. They do not see it as a conscious choice but instead claim that the entanglement of the “magical” and the “real” is merely an African way of portraying life more accurately. Although these attitudes appear to clash, there is a general acceptance that Okri’s novels present an interplay of magic and reality. The objections to the term “magical realism” are mostly based on the supposed connotations of it; its links to postcolonialism and postmodernism, its Eurocentric implications. The majority of articles written on Ben Okri’s work do have similar views on multiple levels, and themes such as Hybridity, the Sublime and neo-Romanticism, Transformation and Self-Actualization, and the Material and Spiritual Realm recur throughout. By reflecting on several academic readings of Okri’s work and looking for these underlying similarities, I want to present a comprehensive study of Ben Okri. Rather than dwelling on the complexities of the term “magical realism,” I will take it at face value at this stage, and instead create a critical framework for Okri’s fiction without focusing too much on the contradictory political implications that the critics link to the magical realist categorization.

1_{E.g. the amalgamation of the spirit world and the human world, the fluid perception of time, transfiguration,} etc.

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A pivotal text that explores magical realism in West African fiction is Brenda Cooper’s surprisingly titled “Magical Realism in West African Fiction” (1998). Her exposé is compelling because it presents not merely an inclusive overview, but also introduces the complex contradictions that exist around magical realism. Cooper does voice a clear opinion on the subject, but at times loses track of her argument in a spiral of inconsistency, making the conclusion of her book slightly surprising. She clearly explains her view of magical realism on the first page of the book2, but takes a step back when she states that “[m]agical realist writers have an urge to demonstrate, capture and celebrate ways of being and of seeing that are uncontaminated by European domination. But at the same time, such authors are inevitably a hybrid mixture, of which European culture is a fundamental part” (17). After claiming that there is a “third space” in which magical realism exists, Cooper goes against herself at length, presenting ways in which several writers are more on one side of the paradox than the other. She moves between these two views quite a lot. Early on, she acknowledges:

Hybridity, the celebration of ‘mongrelism’ as opposed to ethnic certainties, had been shown to be a fundamental aspect of magical realist writing. A syncretism between paradoxical dimensions of life and death, historical reality and magic, science and religion, characterizes the plots, themes and narrative structures of magical realist novels … The plots of these fictions deal with issues of borders, change, mixing and syncretizing. And they do so, and this point is critical, in order to expose what they see as a more deep and true reality than conventional realist techniques would bring to view. (32)

However, in the chapter on Okri, she states that “[on] the one hand, [Okri] opposes the slavish imitation of Western forms and ideas. This gives rise to the search for a pure, pre-colonial past, linked to projects of national reconstruction. On the other hand, there is his love of change and celebration of the transformations arising out of interactions with other cultures” (74). Cooper appears to not be quite convinced of the idea of total hybridity, the existing in a third space, even though she presents this image herself on the first page of her study. She is very much concerned with the paradox, which is much more interesting to her than the third space itself. Although she does not present a particularly negative opinion of Ben Okri, she concludes her book with the statement:

However, [B. Kojo] Laing, Okri and [Syl] Cheney-Coker, are ultimately themselves contradictory hybrids of cosmopolitan magical realism and nationalistic decolonization. For all the enormous intellectual challenge of their work, Okri an Laing all too often fall into the labyrinthine web of their own linguistic threads and leave the reader stranded. (226)

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This conclusion supports her idea that total hybridity is almost impossible to attain, that there is always some partiality involved, even if a writer attempts to exist in a third space. Cooper concludes that although Okri attempts in his fiction to further the process of decolonization in Nigerian national literature, he is too “cosmopolitan”; he writes for a predominantly British audience.

A scholar who has few objections to the idea of hybridity in Okri’s fiction is Mabiala Kenzo. In his article “Religion, Hybridity, and the Construction of Reality in Postcolonial Africa” (2004), Kenzo argues that Okri combines two types of magical realism, “one in which the magic is in the style and another in which the magic is in the material” (256). Whereas the first type creates a magical parallel universe, distinct from ordinary life, in the second type “[it] is reality itself that is magical, fantastic, fabulous, or simply nightmarish” (257). Kenzo states that Okri’s world “is a single coherent world in which the spiritual dimension of life is intrinsically linked to the physical which it shapes. This universe, though conceptually coherent, is not existentially harmonious, but cacophonic. Okri’s genius is in the fact that he discerns within this cacophony the creative force of hybridity” (258). Hybridity for Kenzo, particularly in an African context, “supports the idea that social and subjective identities are socio-cultural constructs which result from complex ‘cut-and-mix’ processes” (260) and “[t]he universe [Okri] creates is, indeed, a quilt made up of pieces from different sources” (261). Whereas both Cooper and Kenzo argue that the theme of hybridity plays an important role in the fiction of Ben Okri, Cooper focuses primarily on the political agenda that might be behind the use of it, arguing that if the “third space” is inhabited, which is highly unlikely, a writer can create a universe where all is equal, while Kenzo claims that the use of hybridity simply acknowledges the fact that “identities are socio-cultural constructs”. Although this observation does have political implications, Kenzo does not attach an ideology to Ben Okri’s work the way Cooper does. In addition, Cooper is of the opinion that Okri fails to achieve magical realism’s ultimate goal; objective hybridity. Instead, she claims that he is too cosmopolitan—which can be read as a synonym for “Eurocentric” in her use of it. Kenzo, on the other hand, regards hybridity as a crucial aspect of magical realism, if not as its main characteristic. For Kenzo, hybridity is a motive rather than a goal.

Although the title suggests it, Kenzo does not see magical realism as intricately related to a postcolonial effort, rather he acknowledges it as a result of colonialism. The style in itself rethinks the African context, not because it wants to, but because it has to. Critic Christopher Warnes argues that magical realism does have reclamation as a central goal. In Magical Realism

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colonialism’s often brutal enforcing of selectively-conceived modernity, magical realism … seeks to reclaim what has been lost: knowledge, values, traditions, ways of seeing, beliefs” (12). He furthermore makes the observation that although Okri’s magical realism is to a certain extent inspired by an African literary tradition, this does not mean that his writing is irrelevant in a global context. He states that “the rejection of realism is also founded in an awareness … that Western-style realism is epistemologically allied to the kinds of reason and rationality that entered into a productive alliance with colonialism” (148), which implies that the use of this type of magical realism in fact serves as a statement regarding colonialism. Kenzo and Warnes voice similar opinions throughout their criticism, but perhaps they are not critical enough. All three scholars mentioned above share the idea that the main objective of magical realism is hybridity, urging the reader to inhabit Cooper’s “third space”. They agree that this is also Ben Okri’s goal, or guiding motive at least, but only Cooper suggests that the third space is an ideal that cannot (yet) be achieved. It is perhaps a more pessimistic view of where we stand in the process of decolonization, though arguably also slightly more realistic.

Not all academics are fond of the magical realist label. To reflect on this, it is worthwhile to consider two critics who dislike it for distinctly different reasons. Douglas McCabe rejects magical realism and instead argues that Ben Okri’s writing is more in line with New Ageism (“‘Higher Realities’: New Age Spirituality in Ben Okri’s The Famished Road”). McCabe recognizes a Western fascination with non-western spiritualties, and claims that Okri plays into this fascination, creating narratives that are specifically geared towards a European audience. It seems that McCabe takes Cooper’s views to an extreme, as his conclusion suggests that Ben Okri fashions the African worldview into something that is easier to “understand” for Western readers. It cannot be denied that there are intriguing parallels between Okri’s writing and the New Age belief-set. For instance, McCabe rightly notes:

New Age spirituality is a movement in which salvation and perfection are achieved not by doing good works or obeying divine authority or having faith in a higher power, but by looking inward to the Self and finding ways to free it from the anxieties and hang-ups and perceptual cookie-cutters of the ego. For New Agers, global justice, ecological harmony, and individual self-actualization go hand in hand. (7)

However, there are serious flaws in McCabe’s argument. His criticism of the magical realist label as carrying a western bias can just as easily be applied to a New Age characterization. He states himself that “the perennialist and detraditionalizing facets of New Age eclecticism work to commodify the spiritualities of other cultures, erasing the rich histories and complex present circumstances in which those spiritualities are embedded and, thereby, reducing them to

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something more amenable to the Western consumer” (10). The manifestation of appropriation inside New Ageist writing is severely critiqued by many, but a writer like Okri—who is in fact African—can hardly be accused of appropriating African culture. Labeling him as a New Ageist is clearly misguided. It appears that McCabe confuses the objectives of the writer with the misinterpretations by certain readers.

Sarah Fulford also rejects the magical realist label, but for different reasons. In her essay “Ben Okri, the Aesthetic, and the Problem with Theory” she argues that Okri “shrugs off not only national labels, but also the theoretical categories of post-colonial, postmodernist, and magic realist” (233) and that “he imagines an uncolonized cultural space” (234). It is striking that although Fulford clearly expresses aversion to the usage of these categories in the case of Ben Okri, her description of the shrugging off of labels is quite similar to what Cooper refers to as the “third space”. Furthermore, Fulford rejects the New Age argument, placing Okri in a neo-Romantic context instead. She states that “[like] a neo-Romantic prioritizing sensibility over sense, Okri’s aesthetic rejects the Enlightenment reason of western modernity in favor of astonishment, wonder, and enchantment” (245), and without even mentioning McCabe specifically, goes on to say that “[as] a neo-Romantic rather than an old hippy, Okri turns to a new aesthetic as it provides him with the utopian impulse for revision, action and change” (256). Fulford emphasizes the importance of art and beauty in Okri’s writing. She argues that both transcend politics; that the political implications of art and beauty are that they can exist without political implications. Fulford replaces the magical realist label with a neo-Romantic one. This works up to a certain extent, as it helps remove colonial implications, yet only covers a few aspects of Okri’s literary project. Because she is so careful to avoid politics, she creates an incomplete image. The issue she avoids—Okri’s national identity—is a defining issue for his work.

Up to this point, McCabe appears to be the odd one out, but even though he takes a radically different stance on Okri’s fiction, the New Age label he attaches to it makes visible many intriguing connections between Okri’s worldview and the New Age interpretation of non-Western belief systems. Although the critics do not agree on terminology, their underlying ideas are all actually very similar; Ben Okri’s objective is to create a fiction that defies boundaries. Between nations, between realms, between the real and the magical. There is a hint of neo-Romanticism in his work, the Sublime is a returning theme3, and all recognize that the decolonization of literature is an important motive in his work. Although they claim to disagree,

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the theories offered by above critics are more alike than they think themselves. A scholar that offers a balanced perspective that unifies all that has been discussed in an impressively comprehensive and logical way is Maurice O’Conner in his 2008 book The Writings of Ben

Okri: Transcending the Local and the National. He is one of the few critics that emphasizes

Okri’s binationality. He suggests that an author like Okri, who has moved to the United Kingdom from an African country, can be classified as Afro-Modern, referring to a literature style in which “postcolonial subjects negotiate new spaces within an ‘alien’ culture to play out those complexities that come about when occupying the metaphorical border space of identity” (101). He connects the magical to this idea by claiming that “Okri explicitly states in Wilkinson (1992)4 that one cannot ignore the fantastic nature of Nigerian reality. The magic elements in his fiction thus correspond to a world view that people believe as reality, rather than an aesthetic exercise in mythopoetic” (98). The hybridity of what O’Connor calls the Afro-Modern, does not center around the fact that there are binaries that can be combined to make a new whole. O’Connor argues that “decolonization” is not a simple process where these binaries are overcome, and also claims that the histories of the respective countries cannot be denied. Instead, this hybrid represents “new sites of inscription that are valid in their own right and do not have to be exclusively theorised as what they are resisting” (100). O’Connor’s view of hybridity is much more balanced than Cooper’s “celebration of ‘mongrelism’”, but also implies that Kenzo’s argument is still too focused on the construction of hybridity, rather than its goal. Whereas Kenzo claims that hybridity serves to show that identity is constructed, O’Connor takes this point further when he states that

Okri’s hybrid prose draws attention to the constructed nature of these fixed notions of identity and culture, and his literary career is testimony to the fact that culture is in a permanent process of transition … Seen in this light, the unifying idea of Okri’s literary project can be defined as a manifestation of the African imagination through the English book which produces a cultural difference that embraces all humanity. (144)

In other words, Okri’s hybridity according to O’Connor helps explore a new space, not a ‘mongrel’ but an evolution5_.

Taking these academic approaches into consideration while trying to construct an accurate image of magical realism appears challenging when academics seemingly disagree on

4_{Wilkinson, Jane. Talking with African Writers. London: James Currey, 1992.}

5_{O’Connor’s understanding of the notion of hybridity is one that I support. For future reference, when using the} term it can be read as follows: “the process of hybridity is not a simple creolisation of rigid ‘traditions’, but the translation of a sophisticated indigenous ontology into the English novel form that simultaneously maintains the incommensurability of its cultural difference” (O’Connor, 136).

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many levels. As I have tried to argue in this chapter so far, the underlying ideas are actually quite similar. When we take away their judgment of the terminology, and distance ourselves slightly from ideas of what has been achieved by Ben Okri, and instead focus on the objectives of his work, many of the critics are actually making the same claims. In Okri’s literature, there is an emphasis on transition and change, on identity within a cultural context, on enchantment and myth, but mostly on hybridity. The main objective of Okri’s work is to come as close as possible to Cooper’s “third space,” O’Connor’s Afro-Modernity, Fulford’s uncolonized space. He wants to create a discourse to help a European readership understand, while simultaneously helping an African readership feel understood. Doing so is not as easy as pointing to the issues and making people admit they were wrong or right. Instead, there needs to be a new space, where borders and binaries can be rethought in the present-day socio-political and literary context. Nations around the world are developing, and countries that were once colonized are becoming democratic, economic world powers. New and inspiring literary voices have unique stories from all over the world to tell. The books we read are no longer written solely by old, white Englishmen. Cultures are now richer and more diverse than ever, and academia and politics cannot stay behind.

1.2. Dream Logic: Interviews & Essays

It is striking that Ben Okri’s own views are not often taken into consideration in critical readings of his work, although he has no problem with sharing them. From his interviews and essays it becomes clear that Okri is an optimistic man, who believes in a transcendental unity of mankind, underlying all that we do. He expresses a view of his incorporation of the magical that is similar to the one presented above, as a necessity for his particular voice. He believes that art should not be easy, because life is not easy, art should not be rational, because life is not rational. In other words, art should represent life in all its illogicality. Expanding on this, he also states in an interview with Charles Henry Rowell that as soon as art—albeit literature, music, or paintings—is produced, it belongs to the world, not merely to the person who created it. This is in itself not a controversial statement, but Okri makes an interesting connection to literature in the postcolonial world when he states:

this human oneness means that the great dreams that a people have don’t belong only to them. We don’t live in a world where people are isolated from one another … we’re all impinged on by other people’s dreams and ideas about how the world should be. Finally, once it enters into the realm of art, it has to say goodbye to the people that it came from … every important work of art is a world dream, a world contribution. (217)

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With this observation it becomes clear why the theme of hybridity is so often discussed in relation to the work of Ben Okri. In his view, literature contributes to a “world dream”, meaning not merely one people, but all people. If this is his philosophy it is not surprising that hybridity is an important aspect of his work. He links the notion of artistic freedom to his idea of universal freedom, saying that “[w]e’re content to send astronauts to space and to distant planets, and we restrict our artists to their culture and their race and their tradition? That is madness. Freedom is universal; limiting the imagination doesn’t make sense to me” (218). If limiting the imagination is a consequence of national boundaries and implications of race/tradition, a solution according to Okri might be to look for the universal in art. Although he acknowledges that the African worldview plays a significant role in his fiction, he also stresses that similar stories are present throughout cultures. In an essay for The Guardian, he makes the point that “[g]reat literature … transcends subject … If the subject were the most important thing we would not need art, we would not need literature. History would be sufficient. We go to literature for that which speaks to us in time and outside time” (“A Mental Tyranny Is Keeping Black Writers from Greatness”). Okri views great literature as having transcendental qualities. Not merely does it transcend subject, it transcends boundaries of tradition and culture. He is “fascinated by similar threads that run throughout philosophy that appear to come from the primordial tradition … These threads running through so many cultures give me a sense not of diversity, but of one source, a unity. Myths tell parallel stories” (Gray, 9). This statement offers an intriguing insight into Okri’s use of the magical. He refers to it himself as “dream-logic narrative” in a short article on The National (“Ben Okri: Novelist as Dream Weaver”). He argues that "[e]veryone is looking out of the world through their emotion and history. Nobody has an absolute reality". A dream logic is arguably the closest Okri can get to a universally understandable universe, a fictional world that everyone can make sense of in their own way. However, creating a universal literary experience is a process that needs a universal awareness. Okri does not assume that waiting patiently will change the world and that people miraculously will unite as one. In his essay “Healing the Africa Within” he argues that “[we] love the America in us. We love the Europe in us. The Asia in us we are beginning to respect. Only the Africa in us is unloved, unseen, unappreciated … The first step towards the regeneration of humanity is making whole again all these great continents within us” (A Time for New Dreams, 138). This is Ben Okri’s objective, to make people see that “[we] have to learn to love the Africa in us if humanity is going to begin to know true happiness on this earth” (137). He attempts to do this with his literary style, one that looks for that which makes us all the same, but one that simultaneously defies rationality and sensibility, for it would be a mistake to assume that people

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are rational and sensible. He believes in the magical “third space” where we are all the same, and believes that we are making progress as a people. In an interview with Nana Yaa Mensah, Okri states that “There is an irresistible process of evolution … Don’t you see how history seems to be accelerating? That it’s not possible any more to keep peoples so rigidly apart and to keep this homogeneity so completely intact? Every day, migration is changing all these hallowed corners, these places that wanted to keep themselves pure and on top” (16), once more proving that Okri believes in the possibility of transcending national boundaries in literature.

1.3. Introducing Astonishing the Gods

Astonishing the Gods (1995) is the story of an invisible man who sets out to find the secret of

visibility. Instead, he finds an island where all the other people are also invisible, where several spirit guides teach him valuable lessons about the universe and life. The world of Astonishing

the Gods is mythical and dream-like, and it does not resemble any particular country. All the

reader knows is that it is not the protagonist’s native land, but he must find his place in it nonetheless. The dream-like qualities cannot merely be seen in the way the island is described. The narrative progresses in a way that is reminiscent of a dream, where creatures and surroundings transform and logic is not just non-existent, it is also not expected by anyone. An acceptance of the dreamscape reality is not unusual for West African literature6, but the setting in an already imaged location enables readers that are not familiar with this type of literature to make sense of it by simply linking it to Ben Okri’s “dream logic”. Sola Ogunbayo recognizes in Astonishing the Gods a narrative about change. He explains that “The change is to challenge a current ideological process which has attributed universality to certain issues that are highly contingent. To challenge the hegemonic structure of institutionalised iniquity and inequity by searching for alternative patterns is the change that the nameless hero of Astonishing the Gods seeks for” (“Prophetic Myth in Selected Fiction of Ben Okri,” 49). Ogunbayo’s reading will be further explored in chapter two, but it is interesting to note at this stage that the narrative of

Astonishing the Gods can be interpreted in this highly symbolic way, one where the protagonist

does not merely represent one man’s search for meaning, but an entire nation if not continent’s struggle. Although the novel is short, it uses highly symbolic and poetic language, and the ideas presented through the story have several levels of interpretation. Moreover, Astonishing the

Gods is optimistic. The struggle is worthwhile, the novel ends with a kind of absolution. It is

6_{See e.g. Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952), inspired by Yoruban folktales, in which the} protagonist searches for his tapster in lands of the living and the dead, where he encounters many spirits and supernatural creatures.

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an idealistic piece, but by no means radical. The book asks for acknowledgement, appeasement, and acceptance, and in doing so it represents the objectives that the critics and Okri himself deem important. The following chapters will provide an in-depth reading of Astonishing the

Gods, taking into consideration critical essays about the novel itself, but also essays that deal

with decolonization in literature more generally. Some of these theories have not yet been applied to the work of Ben Okri, and only a few academic articles deal with Astonishing the

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II

Astonishing the Gods as Decolonial Narrative

In this chapter I will explore how Astonishing the Gods represents a search for decolonization on multiple levels. The first part will explore the use of the natural world to symbolize the universality of the human experience. Using Sarah Fulford’s article, briefly discussed in chapter one, I will analyze the significance of the link to neo-Romanticism, and how its ideas connect to both magical realism and the project of decolonization. Part two will move from the natural world to the city, using Sara Upstone’s article “Writing the Postcolonial Space” which specifically deals with Okri and his use of the city as representative of political progress and the search for identity and community as a touchstone. This section will also incorporate texts by Abiola Irele and Roger A. Berger, who deal with issues of African writing and decolonization more generally. Their ideas on community and the national versus the global are worth considering in the light Upstone’s argument. The third section will analyze the main narrative of the story, using Sola Ogunbayo’s aforementioned article, his notion of the “Journey Archetype” and the theme of visibility. I will take issue with his individualistic approach, and present a way in which the journey of narrative can be seen in a universal light. In the final section I will consider the language of decolonization. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza and Kwaku Larbi Korang are critical of the incorporation of the magical by way of helping the process of decolonizing literature, and instead prefer a more realist approach. The section will take their arguments into consideration and argue that both realism and magical realism play a vital role in decolonizing literature, albeit on different levels.

2.1: Nature and Neo-Romanticism

There is a compelling link in Sarah Fulford’s essay between neo-Romanticism, magical realism and the decolonized space (or rather, in her words, “uncolonized space”). She recognizes a connection between Okri’s writing and ideas of the Sublime, stating that “Okri’s aesthetic deliberately evades an Enlightenment rationale of being able to chart, to categorize, and to know” (244). She states that for Okri “art is overwhelming, it wells over the brim of our understanding or the limits we place upon it and tangles with our unconscious or the irrational” (249), and that the artists serves as “a shaman … whose role is to conjure astonishment and enchantment” (245). Okri achieves both by obscuring the boundaries between internal and external, reality and magic. In this way, these neo-Romantic ideals work together with the magical realist style of writing, resulting in literature not “as religion, but literature as spiritual

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awakening” (258), forming an uncolonized space that has supernatural, overwhelming elements, yet presenting an ideal that can be pursued.

Astonishing the Gods is a highly symbolic book, and there are multiple sections that

show how Okri goes about incorporating enchantment and ideology. To elaborate on this I want to look at the chapters in which the protagonist is faced with the challenge of crossing an invisible bridge. In these early chapters, the protagonist is confronted with a “bridge, completely suspended in the air, held up by nothing that he could see … composed entirely of mist” (16). His first spirit guide urges him to try and cross it, regardless of his fear of perishing. Not crossing the bridge would mean disappearing. The guide tells him “you will be worse than nowhere. Everything around you will slowly disappear. Soon you will find yourself in an empty space … You will become the statue of your worst and weakest self” (17). The protagonist is left to find a way to cross the abyss by himself. He is determined to try, but is held back by a sense of peace and calm while the world around him fades away. The nothingness surrounding him “seemed the perfect place to rest, the safest harbour from so much anxious questing after visibility” (20). His fear of failure causes the protagonist to find comfort in the idea of disappearing without even attempting to progress, but he soon realizes that “the nothingness that was devouring the visible world was now beginning to devour him” (20). It is critical to note that later, the protagonist refers to the bridge as “the bridge of self-discovery” (30) and that this section of the book can thus be interpreted as representing a struggle for exactly that: self-discovery. However, there is a level of threat present that implies more than just any person’s search for selfhood. The fact that not trying to cross the bridge would result in a stagnant state of terror, and that “it is better to try to cross that bridge and fail, than to not try at all” (18) suggests an urgency, a responsibility even. The protagonist reflects that “he would remember that terror also has its enchantment and uses. It was the terror of what he saw that probably woke him up to the last moment of his old life” (21). The world would quite literally fall away unless he attempts to contribute to progress, and perishing in the act of doing so would be better than to stay behind and become meaningless and useless.

The bridge has several forms. These forms are the four elements: fire, water, stone, air. Nature mimics the world here, and a single man’s powerlessness in the face of it is reminiscent of the Sublime image7. The protagonist for instance describes that “[t]he white winds whipped

7_{The awe-inspiring effects of the vastness of the natural world stir deep emotions in the protagonist. The Sublime} was first described in the first century AD in “On the Sublime” (Peri hupsous), a text ascribed to Longinus. He argued that a capable writer/speaker has the power to cause “transport” or ekstasis in the audience by passionate expression and “loftiness of thought”. The term was subsequently used by Edmund Burke (in Philosophical

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the last spaces on the highest mountain and all he could see below was the pure whiteness of oblivion … He felt that he was living the meaning of his life for the first time” (22). The difference here is that rather than observing its greatness from a distance, the protagonist has to face it head-on. The faster he runs, the more the natural forces resist him. When he tries to run back, “the dancing yellow flames raced down from his hair and began to consume his flesh” (24). The protagonist is powerless to these forces, he has to keep adjusting, relearning how to move forward, in order to survive. Moreover, it becomes very clear that running, panic, desperation do not help. As is stated in the novel, “the most sublime lessons possible were always learned and relearned” (28). In Astonishing the Gods, all the protagonist’s efforts are eventually rewarded, and when “he did look back, however, he found himself at the end of the most magnificent bridge he would ever see” (30). Once the crossing is completed, and the protagonist has reached a safe distance, the bridge becomes a testament of glorious endurance. Fulford calls Okri a “Blakean visionary”, as “there is ultimately no sense of retreat or withdrawal in Okri’s aesthetic, but rather greater engagement as he believes art should intensify our experience of the world” (257). The confrontational nature of this episode in the novel suggests that you can run but cannot hide, and that it is better to trust your instincts in a moment of terror, than to rationalize and overthink the situation. Although the safe distance is removed, the instinctual and irrational mode of thought does imply a sense of Romanticism in Astonishing

the Gods.

2.2: The City as Postcolonial Space

Moving on from the natural to the urban environment in Astonishing the Gods, the idea of the City as a postcolonial space is explored by Sara Upstone in her article “Writing the Post-Colonial Space: Ben Okri’s Magic City and the Subversion of Imperialism”. She discussed the idea mainly in relation to Okri’s The Famished Road trilogy, but several aspects of her theory can be applied to Astonishing the Gods as well, even though the two books differ significantly in setting. The Famished Road is set in a nameless African country during a civil war, whereas the island in Astonishing the Gods appears desolate as its inhabitants are invisible and often quiet. Yet Upstone’s more general arguments about the city space offer a powerful starting

observer ought to be safely distanced from a dangerous situation to experience a “delightful horror”, see e.g. PB Shelley’s “Mont Blanc” (1816). Later Kant divides Burke’s definition of the Sublime into two kind, namely the “mathematical sublime” (sublime of magnitude) and the “dynamic sublime” (terror at safe distance), in his Critique

of Judgment from 1790. He also contends that the sublime is in the mind of the observer rather than in the object

that inspires it. The notion of the Sublime has since been written about by philosophers like Schopenhauer, Hegel, Lyotard, and many others.

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point for an analysis of its representation in Astonishing the Gods. She states that “the city is the wider world, an unnamed archetype of all conquered places, a space in which the issues of colonialism are played out, mirrored, often without an awareness on the part of the city’s inhabitants that this is their cause, or that they hold this wider significance” (149). When the city is first seen by the protagonist of Astonishing the Gods, he proclaims that “[t]he buildings, in their perfection, looked like some kind of dream-created illusion. He was puzzled by the monumentality of things” (8-9). The perfect and monumental quality of the island’s buildings can be ascribed to their archetypal appearance. It might not look like any particular city, but it does resemble what a city looks like in a person’s mind. It is a dream-created illusion of “grandeur and majesty” (8), a stereotype of the perfect city. However, the city on the island does not always look the same; it quite literally transforms before the protagonist’s eyes: “all about him, the city was yielding its forms. Houses seemed to turn into liquid … fountains dissolved into fragrances. Palaces became empty spaces where trees dwelt in solitude” (40). Upstone describes the city as “constantly changing – not under the direct pressure of real events, but due to the altered conception that such events inspire” (150). If the original city was a representation of the colonial ideal, the protagonist’s experiences on the island alter the way in which he perceives it, according to his shifting notions of what it should look like.

The protagonist comes to the island looking for an answer. He is invisible and wants to learn the secret of visibility. The text being highly symbolic, it is open to interpretation. Arguably, the protagonist of Astonishing the Gods stands for the African voice that wants to find visibility in a European language. This is, in a way, what Okri is doing as a writer, and the themes of visibility apply nicely. In this light, the transformation of the city—which happens as the main character of Astonishing the Gods becomes wiser—stands for the reclamation of the African voice, starting from the European archetype, and changing gradually into a more authentic one. In his compelling exposé titled The African Imagination: Literature in Africa &

the Black Diaspora (2001), Abiola Irele explores “a coherent field of self-expression by Black

writers in relation not only to a collective experience but also to certain cultural determinants that have given a special dimension to that experience” (4). He makes the important observation that the idea of Africa itself exists in a more global context due to the colonial past, and colonialism’s influence on not only the external vision of it as a continent, but also its inner workings, its border, its nationalities. He states that “precisely because of the developments in the New World and their consequences for our notion of Africa, the term “African literature” itself can be restricting, since it excludes a dimension of experience that brought it into being in the first place” (7). It implies that even the use of a term like “African literature” has a colonial

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connotation, that the works are “situated in relation to a global experience that embraces both the precolonial and the modern frames of reference” (7). Roger Berger recognizes this trend, and argues that “any reading of African literature … must be both specific and global—and must account both for the synchronic realities that emerge from the localized experience of specific writers and for the diachronic, historical developments that presented different imperatives for different historically situated writers” (“Decolonizing African Autobiography,” 47). A representation of an African world, leading from this, always also has to bear in mind its global context. It appears that Africa in its own right has no place in the international literary milieu. Irele summarizes this idea as follows:

Perhaps the most fruitful way of characterizing modern African literature in European languages in order to understand what appears to be its double formal relation … is to see it as an effort to reintegrate a discontinuity of experience in a new consciousness and imagination. For the modern African writer, it has not been enough to attempt to come to terms with that experience; rather, in the new literature, what we encounter is a constant interrogation of both self and the original community to which that self is felt to relate in a fundamental way. (16)

The city of Astonishing the Gods represents this interrogation, and the protagonist eventually finds this self, the invisible self: “[h]e didn’t see the things of the city; he saw the things that weren’t there … He saw how alive the invisible places were” (64). With this, the African and European blend into one; the visible archetype and the invisible man’s perception of it. Returning to Upstone, “instead of national or regional affiliation, there is what may be described as a hybridity that transcends such categorization in favour of a universal humanism” (151-2). In a world where the visible façade of the city is the archetype of the colonial ideal city, a “new consciousness and imagination” allow the protagonist to re-contextualize it. This results in a working together of opposites. The “solid facades, the strong lines, the massive abodes, the square-shaped clusters of rooftops, imposing on the outside, hid tenderness and gardens on the inside” (Astonishing the Gods, 65). That this tenderness lies hidden at the city’s core, means that it is harder to discover, but also increases its significance. Once the global context of the novel is acknowledged, the reader can peel back its layers in order to reveal the narrative in its own right.

2.3: The Journey Archetype

The development of the protagonist on the island is further explored by Sola Ogunbayo. He introduces the idea of the Journey Archetype in his essay “Prophetic Myth in Selected Fiction

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of Ben Okri”. Ogunbayo makes several appealing observations about Astonishing the Gods, but there are levels on which he fails to place the novel in an accurate context. Although the underlying ideas of the paper are compelling, he focuses too little on the international implications of the Journey Archetype he discusses. He explains that

The Journey Archetype is about a hero in search of some truth to restore order and harmony to the land. It often includes the series of trials and tribulations that the hero faces along the way … Okri’s interest hinges on transformation and change … the quest for transformation and change personifies the process of seeking out new options; tearing down what no longer serves … For the perennial issues in Africa … the Journey Archetype is apt in capturing the lost values such as discipline, collectivity, respect, communality and hard work. (42-3)

Looking at Astonishing the Gods using this approach is a valuable set up for the discussion of the novel as representative of the journey towards a decolonized literature. However, Ogunbayo instead chooses to focus more on the individual journey of self-actualization for the postcolonial subject. He states that “[t]o save Africa in this century the inner rugged individual must brave loneliness and isolation to seek out new paths” (43). Of course this is not an incorrect reading of the text—the reader follows an individual searching for his purpose—but there are many ways in which the narrative seems to represent a more collective ideal. An obvious example is the simple fact that the protagonist has no name, he is a vessel for a general ambition, he is no one in particular and thus stands for everyone. Furthermore, like a young free nation, the protagonist has to re-dream, re-imagine, re-contextualize the world and his place in it. Only when he succeeds in this, after imagining the “master dream” in which “the people promised to the heavens that out of their agony they would make a wonderful destiny … they pledged to initiate on earth the first universal civilization where love and wisdom would be as food and air” (131), can he join the invisible illustrious ones. They gather to share their visions for the future, much like a union of countries gathers to solve world issues. Ogunbayo does not oppose these bigger ideas underlying the text. He states for instance that “[i]n Okri’s mythic view, the future could be saved from the incongruence of divide-and-rule tacticians, if only there were a strong sense of stressing socio-political harmony and institutional coherence” (52), but shirks from reading the text in a universalist way, favoring the more individualistic interpretation. Rather than a move inward, I want to argue that the novel presents a move outward, painting the image of a nation ready to join the world with a fully formed identity.

Another important theme that Ogunbayo touches upon is that of visibility. The protagonist begins his journey looking for “the secret of visibility” (4), but eventually he finds

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that it was “odd and beautiful that he who had left home in search of the secret of visibility should have found a higher invisibility, the invisibility of the blessed” (159). Ogunbayo claims that “Visibility in this context means the quest for validation, acceptance and society’s confirmation … The seeking of visibility is a sign of weakness, imitation and parody. We must make our own visibilities or else we would be lost in other people’s vision” (53). Once more Ogunbayo’s statement has incredibly interesting implications on an international scale, though he merely links it to the individual. Visibility as acceptance suggests a surrendering of identity, a willingness to adjust, whereas pride in invisibility can be read as a move from conformance to reclamation. Nonetheless, invisibility is still inextricably linked to visibility, implying that it refers to the African representation in a global context rather than merely a national or African struggle towards constructing identity and community. As Maurice O’Conner states, “Okri as a Nigerian-Londoner writes from the double consciousness of one who lives on the borders of culture. His narrative is conceptualised through a non-organic sense of community where no one single discourse can lay claim to originality or authority” (The Writings of Ben Okri, 143), and it is of pivotal importance to see his work not as establishing simply an African voice, but a hybrid voice of the postcolonial world, where boundaries of nationality are blurred.

2.4: The Language of Decolonization

This is the burden that has faced the African intelligentsia: … how to address the three fundamental quests for parity, purity, and personhood—equality with Europe, difference from Europe, and humanism denied by Europa, in short, how to realize the perennial pursuits of African nationalism (“Africa’s Struggle for Decolonization,” 123)

With this statement, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza opens his discussion of how the language of literature helps the process of its decolonization. He observes that the African intelligentsia transcends binary constructions, as Africa as it is often perceived—not just by Europeans, but also by Africans themselves—was invented by colonialism (124). It is thus impossible, according to him, to ignore the influence of Europe on present-day Africa. The reclamation of its culture has to occur on the global stage, not merely to prove to the western world that Africa has its own identity, but also in order to re-contextualize its own place in the world. Zeleza goes on to investigate the work of Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe, and the research presented in the paper reveals ideas about the language of decolonization that question the value of magical realism, or other styles influenced by oral culture, African myth and spirituality, etc., while favoring

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Achebe’s “tragic realism”8_{. By doing so, Zeleza contradicts himself, as he states early on in his}

essay that “African nationalisms, like other nationalisms, were not only invariably complex, often contradictory, and always changing, but also multiple and multivocal in their expression” (125). Rather than claiming that Okri’s is simply a different nationalism, I want to argue that although Achebe’s achievements are of cardinal importance, they are a step behind in the process of decolonizing literature.

Zeleza bases his view of Achebe on an essay by Kwaku Larbi Korang when he argues that “Achebe reclaims the cohabitation of Africa and Europe in the normativity of the real and the tragic, the sociohistorical and the modern, of the human and its existential contradictions, and their mutual transparency and translatability” (126). Korang writes in an essay from 2011 that “Achebe is a post-Eurocentric writer who revokes and reworks the aesthetic models that his Eurocentric predecessors have otherwise confined to the fixing and reaffirmation of the West as sole or exclusive possessor of humanistic common sense. Achebe aims therein to affirm a proprietary humanity in intercultural common sense” (2). Korang’s main argument is that by “underwriting a thesis of humanist interchangeability” using “mimetic reciprocity”(8), Achebe debunks the Eurocentric notion that rationality and “humanity” are non-existent in the African continent. His tragic realism suggests a translatability of the European experience, proving a “human(ist) likeness” (8) between the two continents. Although Achebe’s is a valuable effort, and although the acknowledgement of humanistic equality is vital in the postcolonial world, it does not reflect the uniqueness of the African continent, and it does not necessarily help the process of decolonizing literature when the voice that is used mimics a European one, rather than reclaiming an African one. Zeleza does not ignore the more African inspired literary voice in his essay, but is critical of its effect:

Many of Achebe’s followers sought to reclaim cultural authenticity and aesthetic originality by peppering their work with the riddles and proverbs of local languages and invoking the enchanting … But this gave rise to another misconception in the reading of African literature, a tendency to see the appropriation of oral narrative as a return to authenticity based on the historically inaccurate supposition that Africa is ontologically oral, while writing is European. (127)

In other words, Zeleza sees dangers in using the magical as a means of reclaiming identity. He fears that literature that relies on “magic” might inspire a sense of exoticism in the European reader, that rather than helping decolonization it will prevent progress, as it enables the

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European reader to return to the colonial idea that African culture is less advanced. Yet Chinua Achebe himself makes a valuable counterargument when he states that there is a “small and proprietary school of critics who assure us that the African novel does not exist. Reason: the novel was invented in England. For the same kind of reason I shouldn’t know how to drive a car because I am no descendant of Henry Ford” (Morning Yet on Creation Day, 54). I think Zeleza underestimates the possibilities of magical realism. I have tried to establish that

Astonishing the Gods, and Okri’s oeuvre at large, does not merely rely on African “aesthetic

originality”. Like many other scholars, Zeleza himself acknowledges that Africa exists in a global context, as it is a global concept. To exist in present-day Africa is to exist in a hybrid of pre-colonial traditions, colonialism’s influence, the postcolonial search for identity, and Africa’s relationship with the rest of the world. This hybridity is a key aspect of Okri’s writing, and the transcendence of boundaries of nations, nationality, internal and external, real and magic, physical and metaphysical, of pivotal importance in the magical realist style. Humanist interchangeability is not ignored in it; hybridity is its representative. It cannot be denied that Chinua Achebe has had an enormous influence on the perception of African literature in the international literary community, and I am not denying the value of his ethos. His work has played a vital part in the progress towards decolonization, but I am hesitant to agree with Zeleza in its part in the process of decolonization. If we understand decolonization as a reclamation of a national—or continental—identity, and the decolonization of literature as a reclamation of its literary voice, a style that uses “mimetic reciprocity” simply does not fit that description. The move away from imitation to hybridity is a move away from acceptance to reclamation. Both stages are indispensable, and both are still relevant, but the latter does follow the former, rather than the other way around.

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III

Themes of Decolonization

The articles discussed in the previous chapter present a fascinating image of Astonishing the

Gods in relation to the process of decolonization. This chapter will take these arguments further

by analyzing several themes in the novel in more detail, themes that recur in essays by and interviews with Ben Okri. With these close readings it will be asserted that the novel clearly presents some of Okri’s statements concerning the decolonization of literature. Furthermore this chapter will close by linking these ideas to Okri’s use of magical realism. It needs to be disclaimed that the novel, thankfully, does not attempt to find a solution to existing problems. This would have been unrealistic and would have made the novel harder to consider in the light of this discussion. Instead, certain ideologies are shared about the way in which to approach issues of decolonization. Okri suggests that if people can change the way they think about African culture, and Africa in relation to the rest of the world, if people can see the underlying similarities of all cultures, this will be the first step towards decolonization. Okri reflects on this using several important themes. By linking these to the narrative of Astonishing the Gods, this chapter will further enlighten how literature that is inspired by both sides of the dichotomy, that looks back to African tradition, but also looks forward to a more unified world, is a step forward in the process of decolonizing literature worldwide.

3.1: Childhood

Although his age is never revealed, it can be assumed that the protagonist of Astonishing the

Gods is not an adult. The book describes is the story of a young man in search of his identity as

an “invisible” person, it is in a way a magical realist version of the traditional Bildungsroman. The protagonist’s invisibility is a given in the novel; he really is invisible. Yet it can quite easily be linked to national or racial identities, as on the first page of the book it is described that “[i]t was in books that he first learnt of his invisibility. He searched for himself and his people in all the history books he read and discovered to his youthful astonishment that he didn’t exist” (3). It is the kind of conclusion a child will come to; he is not represented outside of his community, therefore he must be invisible. The imagination of a child is much more lively, and choosing to tell this story from the perspective of a young person enables Okri to create more freely. Yet it is not merely the protagonist’s proneness to mix reality and fantasy that makes him a suitable main character. Okri attaches significant value to childhood more generally. In A Time for New

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conundrum. It is the home of all the great questions about life and death, reality and dream, meaning and purpose, freedom and society, the spiritual and the secular, nature and culture, education and self-discovery” (10). In other words, the child is more open to the possibilities of hybridity. There is less need for resolution; one reality does not cancel out another. This is not necessarily very ground-breaking, generally children are perceived as “innocent” and “neutral”, but Okri sees in childhood a possibility for change that is of pivotal importance in his literature. It is not accidental that A Time for New Dreams, a collection that deals with notions of Africa in a postcolonial civilization, centers around the theme of childhood, with four essays in it dedicated to the subject. In the last of these, Okri writes that “[c]hildhood is the great puzzle, the marvelous symbol, the emblem of the quintessence, the magic mirror, the little grail, the missing key to our future … Childhood is about discovery. We rediscover the world, and are tempted to begin the grander journey of self-discovery” (110-11). In Astonishing

the Gods the protagonist makes this exact journey, crossing the bridge of self-discovery early

on, and solving puzzles throughout the book—e.g. when he needs to “solve the riddle of the gate” (61) by deciphering an iron scroll. The protagonist realizes that “the words were a law he had known all his life, a pitiless law which when forgotten creates its own punishment. And the punishment was that of complete abandon, till the condition of the words was reached” (63). The vital importance of re-discovering manifests itself in all of the book’s puzzles. The protagonist is urged to retain an open mind, like that of a child, when solving them.

The theme of childhood fascinates Okri not merely in its literal sense. In addition to reflecting on the development of individual human beings, it is also applicable to the development of a people as a whole, and the development of a young nation, or a continent reborn. In an interview Okri further states that childhood “is a time when we dream. Let’s bring back this pure way of seeing” (“Ben Okri: Novelist as Dream Weaver”). In chapter two I reflected on the protagonist of Astonishing the Gods as representative of a collective ideal. Expanding on this, I want to argue that it is the youth of the protagonist that suggest the true ideology. Early on in the novel, the protagonist’s first guide tells him:

Many of our greatest men and women have been here for hundreds of years and have never seen the unicorn. You have just arrived and you have seen it … The council will be delighted by this … we have been awaiting your arrival for a long time. If you survive what is to come, if you make it to the great convocation, it is possible that you are the one who will initiate the new cycle of the Invisibles. (11-12)

The Invisibles have been on the island for such a long time that they can no longer dream. The protagonist’s youthful gaze enables him to see unicorns, or in other words, magic. This can also