The Gods Are to Blame
By
Ayebanoa, Timibofa
Department of English
University of Uyo
07062918048
Ayisat24@gmail.com


ABSTRACT
This paper contends that the gods are to blame over the fatalistic place man occupy in the universe. It further argues that the gods lack ethical standards which they are supposed to portray. The paper therefore concludes that the unfortunate condition the mortal finds themselves as dictated by the gods is beyond their controls but supernatural. Hence, their tragic flaws are supernaturally orchestrated by the gods to feast on their flesh which renders them (gods) blameable and blameful. To achieve this, the Deconstruction critical approach is adopted.











Introduction
While both playwrights exonerate the evil role of the gods in the gruesome and empathetic death of the two tragic characters King Oedipus in Sophocles and King Odewale in The Gods Are Not Blame and tie it to the helpless figures respectively, this essay is predicated on the foundation and devotes its energy to explore the god’s as supernatural evil spirits that watches her subjects die shamefully over conditions they can’t control humanly. It is believed in this paper that the gods deliberately orchestrate and carefully influenced the manifestation of these situations to prove their superiority over helpless mortals to win the chthonic war in the spirit realm as demonstrated in Wole Soyinka’s The Fourth Stage and many others of his plays like The Strong Breed, Death and the King’s Horseman and others. Therefore, the study deconstruct the existing norm that the gods are innocent but argue that they are not and in fact insist that they are responsible for the doom that befall man in the society.
Theoretical Frame work
Deconstruction as a theory emerged in the early 1960s. However, it became a literary sight in the late 1970s. Its major proponent is Jacques Derrida. It is built against the backdrop that, a text has single and stable meaning. The theory attacks the general notion that, the author has an autonomous interpretation, and therefore calls for the death of the writer or his absolute silence, as no text has fixed a meaning. Hence, Deconstructionist believes that meaning is produced by the reader as he/she communicate with the text. In fact, they argue that the writer himself does not understand his artistic frame work as it believed he/she writes under the influence of some super natural beings that, inspires him/her. Thus, cannot offer an interpretation to his work, but the reader and the critic. It implies that every reader or critic arrives at his/her own distinct meaning after relating with a text. This further reveals that; a text has multiples of meaning embedded inside it at its period of composition; which can only be discovered or unveiled by close reading.
According to Paul de Man, an influential deconstructionists, he “insist on the impossibility of making the actual expression coincide with what has to be expressed, of making the actual signs coincide with what is signified.” In order words language cannot express reality so emphases is places on how language is used rather than what is been said in the text. Deconstructionist insists on how the writer has twisted his diction. They do not consider what he writer has said; this is because to them, what he has said can be changed at any time. It can be decentred because it not transcendental signified.

In writing this paper I am tempted to ask a few questions:
1. What kind of relationship exists between mortals and immortal?
2. Does the spirit have total control over the physical?
3. Is man’s destiny controlled by him or the gods?
4. Is the power to change the spiritual within the reach of man?
5. Are the gods moral agents?

A critical study of African and Greek cosmology reveals that there exist a relationship between man and the gods. This relationship however, has different intentions. Some to worship and give reverence while others to go into contracts. Whichever be the case, the concept of god is significance. The god factor goes beyond worship and protection but more of acting like father figure that is; being moral to give good counsel and other the steps of her children or worshippers. But, a survey of the gods in the universe whether African or Greek shows that they lack these characteristics that the role acting as parents. The gods in question never played any of these roles. Neither as father nor mother to their children, instead, they turn to oppress the helpless mortals. They turn to chicken and eat their own chick like cannibals. This manifests in the character of King Oedipus in Oedipus the King. The plot builds round Oedipus who carries a message of the gods to kill his father and marry his mother:
...he shall go journeying to a foreign country
tapping his way before him with a stick.
He shall be proved father and brother both
To his own children and his house; to her
That gave him birth, a son and husband both;
A fellow sower in his father’s bed
With that name father that he murdered....(King Oedipus, 30)
The question that comes to mind is, is this the portraiture and characteristics of a god?
Why will the gods send someone such mission to kill his father, marry his mother and finally kill himself, and put humanity into a test they know will be hard for man to control? Okay, if they really wanted man to play a role and be path of the business as the all mighty God did with Adam, Why don’t they allow the mortals to control the situation, knowing well that they are supernatural beings? Because, in actual relationship between man and God, whenever God sends one on an assignment, he empowers the messenger with unusual strength never to fail also, gives man the will power to decide for himself but the position of the African Gods here reveals the opposite. This goes to prove that there is an already follow up plan by the gods to actualizes the prophecy of Teirisia. It further indicates that the order by the gods to discard the child at the evil grove is a mere display of hypocrisy and a media to exonerate themselves from their evil plan or conceal their identity of killing the innocent child. Same concept is Ola Rotimi demonstrates in The gods are Not to Blame in the character of Odewale who is send by the gods to carry out same function. We hear the full message below:
NARATOR: ...what it is that the boy has brought
as mission from the gods
to carry out on earth (The gods are not to Blame, 2).
BABA FAKUNLE: This boy, he will kill his own father and then marry his mother (The gods are not to Blame, 2).
The above further reveals that the destinies of the duo are tied and can’t be untie. This is what Osofisan refutes and counters in his No More the Wasted Breed as a reply to Soyinka’s fatalistic and rigid stand in The Strong Breed. No doubt, this rigidity and fatalism exhibited by the gods confirm Morosetti’s view that the gods are chicken that feeds on her own eggs:
The eventual portraits of Nigeria that the two authors offer is indeed that of a “Sow that repeatedly devours her own piglets” i.e. an increasingly violent and chaotic society, but in all this folly the reasonable logic of Soyinka and Osofisan support is that of a clear distinction between “true” and “false” villains (1)
Sophocles and Rotimi’s portraiture of the gods also proves further that they are not sincere and only derives pleasure in the cry of their subjects as revealed in The Strong Breed where the gods plague the land out of anger because the carrier Eman absconds. This is what Soyinka demonstrates in The Fourth Stage. He shows that there exist in chthonic realm a battle of supremacy between the three worlds- the unborn, living and the dead. According to Soyinka, this battle begins once one is born. Victory goes to the gods if such predictions come to pass or the gods win while celebration comes to earth where such proves abortive. The case of Saluga in No More the Wasted Breed is a clear example of the gods failure: “Don’t throw
your life so uselessly… You and me, we’ve always asked that these old customs be discarded.” (The Strong Breed,104).
Furthermore, the attempted failure of Odewale and Oedipus parents to avert the prophecy is a clear sign of supernatural domination of the natural. It indicates that they tenaciously monitored the event to bring it into actualization. This exposes their immoral nature, an attribute not worthy of gods.
More so, the gods are not fair to its children. The expected relationship between the gods and mortals is the one of fairness, but in the two plays we see the opposite. The gods rather utilizes and maximizes the weakness of the mere mortals. In the case of Oedipus, they enter through the mind of the messenger to empathize with the child so as to fulfil the evil assignment given to him to accomplish on earth by the gods. Still to display their outward innocence, they manipulated the King into the forest to be killed by his son. The whole event, unveil as prophesied, showing the hand work of some strange forces which they cannot control. All the incidents in play, plays out as designed by the supernatural. Why then should they not be blame? Since there is no room or avenue of the tragic heroes to swing out of their hands and the power to control their destinies is not available, they should be required of the blood of the duo.
Similarly, the gods are oppressive; they never allow the world of the mortals to exercise their right of existence. It is this aspect of their life that contradicts the literature of the new generation of writers like Osofisan, and Egarevba in his Death not a Redeemer. The gods inflicting the land of Thebes and Kutuje with a terrible plague in King Oedipus and The gods are not to Blame is a demonstration of their influence over the affairs of human activities. This is what Osofisan’s explores in No More the Wasted Breed where the land is flooded with water and coursed by the goddess Elesu because her annual sacrifice is not done. But for the intervention of Olokun the land receives restoration.
Finally, from all indication, the gods are cannibals who see humans as object of sacrifice and consumption. This is true because they feed on human blood. This agrees with the observation of Soyinka that:
... the Yoruba does not far(sic) that reason fail to distinguish between himself and the deities, between himself and the ancestors, between the unborn and his reality, or discard his awareness of the essential gulf that lies between one areas of existence and another. This gulf is what must constantly be diminished by the sacrifices, the rituals, the ceremonies of appeasement to those cosmic powers which lies guardian to the gulf (366).
This concept of oppression also manifests in Clark’s Song of a Goat. This unfolds how Zifa’s elder sister Orukorere is coursed by the gods because she refuses to be their maiden princess. Hence, prophecies but no one believes her. This plays out in the relationship between Tonye and Ebiere, where she prophecies about the impending dooms that awaits the family. But everybody took it for granted until it materialized.
Conclusion
From the foregoing it is crystal clear that the gods in the two plays do have the moral right to blame the victims. This is because the whole incident that leads to their flaws is destined by the gods. They mortals only struggle within their reach to escape it but the fail. Therefore, all instruction given by the gods will never work. The reason is because it a divine mission given by the gods which must not fail. Therefore, the paper argues and concludes that having the gods arrogated all the powers to themselves without giving room for humans influence it, they Are to Blame not the helpless characters.

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