First intro says “Tutuola’s writing is original and highly imaginative.

His direct

style, made more vivid by his use of English as it is spoken in West Africa, is

not polished or sophisticated and gives his stories unusual energy. It is a

beginning of a new type of Afro-English literature.” (Geoffrey Parrinder in

TPWD 10). Note Parrinder was an English reverend who studied comparative

religion (Desmond Tutu was one of his students).

Dylan Thomas’ helped prop it to fame: “this tall devilish story”, written in

“young English” (in the Observer, 6 July 1952). --- Note both praise his style of

English.

But Nigerian critics seem not to hold Tutuola in as high esteem as Anglo-

European critics (Nigerian Poet Molara Ogundipe’s in her essay ‘The Palm

Wine Drinkard: a Reassessment of Amos Tutuola’s Legacy’). When it came

out it “received heavy criticism for this choice [of writing TPWD in pidgin

English] from other Nigerian literati, who felt that the use of pidgin, despite its

undeniable authenticity, denigrated Nigerian intelligence and perpetuated the

image of the Nigerian as barbaric and uneducated.” (Falola and Heaton 161)

Russian anthropologist John V. Murra says Nigerians dislike Tutuola’s “lack

of inhibitions, and the folk-tale basis of his stories. They accuse him of

plagiarising from the traditional folk-tales, of encouraging a useless,

impractical mythical way of thinking, of leading West African literature up a

blind alley, and of providing the supercilious Westerner with an excuse for

continuing to patronise the allegedly superstitious Nigerian.” -- qted in

Ogundipe, 99

Achebe discusses that attitude too at the start of his essay on Tutuola when

a young Nigerian woman in America accosted Achebe for teaching Tutuola: “it

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became quite clear that she considered The Palm-Wine Drinkard to be

childish and crude and certainly not the kind of thing a patriotic Nigerian

should be exporting to America.” --- ‘Work and Play in Tutuola’s The Palm-

Wine Drinkard’

Think of this and answer at end.

One of the problems is that some see the novel as “literature in the service

of itself”, as the work of “a writer without problems” (qted in Achebe). But

Achebe claims Tutuola “is the most moralistic of all Nigerian writers”. The

“social and ethical questions being proposed” in the novel is “What happens

when a man immerses himself in pleasure to the exclusion of all work; when

he raises pleasure to the status of work and occupation”? Tutuola sets up the

question in the first two sentences of the work “and proceeds to spend the

rest of the book on the punishment he undergoes in atonement for his offence

and then a fairly brief coda on his restoration.”

When Tutuola writes that the Drinkard’s father hired an expert tapster just for

him, he “has packed into a simple and brief statement a huge social and

ethical proposition: A man who will not work can only stay alive if he can

somehow commandeer to his own use the labour of other people either by

becoming a common thief or a slave-owner.” Thanks to his rich father he can

buy a slave for his drinking. Thus, “refusal to work cannot be a simple “self-

regarding act” but is a social and moral offence of colossal consequence”.

The plot alternates between work and play, suggesting that one gives labour

in order to enjoy rest and satisfaction. E.g. by dancing for 5 days the Drinkard

and his wife get rid of their half-bodied baby, but right after that they realize

they’re penniless and begin to think about how to “get money for our food etc”

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(TPWD). In general, many references to money. First page we see reference

to economics and “COWRIES” because there was no money. But then the

‘complete gentleman’, “if he had been an article or an animal for sale, he

would be sold at least for £2000 (two thousand pounds).” (202) “Now by that

time and before we entered inside the white tree, we had “sold our death” to

somebody at the door for the sum of £70: 18: 6d and “lent our fear” to

somebody at the door as well on interest of £3: 10: 0d per month, so we did

not care about death and we did not fear again.” (247) --- note the quotation

marks on the concepts.

Obs: The drinkard has powers but “always has to combine this ability with

honest-to-God work. So although he can turn himself into a canoe, he still

needs to carve a real paddle!”

E.g. (Play vs Work) Merriment with Drum, Dance and Song is so great it

even brings people back to life: “The whole people of the new town, the whole

people that rose up from the grave, animals, snakes, Spirits and other

nameless creatures” (TPWD). But then the 3 are banished from the world

because the merriment is too great for the preservation of work. To make the

point, “Tutuola switches abruptly and dramatically to the theme of work”: “So

when these three fellows (Drum, Song and Dance) disappeared, the people of

the new town went back to their houses… After I had spent a year with my

wife in this new town, I became a rich man. Then I hired many labourers to

clear bush for me and it was cleared up to three miles square… then I planted

the seeds and grain” (TPWD)

Combination of Protestant ethics (e.g. see Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic

and the Spirit of Capitalism” and the bookkeeping the Drinkard keeps) with

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Yoruba morality: “Morality for the Yoruba is that which creates harmony in the

cosmos.” (Soyinka, MLAW 156).

Unreturnable-Heaven’s town described by its king as “a town in which are

only enemies of God living, only cruel, greedy and merciless creatures.” (241)

Drinkard and wife are beaten and brutally shaved. But “God is so good, that

the attendants did not take us to the outside of the palace before they started

to shave our heads as the king ordered them, otherwise we would be torn into

pieces by the people waiting for us at the gate of the palace.” (241) And “God

is so good, when it was 5 o’clock P.M., a heavy rain came” to soothe them

after the beating and semi-burial in the Unreturnable-Heaven’s town, allowing

them to escape the holes (243) and then burn the whole place down --- very

Old Testament-y.

On the other hand, this idea of work-play balance is more Yoruba: episodes

of work and suffering alternate with episodes of play and relief. E.g. White

Tree rest is the most magnificent rest but follows the most arduous torture in

the Unreturnable-heaven’s Town. “The conclusion that Africans are

persistently in search of harmony in all spheres of life is pertinently true of

African thought.” (MOGOBE B.RAMOSE in ‘The African Philosophy Reader’,

276).

Tutuola sees excessive drinking as a problem: the Tapster dies because “he

over-drank on that day” and the Drinkard postpones his funeral in order to first

grab a couple of drinks. Note some of the Yoruba creation stories involve

Obatala’s (Sky Father of orishas) drunkenness. In one Obatala gets drunk

with palm-wine and makes deformed or incomplete human figures (out of clay

into which Olorun breathed life), hence deformities exist (“The Creation of the

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World” story in the Yoruba section of ‘African Myths of Origin’). In “Oduduwa,

Ife and Oyo”, Obatala and Oduduwa are selected for the task of creating the

world. On their way they drink and Obatala falls asleep. Oduduwa takes the

opportunity and created the world by himself, stealing Obatala’s primary role

in the creation. Oduduwa makes himself king of Ife but because Obatala’s

place was usurped, “the world now knows wars and other catastrophes”. In

both stories, Obatala’s consumption of alcohol leads to unfortunate

consequences.

Also concern with boundaries: “Now we could not return where we were

coming from (my wife’s father’s town) we must go to the Deads’ town.” (223)

--- No explanation as to why they can’t return, just stated. Similarly, “these

long white creatures were bound not to trespass on another’s bush, and they

did not enter into that field at all although they were satisfied with the fire, and

the creatures of that field must not enter into their bush either.” (225) After

staying for 18 months in Wraith-Island “the whole people of the “Wraith-Island”

led us with a big canoe and they were singing the song of “good-bye” as they

were paddling along the river. When they accompanied us to their boundary,

they stopped, but when we went down from their canoe, then they returned to

their town with a lovely song and music and bade us good-bye. If it was in

their power, they would have led us to our destination, but they were

forbidden to touch another creature’s land or bush.” (232). After a year and

two weeks Faithful-Mother tells them to leave white tree because “she had no

right to delay anybody more than a year and some days, she said again that if

that had been in her power, she would grant our request.” (251) “we wanted

her to lead us to our destination because of fearful creatures in the bush. But

5
she told us that she could not do such request, because she must not go

beyond their boundary.” (ibid)

Always punishment for unfulfilled promised (e.g. Father-in-law or Death

loosed upon town). Half-bodied baby is worse version of Drinkard.

This extends to mixing of cosmologies. In Yoruba cosmology: “present life

contains within it manifestations of the ancestral, the living and the unborn”,

though there is a gulf between them. “This gulf is what must be constantly

diminished by the sacrifices, the rituals, the ceremonies of appeasement to

those powers which lie guardian to the gulf.” (Soyinka, MLAW 144), which

implies there’s no divine remoteness, as opposed to Christianity. Yet constant

references to God and heaven. E.g. “When I saw that there was no palm-wine

for me again and nobody could tap it for me, then I thought within myself that

old people were saying that the whole people who had died in this world, did

not go to heaven directly, but they were living in one place somewhere in this

world.” (193).

More morality: after Drinkard loses his will to continue his quest because he

has relapsed into his drinking, Faithful Mother tells him to resume his journey.

The Drinkard is so distraught that he contemplates suicide but can’t because

he sold his death. “I think that what Tutuola is saying here is very important for

an understanding of the meaning of the story. The three ways in which the

pilgrim might seek to evade the rigours of a dangerous quest are taken up in

turn and rejected”: can’t prolong rest, can’t get assistance without the trouble

of travelling, can’t escape through premature death (Achebe). Note “pilgrim” =

Protestant/Christian.

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 Also references to technology. The Drinkard thinks that “if bombers saw him

[the complete gentleman] in a town which was to be bombed, they would not

throw bombs on his presence, and if they did throw it, the bomb itself would

not explode until this gentleman would leave that town, because of his

beauty.” (207). The half-bodied baby, after surviving the arson, “was talking

with a lower voice like a telephone.” (218) “I became a big bird like an

aeroplane and flew away with my wife” (223). In White Tree: “Then we saw

that all the lights in this hall were technicolours and they were changing

colours at five minutes intervals.” (249) Technicolour was first invented in

1916, became popular with Wizard of Oz in 1939. The Drinkard and his wife

are interned in a hospital during their stay at white tree, as opposed to seeing

a healer (249).

Mixing of times: “But in those days, there were many wild animals and

every place was covered by thick bushes and forests; again, towns and

villages were not near each other as nowadays” (193). Implies narrator (the

Drinkard) is telling the story in the present (probably at the time of writing of

the novel), though the story told took place long ago. Yet the story is told with

references to Western, industrialised time: Tapster dies on a Sunday (192) ---

note that weekdays are Western, not the market days of Yoruba culture,

which he recognizes exist because “the market-day was fixed for every 5 th

day” (201), each 4 days named after an orisha. Also references to A.M. and

P.M.

This as reflection of his condition and moment in history: Tutuola born 1920

to Christian parents in Abeokuta. No more than 6 yrs of school, not past high

school. But grandparents still practised Yoruba religion; his grandfather was

7
even an Odafin (a sort of spiritual leader; lit. lawmaker). Note: Odafin “Fin”

Tutuola is a character in Law and Order: SVU, played by Ice-T (has appeared

since 2000, in a total of over 400 episodes in 18 seasons).

1920’s = implementation of Frederick Lugard’s ‘Dual Mandate’ (colonial rule

as maximally beneficial to both British and Nigerians) through indirect rule

(traditional rulers continued to rule but were now subordinated to British

colonial officers) [Falola 112] The first areas under British rule were in the

southwest, and 1st CMS (Church Missionary Society) HQ in Abeokuta 1841.

“By the late nineteenth century, however, increasing numbers of Nigerians

were taking advantage of the opportunities that a European education in a

mission school could offer, of which the most notable was the ability to read

and write in English. With the onset of colonial administration and the

expansion of the colonial economy based on increased import-export

commerce from the 1890’s, the ability to read and write in English became the

stepping stone to a middle-class career.” (Falola 127).

It’s until the 1930s that Nigerians started to see themselves as “Nigerians”

(Falola 137).

1929 crash and WWII affected Nigerian economy, not to mention including

the thousands of Nigerian men sent as soldiers to fight overseas. (Falola 141-

3). This led to the General Strike of 1945 (Falola 144) which pressured the

British gov’t to allow for greater Nigerian self-governance (Falola 145). In

October 1st, 1960 Nigeria became independent.

TPWD published 1952, produced in the theater in the 60s.

Tutuola: “I wrote TPWD for the people of the other countries to read the

Yoruba folklores […]. My purpose of writing is to make other people

8
understand more about Yoruba people and in fact they have already

understood more than ever before”. This leads Bernth Lindfors to claim that

“by keeping one foot in the old world and one in the new while translating oral

art into literary art, Tutuola bridges two traditions. Herein lies his originality”

(qted in Choudhury).

Obs oral nature of narrative, including long sentences with lots of

conjunctions. E.g. “So my father gave me a palm-tree farm which was nine

miles square and it contained 560,000 palm-trees, and this palm-wine tapster

was tapping one hundred and fifty kegs of palm-wine every morning, but

before 2 o’clock P.M., I would have drunk all of it; after that he would go up

and tap another 75 kegs in the evening which I would be drinking till morning.”

Etiological endings common in both TPWD and oral stories: “Since that day I

had brought Death out from his house, he has no permanent place to dwell or

stay and we are hearing his name about in the world” in TPWD, p. 199

(Takacs 396).

Sherryl Takacs: “Tutuola is not a realistic novelist but works within the range

of romantic literature, and primarily that of folklore. In folklore and specifically

in oral storytelling, plot is incidental and plot structure is therefore loose and

episodic by the very nature of this particular genre” (392).

Inconsistencies in TPWD as a result of its oral structure: “As long as the

legendary and doctrinal aspects of the cultural tradition are mediated orally,

they are kept in relative harmony with each other and with the present needs

of society in two ways; through the unconscious operations of memory, and

through the adjustment of the reciter’s terms and attitudes to those of the

audience before him.” (Goody and Watt 321)

9
 Note that, despite the entire novel being narrated in first person, the

Complete Gentleman episode is narrated in a third person omniscient

narrator. The father “never knew whereabouts their daughter was” and so the

Drinkard “started to investigate whereabouts the lady was” (206), so that it

would be impossible for the Drinkard to have narrated the episode. In section

titled “Do not follow unknown man’s beauty” (202) the Drinkard “could not

blame the lady for following the Skull as a complete gentleman to his house at

all” (207). Note that there is no explanation as to how the Drinkard knows the

gentleman was really a skull. He does later marry that girl (213), but still

inconsistent with him having the thought then and there. Intrusion of

omniscient 3rd person narrator into 1st person narrative.

Tutuola’s question to the audience for the judgment of a case is similar to a

storyteller’s address to his audience. “I shall be very much grateful if anyone

who reads this story-book can judge one or both cases and send the

judgement to me as early as possible” (292-3)

So self-described as story-book, not a novel. Moreover, “His characters are

prototypes and most remain nameless”, typical of oral traditions. However,

note the circular ending where the friends come back to ask for food and drink

during the famine, while his friends left him after his Tapster died because

they only wanted the wine. Again, all friends leave him because egg breaks.

But second time he punishes them by whipping them --- by serendipitous luck

--- instead of just sulking and the egg disappears after that. This, along with

the work-play balance Achebe proposes, suggests a novelistic design. Note:

some critics even viewed TPWD as an epic (in Ogundipe 100).

Q. Novel?

10
 In ‘The Writer and His Community’, Achebe writes that “One of the most

critical consequences of the transition from oral traditions to written forms of

literature is the emergence of individual authorship”. Tutuola and his

relationship to folk tales as prime example of this transition.

In fact, Tutuola relies heavily on Yoruba mythology. In this sense, some

critics, like Ogundipe, say “Tutuola did not invent very much in TPWD”

(Ogundipe 102). Both the idea of Deadstown and the story of the complete

gentleman are already-existing stories (the 2 nd one as warning to girls wanting

to marry w/o parents’ consent). (Takacs 395).

When Drinkard turns into a bird to find out what the god wants him to get

from the blacksmith (194 onwards, 99 in Kindle), it is similar to an Ananse

story (originally from the Krachi, close neighbours of the Ashanti) about

successively better barters: “Ananse and the Corncob”. Ananse boasts of his

cleverness in front of Wulbari, the sky-god. Wulbari gets angry and so tells

Ananse to bring him “something” but specifies no more. “You said you were

more clever than I. Now you must prove it.”

Most immediately noticeable difference between the two is the language.

Second intro describes Tutuola’s language as a “new English, an English

whose vocabulary is bent and twisted into the service of a different language’s

nuances, syntax, and interior logic. The result is original and often startling.”

(Michael Thelwell in TPWD 188). I.e. What Chantal Zabus calls

“relexification”:

“I shall thus here redefine relexification as the making of a new register of

communication out of an alien lexicon.” (Zabus in ‘The Postcolonial Reader’,

314). Not to be confused with the simple “Africanization” of English, which is a

11
synchronic phenomenon. “The emphasis is here on the lexis in the original

sense of speech, word or phrase and on lexicon in reference to the

vocabulary and morphemes of a language and, by extension, to word

formation. [T]his concept can be expanded to refer to semantics and syntax,

as well.” (Zabus 314) and so relexification must be thought of as “diachronic

despite its synchronic aspects” (Zabus 315). It is not auto-translation since

“relexification is characterized by the absence of an original” (Zabus 317). It

solves the “immediate artistic problem […] of rendering African concepts,

thought patterns and linguistic features in the European language.” But it also

“seeks to subvert the linguistically codified, to decolonize the language of

early, colonial literature and to affirm a revised, non-atavistic orality via the

imposed medium.” (Zabus 318).

“As a rule, there is a higher incidence of relexifying devices as a work comes

closer to orality. This should come as no surprise since such texts are

relexified from languages that have remained essentially oral and belong to

the vast corpus or oral human discourse, for most languages spoken by

humans over the millenia have no connection with writing.” (Zabus 318).

See Tutuola’s love of paradox and word-play. E.g. Laughing episode: they

“knew ‘Laugh’ personally on that night, because as everyone of them stopped

laughing at us, ‘Laugh’ did not stop for two hours. As ‘Laugh’ was laughing at

us on that night, my wife and myself forgot our pains and laughed with him,

because he was laughing with curious voices that we never heard before in

our life. We did not know the time that we fell into his laugh, but we were only

laughing at Laugh’s laugh and nobody heard him when laughing would not

laugh, so if somebody continue to laugh with ‘Laugh’ himself, he or she would

12
die or faint at once for long laughing, because laugh was his profession and

he was feeding on it.” (227 TPWD) --- very Yoruba, but written in English.

Similarly, puns: “When I reached his (Death’s) house, he was not at home by

that time, he was in his yam garden which was very close to his house, and I

met a small rolling drum in his verandah, then I beat it to Death as a sign of

salutation.” (196)

But is Tutuola actually subverting, as in “subvert the linguistically codified, to

decolonize the language of early, colonial literature and to affirm a revised,

non-atavistic orality via the imposed medium” of Zabus? Adrian Roscoe

claims there is a lack of “an awareness of cultural, national and racial

affinities” in Tutuola’s work (qted in ‘Colonialist Criticism’). But in TPWD

Tutuola writes the “both white and black deads were living in the Dead’s

Town” (TPWD), when during 1950’s Nigeria there was segregation (e.g. a

Lagos hotel that imposed a “two-mile cordon sanitaire” (Achebe) between

black and white settlements).

(Note it’s a slave that carries the sacrifice to Heaven to appease it, and ends

with prosperity of rain.) Note that this goes further than Ashcroft et al’s idea of

appropriation, “the process by which the language is taken and made to ‘bear

the burden’ of one’s own cultural experience” (‘The Empire Writes Back’ p.38).

“Europe is present in his works but only as borrowings which he integrates

into his own purely African world. Tutuola deals adroitly with Western culture

by simply assimilating Western civilization into his stories, in a unique satiric

fashion which does a little distorting of its own” (396): there’s no white

characters, only mentions of them sometimes. I disagree

In the end, we might see TPWD as a celebration of work during a time of

13
insatiable consumerism, argues Achebe, and as such it might be “rebelling”.

However, we must bear in mind Kumkum Sangari’s warning: “There is no

necessary or obvious connection, as is often assumed, between the

decentering of unitary discourses (or, the projects of the Enlightenment and

modernity) and an ‘international’ radicalism. To believe that a critique of the

centered subject and of representation is equal to a critique of colonialism and

its accoutrements is in fact to disregard the different historical formation of

subjects and ways of seeing that have actually obtained from colonization;

and this often leads to a naive identification of all nonlinear forms with those of

the decentered postmodern subject.” -- from ‘The Politics of the Possible’ in

the PCR, 146.

But then is it really originality or simply the inevitable transition Achebe writes

about?

14