Musings on the Strong Breed

Once again, I’ve been remiss in transcribing my scribbles to the blog format, so here goes: several weeks worth all at one time. They will now be in a reverse chronological order, but that extra work of reordering them should teach me something about procrastination!

Entry #18
23 March 2007 (approximately…remiss in the dating in on my written pages)
Work: Wole Soyinka’s Collected Plays 1

I’ve read two of the three assigned plays, The Strong Breed and The Bacchae of Euripides. Though I know that it in part is an issue of understanding the culture, I found both to be very dark. Whereas in Euripides’ original play I found much humor, I didn’t pick up on any of that in Soyinka’s interpretation of the same.

The Strong Breed horrified me. From Sunma’s treatment of Ifada to the Girl’s raw manner (and what forces created her), events in the play unsettled me from the first. I was a bit confused about the relationship between Eman and Sunma, not sure, really, if they were husband and wife or if “strangers” were treated in a different manner in the society. That has not become clear to me, and the flashback nature of the play doesn’t help the confusion.

Ultimately, I have to once again fall back on Campbell’s explanation of myth and superstition as a means of a society to make sense of the seasons, the nature of man and that deep sense that all is not as it seems. This ritual of having a “carrier” to whisk away the sins of the village, though violent and repulsive to someone in our culture (I am assuming things), was, I’m sure, a rational—though I pray, a consciously symbolic—means of dealing with the complexities of human imperfection.

I often thought, during the reading, how wonderful it would be to believe so strongly in a symbolic act that all doubt was removed. My jaded mind tells me that bullet-proof denial is regressive rather than progressive, but how often—in a relationship, say—have we wished for a clean slate? How often have we uttered the words, “Maybe next year will be better.” How often, as an idealistic young person, have we awoken to a day full of promise, self-assured that it would hold none of the clutter and pain of the previous days? I still wake up like that, though now, I realize that it’s an individual choice to carry the sins of the past into the present. I also realize that I can do nothing to control what others choose to hold onto, what they insist must inform their momentary existence. And, as an individual in an individualistic society, I can’t quite grasp the idea of the group dynamic that’s at work in Soyinka’s created villages. I can remember my history lessons about Salem, Mass. and the communities purging of sin by human sacrifice, and I can think about the neighborhoods of my youth where it was still acceptable to knock on a neighbor’s door to borrow a cup of sugar (do people still do that? I don’t even know my neighbors on this long stretch of country road), but that’s not my reality. Even within my own family, we have some shared goals, but we also have our own individual agendas. I like to think we function as a unit, but I think it’s more accurate to say that we interact and shift focus from time to time depending upon the individual needs of each of our members. It’s not exactly symbiotic. Our current culture has affected us more than we like to admit at times.

Till later...