This document summarizes a paper analyzing the concepts of tradition and modernity in the play "The Swamp Dwellers" by Wole Soyinka through a Beckettian lens. It discusses tradition as non-western culture and values passed down through generations, while modernity represents social change through westernization. The play depicts the city as corrupt and the cause of moral degradation, representing the negative effects of colonialism, capitalism, and shifting away from tradition. Key Beckettian dramatic features explored include hopeless isolated characters, meaninglessness of life, and absurdity of the human condition against a dreadful, unstructured world.

1. Department of English, MKBU.
Name: Nimesh Dave
Paper:14
'TheAfrican Literature'
Topic:- "Concept of Tradition and Modernity as
well as Beckettian dramatic features in The
Swamp Dwellers by Wole Soyinka“
Academic Year: 2015-16

3. What is Tradition?
Cultural, social, conventional
Nonwestern attitude/ culture
village- joint family, caste…
Established power and unofficial violence in village

4. What is Modernity?
 Complex phenomenon
Encompasses various elements of the socalled
South African tradition or any tradition
 A change in society
 What type of change?
 Is it all about accepting western ideas, culture
and forgetting the tradition of one’s own
 To shun the roots……?

5. Polar opposites/ Binaries
 Tradition and modernity is a linear theory of
social change
 Tradition- a framework of nationhood
 The concept of development in modernity
Both are treated as polar opposites, or
binaries•Problem- tradition or modernity???
Kinship system v/s money relation
Traditional/ modern values: fostering or
encouraging corrupt behavior

6. Tradition is taught by our elders
Modernity: a person’s thoughts about the world
Corruption- not related with tradition or
modernity
Why people are against modernization?
Modernization has brought materialistic values to
the front seat and ethical and moral values have
been relegated to the back seat…?

7. “The Swamp Dweller"
• In "The Swamp Dwellers" good countryside
and evil city.
• The idea is represented in the characters of
the two women characters 'Desala', unfaithful
wife and 'Alu', the mother
• Makuri says, “There wasn't a woman
anywhere more faithful than you, Alu; I never
had a moment of worry in the whole of my
life”

8. Makuri begins to discuss the city: “It ruins
them. The city ruins them. What do they seek
there except money?
 Alu responds, “It was the swamp … He went
the same way as my son” (87). The point is
clear, even outside of Yoruba belief—the city
is a swamp, a place of moral degradation, that
“kills” those who go there.

9. The Swamp-the city is the result of colonialism,
capitalism, industrialization, the shift from
tradition to “modernity.”
Flood is not the only reason.
Makuri explains, “Not a grain was saved, not one
tuber in the soil … And what the flood left behind
was poisoned by the oil in the swamp water”.

10. enormous ecological and human waste due to greed
Economy/ money is not the reason of corruption in
the play
In the opening scene, “a hut on stilts”; in the hut “is
a barber's swivel chair” (81). This strange, part
comic, part pathetic icon of modernity was a gift to
Makuri from Igwezu, when he was in the city.
Is it modernity or a change????????????

11. ‘Beckettian' dramatic features
Isolated, hopeless, helpless characters
 Futility/ meaninglessness of life
 Disillusionment
 Characters going into their individual world
Absence of God

12. Absurdity of human existence.
Characters presented without much history –
driven to locate themselves in the world with
reference to geography. But the world in which
they live has no overall structure, it is a dreadful
place in which every moment is like the next…
Lacking an assured past, the tramps can have no
clear sense of their own future…They are waiting
without hope for a deliverance from a being in
whom they do not really believe.
Absurdity of human condition against the
background.

13. Human life presents constant problems and
contradictions
The individual and the society in continual need
of salvation for itself.
Representation of inexplicable and hazardous
universe in which man finds himself.
Beggar, Awuchike and Igwezu - ready to submit-
determined to survive against all odds.