Critical appreciation of What the tapsterr saw? - African short story-Ben Okri

 

       Critical Appreciation of  “What the Tapster Saw”

 Introduction:

            Ben Okri is an African writer who has developed a reputation as a leading poet and novelist in his home country Nigeria.  He is considered one of the foremost African authors in the post-modern and post-colonial tradition.  He is generally considered a “postcolonial” writer.  Okri’s work is an outcome of at least two very distinct cultural traditions: the Christian-European-American and West-African-Nigerian tradition.  The main part of his work, however, focuses on life in Africa.

Story is a symbolic association:

            The story “What the Tapster Saw” has the excess that anything is possible: A tapster’s dream, ignored by a healer, will become reality, then takes the story through surreal moments, at once magical, unbelievable but entertaining.  The readers get to point of not being able to determine what’s dream and what’s not, but the images are aligned in such a way that the best way to interpret the story is by symbolic association.  The tapster has been dead for seven days after he fell from the palm tree he has dreamed about. There are hints about war as well in this story; large issues like the destruction caused to forests by oil companies.  These stories were written in the 80s and the problems they deal with are still evident in Nigeria and other parts of Africa.  The creatures in the story have gone riot: a snake spits at the tapster in disgust; three turtles mock and befriend him at the same time.  

           “What the Tapster Saw” is a short story that was published within “Stars of the New Curfew”.  In this story, a temporary death takes the protagonist into a fantastic world peopled by outlandish creatures.  The story perfectly shows that in Okri’s work anything is possible: A tapster’s dream, ignored by a healer, becomes reality, and takes the story through surreal moments, at once magical, unbelievable and confusing,

Narrative perspective:

          One very interesting aspect of the story which is essential for the reader’s perception of the course of events within the plot is the narrative perspective.  “What the Tapster Saw” is narrated by a third-person-narrator, only giving insight into the tapster’s thoughts and feelings.  Thus, the reader gets to know the story only from the main protagonist’s perspective.

Protagonist point of view:

          In the beginning, the protagonist and his emotions and sentiments are described in a very realistic, distanced and so are events as well: “Tabasco was too busy to pay much attention to what the tapster was saying”, or “went back home and drank his way through a gourd of palm wine”.  It gets very hard for the reader to distinguish reality and dream, which can be seen in passages like the following: “What he looked around he saw that he had multiplied.  He was not sure whether it was his mind or his body which flowed in and out of him”, or “The laughter found him, crashed on him, shook him, and left large empty spaces in his hear”.

Petro-fiction genre:

           “What the Tapster Saw” is a short story about destruction to the environment through the eyes of a farmer a tapster.   Its part of the petro-fition genre.  During the course of the story, Okri make use of several motifs and images that run like a common thread through the story.  The most noticeable one is the motif of death.  In the beginning of dreams, the tapster dreams about his own death due to falling from a tree while working: “One night he dreamt that while tapping for palm-wine he fell from the tree and died”.  Troubled by that dream, he calls upon his friend Tabasco, a herbalist, for help-but does not get any.  The next day his vision becomes true:  the tapster falls down, slips away into a kind of deep sleep and when he wakes up finds himself in a surreal, dream line world-in that “the sun did not set, nor did it rise”.  Several events are hinting at death here:  There is “the laughter of death” from the snake, and every day the creatures he is surrounded by let him know how many days he has been dead meanwhile:  “You have been dead for two days”, “You have been dead for three days” etc.  The protagonist also encounters death in the form of “an old man who had died in a sitting position while reading a bible upside-down” and later finds out that “the man looked exactly like him”.  In the end of the story, he “floats” back into the familiar world where he meets Tabasco who confirms that the tapster had been among the dead already: “You fell from a palm-tree and you have been dead for seven days”.

Motif in the story:

          One way of interpreting the death motif in the story is to link it with the social criticism that Ben Okri tries to express in “Stars of the New Curfew”.  It is interesting to note the signs that the tapster sees in the forest before he dies because they obviously indicate danger: “This area is being drilled.  Trespassers in danger”.  Another motif that the reader of “What the Tapster Saw” encounters again and again is laughter.  Similar to the death motif if appears for the first time in the very beginning of the story, when the tapster had just woken up after his fall from the palm-tree, he gets trapped and tickled by the roots of apparently the same tree, and “When he begins to laugh they let him go”.  In a later passage, “the laughter of death roars from the sun” – that way the images of death and laughter are merging into each other.  It always occurs in conjunction with either the tapster or one of the creatures:  “The snake laughed…the tapster laughed as well”, for instance or later “the other turtles laughed”.  Whatever else one might want to call the tapster’s experiences-that emphasizes the wondrous and surreal character of events.

Magical realism:

           As Okri’s work is generally associated with magical realism, it is necessary to analyze the function of magical events in the story as well as how “realism” and the fantastic world are distinguished here.  In “What the Tapster Saw”, Okri obviously focuses on the contrast between dreaming and being awake and thus between some certain dream world and the real world.  The story has a circulate structure:  First thee is the tapster’s dream about his own death, his conversation with the herbalist and his accident the next day; then, and that is the main part, the story is taken through the dream-or not dream-of the tapster; just to in the end return to the real world in which the protagonist wakes up again.  Okri describes things as on the one hand fantastic, but one the other hand seemingly “real”-both realms seems to blend into each other.  On the surface, the story has no clear magical attributes and everything is conveyed in a real setting; a character like the tapster and all that happens to him though, breaks the rules of our real world.

Conclusion:

           Though Okri clearly points to the evil legacy by colonialism, his poignant critique of corruption and politics-fused together like demon twins-remains an over-arching theme where class division is drastic.  Citizens will turn on themselves, conning their neighbours, destroying not only their brothers and sisters but the land of their ancestors.  Okri’s forests are nightmarish, oozing with gaping wounds and furious spirits which provide little salvation for those who always end up felling the city, realizing that a return to their roots has been usurped by industry invading their sacred land.  Even artists, once the flag-bearers of social consciousness, lose themselves in vice and wanton glory, while deceitful drug sellers twist their bizarre profession into a theatrical performance.  It is inevitable where those who try and try again are eternally suppressed.