Analysis Of Azaro's The Famished Road

Her arm dissolved into an indigo liquid and poured down her face; and her face dissolved slowly […]. Then her hair fell off and her head became reduced; and then her head rolled off into a ball of red waters and her shoulders melted and eventually her great massive bulk disappeared […]. (164)
In addition to indicating Okri’s craving for knowledge of the spiritual world to be revealed, The Famished Road also advocates his wish for knowledge of the world of living to be made open. The man branded purely as the photographer uses his camera to record political clash and fighting, and his pictures are exhibited openly in a cabinet outside his home. The photographer captures the reality of the society and displays through pictures which opens the

He is seized against his will in the residence of a police officer and his wife and is enforced to wear the clothing of the couple’s dead son. During his stay in their home, Azaro stares at a ceremony where the policeman puts in force the seven men to take oath. Azaro’s explanation of this scene arrests his fear and mistrust of the type of men who choose to be part of an indestructible alliance:
In a tremulous voice he said that if he had betrayed his oath in any way he should be run over by a lorry. He made a guttural sound. He consecrated his statement by drinking the potion in the calabash. He brought out the money he had collected, and placed it on the table. Then he sat back into the semi-darkness, and became a figure again. (27)
The men themselves appear puzzled to take an oath, and when they finally sink back into the dusk where they are no longer individuals. What Azaro understands from this experience is clear; people who make such everlasting oaths to a socio-political group lose their individual identities and become the shapeless, faceless forms that simply encompass a union led by others. In particular, he does not want to throw away the comfort and companionship he finds in his best friend Ade, another Abiku

However, the way in which Okri re- envisages this frequently used trope suggests a vision of Nigeria that is unlike any other. In place of suggesting renewal and rebirth, his Abiku signifies Nigeria’s capability to steer between the opposed worlds of Western modernism and Africa’s spiritual heritage. In addition, the desire to make public knowledge that would otherwise remain concealed; it is indispensable to discard strict socio-political associations that divide rather than unite. The Famished Road relies on the intersection of the spiritual and the physical realms, the legacy of Nigeria and the modernism of the West, to build up the vision of Nigeria’s