Sozaboy by Ken Saro Wiwa Essay

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Sozaboy' paradoxically decodes the despair and alienation of war into a brighter future for humanity in general. It'd a subliminal lesson that, by making the impact that it does, entrenches itself in the reader's unconsciousness, and helps the reader understand the moral and political implications of war on humanity, in general, and the effect of the Nigerian civil war on the minority areas within the Biafran population in particular.

Sozaboy is a powerful book that is intended to serve as anti-war harangue. That this is so can, I think, be best detected through the language ' rotten English' which serves as vehicle for decoding the disorder and brutality of war. The language itself is a corruption of the regular harmonious way of speaking English. It is fractured, uncouth, incomplete and rough. At rare times, the author lapses into 'regular' English and, as seen, these times seem to occur when order seems to be existent. For instance, at the advent of the war, the author describes his fascination for soldiers in very lucid English (p.72).

The plot itself reflects the disorderliness and hollowness of war. The book starts with Mene's dreams of raising a family and becoming a professional driver. He has recently married and is heartily in love. There seems to be a new government on the horizon that is promising propitious results to the village:

…the new government of Soza and police has come. Everybody was saying that everything will be good in Dukana because of new government.

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They were saying that Kotuma ashbottom from Bori cannot take bribe from people in Dukana again. They were saying too that all those policemen who used to chop big bribe from people who get case will not chop again (P. 1).

God knows but that the village needs invigoration!

Mene's first experiences of war seem disorienting and perplexing:

After the plane has disappeared, then I got up from where I was hiding. Oh Jesus Christ son of God, the thing wey I see my mouth no fit talk am. Oh God our father way dey for up, why you make man wicked like this to his own brother?... I can never forget what I saw that morning. (p.11)

In powerful terms, Mene goes on to describe his experiences:

True true these men were not looking like the people that I have known before. If you see how all their eyes have gone inside their head, and all their hair have become palm oil colour and they have dirty rag shirt and all their bones are shaking inside their body, I am telling you, if you see all these things, and you think about them very well, you will know at once that war is a very bad and stupid game (P. 151)

War is an exercise of those who are supposed to….....

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