SYNOPSIS/PLOT/CHARACTERS OF “THE BLINKARDS” FOR WAEC/NECO LITERATURE EXAMS (64)

SYNOPSIS/PLOT/CHARACTERS-REVIEW

Kobina Sekyi

The Blinkards

The Blinkards is a satirical play written in English and interspersed with Fanti (all the Fantis have been translated on the left hand side of the pages or the even-numbered pages). It tells of the consequences of blindly mimicking the European culture.

The plot is woven around Mrs Brofosem whose brief stay in England has produced in her the self-delusion that her traditional culture is backward and must yield to “the fairer values of the European”. She comes into sharp conflict with Mr Oyimdze who proves to her that local values are as good, if not better, than any.

Mrs. Brofosem exhibits too much European tendencies in his/her actions by eating only European foods, though we know that at several points in time she yearns for locally prepared food such as roasted plantain. She goes everywhere in a frock, boots with an umbrella and a lorgnette. Though she speaks bad English, she does so with a forced English accent. As a wife to Mr. Borɔfosεm, she forces him to behave as an Europeanized man: smoking cigar, eschewing local foods and dresses.

Mr. Tsiba (a cocoa farmer) brought her daughter to Mrs. Borɔfosεm to train so that her daughter would become just like her and this Mrs. Borɔfosεm did with eagerness, instilling in her ‘proper’ English mannerism. Later, Miss Tsiba met a young man, who to attract her attention as an Europeanised man, had also gone to work with Mr. Onyimdze – a lawyer who avoided anything European except those that are germane to the execution of his profession such as the wearing of black gowns and white curled wigs.

As the play goes on we find that the two (the young man Okadu and Miss Tsiba) finally met at a garden party thrown by Mrs. Borɔfosεm and there and then got engaged in manner of one they had read from an English novel (without the presence of any family member). Mrs Borɔfosεm told Mr Tsiba that her daughter was about to marry and that he, Mr. Tsiba, had to buy the clothes for the impending wedding. He got furious but calmed down when he was told that it was the ways of the Europeans for the bridegroom’s father to purchase the clothes for the bride and bridegroom. When Na Sompa (wife to Mr. Tsiba) heard the news she got furious too and insulted Okadu. It was in the middle of one of such vituperations that she got a heart-attack and died. Nana Katawerwa, hearing that her daughter (Na Sompa) was dead and her granddaughter was marrying without following tradition stormed the chapel and disrupted the wedding program.Not only that,he refused to let Miss Tsiba into her ‘husband’s’ house.

Later Miss Tsiba was to marry another man through the traditional mode. This infuriated Okadu, who got the grandmother and granddaughter arrested. The case went to court and Nana Katawerwa and her daughter won under the exposition of the Native Law.

The story is deep and borders on several aspects of our lives. It is a pity that the situation still pertains today. People cannot speak their local language properly and yet would do everything to show that they can speak English including faking the voice. It is easier to see people in three piece suits walking under the scorching sun. Still the borderline between enlightenment and colloquialism is measured by how much one has adopted Christian and European values.

But there is hope: gradually people are changing, people are finding their roots… it is a slow process now but it would work out. It is the language that is becoming a problem. There is a former presidential candidate who changed his name from Joseph Houston-Yorke (yes he is a Fanti) to his local name.

The Anglo-Fanti Short Story

Like The Blinkards, this story concerns blind assimilation of European culture. It’s about a boy who was brought up to become an aficionado of European mannerisms, while shunning African culture. Following this path and learning very hard he got a scholarship to London where he studied Law. Whilst there he realised that London was not all that they say it is. There are classes and divisions and the people they imitated are on the lower scale of their social ladder. He also recognises, that no matter what he did he was described as a savage especially when people began asking whether he wore clothes or not (and they do now ask Naipaul!).

“It does not take him long to find out that he is regarded as a savage, even by the starving unemployable who asks him for alms. Amusing questions are often put to him as to whether he wore clothes before he came to England; whether it was safe for white men to go to his country since the climate was unsuitable to civilised people; whether wild animals wandered at large in the streets of his native town.” (page 230)

However, there were many Africans who also came to a similar disillusionment when they saw England with their own eyes; yet these group began to accept these disconcerting matters as incidental to civilisation.

“… but if his friends, even those who had been similarly disillusioned, have begun to accept certain disconcerting matters as incidental to civilisaiton, and instead of arguing from the unpleasantness of such incidents to the inherent unwholesomeness of that to which they are incidental, they conclude somewhat perversely that whoever cannot explain cannot explain away such unpleasantness is not civilised. ” (page 231)

Time came for Kwesi Onyidzin (Kwesi without a name) – known as Edward Cudjoe – to come to Gold Coast and to Cape Coast. His family were all expecting him to behave like an European man. So when he set down to work and began wearing native dresses and eat native foods they became disappointed in him. Some even considered him mad. Others made it their duty to show him the way. After he was virtually thrust into marriage, it became his wife’s pursuit to force her husband to behave like an European. Later, she resorted to the cooking of European foods and throwing of garden parties. Working harder and ever harder to avoid these incidents, Kwesi Onyidzin broke down.

The issue of cultural invasion is one that has taken the world by storm especially in these days of globalisation. Should there be a universal earth culture? and who would determine what should be in such a culture? or each country should keep its culture? Are other cultures at a threat from European culture? These are questions we need to ask. Culture is something you are born into. It grows with you. Yet people who were born outside of it like VS Naipaul and other aliens who spend a day or two in ones country, only to label their culture as backward, are either insane or mentally distabilised. To me such behaviours and thoughts are infantile and express nothing save folly. Ignorance is no sin yet ignorance expressed in hatred or bad language is stupidity.

This story is purely narrative with no dialogue in it. If you love a narrative novel I recommend this to you. If you are a staunch believer of the communalism rather than individualism, I recommend it to you. If you believe in selective cultural absorption, incising certain unproductive parts of culture and replacing it with tested ones not just dumping the whole into the society, I recommend this to you.

By Nana Fredua-Agyeman….http://freduagyeman.blogspot.com/2010/10/blinkards-by-kobina-sekyi.html