BACKGROUND OF THE POET
Gbemisola Adeoti is Professor in the English Department and Director of the Institute of Cultural Studies at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. His areas of teaching and research include Dramatic Literature, Poetry, Literary History/Theory, and Popular Culture. Adeoti is author of the book, Voices Offstage: Nigerian Dramatists on Drama and Politics (2009), and the short monograph, Aesthetics of Adaptation in Contemporary Nigerian Drama (2010). In addition, he is the editor of Muse and Mimesis: Critical Perspectives on Ahmed Yerima’s Drama(2007), and co-editor of Intellectuals and African Development: Pretension and Resistance in African Politics (with Bjorn Beckman, 2006); After the Nobel Prize: Reflections on African Literature, Governance and Development (with Mabel Evwierhoma, 2006); and IBA: Essays on African Literature in Honour of Oyin Ogunba (with Wole Ogundele, 2003). Adeoti was once a Reporter/Researcher with The News magazine, Lagos, before joining the academia. He is also a poet and author of the collection of poems, Naked Soles (2005), and other poems in edited anthologies. He was a British Academy Visiting Fellow at the Workshop Theatre, University of Leeds, United Kingdom, in 2008, and a Postdoctoral Fellow of the African Humanities Program in residence at the International Institute for Advanced Studies of Culture, Institutions and Economic Enterprises (IIAS), Accra, Ghana from 2009-2010. Adeoti is currently Presidential Fellow of the African Studies Association/ACLS (2012).
BACKGROUND OF THE POEM
The poem is satirical in nature. It tries to expose the socio-political cum economic problems that Nigerians are facing. The poem points out how the dreams and aspirations of an average Nigerian is being thwarted by the political elites who plunder the nation’s resources to satisfy their selfish interests and that of their immediate family. This also applies to all the societies of the world.
THE POEM, AMBUSH BY GBEMISOLA ADEOTI
The land is a giant whale
That swallows the sinker,
With hook, line and bait
Aborting dreams of a good catch
Fishers turn home at dusk
Blue Peter on empty ships
All Peters with petered out desires
The land is a saber-toothed tiger
That cries deep in the glade
While infants shudder home
The grizzled ones snatch their gut
From bayonets of tribulation
Halting venturous walk at dusk
The land is a giant hawk
That courts unceasing disaster
As it hovers and hoots in space
The land lies patiently ahead
Awaiting in ambush
Those who point away from a direction
Where nothing happens
Toward the shore of possibilities.
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE POEM
The poem: Ambush has "political disorderliness" or "bad governance" as its subject matter. The land governed is full of helplessness and deceit in disastrous and chaotic situations.
Summary of the poem
In the first 1-7 lines of “Ambush” by Gbemisola Adeoti, there is a picture of “a giant whale” that is so wicked it swallows all the tools used by the fisherman, thus “aborting dreams of a good catch.” Metaphorically, the Nigerian government nay-African leaders are the whale since their actions of mismanaging the people’s resources is an indication of dreams and hopes dashed. In this manner, therefore, the very resources, which the people depend on, have been unjustly “swallowed”. Similarly, in lines 8-13, “the land” (Nigeria) is described as “a sabre-toothed tiger” so scary that only his “deep cry” make the “infants shudder home”. In a way, these infants are the vulnerable citizens, the lower class, who owing to the frustrations from their government are left with no option except to find every possible means of escape from their leaders’ consciously manufactured “bayonets of tribulations”.
In addition, lines 14-16 describe the land as a hawk, a giant one whose appearance enough portends dangers, kidnapping, stealing, and of course death. When it hovers over the sky, it makes all the little creatures below run for dear life. What is often left in the land is “unceasing disaster.” Like the hawk, the Nigerian rulers do not appear before the people except that they bring with them the instrumentalities of fear, civil strife and division based on religion and ethnic violence. However, when all of the terrors are unleashed in the land, the poor, suffering masses that have been denied access to necessities of life are the worst hit. In reactions, they are forced to revolt, for they have been pushed to the wall. Sadly, the poem ends noting that no matter what the people do, the land is so vast and versed in his wickedness and oppression that it would forever lay in ambush on their resourcefulness and opportunities.
ANALYSIS OF THE POEM, STANZA BY STANZA
We are going to analysis this poem imaginatively using the context of the poem. With such strategy, we will understand better, the details of the poem.
STANZA 1 OF THE POEM, AMBUSH BY GBEMISOLA ADEOTI
The poetic persona talks about the elites of the society which he refers to in this stanza as the land which acts as a giant whale. They are referred to as the “land” to mean the authority of the society. This could mean the government and the political caucus.
The fishers refers to the average citizen of the land who wakes up in the morning and heads to make a living for themselves; filled with aspirations and visions.
Unfortunately for the fishers, the giant whale swallows them and theirs aspirations and dreams as well as everything he has on him, leaving him empty handed.
“The land is a giant whale
That swallows the sinker,
With hook, line and bait
Aborting dreams of a good catch.”
These lines simply point to the fact that the rich always wants to remain rich, and would cut down any tree that attempts to grow taller than theirs. They marry each other to keep the resources, which is a national cake, within a particular circular. This circular is often not up to one percent of the society’s population. Once they notice that anyone is trying to get farther, they will trash everything that connects the person, stopping the person from becoming wealthy and joining the elites. This struggle between the rich and the poor is universal. It is evident in all the countries of the world.
“Fishers turn home at dusk
Blue peter on empty ships
All peters with petered out desires”
The above excerpts, introduces us to what happens when the elites must have handled the fisher man. The fishers go home in the evening with their pocket empty and their desires crushed. Practically, when you encountered a bigger obstacle that is willing to obstruct you, most times you retreat with the intention of giving up. People with more qualified degrees are denied jobs that suit their qualification because the job is meant for a rich man’s child who is yet to graduate or who has actually rejected the job role to pursue another adventure, but the parents are still pleading with him to join the family business. Ridiculous indeed.
Note: the word, “peters” in the last line of the stanza means the same as the word “fishers”
STANZA 2 OF THE POEM, AMBUSH BY GBEMISOLA ADEOTI
Here, the poetic persona refers to the elite as sabre-tooth tiger that is howling in the forest searching for who to devour. A sabre is a light sharped edged sword.
“While infants shudder home
The grizzled ones snatch their gut
From bayonets of tribulation
Halting venturous walk at dusk”
The infants refer to the young ones or the inexperienced who are not familiar with the status quo of the society. The grizzled refer to the old and the experienced. While these young ones will hear the cry of tiger and shiver away, the aged will at least gather some momentum with their weapons of suffering, only to retire again at the end of day empty handed.
This stanza tells us that the elite not only crushed the dreams of the ordinary, they also create fear to subdue you from thinking up any other aspirations. Even when you fight then, you will also loose. The rich always win in a corrupt society.
STANZA 3 OF THE POEM, AMBUSH BY GBEMISOLA ADEOTI
Once again the poet persona compares the elite to another havoc inflicting creature, the hawk. A bird that flies while targeting a prey on the ground. Like this animal, the elites of the society constantly causes havoc, hovers around watching and laughing at their victims.
Most of the situations that the poor find themselves in were orchestrated by the bourgeois to create a revenue for themselves. The poor fall prey to their traps and they are ridiculed and molested. They commit heinous crimes and go scot free, but the poor cannot. They created bad education systems and forbid their children from studying at home. Most elite children study abroad while the ordinary ones are being used as objects of contempt. They embezzled the fund meant for the improvement of the health care system in the country and fly abroad to treat themselves.
STANZA 4 OF THE POEM, AMBUSH BY GBEMISOLA ADEOTI
In this last stanza, the poetic persona brings to light the link between the title of the poem and the poem itself. The land, the authorities, the elites, the politicians, the scavenging rich circle are ‘futuristically’ ahead with all eagerness, waiting for anyone who is aiming to get ahead of them. The society has being construct in such a way that the ordinary citizen is made to believe somethings which are often false. Then, if Para venture anyone finds out or attempts to find out that which is hidden, the big dog will eat or shot him/her up.
It takes money to get money, so greater wealth remains with the rich. An ordinary individual cannot vie for a political position in the country because the ticket is placed at a very high cost that he cannot afford.
The current system and modus operandi of our society is constructed in such a way that it only favours a few, and these few, refuse to let others in. Thus, the poetic persona refer to them as the land that lays ambush to swallow, devour, and destroy.
THEMES OF THE POEM, AMBUSH BY GBEMISOLA ADEOTI
The central idea of the poem hovers around the antagonist and parasitic relationship between the rich and the poor, the ruling class and the ruled class.
- Crush of aspirations – According to the poem, the fishers who set out to catch fishes are being hijacked with their boat and fishing tools. This reveals the shattering of the dreams of the ordinary man, the ordinary graduate who takes to the street to fend for himself. His/her or her ambition to get a good job to meet up with the daily bread is being smashed by nepotism, favouristism and ethnicity. In fact, the last stanza shows that the authority will still go ahead of you to set a trap waiting for the next aspiration that you will come up with.
- Hopelessness – The very fact that the fishers are made to return home at dusk without a single catch instills hopelessness. This is exemplified in lines 5 to 7 of the first stanza.
- Fear – Fear is another theme that is evident in the poem. The gruesome animals used in the poem creates fear in the minds of the people, hindering them from taking another step further. Line 10 in the second stanza indicates how the young inexperienced shudder home in fear of the “saber-tooth tiger” that is howling in the glade. People in our current society are afraid to take up against the authority even when it is obvious that the authority is on the wrong side. Why is this? It is because once an individual speaks up, the government will use its apparatuses in one way or the order to bring the person down. These government tools are depicted with the animals in the poem. The last stanza is also an expression of fear rather than hope that, even after everything the authority has done to bring the fishers down, she will still go ahead of them waiting patiently to swallow, devour and snatch away their new dreams and aspirations. Or inflict pain on them for pointing to the right thing that the government is supposed to do
- Bad leadership – The government is of the people and for the people. The practice of democracy purports that the ultimate power rests with the people. Then, government becomes bad if the reverse of the principles of democracy is in practice. A good democratic government cannot create fear in the minds of her people. Poverty and hopelessness and partially freedom is exemplifies this.
- Destruction – The animals used in the poem to depict the authority are destructive. This shows that the authority and her apparatuses are agents of destruction, destroying the hopes, dreams, and the aspirations of the common man.
STRUCTURE OF THE POEM, AMBUSH BY GBEMISOLA ADEOTI
The poem is a four stanza poem with no rhyme and rhythmic pattern. The only device that brings pattern into the poem is the use of metaphor at every first line of stanza 1 to 3.
MOOD/TONE OF THE POEM, AMBUSH BY GBEMISOLA ADEOTI
The mood of the poem is sad and the tone is that of hopelessness and fear.
DICTION/LANGUAGE OF THE POEM, AMBUSH BY GBEMISOLA ADEOTI
The language structure of the poem is comprehensible and straight forward. Just the use of metaphor and imagery in the stanza makes it little be difficult.
FIGURES OF SPEECH IN THE POEM, AMBUSH BY GBEMISOLA ADEOTI
- Metaphor – this is the most dominant figure of speech in this poem. Every first line of a stanza excluding stanza 4, has metaphor.
1. “The land is a giant Whale” – the land is being compared to a giant whale
2. “the land is a saber-tooth tiger” – the land is compared to a saber tooth tiger
3. “The land is a giant hawk” – the land is compared to a giant hawk
4. The word ‘fishers’ in the first stanza is also used to compare the ordinary citizens of the land
5. The word “land” is also used to refer to the authorities of the country and the animals also represent the institutions of the government.
6. The allusion to peter is the bible is also a kind of metaphor, but inexplicit. The poetic persona compares the frustration that peter suffered as a fisher man to the frustration that the ordinary man suffers in the hands of the authority.
All these show how the poem is designed with metaphor.
- Personification – The land in the poem, is given and animate attribute of swallowing, hovering and crying in the glade. In the last stanza, the land is personified to have the virtue of patience – lies patiently ahead – and is “awaiting in ambush”
- Onomatopoeia – The word “petered” in the last line of the first stanza creates a sound on how shattered those who went out to make living are when they finally return home. This is also Pun – wordplay or playing on words
- Biblical Allusion – The poetic persona makes reference to Simon peter in the bible, the fisher man whom Christ said to, “follow me and I will make you the fisher of men.” Christ met Peter on a very frustrating day that he (peter) was not able to catch a fish. So, the poetic persona indirectly refers to that frustration that Peter, the Apostle of Christ suffered before the intervention of Jesus Christ. This is also an inexplicit metaphor.
- Alliteration – below are the alliterations in the poem:
1. line 2 – swallows the sinker – s alliterates
2. line 7 – all peters with petered out desires – p alliterates
3. line 8 – saber-tooth tiger – t alliterates
4. line 11 – grizzled ones snatch their gut – s alliterates
5. line 16 – hovers and hoots – both h and s alliterate
6. line 17 – the land lies patiently ahead – p alliterates
- Symbolism – the animals used by the poetic persona all symbolizes the different institutions of the government. Likewise, the land symbolizes the instituted authority of the country.
- Metonymy – the land is something that relates to the government as an authority. So, the poetic persona uses it to refer to them the government. Just like when someone says that, “the land must hear this”, he/he is actually making reference to the instituted authority that governs the land and not the land as an object.
- Imagery – this wonderful poem, apart from metaphor, is also dominated by imagery. Land, whale, hawk and saber-tooth tiger all creates visual images in the mind of the reader. The reader is made to picture a whale that swallows a fisherman, a devouring saber-tooth tiger and a giant hawk hovering in search of a prey.
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