Ben Okri's Symbolistic Writing as a Form of Journalism
Ben Okri's What the Tapster Saw is a short story about a man who taps palm trees to make palm wine. One day, he falls out of his tree and into a coma, where he has vivid, violent dreams for a straight week, all related to the corruption of his country.
In his dreams, he sees a snake, "roseate colored," that slithers over everything and seems to rule the alternate reality of the dreams. When the snake went swimming in a "viscous and unmoving river," the river became "clear and luminous." It's never dark in his dreams. Periodically, the Tapster encounters billboards that advertise increasingly violent messages from oil companies against local citizens. The oil companies are seen blowing up or cutting down the forests multiple times. At one point, they eviscerate the wood to get the oil, but leave the site after they cut open the earth, leaving oil and animal bones spewing out from the ground.
Voices are heard throughout the land that talk to each other as if the Tapster isn't there. Whenever the Tapster responds to the voices, he is in danger of being punished with blows to the head, but he can never predict them. He becomes afraid to act when these voices finally do seem to include him. He tries to run from his environment, but fails; he tries to destroy his environment and is punished by the voices. One of the voices provide him with thoughts that it knocked out of the Tapster with all the blows, such as "the bigger mouth eats the smaller head." After providing these thoughts, the Tapster thanks the voice.
Faulty bombs from an old war that never detonated suddenly explode, ruining bridges and roads. Lone travelers aren't safe and what's left of the roads are littered with skeletons. People the Tapster knows are secretly executed, killed by bullets named for their victims. He passes a man once who died while he was reading the Bible upside down, and when he passes the dead man again, he sees that it's himself.
Three turtles appear several times, one of which has his herbalist friend's face, and discuss ridiculous things, like how many moons there were that night and what amount of stars were in the sky at the time. It seems to the Tapster that the turtles talk about things they have no knowledge about, yet have all the authority over. At the end, when the Tapster finally wakes up in his herbalist friend's home, he sees two turtles in a shrine in a corner.
It is clear to the reader that all of this is symbolism: there is no plot, only drugged dreaming. The oil companies, namely Shell, destroy local forests and bodies of water to gain their black gold, and yet leave their wealth spewing out of the ground. They leave signs up that restrict the freedoms and autonomy of the local peoples and cultures. The snake is probably oil itself, as it is roseate colored and rules over all. The dreams are never split between night and day because the gas flares burn day and night in the Niger Delta.
The voices are the government and the oil companies that discuss money and trades without consent of the local people. Like the turtles, the government and oil companies don't know what they're doing but they have all the authority anyway. When the local towns are included in negotiations, they are afraid, because they think they will get taken advantage of or suspect that the decisions won't last. Not only that, but the voices of the government and oil companies speak propaganda to the local people, and the Tapster is given thoughts that are "better" than the ones he came into the dream world with.
The Tapster has no power over the creatures in his dreams, and neither do any of the local tribes of the Niger Delta over their land. Famous people are executed with intent, or "felled by bullets with their names on them." Christianity is both difficult to understand and entirely unhelpful, as the Tapster sees when he finds himself dead with an upside down Bible.
Not only are the events of the Nigerian Oil Crisis influencing authors, but authors are influencing the events, too. What the Tapster Saw is an obvious reaction to the Oil Crisis, how could it not be? Everything in the short story represents something else, and it is a perfect example of influential literature. It is meant to alert readers who aren't living in the direct area to the issues at hand, and it does a wonderful job.
[Rachel, I've uploaded two images into the media files, namely one of Ben Okri and a quotation from one of his books that adorns the Memorial Gates of London's Hyde Park. As I suggested, I'd like to see more about the author, more context on his magic realism, and more engagement with Jennifer Wenzel's essays on the story.]
"Join or Die." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 05 July 2010. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.
