SOURCE: Roy, Anjali, and Viney Kirpal. “Men as Archetypes: Characterization in Soyinka's Novels.” Modern Fiction Studies 37, no. 3 (autumn 1991): 519-27.

In the following essay, Roy and Kirpal discuss how the male characters in The Interpreters and Season of Anomy function as traditional African male archetypes.

Although several articles have been written on the characters of Wole Soyinka's plays, his fictional characters have not been discussed in detail. This leaves a gap in the existing criticism of Soyinka's work, particularly since The Interpreters was specially cited for the Nobel Prize for Literature. This paper examines, in depth, the nature of characterization in two Soyinka novels: The Interpreters (1965) and Season of Anomy (1973), and hopes to fill this lacuna to a great extent.

Any critique of characterization in the African novel not taking into account the traditional African conception of “personality” and “individuality” is, even at its best, limited. Most western analyses...