Eco-Critical Literature: Regreening African Landscapes

10. Nature and Social Responsibility in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Tanure Ojaide’s The Tale of the Harmattan: Cross-Border Studies in Social Responsibility

161 10 Nature and Social Responsibility in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Tanure Ojaide’s The Tale of the Harmattan: Cross-Border Studies in Social Responsibility ,œÃiÞ˜iÊ°ÊÕ>]Ê i«>À̓i˜ÌʜvÊ ˜}ˆÃ ]Ê1˜ˆÛiÀÈÌÞʜvÊ Õi>]Ê >“iÀœœ˜ There was once a town . . . where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards. . . . Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. . . . Everywhere was a shadow of death. (Carson 1–3) So begins Rachel Carson’s narrative of a fabled town in America, but it might well be Tanure Ojaide’s Niger Delta. Like Carson, Ojaide sets out in / iÊ/>i to seek what has silenced the voices of the spring. The harmattan becomes a sustained metaphor for the devastation that has come to characterize the land (the Niger Delta in particular) and the corruption reflected in the people, especially the government; but in a convoluted sense, it is also representative of the lost years of youthfulness, abandon, and plenty, which can now no longer be experienced. In telling the tale, Ojaide puns and asks whether this is the Ì>ˆ of the harmattan. Are we at the end? Is there any hope? Or is there no light at the end of the tunnel? In investigating and analyzing these questions, this paper examines how Carson raises awareness against all ecological desecration and how Ojaide employs irony and metaphor to embrace the dichotomy that his tale encapsulates. This chapter examines how Rachel Carson, a white American Scientist, and Tanure Ojaide, an African poet, raise awareness against all forms of ecological desecration in their works. A reading of Carson’s -ˆi˜ÌÊ-«Àˆ˜}Ê and Ojaide’s / iÊ/>iʜvÊÌ iÊ>À“>ÌÌ>˜Êproves that these intellectuals are aware of the hazardous use of nature by man, and through their different 162 ECO-CRITICAL LITERATURE texts (Carson’s being a series of scientific essays on the environment, and Ojaide’s a collection of poems) raise awareness for man to redeem nature. It is for this reason that I agree with Linda Lear who writes that “Carson’s thesis that we were subjecting ourselves to slow poisoning by the misuse of chemical pesticides that polluted the environment” (x) can be considered a call for revival and the rethinking of man’s activities with regard to the natural environment. How these writers use their different genres, their different locales (Carson, the United States, and Ojaide, Nigeria) to discuss issues of the environment becomes the motivation behind the research. Carson and Ojaide, in the works under study, emanate from traditions /societies that have long recognized that Man is an integral part of his/her landscape; the tapestry of their works illustrates that the world is interconnected and the resonance of issues no matter the technological skills Man has acquired in the intervening years. By training a scientist, Carson nevertheless devolves on the prose narrative to convey to a wider audience her social consciousness on DDT poisoning, while Ojaide appropriates the more elevated poetic form to depict the despoliation of the Niger Delta and the loss of cultural values through the farming of oil by faceless multinational corporations and a greedy corrupt government eager only to amass wealth. Both can therefore be considered social critics. According to Romanus Okey Muoneke in
ÀÌ]Ê,iLiˆœ˜Ê>˜`Ê,i`i“«Ìˆœ˜]Êa creative writer and a scientist may all be social critics as he argues that “by means of their craft, writers [the writer] aim to deliver or save their societies from destruction or disintegration or failure. They aim to liberate their people from ignorance and illusion and from possible difficulties and dangers that threaten them” (3). This view by Muoneke seems valid, as Carson and Ojaide seem to abrogate the mission of conscientization of the public about Man’s treatment of the natural environment. From this perspective, these intellectuals respect the platonic purpose of literature as their works in every way go beyond aesthetic pleasure to real utilitarian and functional goals. The paper adopts eco-criticism as framework for its analysis. This is so because of the theory’s capacity to discuss cultural productions (literature, music, painting, and essays to mention just these) and their relationship with the ecology. Cheryll Glotfelty has argued that eco-criticism “negotiates between the human and non human” (xix); since literature is the artistic representation of human activities, eco-theory helps to expose and explain man, art, and their relation...