LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

                             S .S .S 2

Dramatic Techniques – Language and style used in Let me die alone

 

(1)   Language 

kargbo makes superb use of the English language in Let Me Die Alone. The play is particularly well crafted  and the language is embedded with cultural nuances that adequately contextualize the play especially the rich uses of proverbs

(2) Songs and Dance

Kargbo carefully intersperse the different acts with songs  and dance and pays particular attention to sound effects. The Sande dancers are of particular interest here. As they have the wherewithal to entertain, so they also have the power to check and balance the authorities

(3)  Comic relief

Moments of comic relief also heighten the overall tragic nature of the play. The way Gbanya drags  Yoko to bed stimulates some pleasurable interest. The encounter between the guard and Messenger also underscores some comic relief. The Messenger  has been  manhandled before the guards realize that he is a member of the very powerful poro  Society

(4)  Symbols

In the play – thunder rumbles, jeneba, poison are key symbols deployed to advance in plot structure. At some significant points in the play, thunder rumbles to arrest our attention to consciousness. Jeneba in the play represents shattered hope and a new order denied from sprouting. Poison becomes a potent tool of ending the reign of each leader in the play. Gbanya died from poison by his trusted aids  while yokos death was by self-consumed poison. For Gbanya , poison took him out in a disgraceful manner but yoko used poison to leave the scene with her royal esteem  and integrity intact. Poison in this instance has a dual image of negative  and positive ends. But why does kargbo make the two chiefs to die by poison. Probably or dramatic convenience.

(5) Foreshadowing  

Foreshadowing is a literary device in which a writer gives  an advance hint  of what is to come later in  the story. Foreshadowing often appears at beginning of a story, or a chapter, and helps the reader develop expectations about the coming events in a story . We have some instances of the literary device in let me die alone . when jeneba  is sent to call lamboi and musa for a meeting in the palace, lamboi  admires her and remarks that Girls of her type stand to die in hands of the enemies of senehun . This statement foreshadows jeneba abduction and gruesome death in the hands of lamboi and musa who are in deed the enemies of   senehun. Similarly, yoko has a premonition that a great ill will befall this household

 

Madam Yoko as a Tragic Heroine

Queen yoko is one of the most memorable portrayals of  a woman in the whole of African drama. In the playrights protrayal, yoko is a beautiful, ambitious and courageous woman who joins an all male secret society (the feared poro society) and consequently loses her right to mother hood , though not o sexuality. In the begining a male-female, yoko is much feared by her male contemporaries, envied by women in her constituency, and doubly pliable  in the hands of the British rulers. Seen by many of her subjects as a usurper and a friend of the colonial administraton, she remained controversial throughout her reign until her death in 1906. In the play, this controversy is packaged as a defiance of the cultural norm that women should not dare rule during war times. Being a visionary who willingly gives up the privilege of childbearing of the leading chieftaincy title in all Kpa-Mende. She is willing to disprove the myth of female inferiority. She stands up to her brother Lamboi and Musa the medicine man who try to scuttle her ambition of ascending the throne of Mende. When her name is being smeared as a murderer. She reclaims her integrity though logic and poro verdict. Her reign is decisive on territorial expansion , as she moves  the headquarters of the chiefdom from senhun to mayomba properity sets in and people are happy . When the Governor wants to humiliate her reducing her land boundaries and territorial control, she expresses her disappointment on the betrayal of her loyalty to the governor. Rather than live and be reduced to nothing . She commits suicide as a chief with extant Olympian heights. Kargbo has done a tremendous job of portraying yoko as an impressive ruler of heroic proportions. Indeed, the historic yoko was nothing short of the heroic present yoko, who is a complex figure whose feminine comportment, sensuality, and beauty promoted her among women, but whose fearless soul and unrestrained ambition made her a competent and visionary leader among her male counterparts

Download Document Here: Literature in English , S. S .S 2B. All saints Secondary School oyigbo

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