On Absolutism In Nigerian Drama: The Asphyxiated Freedom In Irobi’s The Other Side Of The Mask And Abba’s The Blood Price

Abstract

Nigerian drama reflects the intrinsic human struggles experienced in everyday life. The quest for freedom is a continuous human struggle, fundamental to human existence and often enshrined in revolutionary activities. This study aims to analyse and assess the critical ideas of absolute freedom in Esiaba Irobi’s The other side of the mask and Abba A. Abba’s The blood price. It presents freedom as a double-edged sword – for liberation or destruction – and these two degrees of freedom occur at separate times. The negative side of freedom, which emerges in its excessiveness (entrapping liberty), manifest as absolute freedom. This foregrounds that absolute freedom incubates in its over-ambitiousness; the outcome of this transcended freedom is its destructiveness. Adopting a qualitative method and distinguishing itself from previous studies on these two plays, the study explores the Marxist and Postmodernist ideas of Terry Eagleton as presented in his book, Holy terror, to analyse absolute freedom in these plays by answering questions such as: At what point can freedom lead to destruction? What actions or events propel such a transition, and how are characters spurned into consciousness? In answering these questions, freedom becomes an effect and a cause, with absolute freedom as an effect that causes ruin to its possessor. While Eagleton’s Marxist ideas dwell on conflicts that emerge from the pursuit of freedom and the need to maintain equilibrium in human interactions, his postmodernist ideas reflect a return to the endless state of the creator’s concept of freedom and a change from modernist ideas that constrict human existence. In the plays, the two protagonists, Jamike and Agunwanyi, become victims of the freedom which they sought in their revolt against conservative practices that suppress humanity; instead of gaining freedom in its objective form, the seekers submerge into absolute freedom that leads to their destructive bondage. The paper concludes that absolute freedom constricts freedom and destroys the mind’s rationality; self-destruction becomes the outcome of these characters’ overambitious quest.