Dennis Buie

Man Vs. Nature: A Natural Tragedy

Family the foundation of society.  The conflict between family values and social mores produces tragedy for people.  But looking deeper, one finds a more elemental conflict: that of nature and mankind.  Mankind’s attempt to control and rule nature finds an outlet in literature and history.  The most potent weapon against the onslaught of natural forces that constantly battles mankind in reason and rational thought.  Reason does more than provide mankind with a tool to deal with nature, it also shines a bright light on chaos so order can be found and seen.  The conflict of man vs. nature is a recurrent topic in Antigone, Death and the King’s Horseman, Oedipus at Colonus, and A Grain of Wheat.  For the purposes of this final essay, and in contrast to the mid-term paper, I will explore how mankind’s battle with nature becomes a central and important element for tragic works of literature.  Tragedy results because it seems like a losing battle, but mankind fights the good fight still.

In Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman, the cosmic order of the world depends on Elesin’s continuation of the tradition of ritualistic suicide, among other things.  The people in this play, especially the Africans, try to maintain order in the world through ritual and superstition.  Some of these things remind me of baseball players who will not step on the lines because of bad luck.  They reasoned that certain actions will control the outcome of world events.  Consistent orderly rituals then will superimpose their orderly nature onto the natural world.  The connection between ritual and the natural world is reinforced with the imagery used in the play’s dialogue.  Like the dog and eagle references in Antigone, Soyinka’s play is replete with images of animals like tortoises, chickens, mussels, etc.  The similes and metaphors quite literally root mankind into the earth.  The African culture, in direct contrast to the Greeks, felt5 that to overcome the vagaries of nature was not to beat or out-think nature but to become one with it.  Becoming one with nature causes mankind to not be affected by the chaos.

Identification with nature is seen in the repeated explanations of people’s behavior in terms of natural events.  Elesin explains his lust as being a plantain growing naturally out of his loins.  It is not a dangerous emotion but a natural process that must not be interfered with.  There is a reason why Somon and the British are opposed to the African ways of culture.  They believe that mankind should rise above nature through reason and the products of reason like culture, society and empires.  Elesin and the other are pagans because their hearts belong to the natural elements and not to ideas and concepts.  The Africans always look down to the earth while the British and West look up to the heavens and God.  The references to grains of earth echo the same intimate connection to nature in A Grain of Wheat.  Elesin’s wedding is not consummated until the grains of earth are spread on their marriage bed, making the connection with the earth complete.

Disrupting the African’s intimate connection with nature is the cause of Soyinka’s tragedy.  The British think it all mumbo-jumbo and unfit for civilized people to retain the pagan connection to the earth.  The West conceives of a higher law, based on thought, which is the sanctity of life to the upheld at all costs.  This disruption recurs in Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat.  The title refers that people are just pieces of the natural world, seeds like yams and wheat that can only survive within the soil of the natural world.  Ngugi continues the topic of being one with nature instead of trying to conquer it with reason.  Mugo’s villages try to maintain an unbroken orderliness by blending into the natural environment and becoming one with the grass and jungle.  The “Emergency” caused by the British drove a wedge, just as Simon did with Elesin, between Mugo and nature, out of his work with the earth.  When Mugo becomes disconnected with the earth, he loses his connection to other people and villagers.  Thiong’s shows that separating oneself from nature leads to a separation with fellow mankind and implies a cause of the degenerate nature of the West and British empire.

Mugo’s separation is one of the subplots in the novel.  His experiences with others is not good and is always trying to get away and work the land.  Mugo’s constant flight and attempt to not get involved in the Movement belies his restlessness and discontent by being separated with nature.  Mugo is representative of the African ideal of being one with nature.  When he tends to his crops in the field and harvests the land, it is all part of the world he created and formed the background against which his dreams soared to the sky.  Mugo strives to connect with the natural elements of the world and to root himself firmly in something larger than himself.  This is why the British buried Waiyaki head down into the earth because they considered this to be a disgraceful burying without being able to see up to God at the time of death.  The West deems the earth and all that is below to be inferior to what is above in the heavens of God and thought.  The Movement is a fight for the African to retain and return to their perceived order of the world.  The same thing happens with Elesin when Olunde completes the ritual for his father.  He does this not because of tradition or because of disgrace for his father’s inability to follow through but to restore the natural order of things.  This is the most important element of their left and is the prime motivation for all their actions of morality and relationships.  Their relationship with the earth is the basis of their relationship to other people.

In direct opposition to the African way of life that is depicted in Death and the King’s Horseman and A Grain of Wheat, the Greeks’ concept tries to do the opposite.  Rather than being one with nature, they want to conquer it and remove themselves from the brutal exigencies of living in the natural world.  For the Greeks, life was an epic battle against the forces of evil nature.  This is why their epics and mythologies revolve around battles and wars, glorifying the heroes of warriors.  It takes a fighter, a smart and intelligent warrior to defeat the enemy of nature.  Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus are full of images of nature in a negative light. 

All of the negative examples of life are expressed through or as the destructive forces of nature.  When Creon and the Greeks let Polynices rot in nature to feed the birds, it is a disgrace because they are letting Polynices return or fall victim to nature.  This is significant because everything the Greeks do is to elevate themselves out of nature and its forces of destruction.  Buying is a form of control over nature by protecting and removing the body from the natural elements, at least symbolically.  The contrast with African culture is stark and obvious.  They want to return to the roots of the earth but the Greeks want Elysium.

The idea that mankind is cast adrift in a chaotic world that must be overcome is confirmed with the numerous instances of nature imagery in Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus.  The birds of prey and storms of sea constantly batter the weaker mankind.  Argos, the enemy of Thebes, is referred to as the dragon-snake.  When the troubles of the state crop up it is likened to a ship tossed on the ocean, rudderless and without control.  All the images reflect an unorderly and chaotic nature always ready to swallow mankind alive, like Waiyaki was in A Grain of Wheat.  Antigone buries Polynices because she does not want the dogs to rip his body to shreds.  She shows that a person outsmarts or overcomes the natural elements.  This is the basis of the Chorus’s speech about how nothing is more strangely wonderful than a man.  Mankind is the only thing capable of beating nature at its own game.  The Greeks saw themselves as the ruler of the earth, not a partner with it, and capable of wearing down the immortal earth.  This becomes the seed of the biblical idea that mankind has kingdom over all the earth and all the animals in it.

Overcoming or harassing earth, the oldest of the gods, is possible because mankind possesses a weapon no other animal has – reason.  There is an interesting fact concerning the Greeks and reason.  They had a pantheon of gods and goddesses, representing all the various forces of nature and human emotions and behavior.  Interestingly, there is no Greek god for the quality of mankind’s reason.  It was never deified like other human qualities with the only god coming close is Prometheus.  This in effect gives mankind sole possession of the power of reason and evokes the idea that mankind has some supernatural power to combat the natural power of the earth.  Reason becomes the means for mankind to rise out of the muck.

One important thing to rise up is the state.  Government and laws are the product of reason.  An orderly state and government imposes order on the surrounding chaos of nature.  This is why the Greeks put so much stock in the state and why Antigone and Oedipus became enemies of the state.  Whatever threatened the stable environment of the state necessarily threatened the very existence of mankind.  Creon called anyone a friend who supported the state and an enemy those who undermined state authority.  The state became the higher law that superseded family and natural law.  As an enemy of the state, like Polynices, the Greeks used natural imagery as when the state is being fed on by gorging eagles and birds of Argos.  Losing state power is equated with returning to nature, something which Africans would prefer but the Greeks abhorred and fought against tooth and nail.

In conclusion, the history and literary traditions of ancient Greece and Africa show that tragedy results from some form of conflict that involves nature, the natural world, or the earth.  For the Greeks, nature was the enemy to fought against with all the powers of reason.  For the Africans, nature was to be embraced and become one with.  All the tragedies concern with some kind of conflict resolution that involves restoring or maintaining order.  Nature abhors a vacuum and mankind abhors chaos.  Though the different cultures find different ways to create order in a chaotic world, each reveals a specific solution that appeals and works best for them.  Neither quite achieves success, mostly because both compete against each other and interfere with each other’s attempts to maintain order in the world.  The West’s is in conflict with Africa and vice versa.  With both fighting against each other and ultimately causing chaos that both try and avoid and overcome, the tragedy is that the natural chaos of the world will always win out in the end.