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Reinterpreting the Post-colonial Nation: Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters.

Disillusionment and despair became the dominant markers of postcolonial African literature in the 1960s. In his 1965 novel, The Interpreters , Wole Soyinka also explored the growing disillusionment and despair in postcolonial Nigeria which was governed by the black elite replacing the departing white colonizers. This paper firstly makes a close study of The Interpreters , and checks how Soyinka interprets the postcolonial degeneration caused by the corruption and decadence in the ranks of the black ruling elite, who turn into the useless and harmful apostates. Secondly this paper examines the positive aspects and limits in Soyinka’s interpretation of painful postcolonial realities by explaining his interpretation in Frantz Fanon’s perspective. Upon this examination, this paper verifies that Soyinka shares Fanon’s view on the pitfalls of national middle classes, tribalism, and the discrimination in the black community. And the paper shows the limits in Soyinka’s view. The limit is that Soyinka does not make available a vision of social-political transition and characterizes the broad masses of people as passive and ignorant objects.