'The Bonfire' af Ken Saro-Wiva, analyse

The Bonfire (1995)Death is very common in every single people’s lives and in this case it’s the theme of the story. Death comes from all types of reasons and people have different ways to deal with it. In the short story “ The Bonfire” written by Ken Saro-Wiva, the understanding of death is different in Africa (Nigeria) than from the modern world we live in now. The difference between Africa and the other part of the world is that they tackle death in a different way; witch leads us to the conflict of the story. But what does death mean and is Nedam a victim or just different?The story takes place in a little village called “Dukana”. The people of Dukana fear death so much, that when someone dies, the chills run through their backs. The people of Dukana see death as something supernatural and they believe that when someone dies, they have made an unforgivable thing. They believe in some supernatural-powers when it comes to death, so therefore they now and then make a “witch hunt”. The witch-hunt makes them feel safe in there surroundings. The people of Dukana often questions the death, so when a person in Dukana dies, they blame it on one person, who is then held responsible for the death of that person. In the short story a young man (Alee) has moved to a bigger city to make his goals come true, but out of nowhere he is found dead. The result of this death leads the people of Dukana to an innocent man called Nedam. Nedam gets accused for the death of the young man, only because the reputation of him was different from the others in the town.Nedam is very taciturn and reticent. Nedam was different because he wasn’t like the typical Dukana. He wasn’t married even though he was over twenty and that was a tradition in the town, also to raise family. He was ugly and thin as a rake. From the day he was born he got some wicked rumors about him, that said he didn’t want to attend school and how he was “envious” of all his friends. These facts lead him to the death of the young Alee, according to the people of Dukana. After the corpse was lead down, people took Nedam and quickly he got chopped his head of so neither he could cry or say a word. After, they dragged him into his house and burned it with him in it. If we take death in a perspective it’s not a “normal” way of thinking in our country. It’s hard to lose someone, and it takes a long time to come through it. Accepting death is very hard for many people but in the end we all do it. Some people are better at it than others. Losing someone is very hard in the first place, but accepting that the person is gone forever is even harder. The hardest way of accepting death is when someone died unexpected and without a warning. If someone is very sick and old it’s obvious that they will die soon, and from that we can get a warning instead of an unexpected death. E.g. by a car accident or a heart attack but the conclusion of the story, is that death is a very common thing and you can blame no body for it to happening. How ever Africa is a very different country and that’s why they suffer a bit more. It’s maybe also the reason why they’re not as modern as a lot of the other countries in the world. It’s a culture difference and we can clearly see that in the short story, because when Alee came to Dukana to fulfill his dreams and then he suddenly dies, they get suspicious and blame it at an innocent different man, even though they don’t even know the cause of the death. Without any proof that it was him either. They had nothing other than gossip and rumors. In this case Nedam isn’t a victim. He is just thinking in another way than the others.