Ogun’s Tirade in the Market of Chaos: A Study of Soyinka’s "Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known”.

Abstract

No doubt, the search for global peace in the world today is an issue of paramount importance. Sadly, in a direction that does not match the attention and resources dispensed on its search, the doses of internal crises enveloping the nations of the world today presage the risk of continued survival of man on the planet. In Nigeria, recent events have produced the highest manifestations of security alertness in the history of a nation. This paper, a general focus on the poetry of Wole Soyinka with particular attention to Samarkand and Other Markets I have Known (2002), examines Soyinka's latest interrogation of peace through his muse, Ogun. The writer identifies with the activities that rupture peace and the cosmetic antidotes deployed by man, the conclusion, using the market metaphor of the poet, is that the realization of multiple boundaries and the respect for them by all will foster the long sought peaceful agenda in the nation and in the universe at large.