The Political Reality In Tutuola’s Novels From The Perspective Of Magical Realism

Amos Tutuola was the first Nigerian black writer to gain international fame.The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts are two of his most representative works.His novels,based on Yoruba mythology,are full of magic,which has led to the questioning of the relevance of fiction to reality by critics.However,this thesis believes that behind the mythological writings in The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts,Tutuola reveals real problems.This thesis analyzes these realistic problems implied in the two novels from the perspective of magic realism and then discusses the reasons why Tutuola uses magical realism to map political reality.The Palm-Wine Drinkard narrates a series of stories about drunkards fighting with various ghosts of the ghost domain in order to recover the dead wine picker.My Life in the Bush of Ghosts illustrates the story of how the protagonist accidentally enters the ghost world to escape the slave war and then returns home.Both novels use the magical ghost world as the narrative location and the magical writing techniques as the basis to expose the dark political reality of Nigeria.The core points of this thesis include the following aspects: First,local African writers have creatively applied magical realism in African novels to express political thoughts and expose political realities.As a common writing method in European and American works,the combination of magical realism and African ingenious stories constitutes Tutuola’s writing characteristics.Secondly,Tutuola takes Yoruba mythology as the creation material,uses the artistic techniques of magic realism,magical characters,and magical story plots,and constructs a magic world with African native characteristics.The reason why he presents Yoruba traditional stories with magic realism is related to the idea of resisting colonial oppression.Finally,Tutuola aims to reshape African traditional stories and expose political reality,trying to subvert Western mainstream discourse power and justify the ancient African tradition.