The Salient Issues In Niyi Osundare’s ‘’Eye of the Earth’’

Eco-criticism is the study of literature and environment from an interdisciplinary point of view where literature scholars analyse the environment and brainstorm possible solutions for the corrections of the contemporary environmental solution and examine the various ways literature treats the subject nature. Eco-critics investigate such things as the underlying ecological values, what, precisely, is meant by the word nature, and whether the examination of ‘’place’’ should be a distinctive category. Much like class, gender or race. Eco-critics examines human perception of wilderness, and how it has changed throughout history and whether or current environmental issues are accurately represented or even mentioned in popular culture and modern literature. Scholars in eco-criticism engage in questions regarding anthropocentrism, and the ‘’mainstream assumption that the natural world be seen primarily as a resource for human beings’’ as well as critical approaches to changing ideas in ‘’the material and cultural bases of modern society’’.  Other disciplines such as history, economics, philosophy, ethics, and psychology, are also considered by eco-critics to be possible contributors to eco-criticism.

SALIENT ISSUES IN NIYI OSUNDARE’S ‘’EYE OF THE EARTH’’

       Niyi Osundare uses poetry to make dialectical commentaries on the social, economic and political experience of his people. No one reads his poetry will fail to make the aberration in a society. Where the privilege few exploit masses. No wonder why the poet can be considered in the literary circles as the champion of the masses. Like the Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, Osundare believes that Art should not be for Art’s sake. Art must have a purpose, Form without content is nothing. No wonder the poet himself says he is interested in the happenings and politics of his society. He has over the years called the image for himself a poet, whose desires is to always situate his verse his verse within the whole ambit of human existence. The poem ‘’Eye of the Earth’ ’ is a metaphorical exploration of the attitude of the powerful and oppressed to the resources of the earth and to each other and a reminder to the poor and the rich alike that humanity and its essence is suffering degradation, which the world authority should take notice of it. The poet’s main concern is majorly the rampant inequalities and injustices all over the world. The use of images and symbolism in Osundare’s poem revolved round these questions searchingly and fruitfully: why should some be poor and some rich? Why is the society built in way to favour the strong in order for them to trample the weak? Why are the weak, the small part of the earth passive, uncommitted to social change? The salient issues discussed in this poem include:

·         Economical wastage.

·         Class division or stratification.

·         Oppression of the black.

·         Hope on fertility of the land.

 

ECONOMIC WASTAGE:

              In ‘’forest echoes’’, the poet condemns the unholy realities of social decadence, moral atrophy, potential gambit and disappearing laughter’s in the face of humanity and equates the contemporary imperfections and impermanent to the flora, the disappearing trees and forest, arising from man’s cruelty to his environment. In the poem of a picture of ‘’Agegilodo’’ is presented. It goes at any length to make profit. The outcome of this unwholesome behaviour of the abegilodo is the unreasonable phasing out of trees. The poet also made use of forest images oke the iroko, which represents the highly opinionated scholars, whose ‘’Baobab foot’’ is rooted against a ‘’thousand storms’’. It is often very difficult to intimidate this class with the oppressive axe of the power wielder.

CLASS DIVITION OR STRATIFICATION:

                 In ‘’they too are the earth’’; Osundare draws a parallel between the rich and the poor. ‘’The swansongs of Beggars sprawled out in brimming gutters’’ the word ‘’sprawled out in brimming gutters’’ paint the terrible and without hope poverty of the poor. The poet parallels them with the rich ‘’under snakeskin shoes and Mercedes tyres.

 

OPPRESSION OF THE BLACK:

                  The unity of labour and earth in social production is a motif in the ‘’Eye of the Earth’’. In ‘’The Rocks Rose to Meet Me’’, Olosunta is the rock which embodies the material essence of earth. Within the communal mode of production, the rock’s gold can be extracted to ensure meaningful development. Osundare distinguishes between harmonic non-alienating social production and the feudalist social order in which health is appropriated by ‘’hallow’’ feudalists.

 

FERTILITY OF THE LAND:

                    Osundare also expressed the same concern for the masses in ‘’they too are the Earth’’ and also in ‘’the pack rose to meet me’’, where the poet address the mountains, his source of inspiration. The rock has material wealth. Olosunda’s belly is a battle ground for the masses. The poet dialectical and revolutionary commitment to the cause of the downtrodden is evident. He satirizes the oppressors ‘’glided craniums and hollow chieftains, undying swords awaits their rocks, Osundare therefore, envisages a glorious future of equal opportunities for all in ‘’what the earth said’’, the personified ‘’earth’’ in the poem urges the masses to unite for a possible total elimination of the exploiters of man. ‘’Our earth will not die’’, climaxes Osundare’s revolutionary intention. Here, the bourgeois not only threaten humanity, but the environment. They lynched the lakes, ‘’slaughtered the seas’’ and mauled the mountains for profits. Thus, even if the mercantilist go lunatic and at random destroy nature endured lakes with the arsenic urine from the bladder of profit factories, this feeling of hope shall forever sustain and eternalize the universe, up to a time.