The Rise and Fall of Chief "Batouala"

I just finished reading "Batouala" today. It is a mind-blowing novel with its truthfulness and free from hypocrisy. Indeed, it tells what is. Chief Batouala is swallowed to death by one of the seven capital sins-jealousy. His might in hunting, war and love was thwarted by his overweening pride (hubris) that led him to his downfall. Worse, his own javelin spawned his own death that wakened a hungry Mourou, a panther, whom he premeditatedly planned to kill Bissibingui 'a la panther style'. The great tragic reversal befell him. The hunter was hunted down by his evil plot. In the end, he was Lord no more. He wallowed in his own catastrophe. He was late to have his own anagnorisis. All deserted him except his own dog. Bissibuingi, whom he esteemed as a friend, and Yassiguindja, his favorite ninth wife, consumed by their carnal desires, betrayed him. While he lay dying, they were on the height of their blissful panting for pleasure. What a sight! a man dying, losing his virility and on the side, a virility at it's best with a wife he dearly loved. All are gone. Soon, on his sleep, Batouala would be gone. The whites whom he loathed remained lording over the land that respected him as he understood and loved fully it's customs.

The narrator's great sense of smell, of sight, of touch and of feeling are fully active and alive. I am able to travel the Central republic of Africa. With that style of climactic and sometimes staccato description, one wants more to rove and see the the famous village of Batouala.

The orality of the narrator, with his songs for the planting, hunting, harvesting, burying their dead, circumcising boys, excising girls, consuming their love is rich in the novel. Indeed, the myths and legends of the sun an the moon, the stars, the villages, the fables of the panther and the lion, the chicken and the elephant proved the narrator and the author to be truly fresh and original.

Maran's incisive social commentary on the ways of the whites, on their ignorance on the culture of Batouala and his ancestors, on their abuses against the Africans are resonating a man's oppressed and suppressed experience in the hands of the whites. One only becomes a witness to the microcosmic tragedy of Batouala, if not an advocate of change, so that Batouala's rest to Ngakoura will be in peace!