Generation to Generation: Perennial Dread and Despair in Chinua Achebe's Beware Soul Brother and Olu Oguibe's a Gathering Fear

Abstract

This paper explores the motifs of dread and despair in the poetry of two Nigerian writers of different generations. It argues that both poets write against the backdrop of an endless context of chaos and disorder occasioned by the caprices of history. The consequences of the frightening historical condition occasioned by military rule which both poets thematize are manifested in a negative connotation that coalesces into dread and despair. The older poet is Chinua Achebe, while the younger is Olu Oguibe. Achebe’s Beware Soul Brother and Oguibe’s A Gathering Fear are examined in this discourse as works of different generational alignments, but reflect the same historical temperament. What is foreground in both works is the seemingly unending condition of national disillusionment sustained by perennial chaos.