Exploring Storytelling Techniques in Adedayo Agarau's Arrival and Chinua Achebe's Vultures
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Storytelling in Poetry Using ‘Arrival’ by Adedayo Agarau (2024) and ‘Vultures’ by Chinua Achebe (1971)
Elements of a Story/Prose
Setting - Location, weather
Plot - Sequence of events
Themes – Predominant ideas
Language – Use of literary devices
Genre and Structure – Type of story
Characterisation – Development of people or things who play a role in the story
Nattarive Arc Explained
Consists of:
An Exposition: This introduces the characters, setting, and initial situation.
Rising Action: This builds tension and introduces the conflict or problem the character(s) will face.
A Climax: This is the turning point of the story, the moment of greatest tension or conflict.
Falling Action: This resolves the conflict, and the story moves toward a conclusion.
A Resolution: This is the final outcome of the story, where loose ends are tied up.
1. Setting - Location, weather
In Adedayo’s ‘Arrival’ the story begins on a rainy evening; action takes place inside a sand house, then scenes change: inside and outside a mosque, then story ends in a turquoise blue room.
In Chinua Achebe’s ‘Vultures’ the scene opens by locating the reader outside- it’s raining too and it’s just before dawn; the skies are grey.
2. Plot - Sequence of events
In Adedayo’s ‘Arrival’ we are launched into a dramatic scene. A familiar relation has plans to exterminate the infant-protagonist by administering a noxious substance to him. Whereas, in Chinua Achebe’s ‘Vultures’ - disgusting carnivores - vultures are feasting on a broken bone.
In Adedayo’s ‘Arrival’ the action soon heats up. A character, the narrator-protagonist’s distressed mother, reacts to the behaviour of the great aunt, the typical Shakespearean villain, who becomes our antagonist. Subsequent actions feed off, of this inciting action. We are given a back story.
The plot climaxes when the protagonist faces grave danger – a hunter points a weapon at him.
Cue suspenseful music because we are left anticipating what happens next. The camera ‘pans’ off to choristers.
In Chinua Achebe’s ‘Vultures’ the loved-up birds carry on eating a corpse they had started tearing apart the previous day. It’s an analogy and the behaviour of the birds becomes a metaphor for the actions of the despicable and now infamous, Commandant at Belsen.
In Adedayo’s ‘Arrival’ the story ends with the infant- protagonist being paced back in cot. We’re intrigued as the reader’s told the nightmare returns.
In Chinua Achebe’s ‘Vultures’ the Commandant at Belsen goes home to a lady, probably his wife or girlfriend.
3. Themes – Main or Predominant ideas
In Adedayo’s ‘Arrival’ the themes are familial conflict, childbirth and cultural beliefs and family values.
In Chinua Achebe’s ‘Vultures’ the poet concerns himself with ‘affection’ the lies underneath the layer of a vicious human nature.
4. Language – Use of literary devices
Chinua Achebe’s ‘Vultures’ employs the use of an extended metaphors – the first stanza is another way or depicting the evil yet loving Commandant at Belsen. The poem is an analogy, meaning ‘a comparison between one thing and another, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification’, [Oxford Dictionary, Online]. The analogy compares vultures and humans.
Adedayo’s ‘Arrival’ uses metaphors, ‘my grandmother’s face, the lines on her cheeks,the map of time’
How can the wrinkles on his Nan’s face be a time map?
The poet also uses repetition with the hyperbolic lines – ‘at the beginning of my life my bruised life the bruised almond tree dried’
He uses to refer to events in a proverbial way - as you’d find in classic African Literature –
‘the day of reckoning is the day the bats find joy in their cave in the songs where i am searching the city for candles i find the wall’
Adedayo uses the element, water as a motif. There’s rain, a river, a sea.
Language – cultural inferences
Adedayo uses Yoruba and Arabic in his poem under discussion. He makes references to cultural practices.
5. Genre – Type of story
‘Vultures’ by Chinua Achebe is a narrative story. Adedayo Agarau’s poem, ‘Arrival’ is a fantasy in which event probably took place in REM sleep or are imagined by the poet. How can a river turn a person towards a sand house? How can a father and son float while carrying a shard of glass? These event defy the laws of metaphysics, (Metaphysics is the study of the most general features of reality, including existence, objects and their properties).
Style –
‘Vultures’ is a free-verse poem with an uneven line structure used to tell a story. ‘Arrival’ on the other hand utilises contemporary prose-like language but delineated lines. These lines are used for ‘Stage positioning’ which in Drama is used only to mean how characters in ‘Arrival’ enter from the left of the page, the action heats up sometimes in the lines which are encroaching the centre or are centre aligned, and the right aligned lines feed off from the main action. Notice how the word, ‘returns’ is left aligned. Its pays a significant role in the conclusion of the poem.
6. Characterisation – Development of people or things who play a role in the story
In Adedayo Agarau’s ‘Arrival’ we find these major and minor characters: infant-narrator, great aunt, my mother, a father, a son, a woman, , the muezzin, the hunter’s, the choir of boys, grandmother, a congregation and the baby in a cot.
Inanimate characters – clouds, rain, the paper boat, the river, a sand house, the bruised almond tree, a goat, the sea and the cat meowing.
In ‘Vultures’ by Chinua Achebe, we encounter: a male vulture, a female vulture, the Commandant at Belsen Camp, love (a lover in a charnel-house) and a tender offspring – possible more children.
Disclaimer-
I often sample the work of ‘newer African writers’ and attempt to apply established theories and concepts in Literature to their work for educational purposes, if you are involved in the pedagogy of English Literature and wish to differ on any point raised, please do so in the comment section.
Authors retain their copyrights.
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