What is inside the Mask: White or still Black? A Post-Colonial Musing on Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters

Abstract

To read Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters is to contemplate on the consequences brought up by colonial hangover rooted in decolonized Nigerian society. This article examines the events and actions, mainly of the compradors, to explore the lingering efflux of colonialism and finds it as the stumbling block for the progress of decolonized. The emerging elites, political leaders, high personnel of Nigerian society take western culture as a weapon to dominate common people, who seek progress and prosperity of their nation. They prefer western norms and values to their own and continue corruption in order to gain individual benefit forgetting rich cultural values of Nigeria. Soyinka communicates with the independent Nigerian society in order to show the decolonized world to be aware of neo-colonialism and its agents for the autonomous progress and prosperity of the country.