Symbols and Symbolism: The Representamen of Infelicities in Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen (2015)

Abstract

Symbolism and literary imagery have always been means of transmitting socio-political messages through engaged literature. In a logic of casting a critical look at his society, the Nigerian writer, Chigozie Obioma, resorts to a literary text dotted with images and symbols to underline the ills of a society whose family unit disassembles to sink into a tragic chaos. With a style endued with features of allegory, Obioma, in TheFishermen, shapes out a narrative discourse through which he iconizes the socio-political issues that submerged Nigeria in the recent past and continues to swamp on itspeople. In this paper, we manage to de-fictionalize the author’s message to lay bare the crude meaning of his hinting about river space and foolishness. Our analytical approach is based on the theory of symbolism to better connect social and physical representamen to their connotations and denotations. AFocus is then put on the reading of the physical and psychological ensigns that centralize the big pictures which condensate the different predicaments that, indeed, gangrene the daily life in Nigeria.