The Dialectics of Setting and Humour in Chukwuemeka Ike’s Novels

Abstract

Chukwuemeka Ike skillfully integrates his settings into the fabric of his stories just as he employs humour in portraying the context of the stories, as well as in determining lessons, challenges, and thematic evolutions of his characters. This rich interplay between the settings of particular scenes, events, encounters, and humour in some novels of Ike impacts the characters and the choices they make. This study investigates the rich intersection between setting and humour that fertilises Ike’s stories. Henri Bergson’s theory of humour, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of Comic, was used as the theoretical anchor for evaluating Ike’s use of humour while the theoretical inspiration was drawn from Sven Birkerts’s views on setting. The results revealed that the characters were influenced and shaped by their settings; a character grew, changed, and evolved as he grappled with the natural or social environment, especially when he alternated between the rural and urban settings where social and cultural orientations were different. The study concluded that the impact of humour on the characters was observed in the way that their attitudes and behaviours were altered under different customs and conventions and adopted different habits, fresh insights, and new expectations at the end of the stories, many of which generate humour.