Culture Conflict in Obii Okwelume’s ‘The Sudden Return’: Dilemma of The Osu Caste System in Igboland, Eastern Nigeria

Abstract

Conflict is both human and phenomenal. The conflict between cultures in contact is phenomenal. This study aims at exploring phenomenal conflict between Western and African cultures in Obii Okwelume’s ‘The Sudden Return’, a collection in his Those Who Live in Glass Houses. It leans on Absolom’s and Kanu’s Indigenous Wholistic Theory (IWT), a theory of indigenous identities and phenomena that have to be treasured and sustained across ages. Using qualitative method and text-content analysis, the study shows how the hero and heroine seek an end to the past of their Igbo-African marriage culture that forbids ‘a freeborn’ from marrying ‘a slave’, based on their acquired Western knowledge of marriage without caste, discrimination or cultural embargoes. For them, the Igbo Osu (slave) caste should be a forgotten past, which should not be allowed to thwart any lovers’ marriage. Contrarily, for the hero’s parents and the elders of their Igbo society, to forget the past culture, which produced culture of today and the future, implies to forfeit the future. The study concludes that culture contact presents dilemma and ideological conflict, as in between Igbo and Western cultures on the notion of ‘freeborn’ and ‘slave’ (Osu), which Okwelume’s two lovers strongly contend against from Western perspective, so they could go ahead and get married, but all to no avail. The study recommends innovative and non-discriminatory reconstruction (re-make) and reformation of cultural practices that get rid of ‘freeborn’ versus ‘slave’ dichotomy and the likes for future generations, just as the ancients had made the past culture for today’s generation.