Research Article | OPEN ACCESS
Sutherland’s Creativity at Work: The New Family of Mr. Ananse the Spider in
The Marriage of Anansewa
P.B. Mireku-Gyimah
Centre for Communication and Entrepreneurship Skills (CENCES), University of Mines and Technology (UMaT), Tarkwa, Ghana
Current Research Journal of Social Sciences 2013 5:177-184
Received: March 13, 2013 | Accepted: April 17, 2013 | Published: September 25, 2013
Abstract
This study explores characterization in Efua T. Sutherland’s The Marriage of Anansewa and demonstrates the playwright’s imagination and creativity at work. Unlike the traditional members of Ananse’s family in Akan folktales comprising a wife (Asɔ), four sons (Ntekuma, Afurudohwedohwe, Tikenenkene and Nyankorɔnhweaa) and sometimes unnamed in-laws, Sutherland creates a daughter (Anansewa), a mother (Aya), an aunt (Ekuwa) and a lover (Christie) for Ananse. Thus there are now four new females in Ananse’s new family to balance the four males in the original Ananse family, counting out man and wife. Unfortunately, Sutherland kills off Asɔ. Anansewa and Christie are main characters but Aya and Ekuwa are made minor characters. Besides this introduction of four women into Ananse’s extended family is Sutherland’s creation of a new identity for Ananse. He is a modernized Ghanaian with an English name, George. Sutherland artistically introduces a new dimension to Ananse by redefining his identity as a modern citizen of the globalized world. Whereas in the traditional folktales Ananse often cheats the members of his family forcing them to find ways and means to survive by foiling Ananse’s tricky plans, Sutherland’s new family members play an entirely different role: they are conscious or unconscious collaborators of Ananse’s scheme to cheat others. It is concluded that, by this new dimension of characters and the roles they play which bring freshness and popularization to the Akan folktales, Sutherland has elevated the Akan folktales to become an African Classic.
Keywords:
Akan folktales, characterization, female, new family, traditional,
Competing interests
The authors have no competing interests.
Open Access Policy
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Copyright
The authors have no competing interests.
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ISSN (Online): 2041-3246
ISSN (Print): 2041-3238 |
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