The Devil in the Cathedral by Fortune Nwaiwu

The Synopsis of the Play:

The  Devil in the Cathedral: A Shadow of Death is a play that exposes the devilish instincts in man, which have caused a fatal doom in the life of countless innocent individuals. The playwright is described as an icon of metaphor who uses such a narrative device to project every un-mannered soul as a devil. In the context of the play, the word "cathedral" is used symbolically as a metaphor for "the world and human heart" as places where the devil can reside in to cause havoc in the society. Really, a cathedral is the main religious synagogue of a diocese, a district under a bishop where praises and worship should be rendered to God. And it is expected from such a religious centre for worship to teach the worshippers the ideal things to live peacefully with one another. But we see that our political and religious leaders and their disciples have become devils in this cathedral who usurp offices and positions of importance to exploit the weak. The playwright laments over the inherent nature of evil in man and how the natural resources of CODERABIANS have been exploited by a band of barons of incompetence who rule the nation under the influence of evil instincts. From the Voice of the ʹRABIANS, we are told that some politicians do covenant with evil spirits for protection and such spirits control them to cause glitches and hitches in the world. That is why when we assume a person will do well in politics and vote for him, all we receive from him are failure and disappointment.                                                       
From one dimension of reasoning, a character, Chief Emezuruike, after a time of mental rumination, bemoans the death of his wife who is poisoned in the cathedral. The poisoner cum sorcerer is metaphorically seen as a devil. Indeed, he comes to church but all his thoughts and deeds are contrary to the word of God. At this juncture, the playwright operates with the principles of equation to say, "the man is a devil"— (p.....) who claims to be a Christian. Thus, it seems that every untutored element or entity is dubbed a devil.

Those Ochie hunters are seen through the lens of metaphor as devils. They are a part of the untutored elements and the bad and cruel part of the conscience, the naughty devils who harbour reckless and spirited energy in the mischievous way to maim innocent souls. Their dreadful acts cause a gross shadow of death in the nation of ʹRABIA in particular and Nile in general.

The devil lives in the cathedral of human psyche to control the shallow minds of some people who give him a chance to dominate them. It is said an idle hand is a devil's workshop. Thus, it is believed to some extent that unemployment has created a spacious room for the devil to drive into the psyche of youths and thrill them for destruction. This iota of truth is foreseen by the governor of Riv-Land to employ over thirteen thousand professional teachers as to avert and curb the problem of idleness. This problem of idleness escalates very revoltingly especially in Ochie land where the evil instincts in man thrust the youths to massacre souls and rape women. Property and other valuable items are vandalised and their evil deeds have caused a baffling intellectual homicide.  Also the devil dominates the mind of some clergymen who perform mystic miracles and prophesy with the power of the devil that is invoked in some sorts of oil as to deceive souls. Such clerics are devil and for this singular fact, the Voice of ʹRABIANS warns drastically for their impending doom.

The mysterious disappearance of the dead body of the Professor of Theology after the wedding song, in other sense of reasoning, is metaphorically oriented. The Devil clothes himself in a human form to parade in the world. Thus, the said prof. Gilbert Biggson dies, and a devil takes his human form to move around the world to deceive people from what the Scripture says, "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgement". The author uses this insight to clarify his audience that once a person dies anything that comes in form of his image is the devil and nothing more.

More so, The Devil in the Cathedral: A Shadow of Death is a play of lamentation that is creatively grafted to presage the wicked for their impending doom which must surely come to pass. It strongly depicts the harsh condition of ‘RABIANS who have been marginalised in the affairs of Nilian governance. The ʹRABIANS own everything in the country, Nile. They are blessed with mineral resources but their political right to rule the country and control their natural resources is suppressed and deprived from them. They are being oppressed and exploited. For this reason, the Voice of ʹRABIA roars from the sky to Nneoma in the wilderness of anguish in a night as she is running away from her mother-in-law. The Voice in the wilderness makes a prophetic pronouncement that Nneoma's son called Dr. EJANG is destined to rule the country, Nile. This child, Dr. EJANG is seen or projected as a deliverer of the ʹRABIANS from the political enslavement which they are being subjected to in their country since after 1960 they got their independence from foreign oppressors. This prophetic declaration is authenticated when the Voice orders Nneoma to bathe her dead son in ocean which is miraculously wrought and provided for a strong conviction that the God of ʹRABIANS is at work to fight for them. The instruction to call the child EJANG as he is being bathed is vehemently ignored until Nneoma tries all she could and then realises to call him the covenant name, EJANG. The Child sneezes and then comes back to life. A scroll of Ten Commandments is given by the Voice as a guide for all the ʹRABIANS and anyone who confutes or invalidates them by the way of living is seen as the devil. Obeying the voice in the wilderness is a stepping stone to conquer the evil lurking in men’s hearts which has made them to misbehave in every field of human endeavour. This will help them not to do evil again but enable them to realise the need to wrought justice and live peacefully with one another and fight against the evil instincts in man. Nneoma takes her child to Bayelsa where she finally finds out her real father land and then an avenue is created for the reading of the Ten Commandments.

A lot of people including some of the ʹRABIAN political bourgeois, leaders and their bloody hunters and the underprivileged masses come to hear the reading of the Ten Commandments. As the play progresses, we notice that there is a constant breach of trust and obedience among the ʹRABIANS in the Ten Commandments because they have made covenant with evil spirits. We see that the promised child becomes completely a failure as when he finally becomes the first man from ʹRABIA to rule the country, Nile. He uses his political power to frustrate the plans of his ʹRABIAN brother, RAC, the governor of Riv-Land. Despite the political challenges governor RAC faces, he is still able to employ more than thirteen thousand teachers, build model schools, fly-overs, award contracts and reconstruct roads.     
                                           
Also, the play satirically displays the ugly trend and serious mayhem in Ochie nationality. The people of Ochie become savage and brutal with their neighbours. The playwright having been imaginatively troubled to depict the incongruous inhumanity to man, which might have been observed in the socio-cultural milieu, felt the inclination to showcase the debauched image the bloody hunters and their politicians have projected in the land. Many people are rendered homeless, decimated, and raped; of which Ineye and Etunan are victims. As poetic justice may have it, the barbaric hunters and their unscrupulous politicians are faced with doom as the Old Woman, the mother of ʹRABIA orders his airy pastor whom she rescued from a bevy of tormenting demons to bring them for judgment. They are judged and tormented, and no one knows their fate.

The play is set in Nile, a country of thirty-six States, which is symbolically elucidated by the age of the man in the epilogue. It is also set in ʹRABIA, (CODERABIA) an acronym coined from nine States that have oil in the country, Nile. Symbolically, the nine year old child in the epilogue represents ʹRABIA while the thirty-six-year old man represents Nile because, Nile as a country comprises thirty-six States. The time setting is after 1960 after independence when the nation began to experience neo-colonialism and oppressive system of Nilian governance.


 Fortune Emerence Chinemerem Nwaiwu




Foreword


The Devil in the Cathedral: A Shadow of Death is a metaphor of lamentation that bemoans the failure of a much looked-up-to leader and that of the led who fail to keep a code of Ten Commandments. This leader Dr. EJANG, who emerges with the rare opportunity which providence gives the minority, squanders it leaving his people not any better than he met them. The play is then a political satire just as it uses the Christian religious parlance to periscope the acts of the individual and the society at large as the cathedral. The irony is that whereas it is Christians that should worship in the cathedral, the people are possessed by the devil himself who rules over their hearts and therefore calls the shots that happen in the universe of discourse of the play to wit, bloodletting, violence, rape, prostitution, political intrigues, betrayal and vendetta. The repercussion is that ʹRABIA, the Niger Delta which should have been benefitted by the facts that it is an oil-producing political sub zone and that it produced the president, is worse off. Events in the play show that neither fact is a point of advantage to the ʹRABIANS.

The play, like the biblical John the Baptist poses the question, is Dr. EJANG the one who is to come, the chosen one, the Messiah, or the ʹRABIANS are to look for another? This question hangs on the lips of everybody till the end when it becomes apparent that the Messiah is yet to come.


DR. GODWIN USHIE
Department of English and Literary Studies
University of Calabar, Cross River State.


 Cast

The Old Woman: The matriarch of ʹRABIANS.

Nneoma: The daughter in-law of the Old
Woman and the mother of His  Excellency, Dr. EJANG

Chief Emezuruike: The dreamer and father to Nneoma whose wife is poisoned by a devil in the cathedral.

The Young Evangelist: A minister of God.

Ineye and Etunan: They are the most promiscuous doxies and victims of the crisis in Ochie land in the play. Both are friends at home and in university.

Ebi: A mentally retarded pastor who is seen as the voice of the people.

Tamara-Ebi: The wife of Mr. Sky and a mother of Ineye.

Tamara- Tare: The woman whose husband is in prison, who before the minister for justice pleads for mercy.

Mr. Sky: The Husband of Tamara - Ebi and a father of Nneoma.

Brown: The young man who is posted to Ochie as a classroom teacher.

Okon Willson: The youth representative.

Mebenco and Noye: The bloody devils

The Voice: A dramatic-god (Deus ex mechina) who issues a scroll of instruction to ʹRABIANS

Mr. Ukaegbu:  The fair man whose car is burnt to ashes by the agents of devil.

His Excellency, RAC: The executive governor of Riv-Land.

Dr. EJANG: The promised child from ʹRABIA, the president of Nile.


Prologue

Enter the young Evangelist wearing his black clerical garment, a royal pastoral robe with an ephod. In his right hand, a big Bible of New Living Translation is seen while he holds a white handkerchief in the left hand to his eyes weeping like prophet Jeremiah. He moves forward to address the audience — 

 “If only my head were a pool of water and my eyes a fountain of tears, I would weep day and night for all my people who have been slaughtered”. I weep for you; good people of Nile, our leaders have disappointed us. I grieve with intense sorrows at heart; our children have become savage, bloody hunters — decimating their brothers and associates because of that old ugly monster that was cast off from ABOVE. I am very much saddened for what I have seen under the sun and felt the inclination to record from my congruous imagination the evil that wrecks our nation and I believe my sayings are a song of woe if we refute the Ten Commandments and fight against the devil in the cathedral.

I see the Black Monster falling down to the globe and I hear the celestial angel roaring in pity and anguish: “Woe unto the earth and the people on it because the devil is cast down upon the earth to deceive the hearts of men. He is like a great musician; his rhythmic samba is a noose to those who dance with him. The Monster is fuming, he has been dethroned from above and vowed not to suffer alone. He now becomes occupant and uses our political front-runners, the cream of the crop and his disciples to ransack and destroy the world.

O God, I hear my people weeping and I ask: “Why thou weepeth?” They grumble: “No one cares for us and we have been hungry since after 1960." O Lord, they are like sheep without a shepherd. They want to go back and be under white colony. It is better to be ruled by the foreigners who would allow us eat the crumbs that fall from their table  … yes the crumbs … than to be ruled by landlords who have made us scrub and keep us in hardship. We remember Lord Lugard! We like to spend with Pounds and not Naira, they groaned.

Oh people of CODERABIA, behold a ruler will be born in your land! He is humble. He is coming for peace but the country of Nile does not need him. He will reign for eight years with the fear of the Great Numen but many hands will be against him. The 'REBIANS will see him as a failure, then another ruler will sprout out from the tree of Northern part with six horns in his forehead and the country will think that he is the government of change they have been waiting for since after 1960. But he will disorganise the country. Hardship is as scorpion as a whip in his hand to punish the masses but those who know their God shall be strong and do exploit.

Now, a drop of blistering sweat falls down from the Young Evangelist and thunder begins to rumble on the sky. A young man is conspicuously seen in a wilderness muttering: Why me alone! Why me alone! We are three! Why must thou follow only me? I pointed my gun on you; I only heard the sound of the rifle but did not see you die. I left you alive. Am I the one that gave you the final blow? What about the politicians who sent us to silence you in a silent night? How long must you keep on tormenting me O spirit of the dead unless I confess? I see you everywhere I go. In the dream, bathroom, you are everywhere and will not let me rest. Leave me alone, and write me no more, MENE, MENE, TEKEL AND UPHARSIN, I beseech you.