Problem-solving in Amos Tutuola's The Palm-wine Drinkard

By

Obododimma Oha

Many people who read *The Palm-wine Drinkard * by Amos Tutuola often focus on his use of language. That is to be expected, but one aspect of the narrative that should interest us is how it pictures problem-solving in Africa. It is along this line of thinking that I examine the novel briefly as a problem - solving narrative.

The narrator-protagonist likes drinking palm-wine but is in a fix because he has lost the person who taps the wine. Worse still, he does not know where this dead man has gone and cannot trace there, to tell him to come back. Nobody is willing to show him how to get there. So, he has to solve this problem. He has to work the solution out somehow.

Obviously, this is a serious philosophical problem for him to try to solve. It is a problem that affects his life and whose solution would shape his future. Normally, the first reaction would be to ask people. But they would not respond to help him solve the problem. So, he has to use cleverness and indirect means.

This shows us something about cleverness and survival, something the tortoise knows very well, as shown in many narratives. As the Igbo would say: "Anụ gbata ajọ ọsọ, a gbanyere ya ajọ egbe" (When an animal in a hunt runs badly, it has to be shot badly). So, the palm-wine drinker has to look for an "unusual" way to solve the problem.

So, what problems are at https://edutitra.blogspot.com/2021/09/problem-solving-in-amos-tutuolas-palm.htmlstake? What does one learn about problem-solving from the narrative? 

1.  According to the protagonist, he had been for days without drinking because his "tapster" was dead. Finding where his tapster was (a spirit), was his obligation. He was looking for his dead tapster.

2. The second and related problem was the unwillingness of people to help him to locate his tapster. A man he approached in this regard even wanted to extend his "help" to become a punishment for the drinker's "foolishness" and to get rid of him finally by asking him to go and find Death, bind him, and bring.

3. The secondary problem - - finding where Death lives - - was not simple. Nobody would help him out of fear of Death. So, this avoidance of such a discourse  is a big problem. It demands an unusual approach.

The solutions are necessary, though not easy. Just like Africa moving to modernity and vibrant economy. Locating the dead tapster  is dependent on locating where Death lives, binding the intangible that must become tangible, and bringing the terrible luggage. Solutions must utilize simple local methods, as we shall see. They require THINKING,  not daily drinking of palm-wine. This thinking is what would help the drinkard.
Now, let us see the solutions.

1.  Locating where Death lives:
As indicated earlier, this required solving another problem - - making the intangible to become tangible! Human discourse would  not help too. So, one has to enlist the nonlinguistic. The drinkard goes and lies down legs spread out, at an "orita" or crossroad. This behavior forces some talkative marketpeople to stop and ask: "Who is the mother of this idiot lying at an" orita" with one leg pointing to Deadstown, where Death lives?" That gives away the solution that they are unwilling to give!

2. The second is how to make the intangible tangible. This is just hard. Well, the narrative assumes that this is possible and involves switching of realities. In that case, the drinkard descends into a deeper fiction where Death is found, tied up, and brought to human world. Doesn't this constitute a big problem? These days, realities can switch places!

Even though we could argue that too much drinking of wine could elicit this kind of fantasy, we know that some drunkards can see and say things. It is possible for a drunkard to catch death, tie the fellow up and bring him to the world. Even the possibility of making death tangible is what a drunkard could affirm.

What  this suggests is that our Western logic and book knowledge would be wrong in giving the impression that all problems have to comply with straightforward thinking. In some contexts, the Western model would not work. The animal is running badly in the hunt and needs to be shot at badly.

Think about COVID-19. A local African may find remedy by plucking and eating some leaves or boiling some leaves as grandfather did, steaming thoroughly to clean the respiratory track. COVID-19 could avoid this Mr. Bones!

Many indigenous people in Africa that want to get confused after colonization, especially book people, should throw away their logic or think they can be Western. They are deceiving themselves. They can never be Western.

Problems ask for solutions and in many indigenous societies in Africa, those solutions can be found somehow. Tutuola's narrative is partly about working out or finding the solution. This makes us thinking beings.