[محمد صالح بحرالدين محمد ص]

A consideration of the didactic aspect leads to the moral dilemmas that are sometimes posed. Tutuola presents two of these at the end of The Drunkard. The first, dealing with professional debtor and a professional debt collector, is not, in my opinion, nearly as good as the second--the love-trial. According to the latter, three women and their husband are going on a journey when the husband suddenly stumbles and dies. The first wife instantly dies in order to keep him company in the other world; the second sets off to discover wizard who can revive the dead; while the third stays by the bodies to keep away wild beasts that would otherwise maul them. Later, the second wife brings back a wizard who revives the bodies. Asked what the fee for his labor is, he demands to be given one of the wives. None agrees to be given away and the dilemma, therefore, is which one should be given to him? Here, the audience recognizes, or is expected to recognize, that the three wives have, each in her own way, demonstrated their affection for their husband, one by dying with him, another by bringing his reviver, and the third by protecting his body from harm. They have shown that they love him in life and in death and are prepared to make any sacrifice to be with him. He alone gives meaning to their sacrifice. To go with the wizard would mean being cut off physically and spiritually. Such a sacrifice would no longer have any meaning: it is as if Christ had allowed himself to be crucified only so man could be claimed by the devil--a case of stupid self-immolation and a repudiation of reason. The audience is made both judge and jury in the case, but everyone knows that there cannot be a just and equitable decision.
It may be asked why "dilemma stories" form a considerable part of the African folktale corpus.
Alta Jab lows view that dilemmas abound in West African narrative because West Africans are interested in legal problems 25 can be quickly dismissed, because the image of the African as the incorrigible litigant who spends most of his time talking "palavers “is one of those clichés that have no basis in fact. It is naive to imagine that indigenous African societies, not having had the literate facilities for drawing up deeds and agreements, must have been in a chronic state of disorder. Every society evolves ways and means of reducing potential conflicts among its members, and in ours there are well established sanctions, apart from the purely legalistic ones, for preventing anti-social tendencies and the possibility of people having their rights trampled underfoot.

[محمد صالح بحرالدين محمد ص]

At all events, the idea of the dilemma being used to inculcate legal expertise is unfounded. The problems are very often not legalistic in nature but are always part of human life. People are constantly faced with choices, the making of which may not only be difficult but often tragic. The Kantian differentiation between the absolute and the categorical imperatives as the basis of the tragic dilemma no doubt has a universal application, but many dilemmas of the African folktale have no immediate divine or ethical basis that could help to arbitrate in making a choice or at least point a way to a final resolution.
They are not always as clear-cut as, for example, Antigone's choice between a religious duty to a dead brother and her duty to the state. Tutuola asks which of these wives, whose loyalty and affection to their husband have been proved, ought to be sacrificed to the wizard.
Dilemmas of this nature are posed here to remind the audience that life contains many moral imponderables that cannot be resolved by making a facile or an apparently clever judgment. The question transcends mere intellectual juggling: it touches the very depths of our emotional being. In short, many of these dilemmas cannot be resolved and are not meant to be. Whereas the literary artist attempts to explore the complicated implications of a particular moral dilemma for the purpose of revealing his own individual insight, the duty of the traditional storyteller is to enunciate it in the clearest way possible and to leave each individual to reach his own solution, if he can. This is exactly what Tutuolahas done.
The folktale as a well-developed narrative can be examined not only on the basis of its structure and content, but also on the basis of style. Its stylistic quality derives essentially from its spoken rather than its written form and is therefore more akin to drama. The competent raconteur uses the possibilities offered by the oral nature of his narrative to immense advantage. By the modulation of his voice, facial expressions, and gestures, he can express varied emotional nuances that are difficult to recapture in written form. The use of songs and ditties not only heightens and vivifies the narrative, it establishes a rapport between the storyteller and his audience. It is expected that the loss of these dramatic devices and songs, as a result of committing what is essentially an oral form to writing, will weaken Tutuola's stories. Anyone who is brought up within the oral tradition cannot fail to notice some gaps in the plot of a written version.

[محمد صالح بحرالدين محمد ص]

In Simbi, for instance, the absence of song is often felt because Tutuola tells us from the beginning that Simbi is an expert singer who has delighted the people of her village.
However, he goes some way toward capturing the effect of song by the simple colloquial rhythm of the speeches. This effect comes out in the scene when Simbi narrowly escapes being sacrificed to the wicked gods of the people of Sinners' Town. Several of Simbi's companions have already been sacrificed, and now that it is her turn, she bursts into along sorrowful song, part of which is an appeal to the people to save her life and the lives of her surviving colleagues. She sings and the king responds in song also:
"Please the King, set the rest of us free." "Ha!-a!-a! Don’t you know you have become the slave of these gods this midnight...?" "Please, the chiefs deliver us from these gods!" "Ha!-a!-a! You chiefs, don't you hear her plead now...?" Then the king, the chiefs, the prominent, and all the common people who were outside the shrine replied to Simbi's request by singing loudly: "Don't you hear, she asks the chiefs to deliver her. But she is not aware that she has become the slave of the gods this midnight, gods who are going to drink her [ Simbi's] blood in just one or two minutes ‘time."
"Having heard like that... she changed that song to a kind of melodious song. “She soon has the whole congregation swaying and dancing. One may say that the reporting of the singing here, like the reporting of an action in the theater, is no adequate substitute for the real thing, and that in a storytelling session the alternate singing by the victim and the congregation would have produced an operatic effect that cannot be adequately recaptured in writing. Nevertheless, the colloquial rhythm of the speeches, especially the interjected remarks and repetitions, does give the feel not so much of traditional folktale singing, which can be extremely lively, but of the kind of irregular incantatory singing that one sometimes hears at a place of ritual sacrifice, a general stirring within the taut, sacrificial atmosphere like the rustling of dry leaves under a dark, overcast sky.

[محمد صالح بحرالدين محمد ص]

Tutuola achieves his best storytelling effects by a simple, direct, and almost bald narrative method. He goes straight to the story without any preambles or circumlocutions. In four brief opening paragraphs, he sets the stage for the long adventure in The Drinkard:
"I was a palm-wine drinkard since I was a boy of ten years of age. I had no other work than to drink palm-wine in my life. In those days we did not know other money, except COWRIES, so that everything was very cheap, and my father was the richest man in our town.
"My father got eight children and I was the eldest among them, all of the rest were hard-workers, but myself was an expert palm-wine drinkard. I was drinking palm wine from morning till night and from night till morning. By that time I could not drink ordinary water at all accept palm-wine? "But when my father noticed that I could not do any work more than to drink, he engaged an expert-palm wine tapster for me: he had no other work than to tap palm-wine every day.
"So my father gave me a palm-tree farm which was nine miles square and it contained 560,000 palm-trees, and this palm-wine tapster was tapping one hundred and fifty kegs of palm-wine every morning, but before 2 o'clock P.M., I would have drunk all of it; after that he would go and tap another 75 kegs in the evening which I would drink till morning. So my friends were uncountable by that time and they were drinking palm-wine with me from morning till a late hour in the night. But when my palm-wine tapster completed the period of 15 years that he was tapping the palm-wine for me, then my father died suddenly, and when it was the 6th month after my father had died, the tapster went to the palm-tree farm on a Sunday evening to tap palm-wine for me. When he reached the farm, he climbed one of the tallest palm-trees in the farm to tap palm-wine but as he was tapping one he fell down unexpectedly and died at the foot of the palm-tree as a result of injuries."
In these few paragraphs we are given, in a graphic way, the time-setting of the story. This, as has been stated earlier, is one of the few stylistic requirements of folktale narrative, the temporal remove that helps to give plausibility to incidents that would otherwise seem incredible in a contemporary setting. Then we are given a brief insight into the character of the Drinkard. He is obviously utterly spoiled by his father. We are shown by facts and figures his obsessive addiction to palm-wine and then, of course, were told of the death of the Tapster, which necessitates the quest.
Tutuola's humor and sensitive nose for the kind of detail that gives beauty, power, and immediacy to writing are illustrated in almost every page of his books. Simbi' conversation with Dogo the slave-raider along the Path of Death and with the Satyr of the Dark Jungle at the first encounter are handled with delicate humor that is greatly reinforced by the deadly menace lurking behind the apparent innocuousness of the situations. Tutuola's imaginative inventiveness is at its best in the description of the masque cunningly staged by the Satyr of the Dark Jungle as a trap for capturing Simbi.

[محمد صالح بحرالدين محمد ص]

The magic hall within which the masque is staged, the phantom orchestra, and the ultra-beautiful
Ladies are all described with engaging case and ample imaginative detail. The last arrivals at this colorful pageant are the six fearful ostriches who wear white shoes on their hooves and cover their faces with masks. The image conjured up by the entire masque is one of great variety of color and ornament and a sort of fairy-tale ballet whose effect is increased by the knowledge that hidden in an obscure corner, ready to pounce at any moment and dissolve the whole scene, is the implacable Satyr. The ability to produce fascinated response behind which there is a background of dread and horror is one of the most outstanding qualities of Tutuola's genius as a storyteller.
Finally, an aspect of his writing that has intrigued many readers is the incorporation of several elements from modern culture. In the dark jungle, time is measured in hours and minutes, as though the protagonists are carrying their pocket watches, distance is gauged in miles, and business is conducted in pounds, shillings, and pence. The skulls chasing after the Drinkard are likened to a thousand petrol-drums pushing themselves along a hard road. Bombers, buoys, Technicolor, telephones, electric switches, and the other paraphernalia of modern civilization, all find their way into these stories. A bewildered German reader asked me why this is so and even compared Tutuola's stories with those of the Brothers Grimm to show that "pure" examples cannot incorporate "foreign" cultural elements.
An explanation for this phenomenon must be sought in the nature of the traditional African folktale. It is a very free narrative form and the narrator has ample scope to incorporate whatever elements within the experience of the community he thinks will make his story effective, especially since these elements do not alter plot, setting, or moral purpose. Even though Tutuola's stories (like all traditional folktales) refer to remote age, the fact that he was writing in the second half of the twentieth century meant that he would have to incorporate some modern elements that have become part of the everyday reality of Nigerian life. Even an illiterate person in the streets of Lagos has seen a clock, a petrol-drum, and a torch, and may have heard of bombers, telephones, and Technicolor. Tutuola's life in the capital must have made him aware of the buoys in the harbor, and his Christian education must have familiarized him with angels, and so on.
These things cannot correctly be regarded as "foreign" and are as much part of the composite culture of modern Africa as are the purely traditional elements. In the words of Kofi Busia: "Survivals of extremely old cultures can be found alongside recently borrowed inventions and ideas. The old and the new are both a part of Africa as it is today.