Characters, Deed and Destiny - Essay Example

The authors are adamant in the characters Maru and Baroka that fortune will favor the brave in the end and respect their desires. Discussion Employing the use of flashbacks, fade-ins and fade-outs, the author Bessie Head of Maru (1995) makes a very strong case against the evils of racism and prejudice in the African community. It is clear at various junctures that the younger Margaret is set to be a beacon of light and hope for her people of the Bushmen tribe. Her mother tells her: “One day, you will help your people.

” This “created a purpose and burden in. [her] mind” (Head,17). Even when the younger Margaret takes on the role of a teacher in a remote Botswanan village and notes the animosity and racial tension between the Botswana tribe and the Bushmen, she is determined to end this conflict. She manages to make friends with Dilekedi and also makes a lasting impression on the various members of the village, including the soon to be leaders of their tribes, Maru and Moleka. Both of them cannot help falling in love with her.

Moleka however is shy and reluctant to profess his love, held aback by her ethnicity and the values and traditions upheld by his tribe which he feels he has to relate to. So Maru takes advantage of his friend’s hesitation and gives her lodging and a bed. . “Who knew where life and destiny would take.[her] as long as their lives were attached to Maru?”(Head, 6). In fact the story is a quaint mixture of past and present, where the fates and fortunes of mother and daughter both named Margaret are intertwined and also lead and follow each other.

The younger Margaret as noted is born in very meager circumstances, her mother dying in childbirth and leaving her child at the mercy of the world. Even in death, the Botswanan nurses at the hospital refuse to touch her body as she is a Bushmen and regarded to be of inferior standing. Seeing this the missionary’s wife takes on the task of bringing up the orphaned child and giving her a good education, determined that she grow up free of racial prejudice and is able to express herself freely, as well as make a difference to her ethnic community.

This is her destiny and as we are told, Maru also wants to share this density as he has a vision or image in his mind that by marrying Margaret, he will begin to share her open and unprejudiced attitude and outlook in life, which would be good both for him and his people. He is therefore on a higher moral ground than Moleka, who ends up marrying Dilekedi after getting her pregnant. The younger Margaret is even superior to her adopted mother, as she harbors no prejudice or racial hatred at all nor cares what others think of her, while her adopted mother treats her more like a servant than a daughter, only opening up to share a love of sketching that they both enjoy.

In Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel (1963), Baroka the Lion, the chieftain of the Ibadan tribe represents tradition and old values in Ilujinle while the