


































CHAPTER THREE.cdr


An Ethnopoetic Interpretation of Ritual Acts in 

Soyinka's Abiku Poem

Clement Eloghosa Odia, Ph.D
Department of English and Literature
Faculty of Arts
University of Benin, Benin City, Edo State, 
Nigeria.
Orcid.org/0000-0003-4871-5841
 
  &
Florence Osaguona Okpalaku 
Department of English and Literature
Faculty of Arts
University of Benin, Benin City, Edo State, 
Nigeria.
osamedeokpas@gmail.com
08022111748

Abstract
Soyinka's “Abiku” is a significant counterpoint to that of Clark-
Bekederemo in that, it emphasises the unbreakable nature of 
reincarnation while arguing that all efforts and rituals deployed in 
breaking the reincarnation cycle are futile. Language is integral to 
the construction of meaning. Equally true is the role of literary 
semiotics in the interpretation of sign systems in the entire 
process. This essay, integrative and analytic, reads rituals in 
Soyinka's “Abiku” in order to convey the various meanings 
inscribed by the ritual signs in the poem. It also establishes the 
main thrust of the poet's argument as it concerns the artistic 
deployment of ritual patterns and their significance. The essay 
employs textual analytic method to examine how the various ritual 
experiences fail to break the reincarnation cycle. The ethnopoetic 

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Clement Eloghosa Odia, Ph.D & Florence Osaguona Okpalaku: An Ethnopoetic Interpretation of 

Ritual Acts in  Soyinka's Abiku Poem

mailto:osamedeokpas@gmail.com


Ritual studies has expanded beyond religion and 
anthropology to other fields like humanities, pragmatics, 
management sciences, sociology, psychology and many more, 
giving it an interdisciplinary status. For this reason, the definition 
has evolved over time in line with its interdisciplinary 
manifestations. From the perspective of religion, ritual, according 
to Holy Nelson-Becker and Kimberly Gangster, repetition and 
time are the two defining qualities of ritual because the action thus 
performed conforms to a rhythm, this time, of repetition and 
sequences which is time bound [154]. Additionally, they explain 
that ritual encompasses tangible symbols, rites or actions. In most 
cases the rite and symbols have connotative significance as they 
express certain values, norms and culture. Qiao Wu defines ritual 
as patterns that must be observed in the expression of words and 
action or art [28]. Qian Liu and Hiasying Wei explain that rituals 
involve symbolic events, that is, events interpretable from their 
cultural relevance to society [25]. Inayat Ali explains that rituals 
involve the enactment of a cultural belief or value through a 
pattern of repeated actions [18]. Martin Hoondert draws attention 
to the formal, the stylized and the spatio-temporal elements that 
constitute the enactment of rituals [iv].

Literary semiotics is one of the interdisciplinary links to 
semiotics. It emphasizes the interpretation of literary texts by 
paying attention to the various meanings associated with the sign 
systems deployed in the text. Necat Kumral explains that 
semiotics involves the active engagement with the text because 
the reader can interact with the text on several levels of language 
and derive many significance from the text [32]. Additionally, 
Stephanie Walsh Mathews posits that the semiotic signs employed 
in the texts always have connections with meaning structures in 
the cultural and traditional domains of the society on which the 
text in question is based [33]. 

This essay employs ethnopoetics to read the different ways 
the poet exposes the futility in breaking the reincarnation cycle in 

theory is used to read the poem and tease out the paradoxical 
implications inherent in the pervasive cycles of reincarnation and 
ritual acts performed to stop it. The essay identifies five main ritual 
acts employed by the Abiku parents to avert further 
reincarnations. It therefore argues that these ritual actions are 
ineffective in averting the above aim. The essay concludes that 
ritual fortification, ritual sacrifice, ritual burial, ritual 
identification and libations are vain methods of breaking 
reincarnation cycles in African worldview.

Keywords: Reincarnation, Cycle, Ritual, Signification, 
Fortification and Libation.

Introduction
 The subject of reincarnation in modern Africa literature, as 
entrenched in mythology and culture, constitutes and shapes the 
belief systems of Africans especially their conception of the 
world. Poetry, being one of the genres of literature, has often been 
used to present the manifold nature of reincarnation. John Pepper 
Clark-Bekederemo blazed the trail in this respect with the poet's 
appeal to the spirit child to show mercy on the parents in the 
collection A Reed in the Tide (1965). It is equally intriguing to note 
in Soyinka's poem with similar title dwelling on reincarnation 
myth, but with a different focus entirely as published in Idanre and 
Other Poems (1968).  Soyinka's Abiku Poem, like Clark-
Bekederemo's version, is argumentative in content and structure. 
While the argument is conducted by the poet persona in the 
former, it is the Abiku child who speaks throughout in the latter. 
The essential argument is centred round the method of appeal 
which the Abiku parents use in persuading the Abiku child. The 
child speaker looks at the placatory rituals offered by the parents 
and denounces them as ineffective in breaking the reincarnation 
cycle. Thus the main thrust of Soyinka's poem is the futility in 
stopping the reincarnation cycle.

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Clement Eloghosa Odia, Ph.D & Florence Osaguona Okpalaku: An Ethnopoetic Interpretation of 

Ritual Acts in  Soyinka's Abiku Poem



cycle:
In vain your bangles cast
Charmed circles at my feet
I am Abiku, calling for the first
And the repeated time. (IOP, 28)

In strict ethnopoetic sense, the cultural context of this 
poem is an asset as it enriches the interpretation of words and 
objects. For example, words like “cast” and “circles” are 
symbolic, just as “bangles” and “charms” are culturally 
circumscribed. These objects are believed to be potent weapons of 
interrupting the mischievous cycle of birth, death, burial and 
rebirth, otherwise described as reincarnation. The act of casting 
bangles and releasing circles of charms represent the act of 
spiritual fortification to which the newly born Abiku child is 
subjected in order to hinder him from tormenting the family. The 
Yoruba cultural mythology believes that such a fortification will 
help the child stay alive or defy the powers that set the 
reincarnation in motion. Hence, the cultural context of this poem 
is helpful in arriving at an accurate interpretation of the various 
ritual acts in the poem.

The “bangles” are tangible chains that are expected to bind 
the Abiku child to the family. It however evokes a spiritual reality 
in that it suggests a spiritual chain or  power that ties the hands and 
feet of the child. In order words, these bangles are the powers that 
are believed to have potency and expected to hold the child in a 
kind of restriction. Although the parents, like several members of 
the Yoruba society, believe in the efficacy of these bangles to keep 
the Abiku from tormenting the family, however, the child speaker 
does not think so. He actually rebukes their effrontery and derides 
their effort at binding him. The child speaker's voice is strident in 
the condemnation of ritual activities connected with stopping the 
Abiku child from reincarnating. This vision is sustained as the 
speaker derides the ritual of casting “bangles” and “charmed 
circles” at the feet of the Abiku child. The significance of this ritual 

the chosen poem. Ethnopoetics in the words of Ezekiel Alembi, 
refers to “the aesthetic and poetic structuring of oral art” [19]. 
Viewed from this angle, it is used in reading works which contain 
oral poetics whether in oral or written discourses. Also, it is 
applied to texts when the aesthetics and structure of orature are 
being studied. Dell Hymes and Dennis Tedlock are two notable 
proponents of this theory. Others include Pertti Antonen and Lauri 
Harvilahti. Two schools of thought have piloted the theory: the 
American and the Finnish respectively. John Miles Foley also 
provides another insight into the cultural approach to 
ethnopoetics. Foley asserts that the theory requires the 
incorporation of cultured tradition which are also noted with the 
performer and audience. Foley emphasises the context of 
performance as the primary domain of meaning. He warns against 
disregarding the domain of performance as it has the capacity to 
eliminate the dependence on the denotative meaning rather than 
the connotative (9). Also inferable from Foley's argument is that 
metonymy and utterance in the text can only convey meaning 
when the auditor is present at the arena where the verbal art is 
performed. In the context of this essay, Hervilahti 's 
methodological model is applied because it takes into 
consideration the implication of culture in understanding the 
Abiku myth which underpins Soyinka's perspective on 
reincarnation. 

Repudiation of Ritual Acts
Soyinka's Abiku poem repudiates ritual acts carried out to 

break the reincarnation cycle. In the poet's view, all such acts are 
“vain”, meaning impotent, ineffective and profitless. Five main 
ritual acts are explored in this section in order to show how the 
poet repudiates them. These acts include ritual fortification, ritual 
sacrifice, ritual identification, ritual burial and ritual libation.

The poem opens with a firm repudiation of ritual 
fortification, done with the intention of breaking the reincarnation 

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Clement Eloghosa Odia, Ph.D & Florence Osaguona Okpalaku: An Ethnopoetic Interpretation of 

Ritual Acts in  Soyinka's Abiku Poem



items through a rhetorical question:
Must I weep for goats and cowries
For palm oil and the sprinkled ash:
Yams do not sprout in amulets
To earth Abiku's limbs. (IOP, 29)

The statement which the child appears to be making is that 
goats and cowries, palm oil and the sprinkled ash are symbolic of 
ritual sacrificial items and they are always presented as means of 
warding off the Abiku child and by extension, breaking the 
reincarnation cycle. In the speaker's opinion, these items are 
presented in vain because as things stand, they will be inadequate 
to stop the child from reincarnating. The entire sacrifice has one 
purpose: “To earth Abiku's limbs”. This means to keep the child 
alive on earth and in the process, end the reign of reincarnation. 
According to the speaker, “Yams do not sprout in amulets”. As 
yams do not survive in amulets, so is the Abiku child not expected 
to thrive on earth. This is a metaphorical expression that 
underscores the glaring sense of impossibility. Therefore, it is 
impossible to achieve the purpose of keeping the Abiku on earth. 
This proverb is highly communicative. It amplifies the vanity in 
breaking the reincarnation cycle. Thus, this proverb reinforces the 
invincibility of the Abiku child.

Leaving the ritual sacrifice, there is the focus on ritual 
identification. The poem abounds with ritual identification carried 
out by the parents of the Abiku child to discourage and prevent the 
reincarnation. Like the ones before it, the speaker believes that this 
ritual will end up in vain. Hence, the child boasts:

So when the snail is burnt in his shell,
Whet the heated fragment, brand me 
Deeply on the breast. You must know him
When Abiku calls again. (29)

The branding of the Abiku child at death is supposed to aid 
the parents of the child to recognise him when he is reborn. The 
cycle of ritual identification subsists as long as the child's 

act pales into irrelevance when the child speaker describes all such 
casting of bangles as “vain”. Thus, the child persona presents the 
picture of an impetuous power which is capable of overthrowing 
any effort at defying the re-incarnation process. This fact is 
reinforced by the child speaker's envisaging of the reincarnation as 
an inviolable experience within the traditional African religion 
and tradition.

The above is contexualised by the following lines: “I am 
Abiku, calling for the first/and the repeated time”. The word, 
“calling” is a euphemism for birth and “the repeated time”, evokes 
several other inter-related experiences of death, burial and rebirth. 
The child speaker seems to be mocking his parents who fortify 
him in order to break the reincarnation cycle to desist from it, 
noting that such an effort will not yield any positive result. As for 
the speaker, he will always be reborn to outlive his 
unvanquishable existence and power over all schemes contrived 
to fortify the Abiku. That the child has been calling on the same 
household shows that reincarnation is well and alive and it 
explains the child's invincibility as well as confirms the vanity in 
breaking the vicious cycle of birth, death, burial and rebirth.

The repudiation flows from the exultant language of the 
poem anchored on the tone of defiance and self-assurance. The 
choice of words, especially “vain”, operates on a symbolic level. 
Even though the speaker has in mind the ineffectuality of ritual 
fortification, it however assumes an overriding thematic 
preoccupation. Without repeating this word, it echoes throughout 
the entire poem, as impossible, worthless, void, baseless, fruitless 
and profitless. Thus, this dominant idea of vanity is meant to 
discourage those who are still bent on breaking the reincarnation 
cycle. He summons them indirectly to give up the idea. The vision 
being articulated in this poem is that the Abiku child is a difficult 
phenomenon to deal with.

Another ritual act which the Abiku child speaker 
repudiates is the ritual of sacrifice. The speaker presents these 

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Clement Eloghosa Odia, Ph.D & Florence Osaguona Okpalaku: An Ethnopoetic Interpretation of 

Ritual Acts in  Soyinka's Abiku Poem



with the traditional Yoruba cultural worldview on the mystery of 
death as a kind of return back home.

The burning of the snail releases the appealing aroma 
which offers a seal to those who live beyond. Secondly, it 
increases the branding power of the shell. The breast is an 
important part of ritual identification. It is the cultural site for such 
a ritual process. At death, the child when suspected to be an Abiku, 
gets a ritual identification ceremony done immediately to expose 
the duplicity of the child and bid him a permanent goodbye to that 
family. This process is said to break reincarnation. As a twist of 
irony, the child speaker laughs at such a ritual process because the 
child believes ritual identification is ineffective to prevent the 
tormentor child from returning to the family. Hence, Soyinka 
seems to repudiate this age long held belief.

Soyinka introduces another type of ritual this time, it is the 
ritual burial. This involves the repetitive process of burying the 
dead Abiku child. This ritual is amplified through the squirrel teeth 
and the riddle of the palm metaphors. Here is an excerpt from the 
poem:

I am the squirrel teeth, cracked
The riddle of the palm. Remember 
This, and dig me deeper still into
The god's swollen foot. (IOP, 29)

The squirrel teeth and the riddle of the palm are two 
metaphorical constructions with which Soyinka advances the 
sense of triumph over human efforts to defeat or break the vicious 
cycle of reincarnation. For the speaker, the “squirrel teeth” 
represents the child's potent power, sharp and unrelenting in its 
ability to crack any hard shell. With this dental weapon, the 
speaker is able to break any barrier erected against the child. No 
matter how hard the people contrive, the Abiku is the squirrel teeth 
to destroy it. Hence, Soyinka employs these metaphors to explain 
how vain the effort to bind the Abiku and stop the reincarnation. 
For this reason, the child suggests, to those preparing to bury him, 

reincarnation remains unbroken. As for the speaker, when the 
Abiku child dies, the ritual identification is conducted sequel to the 
child's burial. As a way of mocking their effort, the child 
repudiates their ritual of identification through sarcastic language 
charged with ridicule. The child dares the parents to brand him 
“deeply on the breast” and that it will yet be unable to deter his 
reincarnation. Thus, the Abiku child is invincible to such a ritual 
conducted to hinder him from reincarnating to the same family.

The significance of ritual identification is that it draws 
attention to the antics of the Abiku child. It appears that the Abiku 
enjoys illusive existence, and as such, prefers to operate without 
being known. When one takes this nature of the Abiku into 
consideration, it becomes easy to appreciate the depth of details 
that goes into the process of ritual identification in the poem. The 
snail is an important object for the ritual. Notice the evocation of 
the olfactory imagery when the speaker recommends the burning 
of the snail in order to “whet the heated fragment”. This act is a 
form of offering to the spirit world to put a seal on the existence of 
the dead child. It marks a significant end to the bond between the 
living and the dead. Hence, this snail, with its steaming hotness, is 
used to “brand” the Abiku child “on the breast” as deep as 
possible. The aim as the speaker reveals, is to make the parents to 
identify the Abiku child when next he is reborn.

A closer attention to the language especially the linguistic 
signs will help improve the reader's understanding of the poem. 
The linguistic sign “calls” in the closing line of the above stanza 
functions as a metaphor. It compares the way a visitor comes to 
one's home to the way the Abiku child is born to a particular 
family. Every visitor is expected to return to their respective 
homes after the visit. Similarly, the Abiku child operates like a 
visitor. The visitor image emphasises the child's brief life span on 
earth. On a symbolic level, this sense of calling is a reincarnative 
experience. Paradoxically, the Abiku child is a visitor, who after a 
brief stay, is bound to return home (the spirit world). This aligns 

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Ritual Acts in  Soyinka's Abiku Poem



The way I came, where
The ground is wet with mourning. (29)

Before examining the treatment of ritual libation, it is 
important to explain its ethnopoetic socio-cultural significance. 
Firstly, ritual libation functions as a medium through which the 
living affirms their attachment to the dead. Secondly, it reassures 
the dead that their death is not in vain or that they are not forgotten. 
Therefore, each libation shows the affinity of the living with the 
dead. Thirdly, it is a medium through which the living pacifies the 
dead. It is against this fact that the ritual libation, which the parents 
of the Abiku child performs becomes meaningful. In their attempt 
to avert the vicious cycle of reincarnation, they offer libation to the 
dead. Instead of becoming an action of pacification, the libation 
becomes an act of provocation. The Abiku child says each libation 
points him to where he came, that is, where the parents mourn. 
This is a clever irony as the expectation of the parents to stop the 
reincarnation fails to materialize.

There is a link between the sense of repetition of the rebirth 
and the sense of death associated with the child. Each experience 
seems to extenuate the other. Just as the child keeps being reborn 
thus embodying the reincarnation process similarly, the ritual of 
pouring libation exacerbates the death of the child. Thus, each act 
of libation “points” the Abiku child “near” the grave. The act of 
pouring libation functions as a paradox. The libation ought to 
serve as a means of pacification, but as things have turned out, it 
has become a way of quickening the process of death for the Abiku 
child. For this reason, the image of wetness generated by the 
“mourning” parents underscores their helplessness in the entire 
process of averting the reincarnation. The message being 
canvassed is that even the ritual libation is inadequate to advert the 
reincarnation which appears to have rendered the child “ageless”, 
a clear euphemism for the several years of reincarnation. Ritual 
fortification, ritual identification and ritual libation deployed to 
stem, the Abiku child's reincarnation cycle, are ineffectual. This 

that they “dig” the grave as deep as possible and bury him and that 
despite the depth of the grave, the child is sure to surmount the 
barrier of the grave and carry out his reincarnation. Again, this 
demonstrates the vanity of ritual burial as a way of ending the 
cycle of reincarnation. It is important at this juncture to add that 
the semiotic sign (“foot”) in the expression “The god's swollen 
foot” is a euphemism for grave. This expression is a pleasant way 
of conveying the sense of death and burial in order to avoid 
offending public sensitivity. Notice the clever metaphorical 
recreation of the burial ground. The grave is compared to a 
swollen foot. This evokes the visual imagery of a heap of sand. 
That it is a foot, suggests the earth, which is the home of all dead 
persons. This visual power is to graphically depict the picture of a 
burial ground. This is done with astonishing adroitness. This poem 
may seem to sacrifice narrative presentation to suggestive 
evocation, but given its basic purpose, this is to its advantage.

Soyinka's use of language is consistent especially with 
presenting the child speaker's abjurate posture to the various ritual 
acts constructed to break the Abiku reincarnation cycle. The 
metaphorical equation of the Abiku child to both the squirrel teeth 
and the riddle of the palm represents the impossibility or the vanity 
of breaking the reincarnation cycle. The language also fuses with 
the tone to express the sense of defiance, ridicule and 
condemnation of those who feel that by burying the dead child in a 
deep grave, they will be able to curtail the operation of the Abiku 
child's reincarnation.

In African cultural society, ritual libation is a common way 
of connecting with the dead. In Soyinka's poem, this ritual is 
presented ironically as a catalyst of reincarnation and not a means 
of ending it. This is the main preoccupation of the fifth stanza, and 
of course, the opening line of the sixth stanza:

Once and the repeated time, ageless 
Though I puke, and when you pour
Libations, each finger points me near

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Clement Eloghosa Odia, Ph.D & Florence Osaguona Okpalaku: An Ethnopoetic Interpretation of 

Ritual Acts in  Soyinka's Abiku Poem



F o l e y ,  J o h n  M i l e s .  T h e  S i n g e r  o f  T a l e s  i n 
Performance.Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1995.

Kumral, Necat. “A Semiotic Approach to the Reading of Literary 
Texts in EFL Classes”.Gazi University Journal ofGazi 
Educational Faculty. Vol. 42, no. 1, 2022, pp. 521-539.

Lin, Qian and Haiying Wei.“Rituals in Service: A Literature 
Review” Journal of Service Science and Management. 
Vol. 13, no. 1, 2020, pp. 18-37 Dol: 10.4236/jssm. 
2020./3/0/2.

M a t h e w s ,  S t e p h a n i e  Wa l s h .  “ S e m i o t i c s ” . O x f o rd 
Bibl iographies .Online  Heimenery,  2017,  NP. 
DOi:10/1093/OBO/9780190221911-0024

Nelson-Becker.Holy and Kimberly Sangster.“Recapturing the 
P o w e r  o f  R i t u a l  t o  E n h a n c e  C o m m u n i t y  i n 
Aging”.Journal of Religion, Spirituality and Aging. Vol. 
31, no. 2, 2018, pp. 153-167 dol:10.1080/15528030, 
2018.1532858.

Soyinka, Wole. Idanre and Other Poems.Eyre Methuen, 1968.

Tedlock, Dennis. The Spoken Word and the Work of 
Interpretation.University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.

Wu , Qiao. “The Structure of Ritual and the Epistemological 
Approach to Ritual Study”.The Journal of Chinese 
Sociology. Vol. 11, 2018, pp. 17-30.

essay demonstrates that ritual fortification, identification and 
libation are impotent in breaking the reincarnation cycle. 

Conclusion
This essay has accounted for the futility in breaking the 

reincarnation cycle and in this regard, it has explored five main 
ritual acts which undergird this futility. The futility is as a result of 
fortification because charms and sacrifices employed by the Abiku 
parents have failed to outwit the cycle of reincarnation. It proceeds 
to examine the second reason, which anchors on the vanity of 
ritual identification as a way of breaking the cycle of 
reincarnation. Thus, the third posits that breaking the 
reincarnation cycle has been impossible owing to the 
inefficaciousness of ritual libation deployed by the Abiku parents. 
These reasons help to affirm the invincibility of the Abiku child 
while emphasizing the futility in breaking the vicious cycle of 
reincarnation. Soyinka's poem repudiates ritual acts deployed in 
breaking reincarnation cycle. As the poem has affirmed, ritual 
symbolism especially its various manifestations are ineffective in 
the task of stopping reincarnation process.

Works Cited
Alembic, Ezekiel.The Construction of Abanyole Perceptions of 

Death through Oral Funeral Poetry. Unpublished PhD 
Thesis University of Helsinki, Finland, 2002.

Ali, Inayat. “Rituals of Containment: Many Pandemics, Body 
Politics, and Social Dramas During COVID-19 in 
Pakistan”. Medical Sociology 2021, pp. 18-30. 
Dol:10.3389/ fsoc.2021.648149.

Bauman, Richard. “Verbal Art As Performance”. American 
Anthropologist, vol. 77, 1975.

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