The Cultural Context of Emeka Nwabueze’s Echoes of Madness and When the Arrow Rebounds

Abstract

Nigerian dramatic literature has often responded to the issue of culture especially the contact between European culture and African culture. The European culture is always standing in dominance over the African culture, while the African writer is always trying to reawaking the consciousness of who we are and where we came from. Emeka Nwabueze in Echoes of Madness and When the Arrow Rebounds present through the action of the characters the culture, the belief system, customs, rituals, proverbs and contacts that stand these works out. The plays will be discussed simultaneously to reveal the tentacles of culture, its components and how the characters in these works function within a cultural milieu. Also here, we will examine how cultural activities become a catalyst that brings about changes in the society. This paper adopts a socio- cultural approach to literature as its theoretical framework and the descriptive research method as its methodology.