Note 3 to the author's "The Interpreters' Cultural Politics, Or Soyinka's Postcolonial Otherness"
The concept "entropy" is related to Quantum theory in Physics; or in a more vulgarised way, the theory of relativity of Einstein. Contrary to what was believed in the Euclidean physics that order is static and, for that matter, disorder as well. In other words, Order stood in an antithetical position to disorder. With the theory of entropy, the view that disorders are not totally and eternally unaccountable. For indeed, given the appropriate tools for measurement, systems and orders of a smaller magnitude can be determined. With the theory of entropy as being endemic and in total disagreement with Order has become a relic of the past. The philosophic dimension of this concept has made it more appealing to philosophers of language and to a more narrow level. Eco (1965) speaks of the Baroque Art (music essentially) as one of the most important and early entropic structures in Art. The break with the rigidity of certain structures and the insertion of openings for other symphonies has been a significant step in the direction of entropic structuring.
Egbo was born in Ibadan, one gathers, into a family from Egbo tribe. His father was a pastor moving about from village to village trying to evangelize people. "My father was reverend pastor ..." (p.15).
At an early age he was orphaned as his parents drowned in Lake Ogun: -"Perhaps you've guessed. My parents drowned at this spot." (p.6).
He was rescued by people of his village who sent for his aunt to come and take charge of him.
His aunts decides to take him back with her to Lagos and give him some education: "And to school you must go, said the aunt, to school you must go in Lagos like a civilised being. That pagan grandfather of yours will only teach you how to count wives and reckon the gains of smuggling" (p.54).
Egbo's air-baptism: To go back to Lagos they had to board a plane, the first Egbo would take. The experience is not a comfortable one: "And up aloft, once above the smell and the dank of the water-side, fear vanished. He had fought every step of the gangway, kicking, biting, clinging to the rails, and even in the cabin he had tried to open a porthole and the other passengers had laughed. The engine throbbed and the vibrations quietened him a bit, and then his cries sprung out afresh. But the wings of the craft came levelling, suddenly in view, shifting planes, just as he used to do pretending he was flying. Egbo quietened." (p.54).
Egbo's shop-keeping experience and his eventual quarrels with his aunt's partner and his wife. "Then to Oshogbo to a trading partner. But the merchant's wife only took the weals to cross them with new ones. For one thing, he would refuse to mind the shops. 'My aunt is your trading partner,' Egbo would ask, 'so how does that make me your shop-keeper?'" (pp. 14-15).
Egbo's Sea-Baptism:"Egbo-o-o-o-o-o .... The voice was so distant .... It sounded so distant and remote, like his aunt calling from nearly the length of the beach against the sea of recurrent surf which beat about his ear and deafened him (....) for it was his first glimpse as a child, there was his excited rush to bathe his feet in sea water ..." (p.223).
The college experience
The first visit to Simi's hive (with his friends) "ix young daredevils, released at last from the tyranny School Certificate, made a brassy first assault on a night-club. ...Egbo had neither got up to dance nor spoken a word since their arrival. And his gaze had never swerved from the one direction. 'Look at Egbo, enh. Have you never seen a woman before?'" (p.50-51)
His visit to her on his own (p.53).
The quarrel he started for her:"Look young man... he did not even seen her leave" (pp.56-7).
The scene in the cab, where Simi invites him (p.57).
His first sexual initiation (pp.58-9).
Movement back and forth is the norm not only as Egbo's life story is concerned, but they seem to be the norm required to fathom the life stories of Sekoni and Sagoe as well.
