JOHN MUNONYE’S TRAGIC VISION IN OIL MAN OF OBANGE

There is indeed a dire dearth of critical studies on John Munonye’s works in spite of his prolificacy which is evidenced in his publication of six novels and several short stories while he lived. Regrettably, this lack of extensive critical studies on Munonye’s works has led to the eclipse of some of the important ideas he embedded in most of these unstudied works. In the light of the above challenges, this paper, therefore, turns attention on exploring the concept of tragedy in John Munonye’s Oil Man of Obange (1971). In particular, this study seeks to demonstrate that in this enthralling and intriguing novel, Munonye successfully projects a refreshingly new model of tragic vision firmly rooted in the subsoil of common traditional Igbo worldview on tragedy. The study further argues that this Igbo-centric concept of tragedy differs tremendously from the popular Classical and Medieval models of tragedy, and then, concludes that Oil Man of Obange is Munonye’s tour de force; a well-crafted tragic novel that is in a class by itself among his other novels.