Destiny as a Universal Language: a Case of Rotimi’s the Gods Are Not to Blame

The traditional pagan perspective of human tragedy, as seen in ancient Greek religious myths, was not only transmitted to Western Europe but also adapted into African contexts, particularly in the literary portrayal of tragedy. Similar religious metaphysical beliefs across different cultures sometimes lead to shared ideas of human tragedy throughout history. However, these cross-cultural cosmological similarities do not automatically imply uniform views on the role of fate in human tragedy. It is important to note that each era and culture views and appreciates tragedy in the context of its own unique socio-political and cultural environment. In this regard, Erich Auerbach's new historicist approach and postmodern interpretation of texts and commentaries effectively demonstrate how humanity's portrayal of reality is shaped by its religious and cultural traditions across time and space. In the metaphysical universe of the Nigerian Yoruba people, the tragic figure is one who holds his fate in his own hands. While gods and supernatural beings in the invisible realms may possess foreknowledge of the fate that the tragic hero will experience, they do not intervene in the hero's journey to fulfill that fate. The Yoruba mytho-religious worldview suggests that the gods allow the fulfillment of fate, as determined by the individual's carnal nature. This project argues that tragedy emerges from the continual operation of fate within the tragic hero, which manifests through a tragic conflict driven by the hero's free will, in line with the prophecy of the gods in Ola Rotimi's The Gods Are Not to Blame. This is aligned with the Aristotelian concept of catharsis in tragedy, where the interaction of preordained fate and historic fate creates the tragic outcome, with the latter being a result of the former.