Rita Aroloye explores family tragedies in new short story

A review of Rita Aroloye’s Blood Relations, by Moshood Abolore.

A tragedy is an extremely sad event that brings about great suffering and distress, such as a serious accident, death, crime and natural catastrophe.  In literature, it is a work that deals with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, On the other hand, a family is a group of people who are related to each other. A family is also said to be a unit of any given society, which means that it is from the family that children start making social relationships, develop and retain such relations. Blood relations extend beyond an immediate family of only parents and their children, they include the extended family members such as grandparents, uncles, nephews, cousins etc. Thus, a tragedy that happens to a family member or a blood relation, can have a spill over effect not only on the entire family, but also on the society at large.

Family tragedies as being presented in Rita Aroloye’s ‘Blood Relations’ have their root causes from discrimination against the widow; kidnapping of a family member; and wife battering. Blood Relations is a collection of three short stories published by OAK Initiative, an arm of OAK Foundation, a charity organisation aimed at supporting indigent students, widows and the fatherless in Africa. All the three stories present tragic events and have death as a common denominator. The book, which is a 2022work, explores other themes such as parental love and care, denial of rights, irresponsible spouse, blind trust for clergymen, tolerance and perseverance.

The stories in this collection are entitled, ‘Nightmare’, ‘Anguish’ and ‘Heart of Stone’.While ‘Nightmare’ and ‘Anguish’ are written in first person narrative, ‘Heart of Stone’ is written in second person narrative. The first-person point of view gives the reader an intimate view of the characters. The storyteller in a first-person narrative is either the protagonist relaying his or her experiences or a peripheral character telling the protagonist’s story. In ‘Nightmare’, the storyteller is the protagonist while in ‘Anguish’ the storyteller is a peripheral character. The second-person point of view usually creates a unique relationship between narrator, reader, and protagonist. And that is exactly what happens in ‘Heart of Stone’.

‘Nightmare’ is divided into four chapters and ended with an epilogue. In this story, issues around widowhood and inheritance are explored. The protagonist, Adaeze, a junior associate at a law firm in Lekki, Lagos, suddenly loses her. The sudden death of her father in Auchi later turns into a nightmare for her mother, Agnes. Adaeze and her sister, Dimma, an undergraduate student of the University of Lagos travel to Auchi a day after their father’s death and arrive to the waiting hands of many sympathizers. It is in the night of their arrival that Adaeze gets the wind of the plan to deny Agnes the inheritance of her husband’s property by three blood relations.

Though Adaeze has the prior knowledge of this plot, the three men succeed in sending the widow out of her husband’s house through some paid thugs three months after the funeral rite. Adaeze’s mother, Agnes finally settles in her sister’s house to the chagrin of Adaeze.

‘Anguish’ bubbles with many scintillating dialogues that make the story to be histrionic. The story is divided into seven chapters. Emmanuel, the peripheral character, tells the story of her missing elder sister, Blessing and the aftermath effect of her disappearance on their parents for more than seven years. When all the intervention services the family employs to find Blessing produce no result, the parents resign to fate but trauma of not seeing one’s child for long has taken its toll on the health of Bimpe, the mother. Frequent nightmares about her missing daughter impinge terribly on her health. This is largely responsible for her death. Shortly after the second anniversary of Bimpe’s demise, Blessing, who now calls herself Racheal, appears from nowhere. She recounts her story of how she was kidnapped, had a ghastly road accident with her kidnapper, became the sole survivor of the accident with a memory loss, rescued by villagers who took care of her. and finally returned home through contact tracing.

‘Heart of Stone’ is divided into four chapters. It is a story of domestic violence being perpetrated by a supposedly man of God, Pastor Ezekiel, a chronic wife beater. His wife, Folusho is also a Pastor in the same church where Ezekiel ministers. Ezekiel is also a wayward pastor who sleeps with female church members and usually comes home very late. Whenever he is confronted by his wife, he beats the hell out of her. On one occasion, he beats her black and blue and breaks her arm in the process. He takes her to the hospital threatening her not to tell anyone the truth about what really happened. Unfortunately, one of the elders in his church, Dr. Williams is the new doctor in that hospital. Dr. Williams finds a way of getting the truth about what really happened from the battered wife. At the meeting of the council of elders of the church, Dr. Williams exposes Pastor Ezekiel as wife beater, which no one believes. But when they finally believe Dr. Williams, it is too late – their man of God, Pastor Ezekiel has killed his wife.

Rita Aroloye explores three contemporary themes that are still ravaging some families in Nigeria – discrimination against widows, kidnapping and domestic violence. She employs rich dialogues which make the book to be theatrical. The stories also have a common weak point, which is the way the author ends them. It is a deliberate way of challenging readers to end each story the way they like. What are the events leading to the collapse of Agnes, the widow? What really happened to Blessing, the missing child for nine years? What becomes of Pastor Ezekiel, the wife beater? Find the answers to these questions in this book, a must-read for all and sundry.