t for the whole populace and paid it before the departure of the pith-helmeted assessor, in cash, held all property in common, literally, to the last scrap of thread on the clothing of each citizen ... .Clearly, in the encircling rush for wealth and power, Aiyero represents a radically unusual way of life. Aiyero's existenceprovokes strong guffaws from the 'outside' world. It is dismissed (by that world) as "the prime example of unscientificcommunalism, primitive and embarrassingly sentimental" (p. 2). There is another unusual feature which intrigues the visitingOfeyi: the people of Aiyero always return to the place of their birth. Aiyero has a strange compelling power, too, for Ofeyi.What brings them back? The answer is to be found in the positive nature of the place itself. In many ways, Season of Anomy isthe story of Ofeyi's search for that answer. Ofeyi tells Ahime, Aiyero's Chief Minister, that "'our generation appears to be borninto one long crisis'" (p. 6). Yet there seems to be no crisis in the traditional village of Aiyero. It is a place where the rural valuesof communal living are being constantly affirmed, a ceremonial centre where human activity is tuned to invocations ofrenewal.13 Aiyero works as a referential model of positive behaviour and, significantly, provides a point of comparison thatallows Soyinka's text a degree of affirmation.14 For, thanks to Aiyero, Ofeyi can see his goals clearly ahead. Having resignedfrom the Corporation (an arm of the exploiting Cartel), his dream is of ... a new concept of labouring hands across artificial frontiers, the concrete, affective presence of Aiyero throughout the land, undermining the Cartel's superstructure of robbery, indignities and murder, ending the new phase of slavery. (p .27)With the support of the Aiyero "presence" (as central to the nation's spiritual and political rearmament) the dream is set up as apotential reality, an alternative way forward. The...
