violence, the author constructs the text's ideological frame of reference.16 The examination of socio-politicalalternatives is well under way.In terms of the personalisation of social contradictions it is apparent that Ofeyi is Soyinka's asker of questions, his searcher forconfirmation. It is Ofeyi who deliberately engages in the constant debate regarding tactics and aims. He it is who is alwayspresent at such harrowing moments as the ghastly massacre at Kuntua church (pp. 196-201). It is Ofeyi who undergoes aprocess of self-examination as he searches for his woman (Iriyise), kidnapped by the Cartel. It is clearly for him that thearguments of old Ahime and the militant Demakin are meant. Soyinka uses the figure of Ofeyi, the searcher, to fill in the detailsof the continuing dream of Aiyero. Ofeyi speaks to Zaccheus, his jazz-playing foil, of creating "'new affinities, working-classkinships as opposed to the tribal'" (p. 170). Shortly after, the two friends stand and gaze at the floating, bloated corpses on thelake, vivid evidence of the Cartel's determination to prevent the building of new kinships of the sort that Ofeyi has in mind.When Ofeyi reaches Temoko prison it is through his progress into the various areas - from the outer area of theself-imprisoned, to the Lepers yard, then past the Death Cells, and finally into the Lunatic yard - that Soyinka creates hiscomplex analogy of national imprisonment and absurdity. Starting from his statement to Ahime that the Aiyero "'grain must findnew seminal grounds'" (p. 6), Ofeyi becomes the main traveller along the text's fictional road. It is a road that leads to thatpointed confrontation with the absurd when men, women and children (trying to escape from the murderers) begin to break intothe Federal prison.Of the numerous subordinate figures in Season of Anomy, all of them filling out minor facets of the text's total process ofpersonalisation, Demakin (the Dentist) fulfils an important func...
