AFRICAN DRAMA FEMI OSOFISAN: Women of Owu Discuss the significance of the meeting between Lawumi and Anlugbua.

Answer Details

In Femi Osofisan's Women of Owu, the meeting between the goddess Lawumi and her son, the god Anlugbua, patron deity and founder of Owu, is a significant framing device that gives the human tragedy of the play its cosmic dimension and its final moral judgement.

It frames the tragedy within a divine perspective. The encounter of the two deities lifts the action above the sufferings of individual women and sets the fall of Owu within a larger order of gods, ancestors and destiny. It reminds the audience that the war and its atrocities are watched and weighed by higher powers.

It voices the question of divine justice. The meeting raises the painful problem of why the gods allowed Owu, a city Anlugbua himself founded and protected, to be destroyed. Anlugbua confronts his own apparent helplessness before the catastrophe, and the dialogue with Lawumi explores whether the gods are indifferent, complicit or bound by fate, giving the play its philosophical weight.

It exposes the guilt of the victors. Through the divine conversation Osofisan shows that the conquering allied forces, though triumphant, have committed atrocities that will not go unpunished. The gods observe the cruelty, the looting, the desecration of shrines and the slaughter, and mark the conquerors for retribution. The meeting thus functions as a court in which the victors are judged.

It promises retribution and cosmic balance. Out of the meeting comes the resolve that the allied forces will suffer for their excesses. This foreshadows the reversal that awaits the victorious armies, restoring a sense of moral balance and warning that no conqueror escapes the consequences of brutality.

It reflects Osofisan's political message. Written with an eye on modern wars and the cycle of violence in Africa and beyond, the divine meeting universalises the lesson: those who wage war without restraint invite their own destruction. It gives the play its didactic, cautionary force.

In conclusion, the meeting between Lawumi and Anlugbua is significant because it frames the tragedy cosmically, questions divine justice, exposes and condemns the atrocities of the victors, promises retribution, and carries Osofisan's warning against the brutality of war.