Mystical Dimensions of Prayer in Ahmed Yerima’s Idemili: Human Quest to Learn

Abstract

This study is an analytical contextualization of the Igbo trado-cultural and Christian perspectives on the context of prayer as a mystical reality and experience. Thus, this study examines the inter-play of faith and testimonies in the validation of the efficacy of prayer, as well as the relationship between fate and prayer from the dominant Igbo socio-cultural worldviews. This study’s case-study is Ahmed Yerima’s Idemili. However other relevant African plays form part of the secondary analytical data. The authors apply content analysis in the discussion of the focal study Idemili. Thus, the interpretive argument of relevant suggestions, positions and perspectives of the characters form the basis of contextualization. Theoretically, this study discusses the mystical and efficacious essence of prayer as a faith and a culture defined experience. Therefore Geertz’s concept of interpretation of culture forms the pivot and frame of our analysis. Again this paper adopts Selmon’s elucidation on magical realism in its explanation of the phenomenon of prayer, particularly as regards to the efficacy and the social view as projected in Idemili. Thus, this paper illuminates on the centrality of prayer in life, its none-ordinariness, and the various trajectories to its essence as projected it Idemili.

Keywords: African Drama, Culture, Faith, Fate, Igbo, Mystical, Prayer, Supernatural