Narration as a concept is the weaving of several strands of events into a story. This means narrative comes out of oral or written account of an event or events such as The Man Died (1972) - the autobiographical narrative on the detention and imprisonment of Wole Soyinka. Narration according Gerard Genette also means "the succession of events, real or fictitious" (25). Narration in this sense may be a novel such as Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. What runs across the two separate definitions of narrative given above is the idea of event without which there can be no narration. Event is the occurrence of action either by man or animal. A student buying a novel at a bookshop is an event and a horse galloping across the field is also an event. The event could be for a very short time and could also be very long such as a civil war. The event or a series of events become a narrative when to use Bridgette Hard et al.'s words they " - are selected and segmented from ongoing information'' (1221). What Hard et al. mean by "ongoing information'' are the several existing events from where some have been selected to form the story or narrative.
Susan Keen (169) observes that narrative empathy overarches narratological categories, involving actants, narrative situation, matters of pace and duration, and story world features such as settings. The diversity of the narratological concepts involved suggests that narrative empathy should not simply be equated with character identification nor exclusively verified by readers' reports of identification. Character identification may invite narrative empathy; alternatively, spontaneous empathy with a fictional character may precede identification. Empathetic effects of narrative have been theorized by literary critics, philosophers, and psychologists, and they have been evaluated by means of experiments in discourse processing, empirical approaches to narrative impact, and through introspection. Non-fictional narrative genres may involve narrative empathy, but most of the published commentary and theorizing on narrative empathy centers on fictional narratives, especially novels and film fiction, and to a lesser degree, drama. Brecht's disdain for the evocation of audience empathy in favour of estrangement effects has had a lasting legacy, depressing the theorizing of reception in performance studies. Individual readers testify to greater or lesser intensities of emotional fusion with non-fictional subjects of autobiography, memoir, and history, contrasted with fictional characters. Whether non-fiction arouses greater or lesser empathy in individuals and in larger populations of readers and viewers is a question for future empirical work. Keen (12) notes that scholars have proposed some factors or elements adopted by writers in their narration that induce emotion in the readers. Elements thought to be involved in readers' emotion include vivid use of settings and traversing of boundaries (Friedman 1998). Most of the existing empirical research on emotional effects in narration concerns film (Tan 1996; Zillman 1991) although a number of researchers are investigating potentially emotion-inducing techniques using short fiction. Novels and stage drama are least studied empirically (though often theorized about), their length and performance conditions being, respectively, at odds with the current modes of empirical verification. This study examines the idea of emotion in the narration of Achebe's There was a Country and Anthills of the Savannah respectively. 1.3 Statement of Problem Every literature aims at informing or educating the readers by passing across certain messages thereby, instructing them to chart a course or change their orientation. The narrative style of a literary work is an important device that the writer explores to drive home his/her point thereby, convincing the readers to hold a particular belief or subscribe to a new idea. Either way, the author has succeeded in creating emotions in the minds of the readers who are persuaded to see things from the writer's point of view. Emotion in narration tends to be persuasive and a good writer like Achebe who intends to persuade his audience to see things from his own vision must use language to create emotions in his writings. The issue or problem is that emotion affects the story we tell and this constitutes a problem. The problem to be solved in this study is to examine the two texts of study and demonstrate how emotions affect Achebe's narration. Thus, this study focuses on the examination of emotion in the narration of Achebe'sThere was a Country and Anthills of the Savannah respectively. 1.4 Aim/Objectives of Study The aim of this research is to examine emotion in the narration of Achebe's There was a Country and Anthills of the Savannah. The objective that will strengthen this study is to demonstrate that emotions affect narration. The study will discuss Achebe's emotion in the narration of the two texts because as a member of society, he is also affected by the issues he tries to portray in his story telling. To get the readers to see things from his point of view, Achebe's emotive tone that underlies his narration will be critically discussed. The study will also try to determine the effect of emotion in the narration of the texts. When a writer becomes too emotional in his/her narrative, the audience may perceive a lack of objectivism in the narration and this may attract criticism for the author. This study will examine how effective emotion helps in the interpretation of the two texts. Also, another objective of this research is to determine the narrative style of the two texts and discuss the emotive effects of such a style. The effective development of a particular narrative style may enhance the critical perception of the readers in becoming in tuned to the author's viewpoint. On the other hand, a not well developed narrative style may defeat the aim of the author and negatively influence readers' perception. The study will also evaluate the thematic concerns of the two texts and how emotion affects the development and portrayal of the themes. When the author becomes too emotional in his character and thematic presentation (narration), the readers may deduce subjective attempts by the author to report societal issues as he/she perceives them rather than how they really appear. 1.5 Scope of the Study The scope of this study is emotional narration which comes under the purview of literary psychoanalysis which interprets literary text from a psychological or mental point of view. This is because the topic of emotion is psychological and narration is relative to imagination. The research will use relevant studies from other domains to situate the view that emotion affects narration. However, in other to limit the scope of this study, this paper's discussion covers the place of emotion in the narration of Achebe's There was a Country and Anthills of the Savannah. 1.6 Significance of the Study This research is significant for the following reasons: i. It will expose readers to the place of emotion in literary narration. ii. The study will discuss the relationship between emotion and narration in literature. iii. It will also explore the effects of emotion in the narration of Achebe'sThere was a Country and Anthills of the Savannah. iv. The research will relate the two texts to contemporary society. v. It will serve as a source material to students, teachers and future researchers in similar topic. vi. This research is also relevant for its contribution to literature in literary psychoanalysis. 1.7 Methodology The study is content analysis based and the psychoanalytic approach involving the concepts of emotion and narration will be adopted for analysis. These concepts cover two fields i.e. emotion is cognitive and narration is imaginative. This gives an indication that the best approach to the study is psychoanalysis. For obvious reasons, this approach allows for not only the analysis of themes, language and style but other aspects that revolve around emotion and narration. 1.8 Theoretical Framework This study adopts the psychoanalytic theory which relates literary work in terms of character and actions to the workings of the mind. This theory relates to the Freudian psychology that interprets character' actions to underlying complexes of the Id, Ego and Superego. These complexes influence character actions and determine their mood at any given time to create emotions and empathetic feelings towards other characters. The author who narrates a story is also influenced by the workings of these complexes due to the influence of the socio-political contradictions that affect his society and narratives. The author in his narration reacts to these issues and sometimes, emotions come into play in the process of the story telling. Achebe's There was a Country and Ant hills of the Savannah are narratives that portray the happenings in the Nigerian society. In exploring these happenings, it is clear that the author's emotion may interfere with his narration thereby affecting the objective level of the narration. These emotional features can be interpreted from character presentation and plotting which underlie the author's perception on the societal happenings of his time. The idea of emotion in narration will be examined from the portrayal of the themes, language use and style of narrative adopted by the author, and how this affects readers' interpretations. CHAPTER TWO 2.0 REVIEW OF LITERATURE 2.1 Psycho-Analysis and Literary Appreciation This section begins by giving relevant quotes which relate the idea of emotions to literary narrations as fictional works are a product of the author's emotional reactions to negative societal issues. But what terrified me most -it was the seed of Marie's blindness in Black Sunlight -was the sight of blind parents being led around by their five year old little girl -they had nowhere to stay -sometimes they slept in the stadium, sometimes at the railway station -(Dambudzo Marechera, 1983). The above epigram taken from "An Interview with Self'' (1983) typifies how fictional narration comes out of emotion. In this instance, Marechera portrays the humiliating scene in former Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) whereby parents and their children were made homeless in their home land by the brutal regime of Ian Smith. Marechera speaks on how emotion arising from the scene becomes part of his novel, Black Sunlight in which dejection that is known to be abnormal is a normal condition. It is the so-called "normal condition" that drove Marechera to write about the degrading situation in the Zimbabwean society of his day. He also paints a bizarre picture of Zimbabwe in The House of Hunger (1978): "I got my things and left - I couldn't have stayed on in that House of Hunger where every morsel of sanity was snatched from you the way some kinds of birds snatch food from the very mouths of babes" (11).The driving force behind the narrative is the intolerable situation in the country that has made the narrator to perceive the homeland as a 'House of Hunger'. As the narrator paints the picture of dreamlike homeland, "what calls for elucidation are not the artistic and literary works themselves, but rather the psychopathology and biography of the artist, the writer or fictional characters (Freud, npn.) The place of Psychopathology, as noted by Freud above, explains the psychological conditions that underlie character behaviour, and the mental phenomena for the writer's reactions to societal events which are recreated in the literary corpus. In this regard, the psychological reaction to societal happenings is manifested in the fictional narration which underlies the writer's emotional response to real life events that are also expressed in a story's character portrayals. Psychopathology, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica is "the scientific study of mental disorder, including efforts to understand their genetic, biological, psychological, and social causality; effective classification schemes (Nosology); course across all stages of developmental psychology; manifestations; and therapy. The term may also refer to the manifestation of behaviors that indicate the presence of a mental disorder." (1225) According to the Online Wikipedia, "historically, the word psychopathology has a Greek origin: 'psyche' means "soul", 'pathos' is defined as "suffering", and 'logos' is "the study of". Wholly, psychopathology is defined as the origin of mental disorders, how they develop, and the symptoms they might produce in a person." (6) Early explanations for mental illnesses were influenced by religious belief and superstitions. Psychological conditions that are now classified as mental disorders were initially attributed to possessions by evil spirits, demons, and the devil. This idea was widely accepted up until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Individuals who suffered from these so-called "possessions" were tortured as treatment. Doctors used this technique in hoping to bring their patients back to sanity. Those who failed to return to sanity after torture were executed. The Greek physician, Nosology was one of the first to reject the idea that mental disorders were caused by possession of demons or the devil. He firmly believed the symptoms of mental disorders were due to diseases originating in the brain. Another Greek philosopher, Hippocrates suspected that these states of insanity were due to imbalances of fluids in the body. He identified these fluids to be four in particular: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. Hippocrates' observations go to prove the idea that social problems may upset emotional bodily fluids leading to the negative mental reactions of a person. Furthermore, not far from Hippocrates, the philosopher Plato came to argue that the mind, body, and spirit worked as a unit. Any imbalance brought to these compositions of the individual could bring distress or lack of harmony within the individual. This philosophical idea would remain in perspectiveuntil the seventeenth century. Plato's submissions above, suggest that the mind, body and spirit of man that worked in unison could only be at peace or sane when societal situations do not act as turbulence to their serenity. When things are going wrongly in society, they are bound to upset the emotional balance of man and this may affect behavioral patterns. When this happens, the writer may feel the need to react by releasing emotions using his/her literary narrations; while the characters presented in the fictional works may portray behaviours that could be considered as madness, mental phenomena or abnormalities, which are socially unacceptable. In the nineteenth century, greatly influenced by Rousseau's ideas and philosophy, Austrian psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud would bring about psychotherapy and become the father of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. Talking therapy originated from his ideas on the individual's experiences and the natural human efforts to make sense of the world and life. The scientific discipline of psychopathology was founded by Karl Jaspers in 1913, whose object of study was mental phenomena. Many different professions or disciplines have become involved in studying mental disorders or mental distress, and literature relates to Psychopathology through psychoanalysis by relating character actions to the workings of the minds or their mental conditions. According to the Online Wikipedia, before diagnosing a psychological disorder, "psychopathologists must study the themes, also known as abnormalities, within psychological disorders. The most prominent themes consist of: deviance, distress, dysfunction and danger. These themes.
