Beyond the Borders of Esotericism: A Socio-stylistic Analysis of Gabriel Bamgbose’s Something Happened After the Rain

Abstract

The deployment of language by a writer creates a distinct style through which he/she reaches out to the audience. Hence, a socio-stylistic study of Gabriel Bamgbose’s Something Happened After the Rain is undertaken in order to reveal how the poet makes use of language. To achieve this, lexico-syntactic choices, graphological devices, and morphological choices of the poet are analysed. At the end of the study, it is discovered that Bamgbose employs the use of Pidgin English, figurative expressions like metaphor, personification, euphemism, repetition, pun, refrain and foregrounding in order to make his ideas and messages relatable to his readers. In this regard, he has succeeded in deploying sarcasm even in the most serious and sensitive issues like death, child labour and delivery as in “Song of a child” and “If I die”. It has also been found out that Bamgbose presents the poems in the studied text in five sections and each section has a distinctive title. Each title captures the general image, mood and tone of the poems in each section. “Sing” expresses celebration and joy of birth, childhood and maidenhood; “Speak” expresses a break away from repression and silence; “Die” captures dying and death itself; “Dream” expresses hallucination and how loneliness or frustration makes one’s mind, unguardedly, stroll into wild imaginations; then “Rain” carries the burden of sorrow and pains accruable after the disasters of the rain. It can therefore be concluded that Bamgbose’s language style underscores the Yoruba assertion that tragic matters often deserve smileful reactions.