Lose or Gain

Having finished Tutuola’s novel, I have to say I really enjoyed it. It was refreshingly simple on the surface, but rereading certain chapters, Tutuola alludes to the cultural changes in Nigeria during a historic time period. One of these parts would have to be the relatively short chapter entitled the “Lost or Gain Valley.”

“Perhaps the clothes that they might meet there might cost more than their own, so it is their gain and if the one that they meet there are not worth their own it is also their loss” (132). This stripping down to one’s first ‘birthday suit’ in order to cross the valley could refer to the limited decisions granted to the natives: either cross on to the other side or stay behind. This seems to be reminiscent of some of the other novels we have read and like the protagonists, the couple leave behind their £100 clothing only to return with them being worn by another couple and then having to wear animal skins.

The way I see it and I’m probably stretching for this, but the nice “trousers, shirt, tie, socks, shoes, hat, and golden ring with [a] costly wrist-watch” are articles of primarily Western/European clothing. The couplet ghosts go for the abandoned attire instead of their animal skins. They are new, different, and shiny to where they catch their attention and forget their traditional garb. In fact, “no stranger would cross the valley without loss, because all the ghosts and ghostesses of that area are very poor and only living on this kind of exchange” (133). The word poor I feel could mean that they are all the poorer for choosing to leave their tradition and culture and substitute it all for a new one, which may not even accept them.