ABSTRACT
As the rhetorical questions in the quote which opens this chapter imply, Kolawole Omotoso’s The Combat, like most fictional writing with the Nigerian civil war as the theme, is loaded with questions concerning the motivations behind, and consequences of that war. But, unlike a good number of these (and other African) ‘civil war novels’, Omotoso’s work raised these questions long before they became fashionable. Should this war have been fought in the first place? How could it have been avoided? Who benefited most from the war? As such questions are raised quite early, and addressed in a sustained manner throughout the novel, this chapter aims to examine both the fictional world Omotoso creates in The Combat, and the internal logic which appears to drive events in this world. In particular, I am interested in Omotoso’s use of symbolism in creating literary myths regarding the dangers, paradoxes and realities of contemporary warfare in West Africa. The Combat’s message is, in the light of recent events in Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire, as relevant today as when the book was first published in 1972 (see Chapters 2, 5, 6 and 10).2
