The Power of Media Control
One of the themes explored in a minor key in the play is the power that control of media plays in a repressive regime. Less significant in the processes of taking power, once an illegitimate regime has managed to situate itself in authority, controlling the dissemination of information (or, more precisely, misinformation) can become just as important as brute force in maintaining and prolonging that grip on political power. Whenever there is a legitimate question as to the exact nature of the relationship that exists between political authority and the mainstream media which shapes, guides and reinforces opinion, the lines between actual news and propaganda is blurred. The manipulation of information in newspaper articles and radio broadcasts are implicated as symptomatic of a problem that exists throughout the many African countries that have suffered decades of political instability.
Refugees and Political Instability
Part of the blame for that long history of political instability throughout the African continent is placed upon the creation and handling of refugees looking to escape the consequences of suddenly being on the wrong side of the political perspective of new regimes by exiling themselves to nearby countries. With African being such an expansive continue with so many countries lacking natural borders smacked up against multiple neighbors in various directions, the problem of such massive interaction among competing populations is magnified. This theme is primarily explored in the play though the charter of Wak, a middle class college lecturer who becomes subject to the dehumanizing aspect associated with being forced to adopt a refugee status.
Reconciliation as Key to Progress
The family dynamics at the center of play become a microcosm on sorts that represents the larger political realities. Odie and Wak are situated as symbolic figures that embody the ways the population of an entire country can split part in their political perspectives that—through the facilitation of media propaganda—spread like a virus into all aspects of culture until everything about human nature begins to viewed narrowly through a glass darkly smudged by those political differences. Odie and Wak have become so emotionally separated from each other that there seems like likelihood of reconciliation, yet that is exactly what happens. In turn, this reconciliation at the personal level becomes the foundation of reconciliation at a thematic level applicable to populations within countries and well as relationships existing between rival nations.
