Predestination: a Critique of Chika Unigwe’s <i>Night Dancer</i>

Abstract

Being a cultural belief that everything happens as pre-decided or preplanned, predestination is a topical issue that attracts the critical imagination of Chika Unigwe in Night Dancer (2013), an African novel. There appears to be no critical attention on Night Dancer. This study examines the novel to illustrate predestination as a belief that persists today. New historicism is adopted as a critical theory to show that predestination is a cultural attitude, while the novel is subjected to critical literary analysis. In Night Dancer, Rapu at birth is so named to predict her as an instrument in the hands of fate to wipe poverty away from her family. As a housemaid in the house of Mike, a wealthy married man, she is unable to control or avert the hand of fate as she has sexual contact with her boss/master (Mike); as the sexual contact results in pregnancy, and the birth of a male child; and pre-ordained marriage. This thus fulfils what has been preordained at her birth that she would attract wealth to her poor family which fulfils by her marriage to Mike. This paper thus argues that Chika Unigwe creates the artistic impression that everything happens as preordained at one's birth. And no one has control over this as demonstrated in the novel.