The Famished Road Essay

Okri's The Famished Road is occupied of allusions to mythology, as we can see in the beginning of the novel: "In the beginning there was a river. And the river became a road and branched out to the whole world."(TFR 1) We're talking about the beginning of the world here. All cultures and religions have an origin myth, and here we see Okri drawing specially on the myths of his native Yoruba culture, which is originated in Nigeria.
But there is reference to mythology in this passage. The narrator talks about the "spirits [that] mingled with the unborn."(1) In fact, the narrator of this novel is an abiku child, which in Yoruba mythology is a child who dies at a young age and can shift back and forth between the actual and the spirit worlds. Those

They're moving between the world of the Living and the spirit world. The "river" at the beginning of time turns into a "road." This moving back and forth between the fantastic and the dull is, of course, a hallmark of Abiku’s

He was seven years old when he “dreamt” that his hands were covered with the yellow blood of a stranger. (8) He had no idea whether these images belonged to this life, or to a previous one, or to one that was yet to come, or even if they were merely the host of images that invades the minds of all children. Azaro relates the experience which he gets from different relationships, situations and locality; such as his family members, spirit world, Madame Koto, photographer, carpenter who works at Madame Koto’s bar, forest, different animals, birds and fetish as well.
They ran through pitch darkness, through silence and mists, and into another reality in which the gigantic Masquerade was riding a white horse. The horse had jagged teeth and its eyes were diamond bright. There was a piercing cry in the air. When the Masquerade and the white horse vanished, I noticed that the forest swarmed with unearthly beings (14)
He notices many things around him which take us in the world of the magic realism but certain words, images, symbols and dreams keep us on the ground of dream logic sequence which clearly directs to the postcolonial aesthetic of cultural hybridity.
Azaro sees the world with various perspectives through mask. The mask plays significant role in