The Mathematical Semiotics of Unoka's Indebtedness

By

Obododimma Oha

Unoka – Okonkwo’s father in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart – had a writing technology and some mathematical skills. Writing is simply the replacement of ideas with graphetic signs, with the hope that someone equipped with the same competence of matching graphic signs with meanings or thoughts would be able to recover the ideas. It is therefore essentially a conversion process – conversion of ideas into graphetic (representative) signs, while its reading by the same person or another person is a conversion of the signs into thoughts. Let’s hope that in the process (of conversions) some of the thoughts would not be lost!

Some semioticians have argued that this “conversion” is not as straightforward as we have put it above. In the original thinking of Ferdinand de Saussure, thoughts are treated as signifieds. In other words, the sound uttered or graphetic sign on paper is only a signifier of this thought, which is another signifier of the object in question. Ferdinand de Saussure did not call it a second signifier but we know that he meant that what was originally signified is a mental image. Later scholars saw the signified as a physical thing.

Was Ferdinand de Saussure not Platonic? Let me help you further there. Plato was associated with the theory of mimesis, from which he claimed that things of this world (as signifiers!) were twice removed from reality as signifiers! What they signified (their signified) was their original in Heaven. That is, assuming the gods are artists – sculptors – and have our original forms. But the divine maker is also a thinker and so the whole process is repeated where we have the so-called originals. The phonic or graphic sounds of the maker in association with what is to be made is a signifier of his mental idea and this mental idea is another signifier of an object. In that case, everything becomes a signifier, every signified, recursively, world without end. In that line of thinking, Ferdinand de Saussure was Platonic in viewing the signified initially as mentalistic and quite removed from our physical world. He was a bit right, though, for what is signified really is not things we can see and touch but our motives or pursuits. These are the real signifieds, in actual fact. Physical things around it only provide support! Our goals are the things that matter.

I had to make an excursion into the idealistic philosophy of Plato because  we needed to understand the involvement of thoughts in signification, in order to follow the line of argumentation on the semiotics and mathematics of Unoka the flutist. This serial debtor had a way, a writing system, through which he recorded and gave evidence about the level of his indebtedness. We could see clearly that he knew something else apart from his flute: he knew signification and he knew the mathematics associated with it and his indebtedness. He was able to use a simple system of binary lines (in chalk) to represent his thoughts. Those thoughts were his indebtedness. Each bar said: “I owe a hundred cowries.” What was missing was the signification of the debtor. If Unoka should die suddenly, it would be hard to associate the bars with specific individuals, whether Ezeudu or Obierika. An argument with Unoka’s relatives could result. And may the gods save the creditor from Okonkwo’s rage: he could get mad and reach for his cutlass!

I suspect that this could be ameliorated a bit with oral tradition; with word of mouth. Unoka could tell his son or any member of his family who is owed what. But I pity that debtor who comes for his money when the bereaved family members still have tears in their eyes. Indeed, some people who lack conscience may deny that they owed the dead fellow, or not mention it at all. That is one major pitfall in orality of indebtedness. Also, Unoka’s creditors might just have to write off his debts as “bad debts,” as lost money, at his death, even when he was alive.

But one is impressed that Unoka made some effort to write down his indebtedness, even grade it and use it as ready evidence to prove to the early caller that came for his money that he knew priority. It was only in bars of chalk, But we can think of a graph that indicated peak indebtedness and low indebtedness. It was such a graph that his visitor-creditor was made to imagine and which demoralized him. But Unoka did not know that, the fact that those he owed much, those with greater number of lines of chalk on the wall, had not come to wake him up early to trade proverbs, did not mean that the creditors were not pained or were not thinking of the indebtedness and closeness to losing money! It was not an argument one should be proud off. Imagine: proud and boasting that one was yet to repay bigger sums!

I believe Achebe used this part of narrative to let Unoka speak statistically about his indebtedness and for us to be sufficiently persuaded that the flutist is a complete efulefu or good-for-nothing fellow. Imagine the way Unoka talked to his creditor, even feigning annoyance that the creditor, unlike those whom he owed much, came to wake him up and talk about his indebtedness early in the morning! Instead of his creditor getting annoyed that he was still owing, Unoka rather got annoyed. Was that not a way of confirming to the reader (making the reader feel annoyed on behalf of the creditor) that our character was a hopeless upside-down fellow! He was really a bad debtor!

As I think about Unoka, I remember that as it is with individuals who only play flutes and nothing more, so it is with societies, with countries who boast with owing billions of dollars to World Bank and Asian countries. When they get the loans, they squander them again and embark on no meaningful projects or improve the lot of their populations. They could buy the latest private jet with swimming pools insides, buy estates in Europe, Dubai or elsewhere, while ordinary roads in their countries get worse and worse. They could even shoot citizens that oppose them.

When citizens relax, thinking that their rulers with the Unoka syndrome have not brought hell on them as individuals, they are mistaken. Will World Bank come and lock up my house or seal u my village? You are asking. Yes; it can do that in some ways and not just write off your country’s Unoka debts as bad debts! It could make life tougher for your community and punish you in many other ways you do know. Yes; Unoka has brought you his misfortune; so do not rejoice yet when that early morning creditor leaves quietly with his goatskin. That is even a bad sign!  In his heart, he is burning, and your life will burn, too.