Night Rain

What time of night it is

I do not know

Except that like some fish

Doped out of the deep

I have bobbed up bellywise

From stream of sleep

And no cocks crow.

It is drumming hard here

And I suppose everywhere

Droning with insistent ardour upon

Our roof thatch and shed

And thro' sheaves slit open

To lightning and rafters

I cannot quite make out overhead

Great water drops are dribbling

Falling like orange or mango

Fruits showered forth in the wind

Or perhaps I should say so

Much like beads I could in prayer tell

Them on string as they break

In wooden bowls and earthenware

Mother is busy now deploying

About our roomlet and floor.

Although it is so dark

I know her practiced step as

She moves her bins, bags and vats

Out of the run of water

That like ants gain possession

Of the floor. Do not tremble then

But turns, brothers, turn upon your side

Of the loosening mats

To where the others lie.

We have drunk tonight of a spell

Deeper than the owl's or hat's

That wet of wings may not fly

Bedraggled up on the iroko, they stand

Emptied of hearts, and

Therefore will not stir, no, not

Even at dawn for then

They must scurry in to hide.

So let us roll over on our back

And again roll to the beat

Of drumming all over the land

And under its ample soothing hand

Joined to that of the sea

We will settle to sleep of the innocent and free.

J.P. Clark

Analysis

J. P. Clark’s “Night Rain” is a narrative poem which reflects on the consequences of nature on a
group of people; the narrator, his parents and brothers. The poet attempts to put across a varying
universal natural phenomenon adopting a typified poor African household that is worried by a
blind night rain. The word “rain” can be variously used and interpreted as there is rain of
Fortune, rain of misfortune, rain of poverty and physical rainfall. In this analysis however, the
less complex manner of appreciating J. P. Clark’s “Night Rain” is presenting it purely as
physical/ordinary night rain in tune with our theoretical framework; Eco-criticism.

Nature is presented as being more powerful than man, yet when there is a problem of life, it is
not for man to start panicking but to face the situation squarely until a solution is found to the
problem. With uncommon courage and gallantry, the victims in J. P. Clark’s “Night Rain”,
especially the narrator and her mother overcome their problem.

The common application of the term “Night Rain” as experienced by the poet and, or narrator of
the incidence fundamentally depicts man and his environment with different challenges facing
him within his ecological existence. It can be understood therefore that the problems of life could
take any form, colour, shape or size and can take place any time it so desires as demonstrated by
the poet’s sudden rise from sleep at night:

“What time of night it is
I do not know”

This shows the non-availability of clue to time-piece. But, the narrator compares his experiences
with that of a fish which is forced out of the depth of water with a chemical substance:

“Like some fish
Doped out of the deep
I have bobbed up belly-wise
From stream of sleep

Linking eco-criticism to the scholarly analysis of critical representations, in 1996, Cheryll
Glotfelty, the Eco-criticism Reader observes that Eco-criticism maintains “a triple allegiance to
the scientific study of nature, the scholarly analysis of critical representations, and the political
struggle for more sustainable ways of inhabiting the natural world.” In African culture, women
are presented as every-busy people in the affairs of home keeping or home management, very
motherly and caring. The poet demonstrates this fact by pointing out that in the dead of night
when the rain arrives uninvited; their mother is given a job to do

“Mother is busy now deploying…
Although it is so dark
I know her practiced step as
She moves her bins, bags and vats
Out of the run of water”

The noun phrase “her practiced step”, which is the direct object of the verb “|know”
consolidates the fact that this is not the first time the woman engages in this act. It is a usual
thing. The perpetual poverty which bedevils the household is further x-rayed through the group
of words, “her practiced step”|.

Again, the imagery of a riverside or seaside area or a mangrove/rainforest region is equally well
painted in the poem, J. P. Clark’s “Night Rain” with references made to words such as water,
fish, tree, owl and bat. The metaphors of the land and, or the environment is also documented.
This imagery makes the poem to be picturesque, understandable and entertaining. The
setting/physical locale of the poem as well as the poet’s choice of words/diction suggests the
kind of work J. P. Clark’s people are known for. The Ijaw people are predominantly fishermen
and this explains the environment where they found themselves.

The mental pictures of drumming, dribbling, droning, deploying, doped among others help to
visualize the density of the down-pour as well as its negative consequences on man. And of
course, the images of sheaves, shed, rafters, wooden bowls, earthenware and mats paint the
sordid condition of a household living in an abject poverty.

Nature is powerful and natural occurrences are blind as they do not give concession or
consideration to anybody. Rainfall,. Thunder storm, volcanic eruption and earthquake just occur
without any provision for man, who is always at the receiving end of those natural calamities.

The effect of natural phenomenon, rain, in this poem, on human beings is the central theme of
the poet. It consolidates the popular saying that man cannot cheat nature. As you lay your bed, so
you lie on it. Man needs to treat his environment in a mode to pave the way for a peaceful and
successful co-presence, co-existence and co-habitation among the various occupants, tenants or
habitants of a given ecological entity so that man himself can be happy.

It is evident that man’s struggle and encounter with the wild forces of nature is practically
inevitable since the survival of man is entirely tied to his environment. The air, the water, the
food and the materials for man’s shelter are all products of nature. Man therefore should be
sensitive and conscious of his environment as well as what the environment demands from him
for a happy living.

Besides the effect of nature on man, the poem shows the ravaging poverty in Africa where
people lack basic necessities of life. There is no decent shelter for the citizens. The victims of
this poem, according to the narrator, are wet even more than the birds which perch on a tree all
through the rain:

“We have drunk tonight of a spell
Deeper than the owls or bats”

The poet systematically calls our attention to the perceived inadequacies of the society we livein
combing the sober and the humorous, the grim and the witty. Commenting about this trend in
African communities, Okey, D. Ebele, (1998) observes: “It is evident today; the rural
communities have been cut off from the urban areas because their roads have become
impassable. Most, if not all our communities, are smarting from their rustic eerie darkness. The
people of our hinterland are hungry for development, and desirous of the opening up of their
villages to beat back the forays of want, deprivation, poverty, primitivism, superstition.
Generally, they long for better living conditions and the benefits of science and technology,” It is
therefore not surprising, if we link the event in this poem to the neglect the Africans suffer in the
hands of their governments. Instead of marching on with primitive cultural practices, Africans
should think of fixing the system and prevent it from collapsing. As it were, the economy is
meltdown, occasioned by bad governance, repressive policies, corruption and docile
followership. African countries are in bad state of indebtedness, flat broke up to their ears, even
with cuts in government expenditures like the removal of subside on basic daily commodities.
This pitiable and poor living conditions of most Africans in forgotten villages is a serious issue,
again, there is the need to prepare for emergencies. The situation of the victims in J. P. Clark’s
“Night Rain” would not have been so bad if they had made provision for the said rain. We all
know the seasons of the year and their peculiarities.

There is a feeling of tenderness and sympathy as the victims react with an attitude of helpless
resignation to the powerful natural phenomenon in the name of a heavy rain. The run-on-line
technique employed denotes continuity and progressiveness of the event captures in the poem
while the first person narrative point of view makes the event real.

Problems come and go as no condition is permanent. The experience of the narrator is an everlasting
lesson for us that we do not need to blame the natural phenomenon for making life
unbearable for us or blaming God for making our family poor. Instead the poet just displayed a
nuance of Shakespeare’s literary wisdom in “King Lear”: “This is the excellent foppery of the
world that when we are sick in fortune – often the surfeit of our behavior- we make guilty of our
disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly
compulsion.”

Literature is without doubt, expected to perform the function of healing which we described as
therapeutic function. Readers are expected to be healed or cured of emotional, psychological,
economic, pathological and/or socially related health challenges through reading a text, watching
a drama or listening to the recitation of a poem. It is again believed that literature can be
employed to develop the language of both the writers and the readers. Language is the vehicle,
the context or the medium by which message content/information in any literature is been
conveyed and disseminated to its publics. Hence, language and literature are two inseparable
kinds. “Literature is a social institution, using as its medium language, a social
creation…Literature represents life and life is in large measure, a social reality, even though the
natural world and the inner or subjective world of the individual have also been objects of
literary imitation”,(Wellek andWarren,1968). In a simple diction, a regular rhythm and a high
degree of narrative expertise which provide suitable imagery, readers are made to share the
poet’s or the narrator’s agonized situation and his unsettled state of mind as well as the degrading
living conditions of the entire content message..

Words such as dope, bobbed, droning, dribbling, deploying, sheaves, rafters, tremble, spell,
bedraggled, stir, scurry, ample and soothing keep the pictures of the narrated event in the minds
of readers. Thanks to his ability to adopt and use constructively relevant literary techniques and,
or devices such as figures of speech (alliteration, assonance, irony, metaphor, personification,
simile, etc); enjambment, I-narrator, detailed description and didacticism only to mention a few,

J. P.Clark is successful in documenting the representations of nature in his literary creation.
“Literature, whether handed down by the word of mouth, or in print, gives us a second handle on
reality, enabling us to encounter in the safe, manageable dimension of make-believe the very
same threat to integrity that may assail the psyche in real life, and at the same providing through
the self discovery which imparts a veritable weapon for coping with these threats whether they
are found within problematic and incoherent selves or in the world around us”, Achebe (1988).