Simon Teryila Zaki

Raped To The Grave Simon Teryila Zaki

Raped to the Grave is a tragic story that explores the sour relationship between farmers and herdsmen fuelled by their greedy, insatiable leaders with potbellies and kleptomaniac fingers whose only aim is to feast on the collective sweat of the poor masses who wallow in abject poverty and are left defenceless to be preyed upon by wild beasts while they (leaders) bask in the euphoria of abundant wealth and dwell in formidable high walls. The story told through the intricately woven experiences of Terseer, Tyopenda and Dooshima, enquires into the theme of man's savagery in the absence of competent government authority to regulate and defend the defenceless of the society as shown in the ruthless butcher of Terseer and his wife Nguemo into bits, and the eventual cleansing of the entire village in the dread of the night. This regrettably sad reality was beforehand captured by Thomas Hobbes in his work Leviathan where he stated that outside the society (society meaning an organised system where the people are under a competent government authority), life would be 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'. The story ends with a tone of uncertainty about what the future holds especially for children who are victims of wars and human wickedness in a society where they so-called leaders are carefree about the people entrusted into their care to govern.