‘The Beach of Dead Whales’ by Tatalo Alamu: A Response to Editorial Essay

Introduction

This paper presents a response to a selected editorial from the Nation newspaper. The author’s spotlight on the article will be looked at microscopically. As such, the paper will be a critique of the presentational statue of the informative article.

Author and Topic of the Article

Tatalo Alamu writes a prolific satire entitled ‘The Beach of Dead Whales’ which depicts with styling oomph the struggle of a helpless African village that battles to identify its personality; particularly in a present-day generation when the identity of communities and tribes is so external influenced. The September 19, 2010 article captures this through a subtle hue of a mythical and monstrous whale that swims way off into a certain sandy Tarkwa Bay beach. There, a group of swimming lads beholds the jumbo-fish as the creature thrashes about the shore of a turbulent sea and casts a huge luminous black body in a brilliant sunset. Never had the boys seen such a monster; a fish of the size of seven hippos- or water elephants, as hippos were named by the tribe. And then, the wonderful creature springs to the water bank. They abandon their canoe and race home as if chased by hungry lions. At home, their story is received with disbelief. But later, the village realizes the truth of a new visitor -a whale- in the community. Alamu emphasizes:

“No one has sighted or seen a whale in these climes before. There was not even a name for it either in antiquity or contemporary parlance. The odd stray shark has been sighted in adjacent waters” (Alamu, 2010).

The village realizes more mammoth whales by next dawn. The author is particulate about this development. Astride was striping itself in the turbulent African region. Soon government had to become fair and assemble experts to study the bizarre visitation. But among those who came to wonder at the visitor, someone realized the whale was deliciously fresh. No one remembered that the whales had crashed-buried some children as the creatures dived headlong to the shoulder marshes of the sea. The whale had buried the future on the tribe, the children. Now the community, as it battled over whale fresh, realized the stinking corpora of those illustrious boys. The need to rescue those corpuses became an urgent one; but even then, the community heaved slab of the god-sent dead whale out, spiritually excited. The author becomes clearer to emphasize the title of the article:

Then divine disaster struck, and for a nation that has lived at the edge of the abyss, it was massive and merciless. In the tropics, things flourish and perish very quickly. Obeying the iron tropical law, the whales began to decompose very rapidly. By the following evening, the entire coast had been taken over by a suffocating smell of decay and decomposition. Worse still, many who had taken the strange meat started vomiting and dying after a violent seizure.

In three brisk days, it was all over. The entire land lay still and quiet like a vast sepulcher. But this is not the silence of lambs. Born a human disaster and fed by a series of man-made disasters, it has taken a natural disaster to overwhelm the nation. A plague has seen off another plague. When politics and science fail, nature triumphs. That is the only iron law of human evolution (Alamu, 2010).

The title of the article could have well been ‘Perils of a lost African generation’.

The author’s point of view

The author exhumes metaphorically the decay of present-day sub-Saharan Africa. The proverbial whales are corrupt practices that have come to invade the true culture of the helpless present African generations. However, though the author has powerful analytic skills, he has failed to proffer a way to revolt against the dead strange whales as was the case with Agaa, (2010) who discussed a similar topic.

The author’s point of view has been consistent throughout the article.

Conclusion

The author’s articles lie on a satisfactory continuum of effectiveness.

Reference List

Agaa, R. B. (2010). Corruption in sub-Saharan Africa. Jos: Lamp and Word.

Alamu, T. (2010). The Beach of Dead Whales. The Nation, 121(13), 44-45.