Andrew Sankie Maimo’s Manichean Ontology: A Review of The Mask

By Bate Besong

Published in Epasa Moto: Journal of Letters, Arts, and Culture, University of Buea (2006: Abridged)

Andrew Sankie Maimo’s The Mask (1980) as a supreme expression of the situation of modern man like much of its absurd, Beckethian or Adamovean genealogy derives its theatrical alloy from its mosaic construct which entails a penetration through a cluster of images and symbolic landscape.

neDream and nightmare in Baye’s encounter with the mask objectifies the Cameroonian encounter with a politics rich in fraud and oppression .The mingling of the irrational as a metaphor of the political climate is vividly captured in this kaleidoscope of absurd presentation monologue between the mask  and Sammy Baye the hero of Andrew Sankie Maimo’s The Mask. The play therefore suggests that the transformation of Sammy Baye’s personality is due to social modern forces. Like the modernist there is the egoist hope that the hero can exercise critical consciousness and help change the world.

Fashioned as it were on the absurd tradition character is conceived within the framework of man as archetypal everyman enmeshed in an endless and futile struggle for recognition, power or even personal glory. Since there is neither subtlety of characterization and motivation; Sammy Baye and Tiku Binla, Miss Angeline Asheri a young lady of about 24 years old who works at the Cameroon Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Yaounde, become largely mechanical puppets which are used by the playwright as aspects of his enquiry into the nature of the modern Cameroon man.

The analysis of fraudulent power affects the form of presentation of reality. The dream sequence reinforced by a technique that may be judged as being reminiscent too of medieval mystery plays and baroque allegories germane in its thriving on moral as well as metaphysical problems. Since, The Mask neither investigates nor solves problems of conducts and morals, Scenes 2 and 3, for instance, are not dramatic in the accepted traditional sense because the formal structure is merely a modernist device to express through the dominating symbol of the mask the total image a sequence of interacting elements.

By abandoning standard modes of characterization and plot and replacing dramatic structures such as organized speech with fragmented, angst-suffused dialogue that sometimes degenerates into exclamatory and seemingly, incoherent sentences or phrases, Maimo’s theatre can also be considered as falling within the expressionist and modernist , avant-garde tradition of such precursors as Strindberg ,George Kaiser ,Ernst Toller and the early Berthold Brecht. Character and destiny are shown in moralistic terms with Baye passing moral judgements while his fears are recreated in dreams and nightmares.

The experience of the world is therefore dominated by ennui and of man at the mercy of the incomprehensible terrors that make up his universe. The characters demonstrate the attributes of Heidegger’s Western, alienated man “thrown into being”, stripped of all certainties and values. The hero exists within an opaque, impenetrable “incognito”. From his disjointed condition humaine, Baye is afraid of the structure of Cameroon power politics. He will later be tempted by the masked persona to join the repressive system. These early intimations of unease point to his fear of repressive power politics.

Humanity is portrayed as being devoid of purpose since all human endeavour comes to naught due to political inertia. A very strong sense of futility seems to adorn the hero’s personality especially as one caught in an epoch where certitudes and basic assumptions have been abandoned by Cameroonian politicians.

Baye is portrayed as everyman trying to hold on to his identity, unable to establish conclusive proof of it. Thus in the attempt to confront and master reality outside oneself, the mask symbol shows Baye as an innocent man confronted by a monstrous conspiracy of circumstances engineered by the totalitarian regime to make nugatory his claims as an intellectual.

History informs Baye’s dilemma however, through a subjectivization of objective reality , Maimo forfeits a larger historicity since the totality of Cameroonian life is not portrayed. The Mask proffers a distorted picture of reality by concentrating on Baye’s subjectivity.