Analyzing Bohannan's Perception Of Shakespeare In The Bush
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Naïve realism is the belief that there is only one fundamental perception of reality that we all share across cultures. A naïve realist will assume that the human emotion of love is elicited and expressed in the same contexts and ways across all cultures (Price 3). Before writing the article “Shakespeare in the Bush”, Bohannan used to think that the human nature was same all over the world, or at least the perception of universal tragedies was the same irrespective of the cultures they were being perceived by. Bohannan was in for a complete shock when she realized that her perception of a motive for an action was completely different from that of the Tiv elders, just because she was a sophisticated, educated European while the Tiv elders belonged…show more content… According to the Tiv people, a chief should have many wives because then, he could get many chores done from them. The advantage of having many wives is that, a chief won’t require many servants which in turn would reduce the amount of taxes he collected from his people for his personal expenses. Thus more the number of wives the chief had, more the people liked him. But in Bohannan’s culture it is immoral for a man to have more than one wife and all his duties are performed by his subordinates and his commitments to his wife are carried on by his son rather than his…show more content… According to Bohannan, it was the grief of losing her father and lover that drove Ophelia to her suicide. Contradicting this, the Tiv elders had a conspiracy theory of their own. According to them, Polonius unable to pay off his sons debts decides to sell his daughter’s body to the witches. Ophelia’s brother was apparently about to retrieve her body to sell it while he was interrupted by Hamlet. The Tiv elders say that Hamlet did not have the noble intentions of stopping someone from disturbing his lovers body but to stop someone from selling it and reaching his chiefly status. Thus it was the struggle for power that killed everyone instead of the passion that started the