Between Emotional Truth and Strategic Social Behaviour: Fear, Distrust, and the Loss of Inner Self in Gabriel Okara’s “Once Upon a Time A Critical Close Reading through Winnicott’s True Self and False Self

Abstract

The goal of this study is to investigate the conflict between emotional authenticity and socially strategic behavior in Gabriel Okara's “Once upon a time.” The speaker of the poem recalls a time when laughter, handshakes and social relations were real, but the present day has a more complex ambiance of smiles, polite actions, social masks and conflicting polite words. This paper brings together the literary analysis of Showkat Hussain Dar, Chukwuma Azuonye and Sajeera Cholakkal to psychoanalytical theories developed by D. W. Winnicott, Erving Goffman and Frantz Fanon within the context of postcolonial discourse and the sociologies of performance theories. The paper examines the process of cultural dislocation, institutionalized hypocrisy and modern social pressures that result in psychological fragmentation and the creation of an adaptive False Self. A stanza-by-stanza close reading examines how fear, distrust, and ambivalent moral sentiments result in emotional distancing, and how the speaker's journey is a quest to "unlearn" the "deceptive socialization" and find his “True Self” again.

Keywords: Gabriel Okara, “Once Upon a Time”, emotional authenticity, strategic social behaviour, True Self, False Self, postcolonial identity, Erving Goffman, psychoanalytic criticism, socio-cultural alienation.