A BEHAVIOURAL ANALYSIS OF PIRA IN MARGARET LAURENCE’S “GODMAN’S MASTER”

Abstract

This paper deals with a midget called Godman who has been kept in a box by his exploiter and forced to make prophetic utterances that bewilder the villagers. Pira is the dwarf inside a box. “Godman's Master” dramatically tells of the coming together of Africa’s past and its possible future when a young man, acculturated by four years at a British university, comes back and rescues Pira, one of the strangest inhabitants of the old traditional society. Godman is an image of imprisonment. He is under nurtured and denied of unrestricted existence. At the end, Godman is happy and asserts himself despite having confronted the worst of the worst while living in a constant state of fear, he has endured. This paper tries to study and analyse, Pira’s character through the help of the tools provided by behavioural analysis.