The Wall

One way of looking at Marechera's 'The Alley', in Scrapiron Blues, is in terms of a critique which he generally makes throughout the book of collected works. In this instance one might say that he critiques the consumerist morality of the Rhodesian soldier, who sees it fit to sacrifice women (specifically, female family members) in order to consume the pleasure of their violence against each other - black and white.

The enjoyment of the violence is depicted by Marechera in terms of dogs in heat. The fighters avidly consume the war in such a way that the consequences of their actions are left without regard. Yet it is the consequences of their actions that Marechera wants to bring home to both the white and black veterans of the war. To bring home this lesson, he takes the white icon of Cecil Rhodes, whom the country was named after, and feminises her (Cecil becomes Cecilia). The white commander is then seen to be sexually torturing Cecilia, and his deeds are symbolically brought home to him -- would he sexually torture the white icon that represents his own power and position of domination? Yes he would, says Marechera. For this is in fact what he is doing.

The black man, Rhodes (another reversal, this time in terms of colour) understands the damage that this masculine posturing does to women. Yet the damage is hardly or barely spoken for much of the play, for its effect resides behind the wall of consciousness for the men become tramps. Only when the wall is tapped, or "struck", does the reality they have been burying from consciousness appear as psychological truth in front of their eyes. The women who had been sacrificed to the necessity of war appear as those who have been able to acknowledge the damage of war, and do something about it -- unlike both of the men who have become physically and intellectually destitute, with swiss cheese memories, due no doubt to the energy it takes to repress key information and lie to themselves (once, lawyers, they are now both tramps). The women, therefore, are lesbians, since they have embraced the psychological truth of war and cannot stand men. The men themselves, however, remain stuck in their attempts to transcend what the truth of what the women experience. The lies they tell themselves in their inability to face the truth assure that they will remain tramps with hazy, inefficient memories.