Oil on Water

Oil serves as not only a physical substance in Oil on Water but also as a metaphorical device for a variety of the difficulties experienced by the people of Nigeria. Oil spreads, running in rivulets and expanding into a slick. It pollutes, corrodes, or corrupts many of the things that it touches. When it gets into a water supply, it makes that water unusable and dangerous. As the oil industry spreads throughout the Niger Delta, it does much the same thing to the land and its peoples. Their homes are abandoned and then bought up by the oil companies. It is no wonder that in Chapter 5, when the major is lecturing his prisoners, he blames oil:

What, you can’t stand the smell of oil? Isn’t it what you fight for, kill for? Go on, enjoy. By the time I’m through with you, you’ll hate the smell of it, you won’t take money that comes from oil, you won’t get in a car because it runs on petrol. You’ll hate the very name petrol (61).

The oil is the object of both the men’s desire and the mode of their punishment. We see that same motif in the larger

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