Oil on Water

In the vein of existentialist pieces like Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Camus’s The Stranger, Oil on Water explores what it means to be human in an inherently turbulent world controlled by faceless oligarchy. In Chapter 7, Rufus and Zaq hire a guide that is physically imposing and armed, and yet this ultimately does no good. In Chapter 20, when Salomon talks about how the kidnapping transpired, he reveals that Jamabo, for all his attitude and toughness, is killed coldly by a character who can easily overpower him. Many of the conflicts in the novel show how quickly order and safety can be made an illusion by chaotic and dangerous forces. Lives are often taken without a second thought, and villages are destroyed or abandoned. Military forces that are supposed to be protective of the people in the region are anything but, instead eliciting violence, keeping citizens from traveling freely, and in some cases torturing prisoners. 

The militants, much in the same way, say that they represent the people of Nigeria who stand against the oil industry, but they, too, bring chaos to the islands, causing havoc with their illegal actions, kidnapping innocent people, and shooting anyone they believe to be against them.