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Satire and Corruption in "Bones"

Sadru Kassam's play "Bones" uses satire to criticize corruption in a society. The play follows an African butcher trying to renew his trading license, but the license endorser denies it, forcing the butcher to pay a bribe. Kassam uses humor and exaggeration to portray a society plagued by deception, where people in power take advantage of others for personal gain. While comedic, the play has deeper commentary on injustice. By laughing at social issues, satire helps audiences acknowledge flaws and think critically about society's problems. The play demonstrates the importance of satire in confronting difficult realities and provoking change.

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jenmoong lee
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35K views2 pages

Satire and Corruption in "Bones"

Sadru Kassam's play "Bones" uses satire to criticize corruption in a society. The play follows an African butcher trying to renew his trading license, but the license endorser denies it, forcing the butcher to pay a bribe. Kassam uses humor and exaggeration to portray a society plagued by deception, where people in power take advantage of others for personal gain. While comedic, the play has deeper commentary on injustice. By laughing at social issues, satire helps audiences acknowledge flaws and think critically about society's problems. The play demonstrates the importance of satire in confronting difficult realities and provoking change.

Uploaded by

jenmoong lee
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
  • Body
  • Introduction
  • Conclusion

BONES

By Sadru Kassam

Introduction
Sadru Kassam, a teacher who was born in Mombasa in 1941, graduated from Makere University
in Uganda and became involved with free traveling theatre while studying English. He is also
known in unique for writing in Swahhili.
In his politically pointed play “Mifupa” (Bones), about an African butcher trying to get his
trading license. But the endorser denies it because everything is not in shape and his restaurant’s
filthy so he had to give “key money” to get his licensed renewed. It was performed twenty times
throughout Uganda in 1965, the first year of the Makerere Travelling Theatre.

Body
A technique called “satire” is shown in the play wherein it uses a ridicule human flaws, humor,
social customs and wit to criticize and provoke change in institutions and human nature. The
playwright must have used this because there is something that needs to be exposed or
denounced.
An example about how Kassam uses satire in the play where, “the butcher cuts his finger and
wipes the blood on a piece of meat.” in this scene, it shows that the butcher fooled the woman
that the meats are fresh and clean, it is where you can see that people may tend to easily fool
people who are not aware or does not have any ideas about those things and that some only care
about themselves and focused on things that they want. .
Another one, where it shows some human quality or trait, “Dongo sweeps a pile of scraps onto
the Butcher’s clean floor and then tells the Butcher how dirty the shop is.” in this one, it showed
that Dongo purposely delayed and refused to endorse the trading license of the Butcher and did
those things just to have a reason not to give what the Butcher wants. Not until he gets the money
or bones that he’s longing for even though the situation is opposite to what he’s saying. In these
one, people do things without thinking of others’ situations just to get money from them and
shows that people with power can take advantages of average peoples and gets what they want.
What I like with this is that Kassam expresses the scenes in a fun or comedy way but still you
can see that it has a deeper meaning behind it. What I don’t want with this approach is that it is
somehow difficult to understand at first and you may not easily get what the playwright might
want to tell and the meaning behind those scenes. But then if you try to re-watch or reread the
scripts multiple times and use critical thinking, you’ll start to appreciate more of this and find the
play itself unique and interesting.
Conclusion
In the “bones” I think the purpose is to demonstrate the problems of corruption and deception in
a society. It portrayed a kind of society that is full of depiction and showed people who are only
concerned about themselves and interests and also showed how they are morally corrupt. In the
play, they reflect a cruelty liked cycle of deception wherein people only fight for their own lives
and does not even care if some people may get hurt with their own actions. And the moral lesson
that I’ve realized is that, even though this society or even the world may be full of deception and
people who take advantages of some, always try to become better and a person of value.
With this play, the importance of satire has been shown in which it uses an approach wherein it’s
starts with comedy. For some, the problems and injustices in the society are way too difficult to
confront directly so with this approach people laugh at something, where you can acknowledge
that the reality is when people denying power over their emotions. It is also getting people to pay
attention to social issues and mirror their flaws and to help people to think critically about things.

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