A Prayer For The Living is a short story by Ben Okri that revolves around the Nigerian Civil War and its repercussions through the narrator’s point of view. The story uses a first-person narrator who has arrived at the town of the dead to look for his family and his lover and realizes that dead people are fortunate and happier than those living in the chaotic and greedy world. The story shows the themes of acceptance and conflict.

A Prayer For The Living | Summary

The narrator describes a town where everyone is dead. The gunrunners and the godfathers have raided all the food meant for the common people. Food didn’t matter anymore as the narrator tells that he has been hungry for three weeks. He sees all the people who have died from hunger and feels they are all happier than the people who are alive. The reporters are horrified that the people aren’t afraid to die.

He waits for his death in the town that smells of sewage, rotten butter, and polluted air. The narrator is the only one alive along with the soldiers who are engaged in the war, only to find a graveyard that was once beautiful, cultured, and full of life.

The narrator is looking for his family and the love of his life among the people who lie dead to know if they have left him. If they have, he will die in peace, but if he doesn’t find out about them, he will hold on to his life till he does. He has arrived in the last town of the world, with the rest having turned into dust and desert, and believes he will find his family. He goes back to the history of drought and famine that led to the destruction before the land was full of life, possibilities, and opportunities for a beautiful future.

The victims search the bodies of their loved ones, turning their bodies over. And how, while looking for his loved one, he feels all the dead are his family.

He keeps looking and finds his brother and puts dust on his face. He comes across his mother’s body holding on to a skeleton and puts dust on her. He will die at peace when he finds his lover.

The narrator hears music coming from an unfinished school, and he gets into the room to see dead people who look alive; the room stinks of prayers rather than of death. The room full of dead people is pure and sacred because the people thought about the people who suffered in their last moments. The narrator moves into a corner and starts praying for the mountains, nature, and human beings. He hears the music that lured him to the school, the music of humankind’s pain and agony. He sings silently and notices his lover dead beside him. He realizes he chooses death as it is more joyful than life, which has betrayed him and is full of pain, bitterness, and greed.

He stares at the room and sees the reporters recording the room and believes they are unfortunate to live a life without love, to live in a better world. He dies holding his lover’s hand.

A Prayer For The Living |Analysis

The story is set in the land of the dead, which is the only place in the world with people, and the rest is covered in desert. The narrator, with all the information, has come to search for his family, and he has been starving for three weeks. It is the soldiers who are alive, engaged in an eternal war without thinking of the repercussions that have brought doom to a beautiful city and turned it into a graveyard. 

He looks for his family and lover in the crowd and has made up his mind that he will look for them till he is alive, and when he does, he will rest in eternal peace.

The town’s gate leads to the desert scattered throughout the world, which holds the history of destruction and the source of the famine, the heap of devastation, whose air takes away the energy of the souls and makes them hopeless.

The narrator explains how beautiful this world was before chaos took over it, how the world was full of opportunities and life, but now there is only a heap of dead bodies that lie all around the world. The world has changed from being full of life and happiness to being full of death and decay.

The ones that have survived, like the narrator, turn to the corpses one by one to find their loved ones. All the corpses look familiar to the narrator as they hold the same serenity on their face. The narrator finds his brother among the dead, his mother holding onto a skeleton that supposedly was his father’s body, and gives them farewell by putting dust on them. The narrator explains how when he finds his lover, he will finally give in to the mountain songs, which mean the song of the dead.

Sunset approaches, and he hears music coming from a school, like a prayer that implies the beginning of beautiful creation, the end of the narrator. The narrator takes a long time to reach the school, which implies how weak he has been as he has starved for a long time, and the music is the only thing that keeps him determined. The cow is the only animal to be alive in the chaos, and it gets inside the schoolroom door before the narrator. This implies the end of mankind in the place, the common people who are the victims of the war. 

The narrator notices that despite the room being full of corpses, it doesn’t smell of death or decay, but rather it smells of prayers. Prayers of all the dead people who sympathized with all that died, they didn’t think of themselves but of the victims of the war, and so died in peace. Their faces glowed in peace as they took their last breath, praying for others. And the narrator feels like doing the same thing, which implies his approaching death. He crawls as his body has given in to starvation and prays in a corner for the mankind that has survived. He sings all evening and suddenly identifies his lover, who lies beside him.

The reporters record the destruction, weeping,  realizing the doomed war has been brought upon all of them. The corpses lay peacefully, just like the narrator. He starts comparing life to death and ponders which is more peaceful– a life that is full of greed, pain, destruction, or death, which is nothing but peaceful. The life he says is beautiful too, but it has betrayed him, and he doesn’t long for life anymore. With all his people dead, he has nothing to live for, and his soul has been starved of love and hope as well.

He opens his eyes for the last time and sees the reporters and their cameras focused on the dead in the room. But he pities the reporters as they will have to live in this world, and the dead will depart peacefully to the afterlife. He gasps, smiles, and leaves the world.

The story presents the Nigerian Civil War and is narrated using a first-person narrator who walks among the dead affected by the war in a town.

He looks at the dead people and sees they seem more peaceful than the living, and realizes the dead are more fortunate to have left this world of violence, war, greed, and agony. He is determined to look for his family and his lover among the dead till his last breath and to die peacefully when he finds them. He hopes for death rather than holding on to life. He thinks he will be left alone in the world without any love or purpose. He feels the room filled with the dead smells of prayer rather than decay, as the victims have lived their last moments praying for those who have suffered. He dies holding his lover’s hand with a smile that shows that he is fortunate to leave the world in peace, as he had arrived in the town to look for his family and his lover. He accepts death without any hesitation or regret, but with sympathy for those who will live.

He joins with the dead in the prayer, the most beautiful music, which implies his death; he dies pitying for people who have survived, as they will have to live in a chaotic world that has turned into a graveyard, that holds no possibility of a happy and peaceful life, of a beautiful future. 

A Prayer For The Living |Themes

Conflict

The story begins with the narrator, who has entered a town where people lie dead, affected by the war. The story shows the period of the Nigerian Civil War and its horrible consequences. The city, which was once beautiful and full of life, has turned into a graveyard. It is just the soldiers who are alive and are in a war against each other in their thirst for power and leadership. The narrator has come to the town to search for his family and loved ones and is determined to find them and later die peacefully. He feels the dead look more peaceful than the living and concludes the dead are more fortunate to have gone to the afterlife. He says that the beautiful and happy land has turned into a graveyard because of the soldiers who have gone to war against each other in their hunger for power. This shows the narrator is aware of the war and its repercussions, which says a war ends with destruction.

Acceptance

The narrator accepts the destruction that is caused by the war. He looks for his family, turning corpses one by one, and sees his brother first. He nods and puts dust on himself which implies he has accepted the death of his brother. He finds his mother after a while near a dry well, who is holding a bone close to her, which implies it can be the dead body of his father. He puts dust on her mother, which shows he has accepted her death. He sees the dead lie peacefully and understands that the dead are happier than the living; they are more alive than people who have survived. He promises to leave his body when he finds his lover, and when he does, he holds his lover and takes his last breath, smiling. This shows he has considered life to be decaying, depressing, and painful, and accepts death to be his savior.

A Prayer For The Living |Character

The narrator comes to this town of the dead to look for his lover and family. He has been starving for three weeks, but hunger is the least of his concerns. He realizes that the soldiers who have fought against each other for the land without caring for the lives of the common people have turned the beautiful land into a graveyard. He has decided that he will find his loved ones, and when he does, he will let go of his life. He accepts the death of his people, and while looking for his lover, he realizes the dead look more peaceful than the people who live. He hears music from the school premises and follows it to reach a schoolroom full of dead people

. The room smells of prayer rather than decay, and it is because the dead thought about the people who have suffered in their last hours. He joins in the prayer and dies holding his lover’s hand, pitying the people who have survived, as they will have to live in a chaotic, decayed, greedy world with no love and sympathy.

A Prayer For The Living |Title

The title explains how the dead, along with the narrator, pray for the living and those who have suffered, as they will have to live in a world where people fight against each other for power, the world is full of greed, violence, selfishness, destruction, and hatred. The living will have to survive in a world of decay, famine, lovelessness, and bitterness. The dead and narrator consider death to be more peaceful and happier than life, and they pity the living.

About the Author

Ben Okri is a British Nigerian poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and essayist who is the winner of the 1991 Booker Prize and has won many honorary doctorates for his contribution to the literary world. He is a well-known writer of post-colonial and post-modern writings. He uses magical realism in his writing style to portray the social chaos in his country and has experimented with different styles and forms through his writing.