SUICIDE IN AN AKAN LANGUAGE NOVEL: A FOCUS ON L. D. APRAKU’S AKU SIKA

Suicide in fiction can promote insights into perceptions of, and attitudes about suicide ideation and behavior in a society. This article uses the novel Aku Sika as a case in point. Aku Sika is a novel set in Ghana in the 1950s. It is about a young married woman who attempts to end her life to avoid imminent disgrace. The king’s youngest wife, Aku, plots to commit suicide by hanging from a tree in response to rivalry and evil machinations of the king’s senior-most wife, Sɛkyeraa. Aku suffers from a hand deformity caused by a childhood accident and had been successfully hiding the deformity from public view. Due to her extraordinary beauty, the king selects her as a wife unbeknownst to him that she had a physical handicap, this in a society with a cultural prohibition barring kings from marrying physically handicapped brides. Sɛkyeraa swears publicly under oath that she should be executed if it cannot be proven that Aku was not physically handicapped, then demands that if Aku was indeed physically handicapped, the king should abdicate his throne and divorce Aku. A date was set for Aku to reveal her hand to the public. She decided to self-destruct rather than face public ignominy. On the banks of a major river where she planned to die by suicide, the river spirit appeared and healed her deformed hand. Both Aku and the king kept this a secret until the day of revelation. Aku finally revealed her healed arm and Sɛkyeraa was put to death by state executioners.