[The Palm-Wine Drinkard] is more commonly admired for its free-running fancy than for anything that could be called its structure, and apart from its archetypal form of the quest, there might appear to be little evidence of patterning…. Indeed, what seems to be a clear instance of the absence of form is the introduction of the tale of the quarrel between earth and heaven into the novel's closing pages. But I suggest that it might be less arbitrary than it appears, and that the episode is given its peculiar prominence as the culmination of a central and repeated image….

I propose to begin my case by referring to Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, particularly to his description of opposed apocalyptic and demonic worlds, imaged characteristically as farm or garden on the one hand, wilderness on the other. (p. 57)

It is clear that these opposed worlds resemble those of...