The Playwright as 'Sociologist': Character Representation and Symbolism in Doyin Aguoru's 'Stolen Seeds'

Aside from the far-reaching influence of religion, although the roles of women within contemporary Nigeria have moved from strictly within the confines of catering to home affairs to making significant impact across different fields of endeavour – many of which were once assumed to be the exclusive reserve of men – the issue of infertility is still one of the major drawbacks when it comes to how gender roles are represented in terms of blame in response to societal expectations. Blending the symbolic with the ordinary, the rhetorical with the metaphorical, and the obvious with the oblivious, this paper analyses the significance of character representation and the use of symbolism in Stolen Seeds by Doyin Aguoru, in order to offer an insight intoaddressing the impact of social institutions such as the family and religion, especially when confronted with challenges around the peculiarities of infertility.