On page 66 of Bessie Head's A Question of Power, it reads "- The real battlefront was living people, their personalities, their treatment of eachother. A real, living battle of jealousy, hate and greed was more easily understood and resolved under pressure than soaring, mystical flights of the soul." In looking at whether or not character Elizabeth's dreams and hallucinations are prophecies, I think it would be fair to say that maybe they could be.
Here, it seems as though she is comparing her dreams to the real world and noticing that real world battles (though often similar to the battles in her mind) are more easily understood by people then her "soaring, mytical flights of the soul." Of her soul.
Though her hallucinations, or dreams may be very comparable to real world issues, to say she is a prophet is controversial. Some people may believe that individuals like Elizabeth who have such vivid hallucinations are prophets and could argue that she could be a deity or speaker of god. Others may argue against that.
In this book it seems as though she herself feels that she is in fact a prophet, as she says on page 66 - "The confusion of the prophets interjections, the orders from god, the dubiousness of the woman involved, the passionate attachment to the woman all took on the strange logic of deliberate planning."
It is a hard concept to grasp but maybe many people around us are prophets and we just do not realize it. Maybe homeless people on the sidewalks of streets in San Francisco who yell at you when you walk by have an important message but cannot communicate it. Maybe the average person looks at these prophets as crazy people when actually there is more meaning behind their madness.
Prophets and prophecy's are a subject that I know very little about but in reading this book I hope to further understand. It seems very interesting and I hope to see how the idea of Elizabeth's character being a prophet or a devine inspiration comes about as I read further on in A Question of Power.
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quite dramatic pictures there hehe.