This question is based on Buchi Emecheta's Second Class Citizen It all began like a dream. You know, that sort of dream which seems to have originated from ...

Answer Details

The technique used in the opening lines of Buchi Emecheta's Second Class Citizen is flashback. The passage begins with "It all began like a dream," which signals that the narrator is looking back in time from a later point to recount how events started. The use of the past tense ("began," "seemed," "was") and the reflective quality of comparing the origin of events to "a dream which seems to have originated from nowhere" establish that the narrative is reaching back into the past to retrieve and reconstruct earlier experiences.

Flashback is a narrative technique in which the story shifts from the present to an earlier time in order to provide background information, reveal character motivation, or establish how events unfolded. Here, the narrator takes the reader back to the beginning of Adah's lifelong dream of going to the United Kingdom, grounding the entire novel in this formative childhood ambition.

Stream of consciousness involves an uninterrupted, often fragmented flow of a character's thoughts and perceptions, which does not match this structured, reflective passage. Foreshadowing hints at future events rather than looking back at past ones. Omniscient point of view is a narrative perspective, not a technique of temporal movement.