ALEX AGYEI-AGYIRI: Unexpected Joy at Dawn Discuss Ni's encounter with -Put-t -to-me in the novel

Answer Details

In Alex Agyei-Agyiri's Unexpected Joy at Dawn, Nii's encounter with the man nicknamed "I-Put-it-to-me" (also called Tally O) is a small but telling episode that dramatises the theme of survival under harsh, repressive conditions and prepares the way for the later fortunes of Nii's sister, Mama Orojo.

The setting of the encounter: the curfew. The soldiers in power have imposed a curfew that forbids movement at night, yet ordinary people still have to get home when the day ends. Nii, whose wife Massa lies bedridden and dependent on him, has stayed out and now has to slip home after the curfew hour. To beat the soldiers and the vigilante patrols on the streets, he uses his wits and pretends to be a lunatic, and in this way he passes safely through the security net to his own door.

The meeting itself. As Nii reaches his house he notices a man sitting on the stump of a tree in front of his door, biding his time to get past the curfew. He passes the man and enters. This stranger is I-Put-it-to-me, an illegal gold miner and a member of the Daga group of miners. Soon an army lance corporal comes into Nii's room, having caught I-Put-it-to-me for breaking the curfew. Like Nii, I-Put-it-to-me survives the danger by sheer ingenuity, and both men escape arrest for the offence. Their shared cunning under the same threat quietly links the two characters.

The irony and significance of the encounter. The meeting is deeply ironic. This same I-Put-it-to-me later cheats Nii's own sister: on Mama Orojo's flight to Ghana he sells her a fake gold ring, so the man Nii once brushed past at his door turns out to be a swindler who exploits his family. The Daga group to which he belongs is also the group in which Joe, the man connected to Mama Orojo, works and dies in the mines. The encounter therefore does more than show two men outwitting a curfew; it exposes a society in which survival depends on trickery and deceit, where the same sharp wits that save a man from soldiers are turned to cheating others.

Conclusion. Nii's brief encounter with I-Put-it-to-me shows the resourcefulness forced on people by military repression and hardship, and, through its later irony, it binds Nii's story to his sister's and underlines the atmosphere of insecurity and dishonesty that pervades the world of the novel.