WAEC SSCE - Literature In English - 2014 (Drama & Poetry)

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In Kobina Sekyi's satirical play The Blinkards, Mr. Onyimdze and Mr. Borofosem are deliberately contrasted characters through whom the playwright attacks the blind imitation of European ways in colonial Gold Coast society. Comparing them clarifies Sekyi's central theme of cultural identity versus slavish Anglicisation.

Their attitude to African culture. Onyimdze, though a London-trained barrister, remains proudly rooted in his own culture. He values African custom, dress and language and refuses to despise his heritage. Borofosem, by contrast, is a comic caricature of the been-to who returns from England determined to live as an Englishman, aping European manners, dress and speech and looking down on all that is African.

Education and reason. Both men are educated and have been exposed to Western learning, but they draw opposite lessons from it. Onyimdze uses his education wisely, with balance and discernment, keeping what is good in both cultures. Borofosem uses his exposure foolishly, mistaking imitation for progress and becoming a figure of ridicule.

Consistency of character. Onyimdze is consistent, principled and sensible; he is the play's raisonneur, the voice of reason and moderation who exposes the folly around him. Borofosem is inconsistent and absurd, enforcing English customs on his household and insisting on ceremonies and etiquette that are ill-suited to their setting.

Their function in the satire. Sekyi uses Borofosem as the chief target of his mockery, the embodiment of the "blinkard" who has been blinded to his own worth by colonial dazzle. Onyimdze serves as the moral standard against which Borofosem's folly is measured, representing the ideal of an educated African who remains loyal to his roots.

Points of similarity. Both belong to the elite, educated class of coastal society and both have travelled or been shaped by contact with England. This shared background sharpens the contrast, for it shows that Western education need not destroy cultural pride: the same experience produces the wise Onyimdze and the ridiculous Borofosem.

In conclusion, Onyimdze and Borofosem are opposites in outlook though similar in background. Onyimdze is the sensible defender of African identity, while Borofosem is the deluded imitator of European ways, and through their contrast Sekyi condemns cultural self-contempt and champions a balanced pride in one's own heritage.

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In John Fletcher’s Upon an Honest Man’s Fortune, the poet’s attitude to man is both critical and hopeful. He reproves man for his foolish dependence on astrology and fortune-tellers, his forgetfulness of God’s power, and his fear of suffering and death. At the same time, he admires the moral and spiritual potential of the honest man, who can rise above fortune through faith, integrity and purposeful living.

Man is presented as thoughtless and spiritually misguided. The poet is displeased with man’s tendency to believe that the stars, astrologers or fortune-tellers control his life. He dismisses such beliefs as foolish because the astrologers themselves are unreliable. Their “calculations” are described as blind and their “conjectures” as drunken, showing that they cannot truly understand or predict human destiny.

Man is criticised for forgetting God’s goodness and supremacy. Fletcher laments that man fails to appreciate the special position God has given him. God has endowed man with reason, a soul and authority over other creatures; even angels are presented as ministering to him. Therefore, the poet finds it regrettable that man should ignore God and seek direction from the stars or from impostors who claim to read the future.

Man wrongly attributes fate to the stars instead of to God. The poet insists that all power, truth and influence belong to God, not to the heavenly bodies. Man’s belief in astrology is therefore shown as a form of faithlessness. The poet’s attitude is one of rebuke: he sees man as blind to the fact that God, rather than fortune, is the ultimate ruler of human life.

Yet, man possesses the ability to shape his life through his conduct. The statement, “Man is his own star,” does not simply mean that man is independent of God or can control everything that happens to him. Rather, it means that a person’s character, effort and moral choices have great influence on his life. By honest and worthy actions, man can become “a glorious man” and need not surrender himself to superstition or fate.

The poet values honesty as man’s highest virtue. Fletcher declares that “the soul that can / Be honest is the only perfect man.” His attitude here is approving and admiring. He considers the honest man superior to one who depends on wealth, social position, luck or astrological predictions. True greatness lies in a pure conscience, moral discipline and dependence on God.

Man should not fear affliction, sickness or death. The poet also regards man’s fear of suffering and death as unnecessary. Affliction and sickness are tests of endurance and inner strength, while death is “but another night” — a temporary passage rather than an ultimate disaster. Since man has a divine spirit and hope beyond this life, he should face such experiences with courage and faith.

In conclusion, Fletcher’s attitude to man is corrective but uplifting. He condemns man’s superstition, fear and failure to trust God, but he also affirms man’s dignity and capacity for moral greatness. The honest man, guided by faith, hard work and integrity, can overcome the false power of fortune and live nobly.

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In Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, the study of the play leaves the reader with a vivid and satirical impression of Victorian upper-class life. Wilde presents the aristocracy as elegant, witty and leisured, but also as trivial, hypocritical, snobbish and obsessed with appearance, and the comedy exposes the emptiness beneath its polished surface.

A life of idle luxury and triviality. The upper class in the play does no useful work. Characters like Algernon spend their days eating, visiting, and pursuing pleasure. Algernon's obsession with cucumber sandwiches and his constant appetite typify a class preoccupied with the trivial. Life is a round of leisure with no serious purpose.

Preoccupation with appearance and form over substance. The upper class values style, manners and reputation far above sincerity. Wilde's title-pun captures this: everyone is concerned to seem earnest while being anything but. Gwendolen loves a man for his name rather than his character, showing how the surface matters more than the reality.

Snobbery and obsession with class and marriage. Lady Bracknell embodies aristocratic snobbery. She interrogates Jack as a marriage prospect chiefly about income, property and family connections, treating marriage as a business transaction and social alliance rather than a matter of love. Birth and money determine a person's acceptability, and being found in a handbag disqualifies Jack regardless of his worth.

Hypocrisy and double lives. The upper class preaches respectability while practising deception. Both Jack and Algernon lead double lives, inventing fictitious persons, "Bunbury" and the wicked brother "Ernest," to escape social obligations and pursue pleasure. This exposes the gap between the class's public morality and private conduct.

Wit and verbal elegance. The upper class is also shown to be brilliantly witty. Its members trade epigrams and paradoxes with dazzling ease. Yet this cleverness often serves to disguise shallowness, and Wilde uses their sparkling talk both to entertain and to satirise their want of seriousness.

Materialism and worship of money. Wealth is the measure of all things. Lady Bracknell's approval of Cecily rises the moment she learns of the girl's large fortune, revealing how thoroughly material considerations govern the class's judgements.

In conclusion, the play impresses upon the reader an image of upper-class life that is elegant and witty on the surface but idle, snobbish, materialistic and hypocritical beneath. Through this portrait Wilde satirises the Victorian aristocracy and its worship of appearance, money and social form.

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In Femi Osofisan's Women of Owu, the meeting between the goddess Lawumi and her son, the god Anlugbua, patron deity and founder of Owu, is a significant framing device that gives the human tragedy of the play its cosmic dimension and its final moral judgement.

It frames the tragedy within a divine perspective. The encounter of the two deities lifts the action above the sufferings of individual women and sets the fall of Owu within a larger order of gods, ancestors and destiny. It reminds the audience that the war and its atrocities are watched and weighed by higher powers.

It voices the question of divine justice. The meeting raises the painful problem of why the gods allowed Owu, a city Anlugbua himself founded and protected, to be destroyed. Anlugbua confronts his own apparent helplessness before the catastrophe, and the dialogue with Lawumi explores whether the gods are indifferent, complicit or bound by fate, giving the play its philosophical weight.

It exposes the guilt of the victors. Through the divine conversation Osofisan shows that the conquering allied forces, though triumphant, have committed atrocities that will not go unpunished. The gods observe the cruelty, the looting, the desecration of shrines and the slaughter, and mark the conquerors for retribution. The meeting thus functions as a court in which the victors are judged.

It promises retribution and cosmic balance. Out of the meeting comes the resolve that the allied forces will suffer for their excesses. This foreshadows the reversal that awaits the victorious armies, restoring a sense of moral balance and warning that no conqueror escapes the consequences of brutality.

It reflects Osofisan's political message. Written with an eye on modern wars and the cycle of violence in Africa and beyond, the divine meeting universalises the lesson: those who wage war without restraint invite their own destruction. It gives the play its didactic, cautionary force.

In conclusion, the meeting between Lawumi and Anlugbua is significant because it frames the tragedy cosmically, questions divine justice, exposes and condemns the atrocities of the victors, promises retribution, and carries Osofisan's warning against the brutality of war.

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In Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, the revelation of Jack Worthing's true identity at the close of the play is the climax toward which the whole comic plot has been building. Its significance lies in the way it resolves the tangled complications, delivers Wilde's crowning irony, and satisfies the play's comedic design.

It resolves the central obstacle to the marriages. Throughout the play Jack cannot marry Gwendolen because Lady Bracknell disapproves of a man who was found as a baby in a handbag at Victoria Station and has no known parentage. The revelation that Jack is in fact the long-lost son of Lady Bracknell's own sister, and therefore Algernon's elder brother, removes this obstacle and clears the way for the union.

It vindicates Gwendolen's fixation on the name Ernest. Gwendolen has insisted she can only love a man named Ernest. The revelation discloses that Jack was christened after his father, General Moncrieff, whose first name turns out to be Ernest. Thus Jack has been Ernest all along, and his double life, pretending to be "Ernest" in town, is revealed to be the literal truth.

It produces the play's crowning irony and title pun. Wilde's final joke is that Jack, who invented the name Ernest as a deception, is discovered to have been Ernest by birth. He declares that he has now learned "the vital Importance of Being Earnest," a pun on earnest (sincere) and Ernest (the name). The revelation crystallises the play's satire on triviality, sincerity and social convention.

It untangles the mystery of the handbag. The revelation depends on Miss Prism's confession that, years before, she absent-mindedly placed the baby in a handbag and left it at the railway station. This clears up the mystery of Jack's origins and ties the plot's loose ends into a neat comic knot.

It fulfils the conventions of comedy. By restoring Jack to his family and enabling the multiple marriages of Jack and Gwendolen, Algernon and Cecily, and even Miss Prism and Dr. Chasuble, the revelation brings the traditional happy ending of comedy, reconciliation, identity restored and unions blessed.

In conclusion, the revelation of Jack's true identity is significant because it removes the barrier to the lovers' marriages, confirms that he really is Ernest, delivers Wilde's central pun and satiric point, resolves the handbag mystery, and secures the comic resolution of the play.

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In George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man, heroism is the central theme, and Shaw treats it satirically, setting the romantic, idealised notion of the heroic soldier against a realistic, common-sense view. The play deflates false heroism and redefines true worth in terms of honesty and practicality rather than reckless bravado.

The romantic idea of heroism is mocked. At the start, Raina and her mother Catherine cherish a glamorous, storybook image of war and the hero. Raina idolises her betrothed, Sergius, as the ideal chivalric warrior, and glorifies his cavalry charge as a magnificent feat of courage.

Bluntschli embodies the anti-heroic realist. The Swiss mercenary, Captain Bluntschli, who climbs into Raina's bedroom fleeing for his life, punctures this fantasy. He carries chocolates instead of cartridges, admits frankly that he is afraid, and declares that the truly experienced soldier looks after his own safety. Shaw's "chocolate cream soldier" is a coward by romantic standards but a sensible, honest man who survives.

Sergius's heroism is exposed as luck and folly. The celebrated charge that made Sergius a hero was, as Bluntschli reveals, a suicidal blunder that succeeded only because the enemy had been supplied with the wrong ammunition and could not fire. Sergius himself grows disillusioned, calling soldiering "the coward's art of attacking mercilessly when you are strong." His "higher love" for Raina proves equally hollow.

Shaw redefines true heroism. Through the contrast, Shaw argues that genuine value lies not in showy gallantry but in honesty, competence, courage to face facts, and practical wisdom. Bluntschli, the professional who tells the truth about war and manages life efficiently, emerges as the real hero of the play, winning Raina in the end.

The satire extends to romantic love. Just as martial heroism is exposed as illusion, so is the affected "higher love" between Raina and Sergius. Both drop their poses, and honest, realistic relationships replace romantic pretence, underscoring Shaw's theme that pretence in war and love alike must yield to truth.

In conclusion, Shaw treats heroism ironically, demolishing the romantic ideal of the fearless soldier and replacing it with a realistic ethic of honesty, competence and self-preservation. True heroism, the play suggests, lies in facing life truthfully, not in empty displays of valour.

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In the poem Myopia, the poet uses the medical condition of short-sightedness as a controlling metaphor to explore the theme of poverty. "Myopia" literally means an inability to see distant things clearly, and the poet extends this into a moral and social "short-sightedness," the failure of society and its leaders to see, understand and address the poverty around them.

Poverty presented as a visible yet ignored reality. The poem portrays poverty as everywhere present, in the suffering of ordinary people, want, hunger and deprivation, yet deliberately overlooked. The "myopia" of the title is the wilful or careless blindness of those who could act but choose not to see the poor at their feet.

The metaphor of blindness and vision. By framing the subject as short-sightedness, the poet suggests that poverty persists not merely from lack of resources but from lack of vision, foresight and compassion. Those in power look past the poor, focusing on their own comfort, and so fail to plan for or remedy the suffering of the masses.

Contrast between the deprived and the comfortable. The theme of poverty is sharpened by an implied or explicit contrast between the suffering poor and a privileged class that remains indifferent. This juxtaposition exposes social inequality and the injustice of a system that leaves many in want.

A tone of criticism and protest. The poet's treatment of poverty is critical and indignant. The poem functions as social commentary, condemning the neglect and short-sightedness that allow poverty to endure and calling, by implication, for clearer sight, that is, greater awareness and responsibility.

The human cost of poverty. Through images of deprivation and suffering, the poem stresses the real human toll of being poor, appealing to the reader's conscience and making the abstract problem of poverty concrete and urgent.

In conclusion, Myopia presents poverty as a pervasive but wilfully ignored evil, using short-sightedness as a metaphor for the moral and social blindness that perpetuates it. The poet's treatment is critical and compassionate, exposing inequality and urging clearer moral vision.

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In Wilfred Owen's Strange Meeting, the speaker, a dead soldier, escapes down some "profound dull tunnel" out of battle into a hell-like underworld, where he meets another dead man who slowly proves to be the enemy soldier he himself killed the day before. Before the two are reconciled, the slain soldier pours out his regrets, and these lamentations form the heart of the poem and carry Owen's protest against the waste of war.

Regret for a wasted, unfulfilled life. The dead soldier mourns "the undone years, the hopelessness." His youth and future have been cut off, and all that he might have lived and achieved is lost. He grieves for a life extinguished before it could be completed.

Regret for lost beauty and joy. He laments that he had hunted "the wildest beauty in the world," a beauty of vision and imagination beyond mere appearances. Death has robbed him of the capacity to seek and enjoy that beauty, and of the gladness and laughter that life could have held.

Regret for the truth of war left untold. His deepest regret is that he will never be able to tell the world "the truth untold, / The pity of war, the pity war distilled." He had a message, to warn humanity of war's real horror, and now, being dead, he cannot deliver it. Men will therefore go on content with what has been spoiled, or worse, break out into fiercer wars.

Regret for a world that will not learn. He foresees that nations will "trek from progress," retreating from civilisation into further slaughter. He mourns that his death, and the truth he carried, will not save mankind from repeating the cycle of destruction. He had wished to "pour my spirit" out to cleanse the world, but the chance is gone.

Regret over the futility of the killing. The poem ends with the terrible recognition, "I am the enemy you killed, my friend," and the invitation, "Let us sleep now." The slain soldier's final regret is the utter futility of the enmity itself, for the two men, alike in youth and hope, need not have been enemies at all.

In conclusion, the slain soldier's major regrets are the loss of his unlived years, the beauty and joy denied him, and above all the truth about the pity of war that he can no longer tell a world doomed to keep on killing. Through these laments Owen delivers his powerful indictment of the senseless waste of war.

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In Kobina Sekyi's The Blinkards, colonialism is presented as a corrupting force that has damaged the identity, values and social harmony of the coastal Gold Coast community. Writing as a nationalist, Sekyi uses satire to expose the many negative effects of colonial rule and the cultural surrender it produced.

Cultural alienation and self-contempt. The most damaging effect is that colonialism has made Africans ashamed of their own culture. Characters like Mrs. Borofosem and Mr. Borofosem despise African dress, food, names and customs and strive to be English in everything. Colonialism has "blinded" them, hence the title, so that they can no longer see the worth of their own heritage.

The corruption of language. Colonial education has led many to prize English and scorn the vernacular. Some characters insist on speaking English badly rather than their own tongue well, and the play mocks the affected, broken English of those who imitate their colonial masters, showing how language becomes a mark of pretended superiority.

Distortion of marriage and social custom. Colonial and Christian influence disrupts traditional practices surrounding courtship and marriage. The confusion over the marriage of Bassa and Tsiba, and the clash between English wedding customs and African tradition, dramatises how imported ways create disorder and hypocrisy when grafted carelessly onto local life.

Class division and snobbery. Colonialism breeds a pretentious elite that measures status by proximity to European ways. The cosmopolitan club and the fashionable set look down on ordinary people who keep to native custom, producing social snobbery and division within the community.

Loss of authentic values. By encouraging imitation over genuine progress, colonialism substitutes surface Anglicisation for real development. The play suggests that the colonised have gained mere mimicry while losing the dignity, wisdom and cohesion of their own culture.

Sekyi's corrective. Against this decay, the figure of Onyimdze embodies the balanced, self-respecting African who resists cultural surrender. Through him Sekyi argues that the antidote to colonial damage is pride in one's own identity married to sensible use of what is genuinely valuable in Western learning.

In conclusion, The Blinkards portrays colonialism as breeding cultural shame, linguistic affectation, social snobbery and the erosion of authentic values, and Sekyi's satire is a nationalist protest against the blindness it produced.

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In George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man, the battle of Slivnitza, an engagement in the Serbo-Bulgarian war of 1885, is the event that lies behind the whole action of the play. Though it takes place off-stage before and during the opening, its significance is felt throughout, for it sets the plot in motion and provides the material for Shaw's satire on war and heroism.

It sets the plot in motion. It is the rout following the battle that drives the fleeing Swiss mercenary, Captain Bluntschli, to climb through Raina's balcony window into her bedroom. This flight brings the play's central figures together and initiates the whole intrigue of hidden identity, the chocolate soldier and the divided romantic attachments.

It is the source of Sergius's false glory. The battle produced Sergius's famous cavalry charge, which made him a celebrated hero and the pride of Raina. Slivnitza is thus the foundation of the romantic reputation that the play will proceed to dismantle.

It exposes the truth about heroism. Bluntschli's eyewitness account strips the glamour from the charge. He reveals that Sergius's reckless attack should have been fatal and succeeded only by chance, because the enemy had been sent the wrong cartridges and could not fire. Slivnitza therefore becomes the concrete illustration of Shaw's thesis that battlefield "heroism" is often folly rewarded by luck.

It contrasts the romantic and the realistic soldier. The battle juxtaposes Sergius, the flamboyant amateur who charges gloriously, with Bluntschli, the seasoned professional who runs away to survive and carries chocolates rather than cartridges. Through their opposing conduct at Slivnitza, Shaw dramatises the difference between illusion and reality in war.

It advances Shaw's anti-romantic message. By anchoring his satire in a real, recent war, Shaw grounds his mockery of military glory in believable circumstance and lends weight to his argument that the truth of war is fear, chance and blundering, not the noble pageantry of romance.

In conclusion, the battle of Slivnitza is significant because it launches the plot, creates Sergius's hollow reputation, supplies the evidence that exposes false heroism, and drives home Shaw's realistic, anti-romantic view of war.

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In Femi Osofisan's Women of Owu, an adaptation of Euripides' The Trojan Women, the chorus of Owu women is the spine of the play's structure. Borrowing the classical Greek convention and grafting it onto a Yoruba setting, Osofisan uses the chorus to carry information, bridge the episodes, voice the collective suffering of the conquered and drive the action toward its resolution. Made up of the ordinary women who survived the sacking of the city and now share in its aftermath of grief, the chorus advances the plot in the following ways.

1. It narrates background and present events. Because most of the destruction of Owu has already happened before the play opens, the chorus carries the essential exposition. It recalls the greatness of Owu, the long siege by the Allied Forces of Ijebu, Ife and Oyo, and the causes and course of the war, while also reporting the current calamities unfolding around the captive women. Without this narration the fragmentary, episodic action would be unintelligible; the chorus supplies the continuity that moves the story forward.

2. It appeals to the gods and shapes the play's direction. Early in the play the chorus pleads with Anlugbua, the ancestral father of Owu, to intervene on the city's behalf. When Anlugbua refuses, the chorus leader turns the despair into resolve, admonishing the women to summon courage to face what lies ahead, insisting that "it's us, not the gods, who create the war. It's us human beings who can kill it." This shift from supplication to grim endurance sets the emotional trajectory of the whole plot and prepares the women, and Erelu especially, to face the worst.

3. It links and bridges the successive episodes. The play proceeds through a chain of encounters as the women, chiefly Erelu, Orisaye and Adumaadan, are led one by one toward their fates. Between these scenes the chorus intervenes with lament, warning and commentary, connecting one episode to the next and giving the loosely episodic structure momentum. It empathises with Erelu over the calamities that have befallen her, particularly the madness overtaking Orisaye, and cautions her to take care not to hurt herself.

4. It voices the collective grief of the victims. The chorus embodies the widowed and captive women of Owu, so that the tragedy is not a series of private sorrows but the anguish of a whole people. When Adumaadan surrenders her only son Aderogun to Gesinde to be killed, the chorus mourns with her; when the boy's corpse is brought for burial they dance round his body and apologise "for bringing you to the world and having to send you away so early and so harshly." Through such shared lamentation the plot registers the full human cost of conquest.

5. It warns, admonishes and mediates. The chorus repeatedly steers the conduct of the other characters. It warns Erelu to prepare for the worst, yet also cautions her against speaking evil of the gods even in the depth of her grief. It curses the Allied Forces for their cruelty, one voice crying, "May you all without exception suffer the indignity of unremembered graves," while urging the surviving people to keep hope alive. In this way it functions as the moral conscience that guides the movement of the action.

6. It acts as custodian of tradition and completes the ritual action. As keepers of the culture of Owu, the chorus reminds Erelu of the rites of passage now thrust upon her, since all the priests and princes have been killed and the dead need someone to release their spirits to the ancestors. Toward the close, the chorus invokes Anlugbua once more, pleading forgiveness for the living and safe passage for the dead. Through them Anlugbua promises that Owu will rise again, not as a single city but scattered in little communities within the other towns of Yorubaland. This prophecy resolves the plot, turning total defeat into the seed of survival.

7. It carries the play's universal, anti-war message. Speaking beyond nineteenth-century Owu, the chorus generalises the horror of war, linking the fall of the city to all wars of conquest and voicing Osofisan's warning to the powerful of every age. This choral commentary shapes the audience's response and gives the plot its enduring moral weight.

Conclusion. The chorus advances the plot of Women of Owu by narrating the background, appealing to and interpreting the will of the gods, bridging the episodes, voicing the collective grief of the victims, warning and mediating among the characters, performing the ritual duties of the dead and delivering the play's universal message. It is therefore indispensable to both the structure and the meaning of the play, functioning at once as narrator, mourner, conscience and prophet of Owu.