WAEC SSCE - Literature In English - 2016 (Drama & Poetry)

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Gabriel Okara's Piano and Drums dramatises the clash of cultures between traditional Africa and the modern, Western world. Using the contrasting music of the drums and the piano, the poet explores the tension felt by an African caught between two ways of life.

The drums as symbol of African tradition. The poem opens with the persona hearing the beat of the jungle drums at daybreak. The drums represent primitive, natural, communal African life, simple, direct and full of raw vitality. Their sound is described as "telegraphing" urgent, primal messages, and it awakens in the persona memories of an unspoilt past, of "green leaves and wild flowers", hunting, and the instinctive rhythm of the ancestral world. This culture is warm, familiar and rooted in nature.

The piano as symbol of Western civilisation. Against the drums Okara sets the music of the piano, symbol of Western culture. Its notes are "tear-furrowed", "complex", "wailing" and full of "labyrinths". Where the drums are simple and clear, the piano is sophisticated, refined but confusing. It represents modern civilisation with its complexity, its technology, its learning and its bewildering intricacy.

The persona caught between two worlds. The heart of the poem lies in the persona's response. Drawn on the one hand to the innocent vitality of the drums and on the other to the complex allure of the piano, he is left confused, "lost in the morning mist of an age at a riverside". He can belong wholly to neither. This confusion captures the predicament of the modern African, educated in Western ways yet shaped by African roots, unable to reconcile the two.

Technique and effect. Okara conveys the clash through vivid contrasting imagery, sound and diction: the earthy, active language of the drums against the intricate, melancholy language of the piano. The very structure of the poem, moving from one music to the other and ending in bewilderment, enacts the cultural conflict it describes.

Significance. The poem does not simply reject one culture for the other; it honestly presents the pain of divided identity that colonialism and modernity have imposed on Africans. The clash of cultures is thus both a personal and a collective African experience.

In conclusion, through the opposing symbols of drums and piano, Okara powerfully renders the clash of cultures, leaving the African persona suspended and confused between the natural simplicity of his heritage and the complex civilisation of the West.

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Mrs Hardcastle is one of the chief comic figures in Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. Vain, foolish, greedy and doting, she is the object of much of the play's satire, and her follies contribute greatly to its humour.

A foolish and affected woman. Mrs Hardcastle is silly and pretentious. Though she lives quietly in the country, she longs for the fashion and sophistication of London and affects a refinement she does not possess. Her ignorance and vanity make her ridiculous, and Goldsmith uses her to mock provincial pretensions to town elegance.

A doting and foolish mother. Her love for her son, Tony Lumpkin, is excessive and blind. She spoils and indulges him, refuses to admit his faults, and treats the grown, mischievous young man as though he were a delicate child. Ironically, it is this very son who repeatedly deceives and torments her, so that her doting is repaid with trickery.

Greedy and scheming. Mrs Hardcastle is grasping over money. She wishes to marry her niece Constance Neville to Tony in order to keep Constance's jewels within the family and under her own control. She schemes and connives to prevent the match between Constance and Hastings, revealing a selfish, calculating streak beneath her foolishness.

A domineering wife. She is also something of a nagging and domineering figure in the household, contrasting sharply with her sensible, good-natured husband, Mr Hardcastle. Their mismatched temperaments add to the comedy.

Victim of comic deception. Much of the play's laughter comes at her expense. In the celebrated episode of the night journey, Tony drives her round in circles and convinces her that she is lost on dangerous Crackskull Common, when in fact she is in her own back garden. Her terror and gullibility make her supremely ridiculous and deliver a fitting comic punishment for her greed and folly.

Significance. Through Mrs Hardcastle, Goldsmith satirises vanity, snobbery, materialism and foolish parental indulgence. She is a source of laughter but also a moral example of the follies the play gently condemns.

In conclusion, Mrs Hardcastle is a vain, foolish, greedy and doting woman whose pretensions and schemes make her both a leading comic character and a target of Goldsmith's satire in She Stoops to Conquer.

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Dele Charley's The Blood of a Stranger is widely read as a dramatisation of colonialist exploitation of Africa. Set in the village of Mando, the play shows how a white intruder, aided by the greed and treachery of some Africans themselves, seeks to plunder the wealth of the land while corrupting its traditions.

The arrival of the exploiter. Whitehead, the white man, comes to Mando not as a genuine friend but as an agent of exploitation. Beneath his gifts and flattery lies the desire to seize the village's hidden wealth, its diamonds and land. His pretended goodwill masks a colonial appetite for African resources, exactly the pattern by which colonialism disguised plunder as friendship and civilisation.

Corruption of the local elite. Whitehead does not act alone. He works through the greed of Maligu, the scheming fetish priest, and others who are willing to betray their own people for personal gain. This alliance of foreign self-interest with local collaborators dramatises how colonial exploitation succeeded by dividing communities and buying off the ambitious, turning Africans into instruments of their own oppression.

Manipulation of tradition. The play shows the exploiter and his collaborators manipulating religious belief and custom, including the demand for the sacrifice of a stranger, to serve hidden ends. Sacred institutions are perverted into tools of deceit, illustrating how colonialism exploited and distorted African cultural and spiritual life to weaken resistance.

Resistance and its cost. Against this exploitation stands Kindo, the brave warrior, who eventually sees through the deception and resists. His revolt embodies African resistance to foreign domination, though the play makes clear the heavy cost of that struggle in blood and conflict.

Thematic significance. Through greed, betrayal, deception and violence, Charley exposes the mechanics of colonial exploitation: the foreigner's hunger for African wealth, the complicity of corrupt locals, the perversion of tradition, and the suffering visited on the community. The title itself, with its stranger whose blood is sought, points to the destructive intrusion of the outsider into African life.

In conclusion, the view that the play exposes the colonialist exploitation of Africa is well founded. The Blood of a Stranger lays bare how foreign greed, working through African collaborators, plunders the land, corrupts its people and provokes a costly struggle for freedom.

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In Robert Frost's Birches, the poet's attitude to nature is one of deep affection, close observation and imaginative delight. Nature is not merely scenery but a source of beauty, reflection and even a way of coping with the burdens of life.

Loving and attentive observation. Frost watches nature with the eye of one who knows it intimately. He describes the birch trees bent "to left and right", their ice-loaded branches clicking and cracking in the winter sun, and the shattered crystals of ice "like broken glass". This precise, tender detail shows a poet who loves the natural world of rural New England and studies it closely.

Nature as beauty and wonder. The frozen birches, shedding their ice and shining in the sun, fill the poet with a sense of beauty and marvel. Even a scientific fact, that ice-storms bend the birches, cannot satisfy him; he prefers to imagine that a boy has been swinging them. Frost thus responds to nature not only with knowledge but with imaginative wonder.

Nature and human experience. Frost characteristically links nature to human life. The bent birches lead him to recall the boy who swings on them, and this becomes a meditation on innocence, play and the passage from childhood to adulthood. Nature becomes a mirror for human experience and a teacher of its truths.

Nature as escape and renewal. When life becomes "too much like a pathless wood", full of confusion and pain, the poet longs to "get away from earth awhile" by climbing a birch toward heaven. Yet he does not wish to leave the world for good; he wants the tree to set him "down again", for "Earth's the right place for love". Nature offers temporary escape and refreshment, but also renews his love of ordinary life.

A balanced, earth-loving attitude. Frost's attitude is finally affirmative and grounded. He values transcendence but returns to earth; he prizes imagination but respects fact. Nature, for him, is a companion that both lifts the spirit and reconciles the individual to the demands of living.

Technique. Through vivid imagery, blank-verse conversational rhythm and the central symbol of birch-swinging, Frost communicates a warm, thoughtful and reverent relationship with the natural world.

In conclusion, Frost's attitude to nature in Birches is one of love, wonder and reflective engagement. Nature delights him, stirs his imagination, offers escape from life's trials, and finally returns him, renewed, to the earth he cherishes.

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In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, the insurance cheque of ten thousand dollars is one of the most important elements of the plot. It sets the action in motion, exposes the different dreams of the family members, and becomes the test through which their characters are revealed.

Origin and meaning of the cheque. The money is the life-insurance payment following the death of Big Walter, Mama's husband, who worked himself to death for his family. The cheque therefore carries deep emotional weight: it represents years of a black man's toil and suffering, and Mama regards it almost as sacred, the fruit of her husband's life.

A focus for competing dreams. The cheque brings into the open the clashing aspirations of the Younger family, the many dreams deferred that give the play its theme. Walter Lee wants to invest it in a liquor store to become rich and to escape his humiliating job. Beneatha needs money for medical school. Mama dreams of a decent house to give the family dignity and space. The single sum cannot satisfy all these desires, and so it becomes a source of tension and conflict.

Driver of the plot. Every major turn of the action revolves around the money. Mama's decision to use part of it as a down payment on a house in the white neighbourhood of Clybourne Park precipitates the confrontation with Mr Lindner and the white community. Her entrusting of the remainder to Walter, and his loss of it to the swindler Willy Harris, produce the crisis of the play.

A test of character. The way each character relates to the money reveals who they are. Walter's obsession with it exposes his materialism and frustrated manhood; its loss brings him to the brink of self-abasement before Lindner. His final refusal to sell the family's pride for Lindner's money shows his moral growth. Thus the cheque becomes the instrument through which Walter, in particular, is tested and transformed.

Symbolic importance. Beyond its plot function, the cheque symbolises both opportunity and danger. It embodies the hope of escaping poverty, but also the temptation to measure life solely in terms of money. The play finally affirms that dignity, family unity and self-respect matter more than wealth.

In conclusion, the check is of great importance in A Raisin in the Sun: it launches the plot, reveals the family's conflicting dreams, tests and transforms Walter, and carries the play's central meaning about the true value of human dignity over material gain.

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In Dele Charley's The Blood of a Stranger, Kindo is the leading warrior of Mando, and his role as a warlord is central to the play's action and to its theme of resistance against exploitation. He embodies courage, loyalty and the defence of his people against both external and internal enemies.

Brave and accomplished warrior. Kindo is presented as a fearless fighter and commander whose martial prowess is respected throughout Mando. As a warlord he leads the village's men in battle and stands as its shield against danger. His bravery makes him a natural protector of the community and a figure of honour.

Loyalty to community and initial obedience. At first Kindo's loyalty is bound up with duty to the established order of the village and its leaders. He is a dutiful son of Mando who serves faithfully, and his strength is placed at the service of his people's security.

Awakening to betrayal. As the plot unfolds and the treachery of Whitehead and his collaborators, especially the scheming Maligu, becomes clear, Kindo's role deepens. The warlord who once fought for the established authority comes to recognise that the true threat lies in the deceit and greed corrupting his own land. His growing awareness marks the turning point of the play.

Agent of resistance and justice. Kindo's warrior strength is finally directed against the exploiters and traitors. He becomes the arm of resistance and retribution, confronting the forces that would plunder Mando and betray its people. In this he rises from mere soldier to defender of his community's freedom and dignity.

Significance. Through Kindo, Charley dramatises the ideal of African resistance to colonial exploitation and internal corruption. Yet the play also shows the tragic dimension of the warlord's world, where courage is entangled with violence and the defence of the community exacts a heavy price in blood.

In conclusion, Kindo's role as a warlord is that of a brave and loyal defender whose fighting strength, once devoted to duty, becomes the instrument of resistance against betrayal and exploitation. He stands as the play's embodiment of heroic, if costly, opposition to those who would destroy Mando.

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In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, Mama (Lena Younger) is the moral centre and matriarch of the family. The impression she leaves is of a strong, dignified, deeply religious woman whose love, wisdom and resilience hold the struggling Younger household together.

A loving and self-sacrificing matriarch. Mama is devoted to her family. Widowed after the death of her husband, Big Walter, she has laboured all her life for her children and grandchild. Her decisions are guided not by selfishness but by the good of the family, and her greatest wish is to see them united, secure and dignified.

Strong and dignified. Mama possesses great inner strength and self-respect. She has endured poverty, racism and hardship without losing her sense of pride. Her insistence on decency and integrity, and her refusal to let the family be humiliated, mark her as a woman of unshakeable dignity.

Deeply religious and morally upright. Mama's faith in God shapes her values. She upholds honesty, family solidarity and moral responsibility, and she rebukes Beneatha sharply when the younger woman denies God. Her religion is not empty ritual but the foundation of her moral authority within the home.

Custodian of the family's dreams. It is Mama who receives the ten-thousand-dollar insurance cheque, and it is she who uses part of it to buy a house in Clybourne Park, a decisive act that expresses her dream of a better life and a proper home for her family. The plant she tends throughout the play symbolises her nurturing spirit and her stubborn hope even in barren circumstances.

Wise and forgiving. When Walter loses much of the money in a foolish scheme, Mama, though grieved, does not abandon him. She helps him recover his manhood and pride, teaching Beneatha that it is precisely when a person is at his lowest that love and understanding are most needed. Her capacity to forgive reveals her greatness of heart.

Significance. Mama represents the older generation's values of faith, endurance and family loyalty. Through her, Hansberry celebrates the strength of the black woman and the power of love and dignity to sustain a family against poverty and racism.

In conclusion, Mama emerges as a loving, dignified, God-fearing and wise matriarch whose strength and moral vision anchor the family and carry it towards a hopeful new beginning.

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Dramatic irony, the situation in which the audience knows more than the characters on stage, is the mainspring of comedy in Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. Almost the whole plot turns on misunderstandings that the audience enjoys while the characters remain in the dark.

The house mistaken for an inn. The central dramatic irony arises from Tony Lumpkin's practical joke. He directs Marlow and Hastings to Mr Hardcastle's country house, telling them it is an inn. The audience, aware of the trick, watches with delight as the two young men behave as paying guests, ordering the household about, while Mr Hardcastle, ignorant of the deception, is baffled and offended by their rudeness in his own home.

Marlow's treatment of his host. Because Marlow believes Hardcastle to be an innkeeper, he addresses the dignified old gentleman with careless familiarity and condescension. Hardcastle, who expects the polite suitor his friend Sir Charles described, cannot understand the young man's insolence. The audience relishes the gap between the two men's perceptions, a gap that produces much of the play's laughter.

Kate's disguise as a barmaid. The richest irony surrounds Kate Hardcastle. Knowing that Marlow is bashful and tongue-tied before ladies of his own class but bold and easy with women he considers his inferiors, Kate stoops to pose as a barmaid. Marlow, unaware that this lively servant is in fact the refined lady he is supposed to court, woos her freely. The audience knows her true identity throughout, enjoying his ignorance and anticipating the moment of revelation.

Constance and the jewels. Further irony attends the sub-plot, as Hastings and Constance scheme under Mrs Hardcastle's nose, and Tony deceives his mother, notably in the night ride that convinces her she is far from home when she is in her own garden. The audience shares the schemers' secret knowledge while Mrs Hardcastle blunders on.

Effect and significance. This sustained dramatic irony generates continuous comic tension and laughter, exposes the characters' follies and snobberies, and gently satirises class distinctions, since Marlow's confidence depends entirely on his mistaken view of others' rank. The eventual clearing up of every misunderstanding brings the satisfying comic resolution.

In conclusion, Goldsmith builds his comedy almost entirely upon dramatic irony: the mistaken inn, Marlow's rudeness to his host, Kate's disguise and the deception of Mrs Hardcastle all depend on the audience's superior knowledge, making dramatic irony the chief source of the play's humour and meaning.

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In Frank Ogodo Ogeche's Harvest of Corruption, Chief Haladu Ade-Amaka is the arch-villain whose role drives the play's exposure of corruption in high places. As a powerful public official, he embodies the abuse of office, moral decay and the eventual triumph of justice that give the play its theme.

The embodiment of political corruption. Chief Ade-Amaka is a corrupt Commissioner who uses his high public position for private gain. He is deeply involved in bribery, drug trafficking, embezzlement and the manipulation of state institutions. Through him, Ogeche shows how those entrusted with public authority betray it for wealth and power.

Exploiter of the vulnerable. The Chief preys on the weak, most notably the young and innocent Aloho, whom he seduces, impregnates and uses as a tool in his criminal enterprise. His treatment of her demonstrates the ruthlessness with which the powerful exploit the helpless, and it makes him directly responsible for her downfall and death.

Master of a network of corruption. Ade-Amaka does not act alone; he operates through accomplices such as Ochuole and dishonest officials, using money to buy loyalty and silence. He believes his wealth and connections place him above the law, and for much of the play his confidence seems justified as he escapes accountability.

Agent of the play's moral lesson. His eventual arrest and prosecution, when the machinery of justice finally catches up with him, provide the play's moral resolution. His fall demonstrates that corruption, however entrenched, can be defeated and that no one is truly beyond the reach of justice. In this way his role is essential to the didactic purpose of the drama.

Significance. Chief Ade-Amaka functions as the central symbol of the corrupt Nigerian elite. Everything the play condemns, greed, abuse of power, exploitation and impunity, is concentrated in his character, so that his exposure becomes the exposure of a whole diseased system.

In conclusion, Chief Haladu Ade-Amaka plays the role of the corrupt and predatory villain whose crimes propel the plot and whose downfall delivers the play's message: that corruption harvests destruction, and that justice, though delayed, ultimately prevails.

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A poem that examines a persona's view of ageing typically weighs the losses that come with advancing years against the wisdom, memory and acceptance that may also accompany them. The persona's attitude is usually reflective, honest about physical decline, yet reaching towards some deeper understanding of what it means to grow old.

Awareness of physical decline. The persona commonly registers the outward signs of ageing: failing strength, the fading of youthful beauty and energy, the slowing of the body, and the nearness of death. These images convey a frank recognition that time takes a physical toll and that the vigour of youth cannot be preserved.

The pain of loss and change. Growing older often brings the loss of companions, of former roles and of the world one knew. The persona may express a note of melancholy or regret as familiar things slip away and the future narrows. This sense of loss gives the poem its emotional weight.

Memory and reflection. A characteristic response to ageing is the turn towards memory. The older persona looks back over a full life, recalling past experiences and measuring the present against them. This retrospection can be a source both of sorrow, in the awareness of what is gone, and of consolation, in the richness of a life remembered.

Wisdom and acceptance. Set against the losses is the gain of understanding. Age brings perspective, patience and a hard-won wisdom that youth lacks. The persona may move towards a calm acceptance of ageing as a natural and even dignified part of human existence, rather than something merely to be feared.

Attitude and tone. The overall attitude thus tends to be one of thoughtful realism: neither despairing nor falsely cheerful, but honestly acknowledging decline while affirming the value of experience and the dignity of the ageing self.

In conclusion, the persona's view of ageing combines a clear-eyed awareness of physical decline and loss with the compensations of memory, wisdom and acceptance, presenting old age as a stage of life to be faced with honesty and quiet dignity.

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William Shakespeare's sonnet Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day? (Sonnet 18) is a celebrated meditation on beauty. The poet praises the beauty of his beloved, contrasts it with the flawed beauty of nature, and finally claims that poetry can make that beauty immortal.

Comparison with the beauty of summer. The poem opens by asking whether the beloved may be compared to a summer's day, then immediately declares the beloved "more lovely and more temperate". Summer, the season of natural beauty, is shown to be imperfect: "rough winds do shake the darling buds of May", the season is too short ("summer's lease hath all too short a date"), the sun ("the eye of heaven") is sometimes too hot and often clouded over. Natural beauty, however fine, is unreliable and changeable.

The transience of natural beauty. The poet develops the idea that "every fair from fair sometime declines", worn away "by chance, or nature's changing course". All earthly beauty is subject to time, accident and decay. This establishes the central problem the poem addresses: beauty in the natural world inevitably fades.

The superior, unfading beauty of the beloved. Against this background the beloved's beauty is exalted as constant. "But thy eternal summer shall not fade", the poet promises; nor shall the beloved lose possession of that beauty, nor shall death "brag" of claiming the beloved. The beloved's beauty is presented as more perfect and enduring than anything in nature.

Beauty made immortal through poetry. The resolution of the theme lies in the couplet: "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." The poet claims that his verse will preserve the beloved's beauty for ever. As long as the poem is read, the beauty it records will live on. Thus art triumphs over time and grants immortality to beauty.

Technique and effect. Shakespeare conveys the theme through comparison and contrast, natural imagery, personification (of summer, the sun, and death) and the tight form of the sonnet, whose final couplet delivers the confident conclusion. The tone moves from questioning to assured celebration.

In conclusion, the theme of beauty in the poem is developed by comparing the beloved to imperfect, fading summer, asserting the superior and unchanging beauty of the beloved, and finally claiming that the poet's verse will immortalise that beauty beyond the reach of time and death.

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In Frank Ogodo Ogeche's Harvest of Corruption, Aloho is often regarded as a victim of circumstance because, although she starts out as an honest and hopeful young woman, the corrupt and predatory society into which she steps drags her down to ruin and death. Her fate illustrates how a rotten system destroys even those who wish to remain decent.

An innocent beginning. Aloho arrives in the city as a jobless but morally upright young woman seeking honest employment. She initially resists wrongdoing and clings to her integrity. This innocence establishes her as a sympathetic figure whose later fall is the work of forces largely beyond her control.

Betrayed by those she trusts. Her friend Ochuole, already corrupted, lures Aloho into the orbit of powerful men, chiefly the corrupt Chief Haladu Ade-Amaka. Desperate for a job and misled by a trusted companion, Aloho is drawn into an environment of bribery, sexual exploitation and crime. She is manipulated rather than freely choosing the path that destroys her.

Exploited by the powerful. Chief Ade-Amaka and his circle use their money and influence to prey on Aloho. She is seduced, made pregnant and reduced to a pawn in their schemes. When she is used as a courier and caught with hard drugs, she is arrested and imprisoned for a crime engineered by the very people who hold power over her.

A tragic end. Aloho dies as a direct result of the corruption that surrounds her, having lost her innocence, her freedom and finally her life. Her death is the price exacted by a society in which the vulnerable are consumed by the greed and lust of the mighty.

A balanced view. While circumstance and manipulation dominate her story, Aloho is not wholly without agency; at moments she yields to temptation and compromise. Yet the play's weight falls on how a corrupt system corners the weak and leaves them little real choice, making her more sinned against than sinning.

Significance. Through Aloho, Ogeche shows the human cost of corruption. She becomes a symbol of the many ordinary Nigerians crushed by a system in which the powerful exploit the powerless with impunity.

In conclusion, Aloho is convincingly presented as a victim of circumstance: an innocent young woman betrayed by a friend, exploited by corrupt authority, and finally destroyed by a society whose corruption she was unable to escape.