WAEC SSCE - Literature In English - 2011 (Prose)

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In Asare Konadu's A Woman in Her Prime, Pokuwaa's failure to bear a child is the wound that drives the whole story, and her two earlier marriages, before her union with Kwadwo, form the background of that anxiety. Both marriages ended in divorce, and in each case her childlessness was made the cause of the breakdown.

The first husband. Pokuwaa's first marriage collapsed because no child came. In the traditional Akan world of Brenhoma village, a wife's worth is measured largely by her fertility, and the pressure of family expectation fell heavily on her. When months and years passed without pregnancy, the marriage lost its purpose in the eyes of the community, and the union was dissolved. The barrenness was assumed to be her fault, and she carried the blame and the shame.

The second husband. Her second marriage followed the same painful pattern. Again she remained childless, and again the relationship broke down under the weight of that failure. The repetition deepens her reputation as a woman who cannot conceive and hardens the villagers' and her own mother's conviction that some spiritual obstacle stands in her way.

The effect on Pokuwaa. These two failed marriages leave Pokuwaa scarred but resilient. They drive her, and especially her mother, into a long round of sacrifices, consultations with fetish priests and ritual observances aimed at removing the supposed curse of barrenness. They also explain her guarded, patient attitude in her third marriage to Kwadwo, and her quiet determination to keep her dignity and her hard-won independence as a farmer.

Thematic significance. Pokuwaa's experience with her first two husbands dramatises the novel's central concern: the cruelty of a society that reduces a woman to her womb. The marriages fail not because of any lack of love or industry on her part, but because tradition allows a childless wife no security. Her endurance through these losses prepares the reader for her eventual, hard-earned motherhood and for the novel's gentle questioning of blind custom.

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In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Ralph and Jack embody two opposed models of authority, and the contrast between them drives the novel's argument about civilisation and savagery. Ralph governs by consent and reason; Jack rules by fear and force.

Source of authority. Ralph's authority is democratic and legitimate. He is elected chief by the assembly, and his power rests on the conch shell, the agreed symbol of order and the right to speak. Jack's authority, by contrast, is self-appointed and coercive. He seizes leadership by breaking away, forming his own tribe, and dominating the boys through intimidation. Where Ralph is chosen, Jack takes.

Aims of leadership. Ralph's chief concern is rescue and the common good. He insists on keeping the signal fire burning, building shelters and holding orderly meetings, that is, on the long-term welfare of the group. Jack's concern is hunting, meat and immediate gratification. He offers the boys excitement, feasts and the thrill of the kill rather than the discipline of survival. Ralph appeals to their better selves; Jack appeals to their appetites and fears.

Method of rule. Ralph tries to persuade and to share responsibility; he consults Piggy, values fair debate, and respects the right of each boy to speak while holding the conch. Jack relies on terror. He beats and tortures his followers, uses the myth of the "beast" to control them, paints his face to shed shame, and has dissenters punished. His rule culminates in murder, the killing of Simon and Piggy, and the hunt to destroy Ralph.

Symbolic contrast. Ralph is aligned with the conch, the fire-for-rescue and the rule of law; Jack is aligned with the spear, the war-paint and the severed pig's head. When the conch is shattered along with Piggy's death, Ralph's civilised authority collapses and Jack's savage power triumphs, at least until the naval officer arrives.

Conclusion. The difference between the two leaders is finally the difference between civilisation and barbarism. Ralph's fragile, rational authority represents order, conscience and the group's future; Jack's brutal charisma represents the dark, anarchic instincts that Golding believes lie beneath the human surface.

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Jaja, whose full name is Chukwuka Achike, is Kambili's elder brother in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus, and his gradual transformation from a silenced, obedient son into a defiant young man carries much of the novel's meaning.

The obedient son. At the start Jaja is the model of his father Eugene's discipline: dutiful, hard-working and fearful. The deformity of his finger, a legacy of an earlier beating, marks him physically as a victim of Eugene's tyranny. He follows the schedules, prays as told, and protects his sister Kambili as best he can within the prison of their home.

Awakening at Nsukka. The visit to Aunty Ifeoma's household in Nsukka is the turning point. There Jaja sees a family that laughs, argues and loves freely. He tends Ifeoma's garden and is fascinated by the purple hibiscus, the novel's symbol of a rare, experimental freedom. This exposure plants in him the courage to question his father's absolute authority.

The defiant son. Jaja's rebellion is signalled memorably on Palm Sunday when he refuses to go to communion, telling his father the wafer "gives me bad breath." From then on he openly resists Eugene, demands time with his grandfather's memory, and insists on protecting his mother and sister. His growth represents the assertion of individual conscience against oppression.

Sacrifice and love. The depth of Jaja's character is proved at the end when he takes the blame for Eugene's death, which Beatrice actually caused by poisoning, and goes to prison in her place. This act of self-sacrifice shows a fierce, protective love and a maturity born of suffering.

Significance. Named partly after Jaja of Opobo, the defiant nineteenth-century Nigerian king, Jaja embodies resistance to tyranny. His journey from silence to speech, from fear to sacrifice, mirrors the novel's larger hope that freedom, like the purple hibiscus, can bloom even in hostile soil.

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In Asare Konadu's A Woman in Her Prime, Kwadwo is Pokuwaa's third husband, and their relationship stands in warm contrast to the two failed marriages that precede it. It is a union marked by patience, mutual respect and, above all, by a shared burden of childlessness that tests but ultimately strengthens their bond.

Love and companionship. Unlike Pokuwaa's earlier husbands, Kwadwo genuinely loves and values her. He is gentle, supportive and slow to blame. Their relationship is built on companionship rather than mere convention; they work, worry and hope together, and Kwadwo does not abandon her when the longed-for child fails to arrive.

Shared anxiety over childlessness. The couple's central trial is Pokuwaa's barrenness. Both feel the pressure of the community, and both submit, at times reluctantly, to the round of sacrifices and rituals urged upon them. Kwadwo's willingness to endure this ordeal beside her, rather than divorce her as her former husbands did, distinguishes him and deepens the reader's sympathy.

Tensions and independence. Their relationship is not without friction. Pokuwaa is a strong, independent woman who farms and manages her own affairs, and she guards that independence carefully after two broken marriages. There are moments of misunderstanding and strain, particularly under the constant meddling of relatives and priests, but these tensions are handled with maturity and are never allowed to break the marriage.

Resolution. The relationship is finally rewarded when Pokuwaa conceives. The child crowns a marriage that has survived on trust and perseverance, vindicating Kwadwo's steadfastness and Pokuwaa's endurance.

Significance. The relationship between Kwadwo and Pokuwaa offers the novel's positive model of marriage: one based on loyalty and patience rather than on the harsh transactional logic of fertility. Through it, Konadu quietly criticises the tradition that destroyed Pokuwaa's earlier unions and affirms the value of steadfast love.

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On its surface, William Golding's Lord of the Flies has all the ingredients of a traditional boys' adventure story: a desert island, a group of schoolboys, no adults, hunting, exploration and survival. Golding deliberately borrows this popular form, only to darken it into a study of human savagery. Read as an account of adventure, the novel offers the following:

The exciting premise. A plane evacuating British schoolboys is shot down during a war, and the survivors find themselves alone on an uninhabited tropical island. The absence of grown-ups, the coral reef, the lagoon, the fruit and the wild pigs create the classic setting of island romance in the tradition of Coral Island, to which Golding openly alludes.

Exploration and organisation. The early chapters are full of genuine adventure. Ralph, Jack and Simon climb the mountain and thrill at discovering that "this is our island." They light a signal fire using Piggy's glasses, build shelters, and explore the beach, the jungle and "Castle Rock." The blowing of the conch to summon assemblies gives the adventure an orderly, almost heroic beginning.

Hunting and danger. Jack's hunters stalk and finally kill wild pigs, and the excitement of the hunt, the chants and the feasts, supplies the physical thrill expected of the genre. The mystery of the "beast" glimpsed on the mountain, later revealed as a dead parachutist, adds suspense and terror.

Rescue and pursuit. The story builds to a manhunt as Jack's tribe sets the island ablaze to smoke out Ralph, and it ends with the sudden arrival of a naval officer, a dramatic last-minute rescue typical of adventure fiction.

Adventure turned to allegory. Yet Golding subverts the form. The fire that should signal rescue becomes the fire that destroys; the hunt for pigs becomes the hunt for boys; Simon and Piggy are killed. The "adventure" exposes the darkness of the human heart. So while the novel can indeed be told as a gripping island adventure, its true achievement is to use that familiar excitement to deliver a grim moral warning.

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Perseverance is the moral backbone of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. Through Santiago's three-day struggle with a giant marlin and his defence of it against the sharks, Hemingway dramatises the idea that human worth lies not in easy victory but in the refusal to surrender.

Enduring the run of bad luck. The novel opens on failure: Santiago has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish and is branded salao, the unluckiest of men. Yet he does not despair. On the eighty-fifth day he rows far out beyond the other boats, a deliberate act of perseverance that sets the whole ordeal in motion. His refusal to accept defeat is established before the marlin is even hooked.

The battle with the marlin. For three days and nights Santiago holds the line as the great fish tows his skiff. His hands are cut and cramped, his back aches, he is exhausted and hungry, yet he endures. His repeated resolutions, and above all his creed, "a man can be destroyed but not defeated," state the theme directly. He respects the marlin as a worthy brother-opponent, and his persistence is a matter of pride, honour and self-definition.

The fight against the sharks. Having killed the marlin, Santiago must watch sharks tear it apart on the long voyage home. He fights them with harpoon, knife, club and finally the tiller, though he knows the battle is lost. This hopeless resistance is the purest expression of perseverance in the book: he struggles on for the sake of the struggle itself, not for a reward.

Triumph within defeat. Santiago returns with only a skeleton, materially ruined. Yet his endurance has won him a moral victory. The other fishermen marvel at the great spine, Manolin weeps and pledges to fish with him again, and Santiago dreams of the lions, symbols of undiminished strength.

Conclusion. Hemingway's message is that perseverance is heroism. Santiago loses the fish but keeps his dignity, proving that greatness lies in how one endures, not in what one finally holds in one's hands.

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Manolin, the boy in Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, is a minor character in terms of stage-time yet central to the novel's emotional and moral life. He is the young apprentice fisherman who loves and serves the old man, Santiago, and through him Hemingway develops the themes of loyalty, love and the passing of skill between generations.

Devotion and loyalty. Manolin's defining quality is faithful love for Santiago. Though his parents force him to leave the old man's boat after forty days without a catch, calling Santiago salao (the worst form of unlucky), the boy's heart never deserts him. He continues to help carry the gear, brings the old man food and coffee, and grieves for him. His loyalty is a rebuke to the fickle judgment of the village.

A source of comfort and hope. Manolin gives Santiago companionship and dignity in his poverty and old age. Their conversations about baseball and the great DiMaggio, and Santiago's repeated wish during his ordeal, "I wish the boy were here," show how much the old man depends on him emotionally. The boy keeps loneliness at bay and gives Santiago someone to teach and to live for.

The disciple and inheritor. Manolin represents continuity. Santiago has taught him to fish, and the boy honours that teacher-pupil bond. At the novel's close, when he weeps over Santiago's ruined hands and resolves to fish with him again regardless of his parents, Manolin becomes the guarantee that the old man's skill, courage and code will not die with him.

Contrast with the community. Where the other fishermen mock or pity Santiago, Manolin admires and believes in him. He thus embodies genuine respect against communal shallowness.

Significance. Manolin softens the novel's harsh vision of struggle and defeat. His unwavering love proves that Santiago, though beaten by the sea, is not alone and not truly destroyed. He is the human warmth at the heart of a story otherwise set against the vast indifference of the ocean.

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In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus, Eugene Achike is a man of two faces, and his relationship with his immediate family, his wife Beatrice and his children Kambili and Jaja, is defined by the tragic gap between his public generosity and his private tyranny.

A tyrant in the home. Eugene rules his household through fear disguised as religious discipline. A fanatical Catholic convert, he punishes any deviation from his rigid standards with brutality. He pours boiling water on Kambili's and Jaja's feet for staying under the same roof as their "heathen" grandfather; he beats Kambili almost to death for keeping a painting of Papa-Nnukwu; and he flings a missal that breaks Beatrice's figurines. The family lives by his timetables, his silences and his moods.

Violence against Beatrice. His treatment of his wife is especially cruel. He beats her so severely that she suffers repeated miscarriages, yet she remains publicly loyal, cleaning up after his violence. Her eventual decision to poison him is the desperate response of a woman driven beyond endurance, showing how his domination corrodes the very love it claims to protect.

Distorted love. Adichie is careful not to make Eugene a simple monster. He genuinely believes he is saving his family's souls, and he weeps and tends their wounds after beating them. His "love sips," the burning tea he shares, symbolise affection that scalds. This warped tenderness makes his abuse more disturbing, not less.

The public benefactor. Outside the home, Eugene is admired as a courageous newspaper publisher who defies a corrupt regime and gives generously to the church and community. This contrast exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of his character and sharpens the novel's critique of authoritarianism, whether political or domestic.

Consequence. His regime finally breaks the family open: Jaja rebels, Beatrice kills him, and only in his absence do the children begin to find their voices. Eugene's relationship with his family is thus a study in how fear, however piously justified, destroys the home it seeks to govern.