WAEC SSCE - Literature In English - 2020 (Drama & Poetry)

Bayanin Amsa

1. Comparison of Kindo and his father. In Dele Charley's The Blood of a Stranger, Kindo and his father, King Santigie of Mando, are drawn in sharp contrast, and their differences carry the play's meaning. Kindo, the prince and heir, is upright, courageous and clear-sighted. He loves his people and his land, distrusts the schemes of the priest Maligu and the stranger Whitehead (Parker), and resists the sale of the village's wealth and freedom to the foreign visitor. He stands for youthful integrity, patriotism and the defence of tradition against corruption. King Santigie, by contrast, is weak, greedy and easily manipulated. Dazzled by the gifts and false promises of the white stranger, and misled by the treacherous Maligu, he allows greed and vanity to blind him to the danger threatening his kingdom. Where Kindo sees clearly and would protect the community, the king is short-sighted and self-serving, ready to betray his people's interest for personal gain. The generational contrast, principled son against compromised father, dramatises the conflict between integrity and greed, and between the defence of the land and its betrayal to foreign exploitation.

2. Wara's encounters with Soko. Wara, the young woman promised as a sacrificial victim in the plot hatched by Maligu, is caught up in the web of deceit surrounding the fetish and its priesthood. Her encounters expose the manipulation of religion for selfish and destructive ends. The priestly scheme, cloaked in the authority of the gods and the demands of ritual, marks her out to be sacrificed so that the conspirators may achieve their aims and please the foreign stranger. Through Wara's ordeal the play reveals how sacred custom can be perverted: what is presented as the will of the gods is in truth the design of corrupt men. Her plight arouses sympathy and outrage, and it sharpens the conflict that Kindo takes up on the side of justice. The encounters thus dramatise the abuse of traditional religion, the vulnerability of the innocent, and the wider theme of exploitation, both of the community by greedy insiders and of the whole village by the foreign intruder.

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7. Marlow and Hastings' first encounter with Mr Hardcastle. In Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, the first meeting of young Marlow and his friend Hastings with Mr Hardcastle is the comic hinge of the play, built entirely on a misunderstanding engineered by Tony Lumpkin. Directed by Tony at the alehouse to Hardcastle's country house as though it were a common inn, the two travellers arrive believing they are guests at a tavern and treat their host, Mr Hardcastle, as though he were an ordinary innkeeper. The comedy springs from the clash of expectations. Marlow and Hastings behave with careless, condescending familiarity, ordering supper, criticising the accommodation and treating their dignified host as a servant to be commanded. Mr Hardcastle, who expects to welcome Marlow as the well-bred suitor for his daughter Kate, is bewildered and increasingly offended by the young men's rudeness and presumption, quite unable to understand why his guest is so insolent. Neither side grasps the truth, and their cross-purposes produce rich comic irony, for the audience knows what the characters do not. The encounter sets in motion the confusion that governs the plot, and it also exposes the paradox of Marlow's character, bold and overbearing with those he thinks his inferiors, yet painfully shy with ladies of his own class, which is central to the play's design.

8. Tony's attitude to Mr and Mrs Hardcastle. Tony Lumpkin, Mrs Hardcastle's spoilt son by her first marriage and Mr Hardcastle's stepson, shows very different attitudes to his mother and his stepfather, and his mischief drives the comedy. Toward his mother, Mrs Hardcastle, Tony is deceptive and manipulative beneath a show of dependence. She dotes on him, spoils him and pretends he is delicate and sickly to keep him at home and to control his inheritance, but Tony sees through her selfishness and delights in tricking her. His famous prank of driving her round and round in circles in the dark, convincing her they are lost and in danger of highwaymen, exposes both his cunning and his resentment of her smothering control. Toward his stepfather, Mr Hardcastle, Tony is disrespectful and rebellious, mocking the old man's love of order and refusing to be tamed by his authority; it is Tony's practical joke that turns Hardcastle's house into a supposed inn and humiliates him before his guests. Yet Tony is not merely malicious. His trickery ultimately serves the young lovers: by helping Hastings and Constance and by refusing to marry Constance himself, he furthers their happiness. His irreverent, playful attitude to both elders makes him the engine of the plot and one of English comedy's great comic rogues.

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11. God's reasoning in "The Pulley". George Herbert's "The Pulley" is a metaphysical poem that explains, through an ingenious conceit, why God withholds the gift of rest from mankind. At the creation, God pours out his blessings upon man as from a glass or cup: strength, beauty, wisdom, honour and pleasure all flow into him. But God deliberately keeps back one blessing, rest. His reasoning is that if he were to bestow rest as well, man would find complete contentment in the created world and in God's gifts themselves, and would worship the gifts rather than the giver. "For if I should," God reasons, man would "adore my gifts instead of me, / and rest in Nature, not the God of Nature." By withholding rest, God ensures that man will remain restless and dissatisfied amid all his riches, and that this very restlessness, this "repining restlessness", will act like a pulley to draw him back to God. Weariness, if not goodness, will lift man's heart heavenward: "if goodness lead him not, yet weariness / may toss him to my breast." God's reasoning is thus at once loving and shrewd: he denies man earthly peace precisely in order to keep man's soul turned toward its true rest, which is in God alone. The poem beautifully reconciles human discontent with divine purpose.

12. How the image of the caged bird explains the boy's experiences in "The Schoolboy". In William Blake's "The Schoolboy", the image of the caged bird powerfully expresses the boy's suffering under a joyless, oppressive system of formal education. The poem opens with the boy delighting in a summer morning, the birds singing, the huntsman's horn, the sky-lark, all images of natural freedom and joy. Against this the boy must go to school, where instead of freedom he finds "a cruel eye outworn", tedious hours and harsh discipline that "drives all joy away". Blake likens the boy to a caged bird: "How can the bird that is born for joy / Sit in a cage and sing?" Just as a bird is created for open flight and song but is imprisoned and silenced in a cage, so the child is made for the freedom, curiosity and delight of nature but is shut up in the confinement of the schoolroom. The cage stands for the school that crushes the boy's natural spirit, dulling his eagerness and drooping his joy "like a bird that from its nest / robbed of its joy". The image drives home Blake's protest that rigid, loveless schooling stifles the child's spirit just as a cage kills the joy of a bird, robbing the young of their spring so that their summer may bear no fruit. Through the caged bird Blake pleads for an education in harmony with a child's natural love of freedom and life.

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5. The role of Mrs Johnson in the development of the plot

In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, the plot is the unfolding of events by which a poor African American family, the Youngers, struggle against poverty and racial discrimination in their aspiration to move up in life. Within this movement Mrs Johnson is a minor but genuinely purposeful character, and her single visit is placed by Hansberry at a decisive point in the action.

Mrs Johnson is a neighbour of the Youngers on the South Side of Chicago, sharing the cramped tenement conditions in which they live and even competing with them for the use of the common bathroom. On the surface she calls out of neighbourliness, exchanging pleasantries and accepting the pie and coffee she is offered even as she protests that she has stayed too long. This gives the scene a touch of humour, but beneath the friendliness her purpose is to unsettle.

She arrives just as the family is packing to move to the white neighbourhood of Clybourne Park, and she brings a magazine whose banner headline announces that Negroes who "invaded" a white area have been bombed out of their home. She teases the Youngers for wanting to "move on up a little higher" when, in her view, they ought to know their place, as she says she knows hers. Her manner mixes envy with a grudging admiration of the family's determination to better themselves. Her recollection of the bombing dramatises the real threat of racial violence awaiting the family and heightens the suspense surrounding the move.

Her relevance to the plot is therefore several-fold. She raises fresh doubt in the Youngers about the wisdom of moving to Clybourne Park, and the events that follow, Walter's loss of the remaining insurance money to Willy Harris and the arrival of Mr Karl Lindner to buy the family out of their contract, deepen that pressure. Beneatha's verdict captures the family's response: "If there are two things we as a people have got to overcome, one is the Ku Klux Klan and the other is Mrs Johnson." In refusing to be discouraged by her, the Youngers reveal their pride and courage.

Above all, Mrs Johnson is thematically significant. She represents those coloured people who will do nothing to improve their own condition and who discourage others from trying. Standing as a foil to the Youngers' aspiration and self-respect, she illustrates the negative, defeated side of the African American struggle to break the barriers of class and race, and so throws the family's dignity and determination into sharper relief.

6. Walter's expectations in the play

Walter Lee Younger, Mama's son, Ruth's husband and Travis's father, is a lean and ambitious young man whose expectations drive much of the play's action. He is not yet the head of the house and resents it; he dislikes earning his living by driving for another man, and he is quick to blame others for his own failings.

Walter is deeply unhappy with the family's poverty and cramped conditions, a frustration that drives him to drink. His central expectation fastens on the ten-thousand-dollar insurance cheque arriving after his father's death, in which he sees the long-awaited breakthrough. He longs to be a successful businessman and provider who commands respect, and he wants the best for his son Travis, so much so that he is shocked when the boy's own modest ambition is simply to become a bus driver like his father's employer.

His chosen route to success is a liquor store, which he plans to open with his friends. He presses the scheme despite the firm opposition of his mother and sister, certain it will make the family rich and prove his manhood. When Mama entrusts part of the money to him, he stakes everything on the venture, only for his friend Willy Harris to abscond with the funds. Feeling disappointed and betrayed, he cries out of Willy, "Man, I trust you... man, I put my life in your hands... that money is made out of my father's flesh."

Walter's expectations also express themselves in his admiration of success in others. He regards George Murchison's wealthy family as having achieved everything he aspires to, and he is disappointed when Beneatha turns from George toward the African student Asagai. Yet by the play's end Walter's expectations mature. Faced with Mr Lindner's offer to buy the family out of their new home, he at first considers accepting the money, but finally rises to his true dignity and refuses, insisting that the family will move into the house his father's money bought. His expectations shift from riches to self-respect, and he reconciles with the family's determination to relocate to Clybourne Park, which for them signifies the real success. In this growth from a frustrated dreamer into a man of principle, Walter's expectations become the very engine of the play's plot and its affirmation of dignity.

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3. Ogeyi as a deeply religious person. In Frank Ogodo Ogbeche's Harvest of Corruption, Ogeyi stands out as a moral and religious anchor in a society sunk in vice. She is the loyal friend of Aloho, and her deep faith shapes everything she says and does. From the outset she counsels Aloho with the language of prayer and trust in God, urging her to be patient, honest and to shun the easy money and immoral shortcuts that the corrupt city offers. When Aloho is tempted into an immoral relationship and drawn into the dirty dealings of Chief Haladu Ade-Amaka, it is Ogeyi who warns her of the spiritual and moral danger, reminding her that ill-gotten gain brings ruin. Ogeyi's own conduct is consistently upright; she resists corruption and immorality and keeps faith with God even as those around her fall. After Aloho's tragic death, Ogeyi's religious conviction sustains her and moves her, alongside Justice and the forces of law, to see that the wrongdoers are exposed and brought to justice. She embodies the play's moral standard, showing that virtue, honesty and faith in God are the true alternatives to the corruption the play condemns. Through Ogeyi, the dramatist affirms religious and moral values against the tide of vice.

4. The downfall of Chief. Chief Haladu Ade-Amaka, a powerful and highly placed public figure, is the embodiment of corruption in the play, and his downfall is both deserved and instructive. His ruin is the direct fruit of his own vices: he abuses his office and influence, engages in bribery and drug trafficking, and preys sexually on vulnerable young women such as Aloho, whom he uses and discards. Confident in his wealth and connections, he believes himself above the law, buying the loyalty of corrupt officials like the Commissioner of Police, Chief Ogeazu, and the magistrate. But his web of crime unravels. Aloho, made pregnant and then destroyed by his schemes, becomes an unwilling drug courier and dies, and the exposure of the drug and bribery network that follows implicates the Chief. The upright characters, aided by an honest judiciary, pursue the case, and the corrupt protectors who shielded him are themselves swept up. In the end Chief and his accomplices are arrested, tried and condemned, brought low by the very corruption they trusted to keep them safe. His downfall dramatises the play's central message: that corruption, however powerful, carries the seed of its own destruction, and that justice, though slow, will prevail.

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9. How the diction conveys the theme of Adeoti's "Ambush". Gbemisola Adeoti's "Ambush" uses carefully chosen, menacing diction to convey its theme of hidden danger lurking within a seemingly ordinary or peaceful land, a metaphor for a nation where crisis and violence wait unseen beneath the surface. The poet's word choices create an atmosphere of concealed threat. Images drawn from wild, predatory nature, the crouching beast, the reptile in the grass, the hunter lying in wait, give the sense of something dangerous poised to strike from concealment. Such diction of stealth and menace transforms the landscape into a place of ambush, where danger is disguised as calm. The language of watchfulness and sudden attack suggests that the ordinary scenes of national life mask betrayal, insecurity and the ever-present possibility of catastrophe. By selecting words that evoke camouflage and surprise assault, Adeoti warns the reader that the country's apparent peace is deceptive and that unseen forces, whether political violence, corruption or social breakdown, are ready to spring. The diction thus binds image and meaning, making the reader feel the tension of a society living under a constant, hidden threat.

10. The theme of accommodation in "The Anvil and the Hammer". Kofi Awoonor's "The Anvil and the Hammer" explores the theme of accommodation, the painful effort to reconcile the traditional African heritage with the intrusive forces of the modern, Western world. The poet presents the African caught "between the anvil and the hammer", that is, between two crushing pressures: the pull of the ancestral past and the pounding demands of a new, colonial and industrial civilisation. Accommodation appears in the speaker's attempt to hold on to the values, customs and "tattered" cloth of the old ways while being reshaped by the alien forces bearing down upon him. The imagery of the forge, where metal is beaten and reforged, suggests both the destruction of the old identity and the fashioning of a new, hybrid one. The poet mourns what is being lost, the fading songs, gods and traditions, yet acknowledges that some adjustment to the new order is unavoidable. The theme of accommodation is therefore treated with ambivalence: it is a survival born of pain and compromise, an uneasy blending in which the African must adapt to change without wholly abandoning his roots. Awoonor captures the cultural dilemma of a people forged anew between the anvil of tradition and the hammer of modernity.