WAEC SSCE - Literature In English - 2008 (Prose)

Akọwa Nkọwa

Buchi Emecheta tells the story of Nnu Ego in The Joys of Motherhood through a carefully chosen narrative technique that shapes the reader's understanding and reinforces the novel's ironic vision of motherhood.

Third-person omniscient narration. The story is told by an all-knowing third-person narrator who moves freely among the characters, entering the minds of Nnu Ego, Nnaife, Adaku and others. This omniscience lets Emecheta present both the outward events of Nnu Ego's life and her private thoughts and feelings, so that the reader shares her hopes, her disappointments and her bitter reflections. It also allows the narrator to comment on the society and its treatment of women, giving the novel its critical, sympathetic voice.

Flashback and non-linear ordering. Emecheta does not tell the story in a simple straight line. The novel opens dramatically with Nnu Ego rushing to drown herself after the death of her baby, and then moves back in time to recount her birth, her descent from the proud Agbadi and the slave woman Ona, and the whole history that led to that moment. This use of flashback creates suspense and lets the reader measure Nnu Ego's early expectations against her later suffering.

Irony. The dominant technique is irony, beginning with the title itself. The "joys" of motherhood prove to be endless sacrifice, poverty and loneliness; the woman who bears many children to secure her old age dies alone by the roadside, with no child at her side. This gap between promise and reality gives the whole narrative its critical, questioning edge.

Realism and social detail. Emecheta grounds the story in the concrete detail of colonial Lagos and rural Ibuza, the laundry work, the market trading, the co-wife household, the effects of the Second World War, so that the narrative reads as a realistic social document as well as a personal tragedy.

Blending of folklore and belief. The narrative weaves in Igbo cosmology, the chi (personal god), the vengeful slave-woman spirit believed to trouble Nnu Ego's childbearing, and proverbs, giving the story a cultural texture and linking Nnu Ego's fate to spiritual forces.

Conclusion. Through omniscient narration, flashback, sustained irony, social realism and folklore, Emecheta controls sympathy and judgment alike, exposing the burdens of womanhood while telling a moving individual story.

Akọwa Nkọwa

In George Eliot's Silas Marner, betrayal is the wound from which the whole plot grows, and Eliot uses it to show how trust broken by selfishness can wreck a life, yet how trust restored can heal it.

Betrayal by William Dane. The first and deepest betrayal occurs before the story reaches Raveloe, in the religious community of Lantern Yard. Silas is a devout, trusting young weaver, and William Dane is his closest friend. When money is stolen from the deacon whom Silas is nursing, William plants Silas's own pocket-knife and the empty money-bag in Silas's home to frame him. William then marries Sarah, the very woman to whom Silas was engaged. Betrayed by his friend, his church and his sweetheart at once, Silas loses his faith in God and man and flees into isolation.

Betrayal by Dunstan Cass. In Raveloe Silas hoards gold as a substitute for human affection. Dunstan Cass, the reckless younger son of Squire Cass, betrays the trust of a whole community when he steals the weaver's hoard, robbing a defenceless recluse of the only thing he loves.

Godfrey Cass's betrayal. Godfrey secretly marries the opium addict Molly Farren, then betrays her and their child by concealing the marriage to protect his inheritance and win Nancy Lammeter. His refusal to claim his own daughter Eppie is a betrayal of natural duty. Years later, when he finally confesses and tries to reclaim Eppie, she rejects him in favour of Silas, and Godfrey reaps the loneliness his earlier deceit deserves.

Eliot balances these betrayals against acts of loyalty, chiefly Silas's faithful love for the abandoned Eppie. The novel therefore condemns betrayal born of greed and cowardice while affirming that steadfast love can repair the damage that treachery causes.

Akọwa Nkọwa

Conflict is a driving force in Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood, which traces the hard life of Nnu Ego in colonial Lagos and Ibuza. The novel is rich in clashes, personal, domestic and social, and three instances stand out.

1. The conflict between tradition and change (village versus city). Much of Nnu Ego's suffering springs from the clash between the traditional Igbo values she was raised with and the harsh realities of colonial Lagos. In Ibuza, motherhood, farming and communal support give a woman worth and security. In the city, money rules, husbands earn wages washing white men's clothes, and the old certainties fail. Nnu Ego clings to the belief that many children guarantee honour and care in old age, only to find that urban poverty and westernisation betray that expectation. This tension between inherited ideals and modern conditions underlies her whole tragedy.

2. The conflict between Nnu Ego and Nnaife (marital conflict). Nnu Ego's marriage to Nnaife is a source of continual friction. She is at first repelled by him, a soft, plump laundryman utterly unlike her ideal of a strong Ibuza man, and she resents his failure to provide. Their quarrels over money, over his taking a second wife, Adaku, and over the raising of the children expose the strains of polygamy and poverty. The rivalry between the co-wives Nnu Ego and Adaku adds a further domestic conflict within the same household.

3. The inner conflict of Nnu Ego over motherhood. Perhaps the deepest conflict is within Nnu Ego herself. She sacrifices everything, her comfort, her health, even her sense of self, for her children, believing they are her "joy" and her future security. Yet she is torn between this devotion and the growing realisation that her sacrifices go unrewarded: her sons pursue their own lives, one going abroad, and she dies alone by the roadside. The bitter gap between the promised "joys" of motherhood and its actual loneliness is the novel's central, ironic conflict.

Conclusion. Through these conflicts, tradition against modernity, wife against husband and co-wife, and the mother against her own thwarted hopes, Emecheta exposes the burdens placed on women and questions the very ideal of motherhood that the title ironically celebrates.

Akọwa Nkọwa

The proverb one reaps what one sows is the moral backbone of George Eliot's Silas Marner. Eliot structures the novel so that every character's harvest, good or bad, grows directly from the seed of his earlier conduct.

Godfrey Cass sows deceit and reaps childlessness. Godfrey secretly marries Molly Farren, then hides the marriage and denies his own daughter to protect his inheritance and marry Nancy Lammeter. He sows cowardice and concealment. His harvest is a long marriage without children of his own, for Nancy bears him none. When at last he confesses and comes to claim Eppie, she chooses Silas, and Godfrey reaps the very emptiness his early lie planted.

Dunstan Cass sows theft and reaps death. Dunstan steals Silas's gold and disappears. For sixteen years his crime seems unpunished, but he had fallen into the Stone-pit that same night and drowned. When the pit is drained his skeleton is found beside the stolen gold. His secret sin yields a secret, wretched death.

Silas sows patient love and reaps joy. Robbed and embittered, Silas nevertheless opens his heart to the golden-haired child who wanders into his cottage on the night his gold vanishes. He sows years of tender, self-denying care for Eppie. His harvest is her devoted love, which enriches his old age far beyond the gold he lost, and even the stolen money is finally returned.

Eppie reaps the security of honest affection, choosing the poor father who nurtured her over the rich one who abandoned her.

Through these interlocking fates Eliot demonstrates a firm moral law: selfish deceit and greed ripen into loss and death, while patience, honesty and love ripen into happiness. What each character reaps is exactly what each has sown.

Akọwa Nkọwa

Rivalry is a controlling force in Isidore Okpewho's The Last Duty, and Okpewho develops it on both the private and the public levels so that the personal struggles of the characters mirror the larger destruction of the Nigerian Civil War.

The central rivalry is over Aku, the wife of the detained Oshevire. With her husband imprisoned as a suspected saboteur, Aku is left defenceless in Urukpe, and two men compete for her. Toje, the wealthy but impotent rubber magnate, desires her as a means of proving a manhood he has secretly lost, while his own nephew Odibo, whom Toje despises and humiliates, also loves her. The uncle and nephew therefore become bitter rivals in the same household, and their contest ends in violence when Odibo is attacked. The irony is sharp: the impotent Toje cannot possess Aku, yet he cannot bear that his crippled nephew should.

Rivalry is also commercial and political. Toje and Oshevire were trade competitors in the rubber business before the war, and it is largely to remove a business rival and clear his path to Aku that Toje engineers the false accusation that lands Oshevire in detention. Personal envy thus hides behind the language of patriotism and loyalty to the state.

At the widest level the novel sets the rivalry between the Igabo people and the minority Simbi community, a fictional reflection of the ethnic hostilities of the civil war. Oshevire's wife Aku is a Simbi woman, so the marriage itself becomes a target of communal suspicion, and private jealousy feeds on public hatred.

Through these interlocking rivalries Okpewho shows how selfish ambition, sexual jealousy and ethnic distrust combine to destroy innocent lives. The tragic ending, in which the reunited family is broken and Oshevire is finally killed, is the harvest of rivalry pursued without conscience.

Akọwa Nkọwa

Akọwa Nkọwa

In Richard Wright's autobiography Black Boy, the narrator Richard grows up in the segregated American South, yet he never becomes an ordinary product of that world. Several factors combine to make him a distinct, exceptional personality.

Fierce independence and rebellion. From childhood Richard refuses to be moulded by the expectations of others. He resists his grandmother's rigid Seventh-Day Adventist religion, questions authority in the home and clashes with employers who expect a black boy to be submissive. Where others bend, Richard asserts his own will.

Hunger, literal and intellectual. Physical hunger dogs his early years, but a deeper hunger, the hunger to know and to read, sets him apart. By using a borrowed library card and a forged note to obtain the books of writers such as H. L. Mencken, he opens a mental world closed to those around him. Reading feeds an imagination that his environment tries to starve.

Curiosity and questioning intellect. Richard constantly asks why, refusing to accept the racial code of the South as natural. This restless, analytical mind makes him misunderstood even by his own family, who fear his boldness will bring danger.

Sensitivity and moral seriousness. He feels keenly the cruelty and injustice around him and cannot pretend, unlike others, that things are acceptable. This sensitivity isolates him but sharpens his conscience.

Courage and endurance. Beaten, starved and threatened, Richard survives without surrendering his individuality, finally migrating North in search of freedom and self-expression.

Taken together, his rebellious independence, his hunger for knowledge, his questioning mind, his sensitivity and his stubborn courage make Richard a distinct personality who rises above the limits his society tries to impose.

Akọwa Nkọwa

Rivalry drives the action of Isidore Okpewho's The Last Duty. Okpewho weaves together sexual, commercial and communal rivalries so that the private appetites of a few men reflect the wider ruin caused by the Nigerian Civil War.

Sexual rivalry over Aku. With Oshevire detained as an alleged saboteur, his wife Aku is exposed and vulnerable. Toje, the rich but secretly impotent rubber merchant, pursues her to prove a manhood he has lost, while his ill-treated nephew Odibo genuinely loves her. Uncle and nephew, living under the same roof, become rivals, and the tension explodes in the violence done to Odibo. Okpewho underlines the irony that the impotent Toje cannot possess Aku yet cannot endure that his crippled nephew might.

Commercial rivalry. Before the war Toje and Oshevire were competitors in the rubber trade. To remove this business rival and open the way to Aku, Toje helps engineer the false charge of collaboration that imprisons Oshevire. Private envy is disguised as loyalty to the state.

Communal rivalry. On the largest scale the novel dramatises the hostility between the Igabo majority and the minority Simbi people, a mirror of civil-war ethnic conflict. Because Aku is a Simbi woman, her very marriage attracts suspicion, and personal jealousy feeds on communal hatred.

These layers of rivalry combine to destroy an innocent family. The bleak ending, with the household broken and Oshevire finally dead, is the bitter harvest of rivalry pursued without conscience, and Okpewho's clear moral is that selfish competition, whether between men, traders or peoples, brings only devastation.