WAEC SSCE - Literature In English - 2015 (Prose)

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Santiago's recurring dream of the lions on the African beach is one of the most significant images in Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. Though brief, the dream carries deep meaning about youth, strength and hope.

A memory of youth and vigour. The lions belong to Santiago's boyhood, when as a young sailor he saw lions come down to the shore in the evening on the coast of Africa. Dreaming of them takes the old, worn man back to a time of energy, strength and possibility. The dream therefore links his tired present to a vigorous past and reminds the reader that the frail fisherman was once young and powerful.

A symbol of strength, nobility and courage. The lion is the king of beasts, an emblem of majesty and fearless power. By dreaming of lions, Santiago is spiritually renewed with the very qualities he needs for his ordeal: pride, courage and undefeated dignity. The lions represent the heroic strength that still lives in his spirit even when his body is failing.

A source of peace and hope. The lions play gently on the beach like young cats, and the dream brings Santiago calm and contentment rather than fear. It suggests an inner peace and a hope that endures despite hardship.

Structural significance. The dream frames the novella. Santiago dreams of the lions before he sets out and, most importantly, in the very last line of the book he sleeps and again dreams of the lions after his exhausting defeat by the sharks. This final return to the lions signals that his spirit is unbroken, that he will rise to fish again, and that hope and youthful strength survive in him.

The significance of the lions, therefore, is that they embody youth, strength, courage and enduring hope, and their reappearance at the close affirms Hemingway's central theme that a man can be destroyed but not defeated.

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In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Ralph is the central figure around whom the action turns, and although he is flawed he functions as the hero of the novel because he stands for order, reason and humane leadership against the tide of savagery.

He is the elected leader. At the first assembly the boys choose Ralph as chief, largely because he possesses the conch that summons them. From the start he represents legitimate, democratic authority rather than force.

He champions civilisation. Ralph's leading policy is the signal fire kept burning on the mountain so that a passing ship may rescue them. His steady insistence on the fire, on shelters and on orderly meetings shows him working for the common good and for a return to the adult world of law and reason.

He grows in understanding. Ralph matures during the story. He learns to value the despised Piggy for his intelligence, and he gradually recognises the darkness that is overtaking the others. This growth in moral awareness is a mark of the hero.

He resists the descent into savagery. As Jack's hunters abandon rules for painted faces, blood and cruelty, Ralph almost alone holds to decency. He is horrified by the killings of Simon and Piggy and refuses to join the tribe, even when doing so would make him safe.

He is the hunted victim who is finally saved. In the climax the whole island is set ablaze to smoke Ralph out for the kill, and he flees for his life until he collapses at the feet of a naval officer. His survival, and his weeping for the end of innocence and for the death of his true, wise friend Piggy, confirm his role as the moral centre of the book.

Ralph is not perfect; he sometimes mocks Piggy and even shares briefly in the frenzy that kills Simon. Yet because he embodies order, responsibility and conscience, and because he suffers and endures in their defence, Ralph deserves to be regarded as the hero of Lord of the Flies.

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The military is an important background presence in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus. Set in an unstable, post-independence Nigeria, the novel uses the military to link the private tyranny of Eugene's home to the public tyranny of the state.

The coup and the atmosphere of fear. Early in the novel a military coup overthrows the government, and the radio announcements of soldiers seizing power establish an atmosphere of instability, censorship and dread that hangs over the whole story. Ordinary life is shadowed by roadblocks, corruption and the threat of violence.

The military and the persecution of truth. Eugene owns the Standard, a newspaper edited by the courageous Ade Coker, which dares to criticise the corrupt regime. The military strikes back: Ade Coker is detained and tortured, and is finally assassinated by a parcel bomb delivered to his home while he sits at breakfast with his family. Through this, Adichie exposes the brutality of military dictatorship toward the free press.

A mirror of domestic tyranny. The oppressive military state parallels Eugene's oppressive rule over his household. Just as the soldiers silence and terrorise citizens, Eugene silences and terrorises his wife and children. The public and the private forms of dictatorship reflect one another, so that the military theme deepens the novel's study of oppression.

Corruption and its cost. Bribery of officials, fuel scarcity and the general decay under military rule form the social backdrop against which the family drama unfolds, reminding the reader that the Achikes' troubles are part of a wider national sickness.

The military is therefore important both as realistic setting and as a symbol: it dramatises the crushing of freedom in the nation and mirrors, on a national scale, the crushing of freedom inside Eugene's home.

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Tano Kofi, the husband of Pokuwaa in Asare Konadu's A Woman in Her Prime, is more than a background figure; his presence carries much of the novel's meaning about marriage, patience and the pressures of custom.

He is the stable partner in Pokuwaa's search. After two earlier marriages that failed partly because of her childlessness, Pokuwaa is married to Tano Kofi. He is a steady, hard-working farmer, and his relative patience contrasts with the impatience she suffered before. His companionship gives Pokuwaa the security within which she can pursue, and finally abandon, the anxious quest for a child.

He shares in the burden of childlessness. The couple's failure to produce a child is a joint concern, and Tano Kofi's willingness to remain with Pokuwaa through the long round of rituals shows that the barrenness is treated as a shared trial rather than her fault alone. This deepens the reader's sympathy and broadens the theme beyond a single woman's suffering.

He embodies the rural, traditional world of Brenhoma. As a farmer bound to the land and to the customs of the community, Tano Kofi represents the ordinary village life against which Pokuwaa's quiet self-assertion is measured. His routine of farm work and communal obligation grounds the novel in authentic Akan village experience.

He is linked to the theme of fulfilment. It is within this marriage, once Pokuwaa stops straining after ritual solutions and simply lives, that she at last conceives. Tano Kofi therefore stands at the point where patience is rewarded, reinforcing Konadu's message that peace and acceptance, not desperate effort, bring the longed-for blessing.

In these ways Tano Kofi is significant as husband, fellow-sufferer, and representative of the traditional life that both tests and finally rewards Pokuwaa.

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In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Piggy's spectacles are one of the novel's most powerful symbols. Golding invests this small object with large meaning, so that its fate charts the rise and collapse of order on the island.

They symbolise reason, science and intellect. Piggy is the most rational and clear-thinking of the boys, and his glasses represent the power of the human mind to see clearly and think logically. As long as the glasses are intact and Piggy is respected, reason has a voice in the group.

They are the source of fire. The boys use the lenses of Piggy's glasses to focus the sun's rays and light their signal fire. The fire represents both the hope of rescue and the practical benefits of civilisation. Thus the glasses are literally the means by which the link to the adult, ordered world is kept alive, and later the means by which Jack's tribe cooks its meat.

Their damage tracks the decline of order. The condition of the glasses mirrors the condition of the group. When one lens is broken during an early quarrel, it marks the first crack in the boys' unity and in the rule of reason. As savagery grows, the intellect is progressively blinded.

Their theft marks the triumph of savagery. Jack's hunters raid Ralph's camp at night and steal the glasses, seizing the power of fire for themselves by force rather than by cooperation. This theft, not the conch, shows that brute power has overthrown reason. Soon afterwards Piggy is killed and the conch shattered, and with the loss of the glasses' owner the last light of rational civilisation is put out.

The significance of Piggy's glasses, therefore, is that they embody clear-sighted reason and the fire of civilisation, and their breaking and theft dramatise humanity's descent from order into barbarism.

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In Asare Konadu's A Woman in Her Prime, tradition shapes the whole relationship between Pokuwaa and her mother, and Konadu uses that relationship to weigh the pressure of custom against the value of personal peace.

Tradition as the source of anxiety. In the Akan village of Brenhoma a woman's worth is measured by her ability to bear children. Pokuwaa, though hard-working and prosperous, is childless after three marriages, and it is her mother who most keenly feels the shame this brings on the family. The mother's constant concern for grandchildren is not personal cruelty but the voice of tradition speaking through her; she wants her daughter to fulfil the role custom expects.

Tradition drives the round of rituals. Acting on customary belief, the mother urges Pokuwaa into repeated sacrifices and rites. Together they consult diviners and perform the sacrifices prescribed by the god Tano and the fetish priests, including the ritual killing of a sheep, in the hope of removing whatever curse or spiritual block is keeping Pokuwaa barren. The relationship is therefore built around shared religious observance dictated by tradition.

Tension and eventual release. The mother's traditional expectations place a quiet strain on Pokuwaa, who grows weary of endless rituals that yield nothing. A turning point comes when Pokuwaa resolves to stop the sacrifices and simply live her life, trusting that a child will come in its own time. Significantly, it is after she frees herself from the anxious pursuit of custom that she conceives. The mother's traditional pressure is thus shown to be well-meaning but ultimately less effective than Pokuwaa's calm acceptance.

Konadu presents the mother-daughter bond as loving yet dominated by tradition. Custom binds the two women together in shared ritual, but the novel finally suggests that peace of mind, not slavish adherence to tradition, brings fulfilment.

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The relationship between Eugene Achike and his wife Beatrice in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus is one of tyranny and silent suffering that finally erupts into resistance. Adichie uses the marriage to expose how religious fanaticism and domestic violence poison even an outwardly respectable home.

Domination and abuse. Eugene, called Papa, is a wealthy, publicly admired Catholic industrialist, but at home he is a violent religious tyrant. He beats Beatrice for the smallest supposed lapse. On one occasion he assaults her so severely while she is pregnant that she suffers a miscarriage; on another he flings a missal and later beats her until she loses a second pregnancy. His wife bears these attacks in near-total silence.

Beatrice's submission. For most of the novel Beatrice is the model of the crushed, obedient wife. She defends Eugene to her children, polishes the etagere figurines as a way of composing herself after each beating, and endures because tradition and her love for her husband make her cling to the marriage despite the danger.

The imbalance of power. Eugene controls every detail of the household, dictating schedules, prayers and conduct, while Beatrice has no voice. The contrast between his charitable public image and his private cruelty is one of Adichie's sharpest ironies.

The turning point. Beatrice's endurance finally breaks. Unable to escape openly, she poisons Eugene gradually by adding poison to his tea, and he dies. Her son Jaja takes the blame and goes to prison. The wife who seemed powerless becomes, in the end, the agent of her own release, though at terrible cost.

The relationship therefore moves from oppression through long-suffering silence to violent liberation, and through it Adichie condemns the abuse that hides behind piety and respectability.

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The question of the old man's success on his last fishing trip is deliberately left double-edged by Ernest Hemingway in The Old Man and the Sea. Judged by results, Santiago fails; judged by spirit, he triumphs.

The material failure. Santiago sets out after eighty-four days without a catch, sails far beyond the other boats, and hooks a giant marlin longer than his skiff. For two days and nights he battles it, and at last kills it and lashes it to his boat. But on the long voyage home the blood of the marlin draws sharks. One by one they tear away the flesh until, when he reaches shore, nothing is left but the great white skeleton, the head and the tail. In practical terms the trip is a failure: he brings home no saleable fish and returns as poor as he set out, his hands cut and his body exhausted.

The moral and spiritual success. Yet in every way that matters to Hemingway, Santiago succeeds. He proves his endurance, courage and skill by catching the greatest fish of his life and by fighting the sharks to the very end, refusing to give in. His often-quoted resolve, that a man can be destroyed but not defeated, is vindicated: he is destroyed of his prize but not of his dignity. He keeps his pride, his self-respect and his bond with the boy Manolin, who weeps for him and vows to fish at his side again. The skeleton itself, admired on the beach, is proof of the magnitude of his achievement.

Balanced judgement. To the extent that success means profit or a fish to sell, the trip is a total loss. But to the extent that success means proving one's worth, showing unconquerable courage and winning renewed love and respect, Santiago is wholly successful. Hemingway's point is that true victory lies not in the reward kept but in the greatness of the struggle endured.

Therefore the old man was successful to a very high degree in spirit, even though he failed entirely in material terms.