WAEC SSCE - Literature In English - 2017 (Drama & Poetry)

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Oliver Goldsmith presents two courtships that run side by side in She Stoops to Conquer, and the humour of the play partly depends on how differently the two couples pursue love.

Tony Lumpkin and Constance Neville

• Theirs is a false, unwilling match. Mrs Hardcastle schemes to marry Constance to her son Tony so that the family jewels stay in the household, but neither party desires the other.
• Tony openly detests the arrangement. He calls Constance a bitter draught and would rather spend his time at the Three Pigeons alehouse than court her.
• Constance loves Hastings, not Tony, and only pretends affection to deceive Mrs Hardcastle and secure her inheritance.
• Tony and Constance therefore become co-conspirators rather than lovers. Tony helps Constance by stealing the jewels and by driving his mother round in circles in the dark, all to free himself and unite Constance with Hastings.

Young Marlow and Kate Hardcastle

• Theirs is a genuine match built on real, though comically delayed, attraction. Marlow is the intended suitor Kate's father approves.
• Marlow suffers a strange affliction: he is bold and free with barmaids and low women but tongue-tied and bashful before refined ladies. Kate must therefore stoop, disguising herself as a barmaid, to draw out his true feelings.
• Their relationship deepens through this device until Marlow falls sincerely in love with the supposed servant, only to discover she is the lady he was too shy to address.

Comparison

• Both relationships are shaped by pretence, but the purposes differ. Tony and Constance pretend to escape a marriage; Marlow and Kate use pretence to build one.
• The Tony-Constance bond is one of alliance and mutual convenience, warm in friendship but empty of romance. The Marlow-Kate bond grows into true love.
• Both couples end happily: Tony, on learning he is of age, refuses Constance and frees her for Hastings, while Marlow and Kate are united with the blessing of Mr Hardcastle.

Thus Goldsmith balances a comic anti-romance against a genuine romance, using both to satirise the artificial manners and mercenary matchmaking of his age.

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Robert Frost's Birches uses the image of birch trees bent to the ground to explore how the human spirit endures the strains of life. The theme of endurance runs through the poem's contrast between hardship and recovery.

The bending as a picture of endurance

• The birches are bent down by ice-storms, loaded until they bow and even trail their leaves on the frozen ground. This weight symbolises the burdens and sufferings that press upon human life.
• Yet the poet notes that the trees are only bent, not broken. They stoop under the load but survive, an image of a spirit that bends beneath trouble without being destroyed.

Recovery and resilience

• Though the birches do not always straighten fully after the ice has bent them, they endure and go on living, marked but standing. Endurance here is not escaping suffering but outlasting it.
• The boy who swings the birches climbs to the very top and then flings himself out to ride the branch down. He learns to launch out only after climbing carefully, a picture of measured strength that knows how far it can go.

The persona's own weariness

• Frost admits that when he is weary of considerations and life feels like a pathless wood where the face burns and one eye weeps, he dreams of climbing a birch away from earth for a while.
• But he wants to go only to come back: Earth's the right place for love. This is the heart of the theme, endurance means returning to face life rather than fleeing it permanently.

Conclusion

Through the bent but unbroken birches and the swinger who climbs and returns, Frost celebrates endurance as the capacity to bear life's burdens, to bend without breaking, and to keep coming back to earth to live and love.

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Frank Ogodo Ogbeche's Harvest of Corruption is aptly titled, for the play dramatises a society in which corruption has been sown so widely that its bitter "harvest", exposure, disgrace and punishment, is finally reaped. The title captures both the pervasiveness of corruption and the idea that wrongdoing eventually yields destructive consequences.

Corruption as the seed sown throughout the play

• Corruption saturates every level of the society of Jabu. Public officials, the police, the judiciary and business people are all shown trading in bribery, abuse of office and moral decay.
• Chief Ade Amaka, the corrupt Commissioner for Health, embodies this: he abuses his position, engages in drug trafficking and sexual immorality, and uses wealth and influence to escape accountability.

The many forms of corruption

• Political corruption. Amaka secures and abuses public office for private gain.
• Bribery and perverted justice. Officials such as the police officer Inspector and the corrupt figures in authority take bribes; attempts are made to buy the courts.
• Drug trafficking and immorality. Amaka's involvement in hard drugs and his exploitation of young women, including the tragic case of Aloho, show moral rot.
• Abuse of the vulnerable. The innocent are used and discarded, as when Aloho is seduced, exploited and destroyed.

The harvest: consequences reaped

• The metaphor of harvest implies that what is sown must be reaped. After much wrongdoing, justice finally catches up with the offenders.
• Aloho pays with her life for her entanglement in Amaka's corrupt world, while the exposure and prosecution of Amaka and his accomplices show corruption bearing its destructive fruit.
• The eventual triumph of justice, through the efforts of upright characters like Ogeyi and the honest arm of the law, delivers the "harvest" of retribution.

Conclusion. The title is fully justified. The play depicts a society that has cultivated corruption in every institution, and it traces the inevitable harvest of that corruption in ruin, death and eventual punishment. Harvest of Corruption thus warns that a nation which sows corruption will surely reap its bitter consequences.

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Dele Charles's The Blood of a Stranger is set in the traditional African community of Mando Land, and the play reveals much about the culture, beliefs and social organisation of its people. This cultural world is important because the drama turns on the clash between tradition and the disruptive arrival of the outsider.

A community governed by tradition and kingship

• Mando Land is ruled by a king (Kabalah) supported by a council of chiefs and elders, showing a hierarchical, traditional system of authority.
• Respect for the throne, elders and established custom governs the people's conduct.

Strong religious and spiritual beliefs

• The people are deeply religious, worshipping their gods and consulting the oracle and the priest/priestess for guidance on important matters.
• They believe firmly in sacrifice, and the demand for the blood of a "stranger" to appease the gods reflects the centrality of ritual sacrifice in their worldview.

The place of the diviner and priest

• The priest and the oracle wield great influence, interpreting the will of the gods and directing communal decisions.
• Superstition and fear of divine anger shape how the community responds to crisis.

Festivals, customs and communal life

• The play depicts communal gatherings, rituals and festivals that bind the people together and express their shared identity.
• Hospitality toward strangers coexists uneasily with suspicion, and the treatment of the stranger tests the community's values.

Values challenged by greed and change

• The arrival of the outsider (Whitehead) and the lure of wealth expose the vulnerability of traditional culture to corruption and exploitation.
• The demand to shed a stranger's blood shows how tradition can be manipulated for selfish ends, inviting criticism of harmful customs.

Conclusion. The play teaches that Mando Land is a tradition-bound society governed by kingship, elders, gods, oracles and ritual sacrifice. Its culture of reverence, religion and communal solidarity is vividly portrayed, even as the drama exposes how such traditions can be abused, making culture central to the meaning of the play.

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Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun portrays the Youngers, a poor African-American family in Chicago's South Side, as a close-knit family. Despite poverty, cramped living conditions and sharp disagreements, the family is bound together by love, shared struggle and a common dream of a better life.

Living together under one roof

• Three generations, Mama (Lena), her son Walter Lee and his wife Ruth with their son Travis, and her daughter Beneatha, share one small, overcrowded apartment.
• Their close physical proximity, sharing space and even a bathroom down the hall, reflects and reinforces their tight family bond.

Shared dreams and sacrifice

• The family is united by the hope of using the ten thousand dollar insurance cheque to improve their lives, and each dreams for the family's future.
• Mama's dream of a house with a garden is a dream for all of them, and she puts the family's welfare above her own comfort.

Conflict within a loving frame

• They quarrel intensely, Walter over his business dream, Beneatha over her ambitions and beliefs, Ruth over money and her pregnancy, but these conflicts arise within, not against, a fundamental bond of love.
• When Walter loses much of the money to the swindler Willy, the family is angry yet ultimately rallies around him rather than casting him out.

Solidarity in crisis

• Faced with Mr Lindner's racist offer to buy them out of the white neighbourhood of Clybourne Park, the family stands together and refuses to sell their dignity.
• Walter's decision to reject the offer, made in front of Travis and with the family's support, is an act of collective pride that reunites them.

Mama as the unifying centre

• Mama holds the family together through faith, love and moral strength, teaching them to value one another above money.
• Her insistence that they never give up on a family member, even one who has failed, keeps the family whole.

Conclusion. Though the Youngers are poor and often at odds, they remain a genuinely close-knit family. Bound by love, shared dreams, sacrifice and a united stand for their dignity, they emerge from crisis stronger and together, affirming the enduring strength of family solidarity.

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Gabriel Okara's Piano and Drums is built almost entirely on symbolism. The two musical instruments of the title stand for two ways of life between which the African persona is torn.

The drums as symbol

• The drums, heard at daybreak, symbolise Africa's traditional, indigenous heritage. They are described as jungle drums telegraphing the mystic rhythm of the persona's roots.
• They call up images of the primal, the simple and the natural: hunters, leopards, spears, and a mother-lamb world of clear, direct instinct. The drums stand for a life that is raw, urgent and spontaneous.
• Their beat makes the persona's blood ripple and take flight, showing how deeply the ancestral call is felt in the body.

The piano as symbol

• The piano symbolises Western civilisation, culture and refinement. It is complex, learned and, in the poem, a little cold.
• Its music is described as coming in concerto, wailing and misty, full of far-away lands and new horizons. This suggests sophistication but also confusion and distance from the persona's roots.
• Where the drums are direct, the piano is winding and intricate, symbolising a modern life of subtlety, technology and complication.

Symbolism of the persona's position

• Standing between the two sounds, the persona symbolises the modern African caught between tradition and Western culture.
• The daybreak setting symbolises a moment of choice and awakening, while the closing image of being lost in the morning mist of an age at a riverside keep symbolises the persona's confusion and inability to belong wholly to either world.

Conclusion

Through the controlling symbols of the primitive drums and the sophisticated piano, Okara dramatises the cultural conflict of colonialism, leaving the persona, and the reader, aware that the modern African is suspended uneasily between two heritages.

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Gbanabom Hallowell's poem The Dining Table and the war poetry of the WAEC selection give the word ambush a heavy meaning, and where a poem titled Ambush is set, the title itself carries the whole theme of dreams that are cut down before they can be realised.

Meaning of the title

• An ambush is a hidden, sudden attack that strikes when the victim is unprepared and hopeful of safety. The word suggests concealment, betrayal and violence that comes from an unexpected quarter.
• As a title, it prepares the reader to see life, or the nation, or the persona's aspirations, as a traveller who sets out with hope only to be waylaid.

Link to frustrated dreams

• The dreams in the poem are pictured as a journey or an expectation of a better future, whether personal ambition, national progress after independence, or peace after conflict.
• Just as the traveller is halted by the ambush, so the dream is halted by war, corruption, poverty or violence. The hope never reaches its destination; it is struck down midway.
• The suddenness of the ambush mirrors the way in which the persona's expectations collapse without warning. What promised fulfilment turns into disappointment.
• The concealment in an ambush also suggests hidden forces, unjust leaders, betrayal by trusted people, that frustrate the ordinary person's aspirations from behind.

Effect

• By naming the poem Ambush, the poet insists that the destruction of the dream is deliberate and treacherous, not mere bad luck.
• The single, violent image controls the mood of the whole poem, leaving the reader with a sense of aspiration betrayed and potential wasted.

The title therefore is not decoration but the very key to the theme: dreams are the unsuspecting travellers, and the harsh forces of the persona's world are the ambush that lies in wait to frustrate them.

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Wara's Role in the Development of the Plot

Wara is the principal female character in Dele Charley's The Blood of a Stranger. Attractive, skilful as a dancer and Kindo's beloved, she is central to several incidents that complicate and eventually help to resolve the action. Her role links the private love story of Kindo and Wara with the political intrigues, sexual exploitation and abuse of Mando custom in the play.

Wara is introduced early through the cave incident. Kindo tries to drag her into the sacred cave for sexual purposes, but she resists him. Soko nearly discovers them there. Had they been found in the cave, both Kindo and Wara could have been accused of sacrilege. Wara's presence of mind and their escape from immediate exposure prevent the action from reaching a crisis too early; thus, the incident creates suspense and advances the plot.

As Kindo's girlfriend, Wara becomes a vulnerable means through which his enemies can attack him. Although Kindo is protective of her, she is not fully aware of the intrigues at the King's court. Maligu and Soko exploit her relationship with Kindo in their schemes against him. In this way, Wara's position intensifies the conflict between Kindo and those who manipulate the authority and customs of Mando land for selfish ends.

Her importance becomes greater with the arrival of Whitehead. Whitehead lusts after Wara, and Maligu, Parker and Soko abduct her in order to expose her to him. Whitehead attempts to rape her, but Wara courageously fights him off and escapes. This escape delays a direct confrontation between Whitehead and Kindo and makes the eventual denouement more tense. It also reveals Whitehead's moral corruption and the complicity of the local plotters who aid him.

Wara is further made the proposed sacrificial victim. Soko and Maligu choose her because they regard her as a stranger and a virgin, qualities required for the sacrifice. She therefore becomes the intended sacrificial lamb. Her proposed sacrifice exposes the cruelty and hypocrisy of those who invoke tradition, not for the welfare of the community, but to protect their power and satisfy their private interests.

The final resolution is closely connected with Wara. Kindo declares that Wara is not a virgin and reveals that the body on the sacrificial stone is not Wara's but Parker's, whom he has killed. He also kills Whitehead, whose actions have threatened both his relationship with Wara and the integrity of Mando custom. Finally, Wara reveals that she is not a stranger in Mando land. This disclosure destroys the false basis on which her sacrifice has been planned and proves that custom has been deliberately manipulated by Maligu and Soko.

Thus, Wara develops the plot through the cave episode, her abduction and escape from Whitehead, the proposed sacrifice and the revelation of her true identity. Through her, the play exposes lust, betrayal, political intrigue and the exploitation of traditional practices for selfish purposes.

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In She Stoops to Conquer, Tony Lumpkin is the son of Mrs Hardcastle by her first husband, which makes him the stepson of Mr Hardcastle. Goldsmith uses their relationship to contrast the sober values of Hardcastle with the indulgent spoiling of his wife.

Disapproval of Tony's behaviour

• Mr Hardcastle strongly disapproves of Tony's idleness and love of low company. He complains that the boy wastes his time at the alehouse among ostlers and stable-boys instead of improving himself.
• He blames Tony's coarse manners and mischief on Mrs Hardcastle's over-indulgence, believing she has ruined him with pampering.

Restrained tolerance rather than open hatred

• Despite his irritation, Hardcastle does not treat Tony with cruelty. His feeling is one of weary exasperation and disappointment rather than malice.
• He recognises that Tony is naturally sharp and cunning, even if that cunning is misapplied. Hardcastle can therefore laugh, at times, at the boy's roguery.

A guardian's honesty

• Hardcastle acts honourably in the matter of Tony's fortune, intending that the young man should come into his rightful inheritance once he is of age.
• When it is finally revealed that Tony is already of age, information Mrs Hardcastle had concealed, Hardcastle sees to it that Tony is set free to refuse the unwanted match with Constance.

Conclusion

Mr Hardcastle's feelings towards his stepson are a mixture of disapproval, frustration and reluctant tolerance. He deplores Tony's want of education and refinement, yet he bears him no real ill will and deals with him fairly, laying the blame chiefly on his wife's spoiling rather than on the young man alone.

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George Herbert's The Pulley is a metaphysical poem in which God, at creation, pours His blessings on man but deliberately holds one back. The whole meaning of the poem turns on a pun.

The central pun on "rest"

• The key word is rest, and Herbert plays on its double meaning.
• In one sense rest means repose, peace and contentment, the settled ease that would make man perfectly satisfied.
• In the other sense rest means the remainder, that which is left over. God pours out strength, beauty, wisdom, honour and pleasure, and when almost all is gone, the poet says the rest lay in the bottom of the glass.
• The pun binds the two ideas together: the one gift God withholds (repose) is also literally the last thing remaining (the remainder). Withholding "rest" in one sense is withholding "the rest" in the other.

How the pun carries the theme

• God reasons that if man also had rest (contentment), he would adore the gifts instead of the Giver and would rest in Nature, not in the God of Nature.
• So God keeps back rest with repining restlessness. Man's very weariness and dissatisfaction become the pulley that draws him upward to God.
• The pun thus embodies the poem's argument: the absence of one "rest" ensures that man's final "rest" will be found only in God.

Related wordplay

• The title itself works like a small pun-image: a pulley lifts a weight by pulling down on the other side, just as man's restlessness pulls him up to heaven.

Conclusion

The pun on rest is the hinge of the poem. By exploiting the two meanings of a single word, Herbert compresses his whole theology into a witty, memorable paradox, showing man's discontent to be a divine device for salvation.

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In Frank Ogodo Ogbeche's Harvest of Corruption, Ogeyi stands out as a rare figure of virtue in a society riddled with corruption. She serves as a moral contrast to the corrupt characters and helps drive the play toward the exposure of wrongdoing.

A principled and upright young woman

• Ogeyi is honest, morally upright and firm in her values. In a world where nearly everyone can be bought, she refuses to compromise her integrity.
• She embodies the decent conscience of the society, a standard against which the corruption of others is measured.

A loyal and caring friend

• Ogeyi is the close friend of Aloho, and she genuinely cares for her welfare. She warns Aloho against the dangerous, immoral path into which Chief Amaka and his associates lure her.
• Her concern shows compassion and foresight; she sees the ruin ahead when Aloho cannot.

A voice of moral counsel

• She repeatedly counsels honesty and caution, urging Aloho to avoid corrupt shortcuts to success.
• Her advice, though unheeded, underlines the play's moral message about the dangers of greed and easy money.

An agent of justice

• After Aloho's tragic fate, Ogeyi contributes to the effort to expose and bring the corrupt to justice, aligning herself with the honest forces in the play.
• Her courage in standing for the truth helps ensure that the "harvest" of corruption is finally reaped by its perpetrators.

Her thematic significance

• Ogeyi represents hope and the possibility of integrity in a decayed society.
• Her character affirms the playwright's belief that virtue, though embattled, can still resist and help defeat corruption.

Conclusion. Ogeyi is portrayed as an honest, caring and courageous young woman whose integrity contrasts sharply with the surrounding corruption. As a loyal friend, moral guide and ally of justice, she embodies the play's positive values and plays a key part in the eventual triumph of righteousness over corruption.

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In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, the three women of the Younger family, Mama (Lena), Ruth and Beneatha, are drawn as distinct yet complementary figures. Each represents a different generation and outlook of African-American womanhood, and together they reveal the play's concerns with dignity, dreams and identity.

Mama (Lena Younger)

• Mama is portrayed as the strong, dignified matriarch and moral centre of the family. Deeply religious and rooted in traditional values, she holds the household together.
• She is loving but firm, insisting on respect for God, family unity and human dignity. Her dream of a house with a garden is a dream of a better life for all the Youngers.
• She embodies endurance and hope, the legacy of the older generation that survived hardship and racism through faith and sacrifice.

Ruth Younger

• Ruth, Walter's wife, is portrayed as patient, hardworking and long-suffering. Worn down by poverty and a strained marriage, she nonetheless keeps the family functioning.
• Her crisis over an unwanted pregnancy, and her thought of ending it because of their hardship, dramatises the pressures poverty places on women.
• She is practical and devoted, and her joy at the prospect of the new house shows her yearning for a decent, stable home.

Beneatha Younger

• Beneatha, the educated younger daughter, is portrayed as intelligent, ambitious, independent and modern. She dreams of becoming a doctor, a bold aspiration for a Black woman of her time.
• She questions tradition and religion, and her search for identity is expressed through her interest in her African heritage, encouraged by her suitor Asagai.
• Torn between the assimilated George Murchison and the proud African Asagai, she represents the new generation seeking self-definition and cultural roots.

Contrast and significance

• The three women span old faith and endurance (Mama), weary present-day struggle (Ruth) and forward-looking ambition (Beneatha).
• Together they show the strength, resilience and evolving aspirations of Black women, and they are central to the family's survival and dignity.

Conclusion. Hansberry portrays Mama as the dignified, faith-filled matriarch, Ruth as the patient, hardworking wife, and Beneatha as the ambitious, questioning modern woman. Their differing yet complementary portrayals enrich the play and highlight its themes of dreams, dignity and identity.