Artistry and Social Consciousness in Cyprian Ekwensi's Novels and Stories

Starting from his thrilling and exciting plots, it is obvious that most Cyprian Ekwensi revolves usually very good and interesting stories. But his plots are often so episodic organic unity to lose. In People of the City , the plot is loose and episodic. The looseness at the end of the various sub-plots make the novel read like a chronicle of events in the life of the people. However, the placement of the same characters in all of these events keeps them together. The action is also in episodic Jagua Nana with about three sites not permanently connected and justified in the wider context of the novel. One of them is the Jagua brings to Freddie's home. The other three novels are, however, spared this problem, because it would improve property control.

Some incidents in the works not from real and convincing. All too often, there are frequent recourse to melodramatics. These are most evident in the many dramatic events with Amusa Sango and Jagua Nana, murders, suicides and fights, as well as the numerous sexual orgies with the same characters. Fortunately Survive the peace seems to have been spared much that.

In addition, many characters are not coming from real and convincing. The women Amusa Sango meets with people in the city are mostly stable as well. Also, the main character himself, Sango, as shallow and stereotyped .. Much of what we know is it by the authors comment rather than showing what it through his words, thoughts and actions. Freddie's representation in Jagua Nana is a shadowy existence. Many of his actions seem rather unlikely. It is unlikely, as an honest and idealistic young man suddenly transformed to a self-serving political aspirant and lusty simply because he just returned from studying overseas.

Other characters like Namme uncle, uncle Ofubara, and Dennis are almost as Odoma Good as pawns. Uncle Taiwo's funny presentation makes it more of a caricature than a fully developed character. He is just as a ball of the introduction of the political aspects of life Lagos. Seldom has Ekwensi enable the reader to follow the process that his figures. Neither is his use of diction successful in distinguishing the various characters, whose speech remains unchangeable, despite the different situations and circumstances in which they are located. Freddie's superior education is not in a position to talk to him differently than his mistress uneducated prostitutes, Jagua. Ekwensi the characters, even if the events in the cultural importance, showing only a superficial perception, learning little or nothing at all about themselves and their quests.

There is not much Ekwensi striking in the use of language. One is its use of the English language is usually uncertain and shows little mastery of the rules and current uses. Unlike Achebe, he has not developed an authentic African voice. His language seems largely imitative, the fourth sentence Western. Because he seems to be just pandering to the tastes and expectations of the book-buying public to the west of it expects that certain literary forms and conventions. His writing style had therefore influenced by them. Because, as he himself said that he was writing for a mass appeal so much that in an interview with Larson he prosperity of the future he would have been if he were swimming in writing in the above America.

Despite, hundreds of thousands of readers both in the West and in Nigeria, have found entertainment and a realistic picture of the joys and dangers of city life and his writings. But his work could be redeemed by its grave concern with some of the most pressing social and political problems of modern Nigeria threaten? How well does he deal with the social and political concerns of Nigeria and Africa? It may also be necessary to examine how he deals with the "chaotic formlessness and sustained flow of the modern Nigerian city."

In response to the interviewer, who asked him basically what inspired him as an artist. He. Said:

you can social consciousness. You have to be conscious of the people with whom you live under, their likes and dislikes, and you respect them and their culture still extract and so on.

Ekwensi works are in the rural as well as urban centers. This bipolar environments allow him to show the ugliness of the city and monstrosity next to the idyllic and unspoiled beauty of rural life. In the rural area values such as honesty, industry and respect for the elders, ancestors and gods are in high esteem. But in the cold, foreign, strange and barren wasteland, is the city that people are dishonest, corrupt politicians and neighbors are in hostilities. It is like a hostile world, that the emigrants from the rural areas are thrust as prey. In contrast to the beauty and innocence of the country, where they are daily confronted wretched filth, decay, hopelessness and prevarication. " This despite the superficial gloss they could see, in the city of their hopes for self-realization are beset with erdreckender setbacks for the city has a huge influence, a magnetic force, which from a distance just swings his excitement, happiness and transient Glitter, Lockt People either destruction or downfall.

Ekwensi was gifted as a writer with an acute power of observation. With his talent for catapulted itself deep into each scenario or environment, he observes the people not only tight, but translated mannerisms and its manifestations in many of his characters. Created largely by his first-hand knowledge and interactions with Nigerians, and a sharp intellect and science - is primarily a pharmacist characteristic that an orderly manifested itself in his works.

Cyprian Ekwensi has a fruitful edition of the popular novels and stories repeatedly to the Nigerian capital Lagos show the negative impact of the urban milieu to migrants from rural areas, portrays the lives of prostitutes, shady politicians, businessmen, police officers, journalists, thieves and others who witnessed the seamier side of life, as As it is a good representation of erotic love in a society in which arranged marriages are mostly plots and fiction avoids dealing with love and marriage.

In People of the City Sango and almost everyone with whom he interacts, as a pressure suffer. The city is moving to a central motif, and then graduates almost as a character, controlling, definition, the organization and often destroy other people's lives. It is like a trap to help devour the unwary is proposed, as in the first sentence: "As the city attracts all types and how the unwary must suffer from the ignorance of its ways." The police warning after Aina arrest: "... Who's not careful, the city will eat him" captures the incipient danger. Moreover, the constant warning voice of his mother, the women of the city.

Beatrice is the prime contractor victims. Although it appears that the most vulnerable. It shows already on our first acquaintance with her, the unrest and the desire for excitement, activity and freedom in general those who determined the motive, the city of the victims, but it is also showing signs of deterioration and disintegration - they already The suffering deadly disease, which is eventually to their demand life.

Beatrice is so trapped in his clutch, that in the end they could not respond positively to salvation for themselves in order to earn at the end of a humiliating welfare recipient's young funeral.

The Girls, Aina, if led to court, stood against a city determined to show them no mercy "if the first location, warm feelings shows will inevitably caused by the city into a hardened thief callousness and racketeers." Earn up a tough prison sentence.

Dazed by the illusory glitter, they all renounce the money, fame and influence to win. Lost in such a hysteria of life, they follow their basest inclinations with total abandon. Sango at the end, but can not with the examination of others.

Jagua, like all other oppressed women "who came to Lagos, imprisoned, in the city, unable to rid itself of its claws" come to listen to the taunts and threatening attitude of the people in their Ogabu kept blaming, it is not productive, even after three years of marriage. The Lagos it is going to is found to appreciate values diametrically opposed to her village. There "glass were girls, worked in the offices as men, danced, smoked, wore high-heeled shoes and narrow trousers, and were free and easy with their favor." There is no one in judgement over another for non-performance to meet any responsibility. In fact, Jagua feels relieved, because they can not access their account is not for the performance of their duty as a woman and as a wife has been the case back home. It therefore falls into the open arms, but pernicious of the city. They move from a situation of desperation to another with little if any self-satisfaction. At the Tropicana, a popular place for the night Lagosians, it has different types of men with the make-believe glamour of this degenerate world, it is dark lighting makes her look even more beautiful and seductive than usual.

All the women wore dresses, the Definitely after Grae so that Gesa grotesque and breasts jutted above the general contours of her body. At the same time, midriffs shrunk to suffocation. A dress succeeded, the men when they flirt hungry eyes in this super-modern sex market. The dancers occupied a small word, unlit, so that they are silhouetted faces and bodies, without the most un-athletic men could be considered an attempt to make the improvisation-called high-life.

The their full effect of corruption through the city is fully realized when the villagers Ogabu ridicule of their values and their standards:

The women have their eyes firmly on the painted eyebrows and a child cried in Ibo "Mama! your lips with blood ... heard a Jagua other women say, "It is the end, as if the drop-off. I can not understand what the girls become

Jagua devotion to the excesses of urban life only leads to their drifting away from true self-knowledge. She flees into life as short, intense, desperate, without the use of the social conventions. But realizing that the Tropicana was a mere illusion, they must renounce quickly to achieve a new life, the big change in her life.

Jagua begins again Ogabu "with new settings and will be rewarded with the performance they had yearning for all your life. your pregnancy satisfy this yearning. And for this, Jagua's joy is boundless. "Quite clearly the law has led to their concept that takes place in the landscape" a cottage at the lake, just a stone's throw from the shrine. " It is thus seen reunification of the country, their roots, which they had so long denied and fled from.

Poverty and misery are both a cause and an effect of the problems of the city. Only a brief glance at the house of Aina mother says as much:

It had looked bleak enough in the sun, but now the darkness, there was a new level of poverty musty. The only light was from a street lamp about fifty meters away when the two houses flanked it fairly shone with their own lights

Predictably the internal conditions are worse off:

He could not see his way in the future. With outstretched hands, he fumbled on what a door. His hand against something and he appeared trapped under ... Then he realized that the entire floor was covered with sleeping body. He was covered with sleeping body. He was in a kind of less open-bed dormitory. Everyone, but the old woman slept on the floor. Old, young, lovers, enemies, fathers, mothers, they all shared this hall. From early childhood Aina had heard discussions about sex, seen bitter quarrels, heard, seen and perhaps even adults shamelessly their naked passions like animals.

Buraimoh Ajikatu is a representative of the underdogs in the economic stranglehold of the city. It is an irony that in the middle of such wealth as to be expected in such transactions a clerk in a large department store hardly enough for himself, his wife and four children. He also found it incomprehensible. He proposes, therefore, to the city as the "enemy, the increase of prices of their goods without his pay, or even if the pay raises prices as soon raced before deterioration of the situation much more than before. His situation is only can be found, if he stepping into a secret society. Then he receives a salary increase and promotion overdue much promise, with a further important within a month. He now realizes why all that he would have been under oppression, the only non - member. And then:

One night fell the blow .... She asked him, in fact a question of the way to give them their first son was born. He protested, asked for an alternative sacrifice, and if they would not listen threatened to leave the company. But they told him that he could not leave. It was a way, but no one - unless by death. He was frightened, but inexorably.

He said that none of his misery, and it was gone when he was at home. Now that the good things in life he had, he would not say, go back and his wife. learned all this Sango , and much more. for him had great significance. with the discovery of this veil, he had discovered where all the depressed people of the city went for the food. you literally sold their souls to the devil

In Jagua Nana we get more insight into the lower reaches of Lagos life with very bloody details of the dirt and pain:

A young woman in the corner of the room seemed to be smelly, a statement which was Freddie interrupted. started bawling you swear words to the young police constable, "Ignore them and kept on writing ever ... other policemen were in some lecherous satisfaction of the young woman's behaviour. defiant They had a twinkle in their eyes, her breath smelled of alcohol and her blouse - an arm of which was in the scrum Some - slouched over a bare chest with a little dare-devil, not abandon, but funny. you seemed on their way to be, power of their femininity on the men in khaki uniforms. Freddie stared at the ragged woman who confronted him with the eternal struggle to live, so tragic in the lower reaches of Lagos life.

Ekwensi vividly describes the misery and dirt:

They stored away the food, then took her towel and went to the toilet, but if they beat a man, she replied from inside, and instead they went to the toilet. old buckets piled high on the floor and made so that they nothing could see their silver sandals. Everything has been done by the broken children upstairs. Why blame if their mothers do not know any better. Where was the landlord? Where was the City Hall Health Inspector? The Inspector was to come here again in a while, and when he came, he notes in his black book, but nothing ever happened. would you talk with him seriously the next time. unpleasant side of life Lagos: The flies in the toilet - big and blue and persistent - to the breakfast and lunch-yam stew (they were invisible in a stew with greens). Jagua But closed eyes closed and their nostrils with her towel.

Ekwensi works also show youth crime. Beatrice is said that whoever , it promotes in the city. for Bayo shows how they introduced Suad Zamil to him, and we were in love. . . . Of course, we used to in her room, and she was kind to us. "The insidious influence of the city on the young is also by the teenage prostitutes mature Aina, which represents the" mad-age "and the mid-teenagers whose eyes are full of enthusiasm with the life Aina backups in all its evils of the wild Living in the city, it contributes most to Sango's depravity. your greed and dishonesty manifests itself mainly in their preference for shop-lifting it transfers to Sango and uses it in many exploitative and destructive ways with which it was his money and between him and the good influences as Elina.

Through Aina Beatrice and we have a clear idea of prostitution. Beatrice, in the sensual novel came from the eastern Greens, the city of coal. was moved into the city, as they themselves said, by the need for the high life expectancy, which includes their cars, servants, high-quality food, decent clothes, luxurious living all that they can only win when they realized by himself to someone who could. once in the city it is in the middle of their ways and are engaged in the promotion. yourself boasts ebermaigen their sexual appetite as "Hot stuff, that the Europeans are crazy." Gunnings But then, with which the European She has three children was not enough to satisfy them. you leave it then for Sango. Flirtet them indiscriminately with Lajide and Zamil, and their housing can later be used as a nest for young lovers like Bayo and Suad Zamil.

There is also the Kleglichen case Dupeh Mattin was born and bred in the city with only primary education, and perhaps the first few years of secondary education, but still to know about all Western sophistication - Make-up, cinema, jazz, and so on.

This kind Sango girls knew would To walk their shoes thin in the air-conditioned atmosphere of the stores, hangs over the whole day in the foyer of the hotel with not a penny in her handbag, rather than living in the country to marry and Dad's choice.

In Jagua Nana , prostitutes as victims are generally drifting with the city itself. young prostitutes go to the Tropicana daily expected that something could happen to put an end to their poverty and hunger. Lagos, therefore, is where many others are virtually strangers in a city where anyone can come to quick money faster. his bright lights, the sounds, asphyxiation, in which time their friends. Tropicana in time for it "a potent, habit-forming brew , "gives it a constant stock of tension and happiness and popularity, and the money, if competition inevitably develops between her and her colleagues in their offer to attract and capture customers.

Ekwensi on crime and shady deals. Sango ' servants therefore warns that Bayo which we already know is in the underworld of crime is a bad boy which is also his master has to be careful, so that he draws you into trouble. Sango But apparently ignored the advice, and to figures the consequences very expensive. Sangro room becomes a venue for the execution of the plans Bayo's risky. So at the end of the CID searched the apartment and whisked him off.

Jagua 's drift into crime, it also allows us to our knowledge about improving the world in Jagua Nana. Obanla's ugliness is veiled by the offices of renowned lawyers, engineers and business people in respectable cloak. Dennis's Odama everything is so dark and mysterious that Jagua had some time to spend before they could habit their eyes to its darkness. All his people the time to wait for the night and keep always on the alert for the police siren, to be heard, they would rise quickly in their hiding places. For Dennis, crime has become the only way to earn a living in a cruel city. When he was discharged, if the possibility exists, as a clerk:

... I have been trying to find a job. The wonder, for money to bribe. Give me a man ten pounds, and he money and hack de fin he does not work for me. What should I do?. I mus' hoes. Myself and de taxi man who die, we make some kin hundred pounds from Saturday. Eventually, we do not see Anythin '. But we live happy .... We look never money in de face, a 'say' dis is too much money. "We jus' spen 'to anythin' we want. Anythin." So why I fear? De dat de policeman day we start, we go. Are all the same, in which we live, whedder cell or outside the cell en.

Ekwensi his company also confronted with the social injustices and immoralities. This includes housing problems in the alliance with the high-handedness and almost inhuman attitude of the landlords and the fraudulent means by which the rich keep enriching itself at the expense of the poor. Thrown example, if the tenant from their homes to become rich meat, as was the case for Sango, for the ruthless exploiters: Representatives of the housing industry, the pimps and liars accept under false pretenses.

Zamil money, the Lebanese, a carefree, rich financier who keeps his money tossing bait at attractive women is one of the so-called foreign investors, which in African cities with promises of industrialisation, but only succeed in the small African edges dealers out of business. They might even promote further misery by a composite whole and for the payment of rent for five years in advance, while ten Africans would squeeze into a smelly, dirty, and slummy room.

Lajide, a local landlord foreigners preferred, because they willing and able to offer him "five thousand pound cash ... for a lease period of five years." He is a donor careless when in the company of beautiful women, but often too stingy and cruel men. He has no scruples when it comes to acquiring more money. He buys stolen military vehicles on Ermaigten rates and then sells them later with a high profit section, which he then used to influence the law in its favor. Because of its callousness to the less fortunate, Sango regards him as his "a major obstacle in the city."

In Survive the peace Ekwensi moves on to examine the social impact of the Nigerian civil war was fought to prevent the attempt to Ibo breakaway from the federation to form the Republic of Biafra in 1967 to 1968. With the end Des war was the destruction of such a dimension that it is almost unbelievable that the war had ended. Families, tribes and cultures have all disintegrated. Deaths have been so widespread that grief is useless. Wives get drummed into so that they could fornication 'T redeemed, while their husbands conjugal duties withdraw so that a general breakdown of the family life.

The efforts to the peace to survive, graer as needed to to survive the war. Essential commodities are either rare or unaffordable prices. A chicken, the cost fifteen shillings before was now twenty pounds. Life here is marked by suffering. While some are starving to death, others fear, hold the potential attack from roving bands of armed bandits who loot and kill. It is ironic that in the middle of the many peace keeping and girls are dying raped.

The war has not changed anything for it is stupid and pointless, as the product of power-cursed seekers, to protect itself, while others Send to be killed. Because after Ukoha Pa.:

If some black men begin to greedy. They eat and fill the stomach and the stomach by their brothers. That is not enough for them. Continue until their throats are filled. And that is not enough. They have foods in the stomach and in their throats and they do full on the mouth and then proceed to fill the bags. But no one else outside the family or the tribe must participate in these foods. But everyone should have a share in the food industry. That is what brings the problems in Africa. So, I want the rule - so my shares. They want to rule, you have your shares. Then we begin to kill ourselves. God forbid.

Ekwensi, despite the above-mentioned shortcomings has much to the development of African literature because of the wide body of works that make life in the city so much more alive memories alive with the setting together with local color ..

References

Beier Ulli ed. Introduction to African Literature (1967);

Breitinger, Eckhard, "literature for younger readers and Multicultural Education in Contexts," in language and literature in Multicultural Contexts , Edited by Satendra Nandan , Uinveristy of South Pacific, 1983.

, Volume 117: Caribbean and Black African Writers , Gale, 1992. Dictionary of Literary Biography

Dathorne OR The Black Mind: A History of African Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1974.

Emenyonu, Ernest, Cyprian Ekwensi . Evans Brothers, 1974.

Emenyonu, Ernest, editor. The Essential Ekwensi . Heinemann Educational Books, 1987.

Larson, Charles R., The Emergence of African fiction . Indiana University Press, 1971

Larson, Charles R. The Ordeal of the African Writer. London: Zed Books, 2001.

Laurence,. Margaret Long Drums and Cannons: Nigerian Dramatists and Novelists, 1952-1966 (1968) .

Lindfors, Bernth, 'Nigerian Satirist "ALT5

Palmer, Eustace. The growth of the African novel. study in African literature. London, Heinemann, 1979.

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