2024 WAEC GCE FIRST SERIES (JANUARY) LITERATURE: 2024 WAEC GCE First Series LITERATURE IN ENGLISH 3 (Drama & Poetry) ANSWERS (4586)

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women are presented  through derogatory words and phrases which are connoting negativity and their sexual availability. Women characters in the plays are portrayed as sex objects for men as their bodies are reduced to different parts like hair, body size and breasts and this was not a case for the male characters as they were described and presented in terms of their appearances. 

Women are presented as pawns in the play, The Lion and the Jewel. Although, the female characters themselves are depicted as opinionated, manipulative, independent, and outspoken, their lives are, none-the-less, dictated by men. 

Wole Soyinka presents women in the play The Lion and the Jewel as being caught up in the battle between tradition and modernity. There’s no sense in which women, in the shape of Sidi, get to decide how they should live their lives. This is because they are denied independence by both of these opposing worldviews. 

In The Lion and the Jewel, women are considered the second sex, inherently meant for serving men. Unlike other men in his society, Lakunle seeks a woman to be his life partner, and not because of her abilities to cook, clean, and fetch water. Sidi is firmly rooted in tradition and asserts that any marriage is possible provided the dowry is paid. She rejects Lakunle’s advances even though he is well-educated and civilized. Wole Soyinka, through the character of Sidi, portrays women 'copied from e x a m p l a z a . c o m free' as ignorant and old-fashioned.

Lakunle: Ignorant girl, can you not understand?

To pay the price would be

To buy a heifer off the market stall.

Women are also portrayed as submissive and lesser beings in society who are not supposed to make decisions. Lakunle is planning to “civilize” Sidi by marrying her, without considering her desires and feelings. Lakunle’s remark to Sidi, “as a woman, you have a smaller brain than mine

The title gives a strong hint about how women are portrayed throughout the play: the "jewel" in question is the beautiful woman Sidi, who is reduced to a coveted object that two men in particular want to possess. These men are the elderly Baroka, the "lion," and the young, western-educated school teacher Lakunle.

Throughout the play women are treated as objects and as subordinate to men. Lakunle, for instance, assumes the unquestioning right early in the play to tell Sidi she should not show so much cleavage or carry a pail on her head. He also asserts dominance by informing her that she has a smaller brain that of a man. After that less than endearing beginning, he tells her he loves her.

Later, during a village performance, the women assume the parts of the wheels of the car, while Lakunle is the driver, again illustrating the subordinate position of women in this society.

Women's status as possessions is shown most clearly in the behavior of 'copied from e x a m p l a z a . c o m free' Baroka, the lion, who has collected a multitude of wives the way one might collect china. We see him telling one of his wives, who is plucking out his armpit hairs, that he plans to take yet another wife but will allow her to be the only one who gets to pluck his armpit hairs. This comment is half teasing and half manipulative (Baroka wants her to pull harder), but it also illustrates the way women are owned and subordinated in this society.

Women like Sidi do show verve, strength, and agency, but in the end fall in line with traditional cultural values. Sidi, for example, thinks it is shameful that Laklune does not want to pay the bride price Wole Soyinka presents women as unintelligent individuals who are admired for their physical beauty and seek independence throughout the play The Lion and the Jewel. Women are also depicted as possessions, which is evident in the payment of the bride-price. Sidi is portrayed as a beautiful girl who becomes conceited after her image is published in a popular magazine. Sidi's confident attitude changes her perspective on life, and she wishes to be revered throughout her village. She foolishly attempts to mock Baroka, but is wooed into sleeping with the Bale after he shows her a machine that produces stamps. Sadiku is also portrayed as foolish because she believes Baroka and spreads the false rumor that he is impotent. Baroka uses Sadiku as a pawn in his plan to marry Sidi. Sadiku also celebrates and recounts how she 'copied from e x a m p l a z a . c o m free' "scotched" Okiki, Baroka's father. Both Sidi and Sadiku are portrayed as unintelligent females who are at the mercy of men and viewed as possessions throughout the play.

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Lakunle is a village school teacher in Ilujinle Village. He is said to be in his early twenties, adjudged more precisely to be “nearly twenty-three”. He makes passes at Sidi and claims to love her and wants to marry her.

He is an archetype of confused educated Africans who embrace European values at the peril of their cultural heritage and antecedents.

Lakunle is clearly a hypocritical character and somehow difficult to understand. He is the type of individual one may say has double mouths. He says or does something now and the next minute, he says or does the contrary.

This is exemplified in his refusal to pay Sidi’s bride price while claiming that Sidi is meant to be his equal, not a subordinate or an inferior in the affair of marriage. By this, he advocates for gender equality. It is however surprising that this same Lakunle would say women have smaller brains than men, implying that women are inferior to men – a brazen contradiction of his previous stance about gender equality.

Lakunle also believes that African values are barbaric, outdated, archaic and degrading but this doesn’t stop him from joining the traditional dance initiated by Sadiku and others when a lady threw her buttocks at him provocatively.

Undoubtedly, Lakunle is just a pretentious character who thinks he is above everyone else because of his foretaste of the European civilization but who in actual fact lacks the wisdom and understanding to harmonise 'copied from e x a m p l a z a . c o m free' both Western values and African values and put the end result into a good use.

Sidi’s appraisal of Lakunle in comparison with Baroka establishes that Lakunle is weak, lacks in physical strength and wit, and, passes for what Sidi calls “book-nourished shrimp”.

His comic nature is unveiled through his use of verbose words which tenders to confuse the people and even himself. 

His dressing in the play also depicts his comic nature in the play as it makes the readers to understand his way of life and true identity as a school teacher. 

Also, his comic nature is brought into light in the coming of a stranger to the village and the origin of the glossy magazines, where  Lakunle plays the improvised role of the stranger during the mime.

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In the play, Helena's betrayal of Alison unveils her hypercritic nature and forms a major part to the development of the plot and characters of the play. Helena, who has been Alison's best friend, visits at the Porter's residence only to give herself a temporary residence for the job interview she had to attend. While at the Porter's, she makes a show of defending her best friend from her oppressive husband and even threatens to slap Jimmy. Eventually, she phones Alison's father and makes her father come down to pick her up without consulting Alison herself. What will later be revealed as her intention, however, is to snatch her friend's lover. She later confesses to Alison that she has fallen in love with Jimmy for some time earlier, and that can be seen as her genuine reason for visiting the Porter's and not any job interview as she has claimed.

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Jimmy Bulling His Wife

      When the play first opens we are introduced to the occupants of a flat, Jimmy Porter, his wife and Cliff a friend of Jimmy. In the very opening scene, we get an idea about Jimmy’s angry temperament. He is a dissatisfied man who keeps complaining about everything. He reads the newspaper, complains that the book reviews are all same. He criticizes the Sunday paper saying that it makes the reader ignorant. He criticizes his wife saying that whenever he tries to talk to her she goes to sleep. When Cliff tries to prevent him saying his attacks makes it difficult for Alison to think, Jimmy mockingly says that Alison has not had a thought in her head for years. The constant nagging and bullying on the part of Jimmy the husband indicated a communication gap, a lack of compatibility between the couple.

Furthermore, Jimmy’s Contempt for Alison’s Family. 

      From Jimmy’s speech condemning Alison’s parents, her brother we can get a fair idea about his disgust, his hatred for his wife’s family. In a rhetorical speech he condemns Alison’s mother. He calls her an old bitch and venomously wishes her death. His anger against his mother-in-law is the result of her opposition and vehement attempt to stop his and Alison’s marriage. He calls all her relatives militants like her parents, arrogant, and malicious, or vague. His contempt for Alison’s family members has its roots in the 'copied from e x a m p l a z a . c o m free' disparity between his low working-class background and his wife’s upper-class background. Denied a suitable job in spite of his university education and superior intellectual accomplishments, he has come to feel that is because of his humble background that the upper class has prevented from making full use of his academic attainments. He bullies his wife, treats her like a hostess and tries to get back to the upper-class people against whom he was waging a battle. Alison’s statement in Act II Sc. II to her father that Jimmy had married her to take revenge on the upper class is not without truth. He seems to take pleasure in bullying his wife and constantly provokes her to retaliate. He is offended by the silent posture that Alison had adopted as a defense tactic.

Moreso, Jimmy's inability to get along with the wife (anyone). 

In the play,the playwright Osborne has analyzed a perverse marriage very accurately. Jimmy Porter’s problem is not the vicious injustice and hypocrisy of the social order; it is his suppressed awareness of the insoluble psychological paradox caused by his desperate, over-riding need to possess a woman’s complete unquestioning love and his simultaneous constitutional inability to get along with anyone. His bitter outbursts are the result of his wife’s failure to rise to the standard of devotion that he expects from her though he is aware of the fact that complete devotion is impossible. His biting sarcasm is in a way 'copied from e x a m p l a z a . c o m free' directed against himself in the manner of a guilt-ridden hero, who tortures others by torturing himself. He needs absolute devotion from his wife, but too proud to ask for it he demands complete allegiance from his wife who comes from the upper class against whom he wages a battle as a socialist. He wanted Alison to completely alienate herself from her background and submit herself totally to the working class customs and ideals of her husband. Her inability to adapt herself to Jimmy’s culture and her links with her family infuriates him. His dilemma is perfectly presented in Alison’s description of his reaction to her virginity: he taunted Alison with virginity and was quite angry about it, “he seemed to think an untouched woman would defile him.” Being a virgin, she is pulling him down into an observance of social convention. She is as per her middle-class expectation. Jimmy is not pleased as it is a middle-class convention. Alison rightly tells Helena that what Jimmy really wants is "something quite different from us. What it is exactly I don’t know—a kind of cross between a mother and a Greek courtesan, a hench woman, a mixture of Cleopatra and Boswell”. Jimmy’s tragedy is that he will never find this ideal and he knows it quite well. He spends the rest of his life bathed in self-pity, ranting impolitely about the misfortunes he himself has created.

Troy Maxson manages to betray just about everyone in his life: his son, his wife, his brother, and his best friend. Pretty much every character in the play is betrayed by Troy in some way. 

Troy had an affair with Rose with another woman named Alberta who is pregnant with Troy’s baby. Troy’s friend, Bono, said “Some people build fences to keep people out… and other people build fences to keep people in. Rose wants to hold on to you all. She loves you” (2.1). Bono says this because he wants Troy to realize that he has a good woman who loves him and he should not hurt her. Troy knows that he has to tell Rose what is going on so he says “I don’t know how to say this….. I can’t explain it none. It just sort of grows on you till it gets out of hand. It starts out like a little bush…and the next thing you know it’s a whole forest” (2.1). This is Troy’s way of trying to explain to Rose what he has done, but he does not really know how to fully come out and say it. Rose was confused by what Troy was saying and in response he says “I’m talking, woman, let me talk. I’m trying to find a way to tell you… I’m going to be a daddy. I’m going to be somebody’s daddy” (2.1). After beating around the bush Troy finally came out and told Rose that he was expecting another child with another woman. In response to what Troy said , Rose says “I took all my feelings, my wants and needs, my dreams...and I buried them 'copied from e x a m p l a z a . c o m free' inside you. I planted a seed and waited and prayed over it” 

Gabriel has a mental disability due to an injury that happened during the Vietnam War. Rose believes that Gabriel should be put back in the hospital so he can be taken care of, but Troy says “Don’t nobody wanna be locked up, Rose. What you wanna lock him up for? Man go over there and fight the war…..messin’ around with them Japs, get half his head blown off...and they give him a lousy three thousand dollars. And I had to swoop down on that” (1.2). In other words Troy does not want Gabriel to be locked up in the mental hospital because Gabriel has gone through a lot and Troy still wants to use Gabriel’s checks that he gets from the war to keep his house.

No 9

Unarguably, no continent has gone through the many rough and hard periods as Africa. Africa has been through a lot of many destructive periods and the aftermath of these periods are still visible till this day. Going through the history of Africa, one can vividly understand why Africa is in the sorrowful state it is now. The poem talks about slavery which took away many of African's resources. Even during the colonial era, Africans were rendered useless in their own lands. This was the sole reason for the poet's choice of "grieved" as the word to describe Africa. 

the poem dwells very much on slavery of Africans (both ancient and modern). There was a time when Africans were sold into slavery. Many Africans were forcibly taken away from their lands and transported by sea to European countries. The voyage from Africa to Europe was a very painful one for Africans. There were packed below the deck in uniminable unhealthy positions. To keep them active, they were made to dance to entertain the slave masters. The women were abused and raped, and when any of the slaves showed a sign of disease, they were thrown overboard to avoid others contacting the disease. Defiant slaves were also thrown overboard with their hands tied. The European masters treated them as cargo. This wasn't the only form of slavery however, as we are introduced to the "tearful woes of ancient and modern slave" in line two. The poet talks of the colonial times during which Africans were 'copied from e x a m p l a z a . c o m free' treated as slaves even in their own countries. It was against this backdrop that Neto wrote the poem to express his concern on the grieve of Africa and make a case that there is still hope amidst all these grieve in African land

 simile is indirect comparison through the use of such words like "like", "as", "as if" "as though", amongst others. The poet uses this device in order to accentuate his employment of imageries all the more in the following instances: "And serrated wings against the sky/Like a g

glove" (lines 22-23), "wings like bits of umbrella" (line 36), "creatures that hang themselves up like an old rag, to sleep" (line 38).

He describes the wings of the bird as "serrated". This depicts the birds are looking rough. He also describes the skin as "black glove" . Against that time of the day, this depicts the odd way the birds look. After all these graphical description, the persona soon realises that the birds are bats, and not swallows. His shock and distaste for bats can be silently read. The italicized way the bat is written shows the shock of the persona. He further acclaims his knowledge of the swallows by saying the swallows were long gone at that time of the day. In the instant, claims the persona, the bats replace swallows. He compares this to military ceremonies, especially the ceremony at Buckingham palace where new sentries take over from old sentries. 

The use of simile in line 38 is Just like a verbal speech, the persona resonates the name of the bird once more: Bats! The emphasis on this line points more to his disgust for the birds and paves way for the next lines.