Second Class Citizen Literary Elements

Fiction

Nigeria post-independence; United Kingdom in the 1960s

Third-person narrative

Tone: earnest, straightforward, passionate, anxious, tense

Mood: hopeful, stressed, determined, dreary

Protagonist: Adah; Antagonist: Francis, Trudy

Will Adah make it in London? Will she become a librarian? Will she come to terms with her marriage or end it? Will she be a "second-class citizen" or elevate herself?

Francis publicly shames Adah for getting the cap, leading her to decide the marriage is over.

Adah and Francis's wedding being a "hilarious" affair and having issues with the rings foreshadows the later turmoil in their union (24).

"The child is sitting there pretty. It did not come out as you made me believe it was going to" (154) is an understatement for Adah's abortion pills not working.

1. Rip van Winkle (16).
2. Numerous allusions to the Bible, including Adah's reference to Jesus saying not to steal (21), the sower of seeds (80), the eye of a needle (47), and Lot's wife at Sodom and Gomorrah (104).
3. Calling their children Kennedy and Jacqueline is a reference to JFK and his wife, the American President and First Lady (25).
4. "Alice, in Lewis Carroll's fantasy, weeping away like mad" (31) is a reference to the novel "Alice in Wonderland."
5. Christian in Pilgrim's Progress is a reference to the main character in the allegorical novel by John Bunyan (55).
6. "just like Caesar dismissed his wife's dream about the Ides of March" (55) is a reference to the betrayal and murder of Caesar that took place in ancient Rome on March 15th.
7. The Shakespearean quote of "Cowards die many times before their deaths" is from "Julius Caesar" (128).

The imagery of the text primarily centers on weather and lodging, done in order to reflect Adah's mindset and condition of life (i.e., the gloominess of London is mirrored in her anxiety and sadness) or connote the social/racial divide that exists (i.e., Pa Noble's small, derelict house amidst nicer homes owned by whites).

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"The fatter your purse, the more intensive your treatment" (60).

1."The wildness in her eyes had a way of betraying her" (21).
2. "Pa, I'm in the United Kingdom, her heart sung to her dead father" (35).
3. "The hunger that held the two sides of one's stomach and squeezed them so tightly that the owner of the stomach would whine and rumble in its agony" (57).
4. "These thoughts chased each other through her mind" (61).
5. "The world would not see her now, the world would not know whether she had a hospital dress or her own dress" (119).
6. "her mind was crying for someone to listen to her" (157).
7. "Adah waited for the Law to come for her, but the Law did not" (161).