Log in with Facebook Log in with Google. Remember me on this computer. Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. Need an account? Click here to sign up. Download Free PDF. A short summary of this paper. Download Download PDF. Translate PDF. The preponderant penury has been decried; the cruelty of infidelity and immorality has been denounced as well as the dehumanizing oppression of the poor by the rich. The study concludes with a call on the government and well-meaning members of society to stand and overcome these three maladies.
Keywords: Poverty, Infidelity, Oppression, Violence 1. As a protest writer, Iyayi takes a philosophical look at the neo-colonial set- up in Nigeria and declares Violence as its guiding principle. Idemudia unavoidably drops out of school and goes to the city in search of a job which he never finds. Idemudia actually represents a million unemployed able-bodied, homeless and hungry in a land of abundance as shown in hotels and beautiful edifices scattered everywhere and the dustbins of some filling to overflowing with remnant of delicious food.
Due to the difficulty of getting jobs, men sell their blood in order to feed their families; and women resort to infidelity to save their dying husbands. The hospitals are filled with heartless nurses. Other social infrastructures like roads, electricity, etc are also nothing to write home about. In the midst of these hopeless conditions, is the glaring opulence of a few like the Obofuns who go about in ostentatious and prestigious cars, own a lot of houses, factories, hotels and concubines that are all acquired with public money through contract inflation and non-performance or outright embezzlement.
The perpetrator is the society, the type of economic-cum- political system which is operated in the country that brutalizes the individual and rapes his manhood. And when such men of poor and limited opportunity react, they are only in a certain measure answering violence. The dominant structural element in Violence therefore, is the opposition of the oppressors and the oppressed.
The questions that readily come to mind are, 1 Are the events in the novel a true picture of the Nigerian society? These and other questions shall be answered in this essay. In his second novel, Contract, Iyayi yields the stage to the infinite appropriators, so that we can see them clearly in all their bizarre adornment.
They include governors, their administrators, the colonial officials, the business men, the police and the army. The alarming effects are evident not only in multi-million naira embezzlement but also inferior and badly constructed roads, hospitals, markets, stadia, public parks, pervasive filth scum, squalor and poor population.
The scheming for the multi-million naira Ogbe City Council contract for the low cost houses knows no limit. The Chairman, Chief Ewe Obala, wants his son Ogie as a member of the contract award committee so that his percentage out of the expected kickback would be higher.
It degrades human virtues such as love, honesty, sympathy etc to marketable commodities. It is suicidal to attempt to be good in such society. Appeals to all the supernatural deities in mosques, churches and shrines would not help for their contribution to the mess is itself enormous.
Recourse to abstractions such as justice will also not help because society has turned justice to a word coined by the rulers to legitimize their unjust rule. Are we then at a dead end? The novels answer No, and recommends the second step to dis-alienation; correct historical perception of our alienating order.
In Violence, Idemudia begins by seeking the pervasive iniquities in individual, personal terms. He blames. He has come to the full awareness. One other crucial point prevails in the characterization and structural arrangement of the narrative of the oppressed masses: the oppressors too need some pity for, in the final analysis, oppression basically dehumanizes, whether one is the giver or the receiver.
If ever we need the novelist as teacher today, Iyayi is definitely a foremost contender to the title. Poverty is thus a relative condition. What Violence portrays is Class poverty: A condition of constant struggle for survival, unemployment and underemployment; it is also associated with low wages, miscellaneous unskilled occupations, child labour, the absence of food reserves in the home, the pattern of frequent buying of small quantities of food many times a day as the need arises, pawning of personal goods and the use of second hand clothing and furniture.
The social and psychological results of this type of poverty include living in overcrowded quarters, lack of privacy; high incidence of alcoholism, frequent resort to violence in the settlement of quarrels; frequent use of physical violence in the training of children; wife beating, early initiation into sex free union or consensual marriage; a relatively high incidence of the abandonment of mothers and children; high trend toward mother-centred families and a much greater knowledge of maternal relatives; the predominance of the nuclear family; a strong predisposition to authoritarianism; and a great emphasis upon family solidarity — an ideal only rarely achieved Encyclopedia Britanica volume The foregoing is the exact picture depicted in Violence.
The first chapter opens with Idemudia and his wife, Adisa, as tenants living in one of the low mud but zinc houses along Owode Street. Owode Street is always over flooded any time the rain falls and houses collapse, sometimes trapping human beings in them.
Idemudia does not fear that his house will collapse, because even if it does he will not lose much property, after all what are one eight-spring iron bed, a short broom, a table and few cooking utensils? Idemudia lives in a room with a badly cemented floor, without radio in his house and food to eat.
Do you think I go to lyaro and First East Circular on an empty stomach for mere fun of it? Is the coming back any better than going away?
Idemudia could not complete his secondary school education because there was no money. His father and his uncle had to run into the bush to avoid harassment from tax collectors and Idemudia suffered for it. Now that he has come to the city, he could not find a job. He and his wife have to fight over lack of food.
Idemudia is ready to borrow some money, even if only one naira, so that he and his wife could eat! But he does not know who will lend him the money? Friends are few indeed. Nobody will 1end him the money, knowing full well that he has not the means to payback. To get something to eat, Idemudia and his friends have to agree to offload three full trailer loads of cement at the price of five Naira for each person. But who could have told Idemudia that this job would make him break down, be severed from his home for some weeks and spend more than double of this money in the hospital!
Corporal kolawole is a big example of this travesty of justice. Wise marked it as to-read Jun 07, Brigadier and later General Otunshi, executed 42 soldiers and 5 officers for mutiny by deserting the battlefield while he was away attending a party.
Writing about literature and critical theory. D from the University of BradfordEngland. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; http: He was educated at the Kiev Institute of National Economy, where he studied economics and at the university of Bradford for his postgraduate studies.
But in time of war, there are no law, when we misbehave. Louis Tyson in her book Iywyi theory today posits that the differences in socio economic class divide people in ways that are much more significant than do differences in religion, race, ethnicity and gender.
This article is really contains lot more information about This Topic. Yet the politicians who want to increase their power refuse to consider the misery of the citizens. With every killing, for instance, of hundreds of men, the casualties transcend the surface value. A total revolution, powered by the third army, could eliminate the corrupt officials reigning at the top of all sectors of Nigerian society and replace it with rule by those who love the land, work the land, and therefore respect it and its inhabitants.
Prior to this, I had read several books on the biafran war but sincerely speaking reading this book with my young mind gave me a very different and balanced perspective of the war. As such, he is merely sending them early to their graves.
The doctrine of Marxism is viewed from three basic aspects which are: Iyai is a prolific writer and reading the novels gives the reader and any other audience a serious reason to think about our country. Through the use of such narrative techniques as flashback, simple diction, bitter tone, irony, juxtaposition, symbolism e.
Exploitation has been a socio- economic feature of any class society and is one of the principal features distinguishing the social classes, the power of one social class to control the means of production, enables its exploitation of the other classes.
Find more information about: ISBN: User-contributed reviews Tags. ISBN Festus Iyayi: Festus Iyayi 29 September — 12 November [1] was a Nigerian writer know World Heritage Encyclopedia, the aggregation of the largest online encyclopedias available, and the most definitive collection ever assembled Violence usually connotes physical abuse, but in his first novel, Violence, Iyayi redefines it as a continual, demoralizing structure that eliminates hope, pride, self-esteem, health, and the ability to live independently.
Iyayi, infuses elements of Marxism in this work by showing Idemudia's struggle against poverty life and the society in which he lives. Festus Iyayi Personal Data Section Of Resume confronted forces of under-development in his contribution towards the growth of Nigeria People talk about a woman who drowned in the river, and you talk about the cloth she wore around her waist.
The purpose is to enlighten Africans on the need to fight against all forms of social injustice. Other books by African authors i like are The Bride Price-Buchi Emecheta, Violence-Festus Iyayi and Somolu Blues- I cant remember d author , 'The Interpreters' by Wole Soyinka would have made my list but it was too hard for me to comprehend; I read the novel upto five times,before i could understand it.
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