30/04/2025
LITERATURE IN ENGLISH
Give account of Adah’s cold welcome to London in The Second Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta
WAEC, 2023.
ANSWER
Adah, the protagonist of the text is a strong woman. However, her arrival to London results in a mixed feeling. The experiences she encounters in England can be linked to the themes of disillusionment and marital woes as we have in the novel. Adah believes that her journey to Europe will give room for freedom and liberty she has not experienced in Nigeria. As a girl child, she has to struggle to get education because of the African mentality that education should be for only a boy child who will become an ‘’obi’’ later in life and takes up the family name. Whereas, girls are meant to be pushed to their husband’s house at certain age as only wife material. Girl child’s birth is welcomed with disappointment and disdain. Adah sees this myth coming for her children, as she already birthed two daughters for her husband, Francis. She doesn’t want her daughters to suffer in Africa like her, she wants to raise full fledged educated children, civilized children that will be free to express their opinions, contribute to their society and become the best version of themselves. All these can only be achieved in Europe where people are given equal opportunities and girls are not treated as second class citizens. She believes so.
On getting to England, her dream land, she feels disappointed at the smoky weather, as people mind their business, no one celebrates or recognizes her and her children. Her husband’s happiness at the site of his family makes her a little relaxed but not long, as he reminds her that he is still an African man when Adah expresses her displeasure about how the environment looks moody. He immediately puts it to her that she doesn’t have the right to talk back at her as an African (Page 34) She begins to realize that her dreams of becoming a good wife and a great mother to her children might be shaking in the white man’s land.
Adah’s dream of becoming more successful in a white man’s land begins to dwindle when she realizes that there is a huge gap between the white and the black. She does not like how no one recognizes her and the way the whites keep their distance far away from the blacks. When she gets to their apartment, she feels terrible at the glimpse of a place that looked like a tunnel(page35) where her husband said they will live. They have to share their small apartment with other Nigerians who are struggling to survive in London. Back there in Nigeria, where she had made a name for herself, the calibre of people that will address her as “madam”. They will share apartment without kitchen and bathroom. She regrets having given England a thought and “wish she had not come” page 36.
All these contributes to the cold welcome Adah receives in a white man’s land that leaves her with the impression that in London, there is no freedom for blacks and that, blacks remain second class citizens to the natives.
Also, she realizes that her husband is becoming sophisticated and he feels he doesn’t deserve the best in the white men’s land, he keeps pressing his wife to join uneducated Nigerians in the factory work, neglecting his wife and children. He sees nothing wrong in a woman taking primary responsibility of catering for the family. Adah struggles until she gets her first appointments as a senior library assistant. She arrives at the United Kingdom in the month of March and gets her first appointment in the month of June amidst all odds!
The reality of the circumstances Adah experiences in the united kingdom at the beginning of her arrival is still very relevant in the present day African Countries and in Nigeria, as some men get very angry when they give birth to only female children. Africans should wake up from their slumber and allow their children to explore the world.
Buchi Emecheta has used her text to inform Africans that no child should be denied right to education and happiness. Also, some children should not be overpampered based on their gender because it might have negative effect on the child in the future.
The writer of The Second Class Citizen also reminds us that we should believe in ourselves, with hardwork, perseverance and prayer, one will achieve ones dream. Also, she emphasizes on the need for Africans to be satisfied with what they have, embrace it and develop it because till date, racial discrimination exists.
Miss Moronkeji SK’
Let's talk about women and children�
